The Victors Part 11

There were men who broke under the strain, and there were heroes. On November 5 the Germans counterattacked. An unknown GI dashed out of his foxhole, took a bazooka from a dead soldier, and engaged two German tanks. He fired from a range of twenty-five meters and put one tank out of action.

He was never seen again. On November 6 an entire company pa.s.sed the breaking point. An all-night sh.e.l.ling had caused numerous casualties. At dawn a German counterattack began. When the small-arms fire erupted from the woods, the men could endure no more. First one, then another, then two and three together, began to run to the rear. Capt. Joe Pruden was sympathetic: "They had just had too much.

Their endurance could stand no more." But he knew he had to stop them, get them to turn and face the enemy. Along with other officers at the command post, he tried. But the men were "pus.h.i.+ng, shoving, throwing away equipment, trying to outrun the artillery and each other in a frantic effort to escape. They were all scared." He saw badly wounded men lying where they fell, crying out for medics, being ignored.

The 28th's lieutenants kept leading. By November 13 all the officers in the rifle companies had been killed or wounded. Most of them were within a year of their twentieth birthday. Overall in the Hurtgen, the 28th Division suffered 6,184 combat casualties, plus 738 cases of trench foot and 620 battle fatigue cases. Those figures mean that virtually every front-line soldier was a casualty.

Col. Ralph Ingersoll, the creator of the "Talk of the Town" for theNew Yorker magazine, was an intelligence officer with First Army. He met with lieutenants who had just come out of the Hurtgen: "They did not talk; they just sat across the table or on the edge of your cot and looked at you very straight and unblinking with absolutely no expression in their faces, which were neither tense nor relaxed but completely apathetic. They looked, unblinking." Bradley and Hodges remained resolute to take the Hurtgen. They put in the 4th Infantry Division. It had led the way onto Utah Beach on June 6, and gone through a score of battles since. Not many D-Day veterans were still with the division-most were dead or badly wounded. In the Hurtgen, the division poured out its lifeblood once again.

First Army put the 8th Infantry Division into the attack. On November 27 it closed to the town of Hurtgen, the original objective of the offensive when it began in mid-September. It fell to Lt. Paul Boesch, G Company, 121st Infantry, to take the town. At dawn on November 28, Boesch put one of his lieutenants to the left side of the road leading to town, while he took the other platoon to the other side.

Boesch ran from man to man, explaining what the company was about to do. When he gave the signal, they charged. "It was sheer pandemonium," he recalled. Once out of that d.a.m.ned forest, the men went mad with battle l.u.s.t. Boesch described it as "a wild, terrible, awe-inspiring thing. We dashed, struggled from one building to another shooting, bayoneting, clubbing. Hand grenades roared, fires cracked, buildings to the left and right burned with acrid smoke. Dust, smoke, and powder filled our lungs, making us cough, spit. Automatic weapons chattered while heavier throats of mortars and artillery disgorged deafening explosions. The wounded and dead-men in the uniforms of both sides-lay in grotesque positions at every turn." American tanks supported Boesch's company. He remembered that they would first spray the buildings with their .50-calibers, then use their 75s to blow holes for the infantry. "We hurled ourselves through the holes or through windows or splintered doors. Then it became a battle from floor to floor-from room to room." The company took nearly three hundred prisoners. As the battle sputtered to a close, Boesch "started to shake, and it wasn't the cold. I realized that I had not been 133 afraid during that whole day. Not once did I feel afraid. I was busy as h.e.l.l, and that occupied my mind.

But when I shook, visibly, on that floor with a roof at least two feet thick over my head, I was hoping that I would not forget to be afraid because that was the best way to stay alive, to not make careless moves."

He was wounded later that night by a German sh.e.l.l and was sent to a hospital in the States. The 8th Division didn't get far beyond Hurtgen. By December 3, it was used up. A staff officer from the regiment was shocked when he visited the front that day. He reported, "The men of this battalion are physically exhausted. The spirit and will to fight are there; the ability to continue is gone. These men have been fighting without rest or sleep for four days and last night had to lie unprotected from the weather in an open field. They are s.h.i.+vering with cold, and their hands are so numb that they have to help one another on with their equipment. I firmly believe that every man up there should be evacuated through medical channels." Many had trench foot; all had bad colds or worse, plus diarrhea.

15 - The Battle of the Bulge

THROUGH THE FALL, the great offensive continued. The only place the Allies were not on the attack was in the Ardennes itself, which was thinly held by Lt. Gen. Troy Middleton's corps. On a drive to Maastricht on December 7, Eisenhower had noted how spread out the troops in the Ardennes were, and he questioned Bradley about the vulnerability of this sector of the front. Bradley said he could not strengthen the Ardennes area without weakening Patton's and Hodges's offensives, and that if the Germans counterattacked in the Ardennes they could be hit on either flank and stopped long before they reached the Meuse River. Although he did not expect a German counterattack, he said he had taken the precaution of not placing any major supply installations in the Ardennes. Eisenhower was satisfied by Bradley's explanation.

December 16 was a day of celebration at SHAEF main headquarters in Versailles, featuring a wedding, a promotion, and a medal. In the morning, Eisenhower aide Sgt.Mick ey McKeogh married one of the WAC sergeants. Eisenhower hosted a champagne reception in his house in Saint-Germain. He had something else to celebrate: the U.S. Senate had just announced his promotion to the newly created rank of General of the Army, which made him equal in rank to Marshall, MacArthur-and Montgomery.

Late in the afternoon Bradley arrived to complain about the replacement situation. The United States now had all but one of its divisions committed, the flow of replacements was not keeping pace with the casualty rate, and because of the general offensive that Eisenhower insisted on conducting, SHAEF had few men in reserve.

While they talked in Eisenhower's office, British Gen. Kenneth Strong interrupted to inform them that a German attack had been launched that morning in the Ardennes. Bradley's initial reaction was to dismiss it as a mere spoiling attack, designed to draw Patton's forces out of the Saar offensive. But Eisenhower immediately sensed something bigger. "That's no spoiling attack," he said, explaining that since the Ardennes itself offered no worthwhile objective, the Germans must be after some strategic gain. "I think you had better send Middleton some help," he told Bradley. Studying the operations map with Strong, Eisenhower noticed that the 7th Armored Division was out of the line, in First Army sector, and that the 10th Armored Division, a part of Third Army, was currently uncommitted. He told Bradley to send the 134 two divisions to Middleton, in the Ardennes. Bradley hesitated; he knew that both Hodges and Patton would be upset at losing the divisions, Patton especially, as the 10th Armored was one of his favorites.

With a touch of impatience, Eisenhower overruled Bradley. In the morning, the news Strong brought, based on identification of German divisions in the Ardennes and on captured doc.u.ments, was about as bad as it could have been. Eisenhower's rapid and intuitive judgment had been right-the Germans were engaged in a counteroffensive, not just a counterattack. Two German panzer armies of twenty-four divisions had struck Middleton's corps of three divisions. The Germans had managed to achieve both complete surprise and overwhelming local superiority, an eight-to-one advantage in infantrymen and a four-to-one advantage in tanks.

Eisenhower accepted the blame for the surprise, and he was right to do so, as he had failed to read correctly the mind of the enemy. Eisenhower failed to see that Hitler would take desperate chances, and Eisenhower was the man responsible for the weakness of Middleton's line in the Ardennes because he was the one who had insisted on maintaining a general offensive. But despite his mistakes, Eisenhower was the first to grasp the full import of the offensive, the first to be able to readjust his thinking, the first to realize that, although the surprise and the initial Allied losses were painful, in fact Hitler had given the Allies a great opportunity. On the morning of December 17, Eisenhower showed that he saw the opportunity immediately, when he wrote the War Department that "if things go well we should not only stop the thrust but should be able to profit from it."

After dictating that letter Eisenhower held a conference with Smith, Gen. J. F. M. Whiteley, and Strong.

SHAEF now had only two divisions in reserve, the 82nd and 101st Airborne, which were refitting from the battles around Arnhem. The SHAEF generals antic.i.p.ated that the Germans would attempt to cross the Meuse River, thus splitting 21st and 12th Army Groups, and take the huge Allied supply dumps at Liege. The dumps were crucial to the Germans, as they contained the fuel Hitler counted on to sustain a drive to Antwerp. Whiteley put his finger on the small Belgian town of Bastogne and declared that the crossroads there was the key to the battle. Bastogne was surrounded by rolling countryside, unusually gentle in the rough Ardennes country, and had an excellent road network. Without it the Germans would not be able to cross the Ardennes to the Meuse. Eisenhower decided to concentrate his reserves at Bastogne. He ordered a combat command of the 10th Airborne to proceed immediately to the town, and told the 101st to get there as soon as possible. He also sent the 82nd Airborne to the northern edge of the penetration, where it could lead a counterattack against the German right flank. Finally the Supreme Commander ordered the cessation of all offensives by the AEF "and the gathering up of every possible reserve to strike the penetration on both flanks." The following morning, December 18, Ike called Smith, Bradley, and Patton to a conference. The generals met in a cold, damp squad room in a Verdun barracks, on the site of the greatest battle ever fought. There was only one lone potbellied stove to ease the bitter cold. Eisenhower's subordinates entered the room glum, depressed, embarra.s.sed. Noting this, he opened by saying, "The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster. There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table." Patton quickly picked up on the theme. "h.e.l.l, let's have the guts to let the --- --- --- go all the way to Paris," he said. "Then we'll really cut 'em off and chew 'em up." Eisenhower said he was notthat optimistic: the line of the Meuse had to be held. But he was not thinking defensively. He informed his commanders that he was not going to let the Germans get away with emerging from the West Wall without punis.h.i.+ng them. He asked Patton how long it would take him to change the direction of his offensive, from east to north, to counterattack the Germans' left, or southern, flank.

Patton replied, "Two days." The others chuckled at this typical Patton bravado; Eisenhower advised him to take an extra day and make the attack stronger. He told Patton to cancel his offensive in the Saar, change directions, and organize a major counterblow to ward Bastogne by December 23. He was going to have Montgomery organize an attack in the north, against the German 135 right flank. In short, by December 18, on the third day of the Bulge, well before the issue was settled at Bastogne or on the Meuse. Eisenhower had already put in motion a counterattack designed to destroy the German panzer armies in the Ardennes. That Eisenhower was able to react so positively to news that had other generals shaking spoke well of him. But the real heroes of the day were the junior officers, the NCOs, and the enlisted men in the Ardennes. They were the ones who stood up to what should have been an overwhelming German attack. Hitler had managed to gather in the Eifel, across from the Ardennes, a force greater than the one that had attacked through the same area in May 1940. At the point of attack, the Germans had as much as a ten-to-one superiority. In such circ.u.mstances it was to be expected that the untried American troops in the Ardennes would cut and run, and some of them did, or surrender in ma.s.s, and some of them did. But at crossroads, on hilltops, in villages, individuals stood to their guns and did their duty, holding up the German onslaught, disrupting Hitler's timetable, giving Eisenhower a chance to gather reinforcements and rush them to the battlefield. Not least of these was Lt.

Lyle Bouck. Lieutenant Bouck commanded the intelligence and reconnaissance (I&R) platoon of the 394th Regiment, 99th Division. He had enlisted before the war, lying about his age. He was commissioned a second lieutenant at age eighteen. Informal in manner, he was sharp, incisive, determined, a leader. The only man younger than he in the platoon was Pvt. William James. The platoon was near Lanzerath. Bouck kept his men up all night December 15-16, sensing that something was stirring somewhere.

Shortly before dawn, December 16, the sleepy-eyed men saw the sky lit up from the muzzle flashes of a hundred pieces of German artillery. In the light of those flashes, Bouck could see great numbers of tanks, self-propelled guns, and other vehicles on the German skyline. He and his men were in deep, covered foxholes, so they survived the hour-long sh.e.l.ling without casualties. Bouck sent a patrol forward to Lanzerath, with orders to climb to a second story and observe. The men came back to report a German infantry column coming toward the village.

Bouck tried to telephone battalion headquarters, but the lines had been cut by the sh.e.l.ling. He got through on the radio. When he reported, the officer at the other end was incredulous.

"d.a.m.n it," Bouck hollered. "Don't tell me what I don't see! I have twenty-twenty vision. Bring down some artillery, all the artillery you can, on the road south of Lanzerath. There's a Kraut column coming up from that direction!" No artillery came. A couple of tanks that had been supporting the I&R platoon had pulled out when the sh.e.l.ling began. The men told Bouck it was time for them to retreat; after all, they had gathered and reported the intelligence, which was their job.

Bouck said no. He started pus.h.i.+ng men into their foxholes. Including Bouck, there were eighteen of them. They were on the edge of a wood, looking down on the road leading into Lanzerath. Bouck, Sgt.

Bill Slape, and Private James had their foxhole in the edge of the village. They were in a perfect position to ambush the enemy, and they had plenty of firepower-a couple of .30-caliber machine guns, a .50-caliber on the jeep, a half-dozen BARs, and a number of submachine guns.

The German columns came marching on, one on each side of the road, in close order, weapons slung, no security on either flank. They were teenage paratroopers. The men of the I&R platoon were fingering the triggers of their weapons. Sergeant Slape took aim on the lead German. "Your mother's going to get a telegram for Christmas," he mumbled.

Bouck knocked the rifle aside. "Maybe they don't send telegrams," he said. Then he explained that he wanted to let the lead units pa.s.s so as to spring the ambush on the main body. He waited until about three hundred men had pa.s.sed his position and gone into the village. Then he saw his target. Separated from the others, three officers came along, carrying maps and binoculars, with a radioman just behind-obviously the battalion CO and his staff. James rested his M-1 on the edge of his foxhole and 136 took careful aim.

A little blond girl dashed out of the house just down the street. She made a vivid impression on James-later he recalled the red ribbons in her hair-and he held his fire. The girl pointed quickly at the I&R position and ran back inside. James tightened his finger on the trigger. In that split second the German officer shouted an order and dove into the ditch. So did his men, on each side of the road.

The ambush ruined, the firefight began. Bouck's men had the Germans pinned down. Through the morning they fired their weapons, including the .50-caliber mounted on the jeep. Without armored support, the German infantry couldn't get at the jeep, nor fire with much effect on the men in the foxholes.

By noon, the I&R had taken some casualties but no fatalities.

Private James kept screaming at Bouck to bring in artillery with the new proximity fuse.* Bouck in turn was screaming over the radio. Battalion replied that there were no guns available.

A fuse that incorporated a tiny transceiver that emitted radio waves after firing, which exploded on the reflection back from the waves when the sh.e.l.l was near the target. Initially it was used only for anti-aircraft fire, but by late 1944 it was being used for bombardment by artillery against Germans caught in the open.

"What shall we do then?" Bouck demanded.

"Hold at all costs."

A second later a bullet hit and destroyed the radio Bouck had been holding. He was unhurt and pa.s.sed on the order to hold.

Private James was amazed at the German tactics. Their paratroopers kept coming straight down the road, easy targets. "Whoever's ordering that attack," James said, "must be frantic. n.o.body in his right mind would send troops into something like this without more fire support." He kept firing his BAR. The Germans kept coming. He felt a certain sickness as he cut down the tall, good-looking "kids." The range was so close James could see their faces. He tried to imagine himself firing at movement, not at men. As the Germans, despite their loses, threatened to overrun the position, James dashed on to the jeep and got behind the .50- caliber. Three Germans crawled up close enough to toss grenades at Pvt. Risto Milosevich, who was firing his .30-caliber at men in front of him. Unable to swing the .50-caliber fast enough, James brought up the submachine gun he had slung around his neck and cut the three Germans down. In a frenzy he ran to the bodies and emptied an entire magazine of nineteen rounds into the corpses.

By mid-afternoon there were four hundred to five hundred bodies in front of the I&R platoon. Only one American had been killed, although half the eighteen men of the platoon were wounded. There was a lull.

Bouck said to James, "I want you to take the men who want to go and get out."

"Are you coming?"

"No, I have orders to hold at all costs. I'm staying."

"Then we'll all stay."

An hour later they were both wounded, the platoon out of ammunition. They surrendered and were taken into a cafe set up as a first-aid post. James thought he was dying. He thought of the mothers of the 137 boys he had mowed down and of his own mother. He pa.s.sed out, was treated by a German doctor.

When he came to, a German officer tried to interrogate him but gave it up, leaned over James's stretcher, and whispered in English, "Ami, you and your comrades are brave men." At midnight, the cuckoo clock in the cafe struck. Lt. Lyle Bouck, on his stretcher on the floor, had turned twenty-one years old. "What a h.e.l.l of a way to become a man," he mumbled to himself.

On the third day of the attack, December 19, German armor began to acquire momentum; the greatest gains made by the armored spearhead columns were achieved that day. The U.S. Army, meanwhile, was in an apparent rout, reminiscent of First Bull Run eighty-three years earlier. As the Germans straightened out their traffic jams behind the front, the Americans in retreat were colliding with the reinforcements Eisenhower had sent to the battle, causing a monumental traffic jam of their own.

The U.S. Army in retreat was a sad spectacle. When the 101st Airborne got to Bastogne on December 19, the columns marched down both sides of the road, toward the front. Down the middle of the road came the defeated American troops, fleeing the front in disarray, moblike. Many had thrown away their rifles, their coats, all enc.u.mbrances. Some were in a panic, staggering, exhausted, shouting, "Run! Run!

They'll murder you! They'll kill you! They've got everything, tanks, machine guns, air power, everything!"

"They were just babbling," Maj. Richard Winters of the 506th PIR recalled. "It was pathetic. We felt ashamed."

The 101st had packed and left Mourmelon in a hurry. The troopers were short of everything, including ammunition. "Where's the ammo? We can't fight without ammo," the men were calling out as they marched through Bastogne to the sound of the guns. The retreating horde supplied some. "Got any ammo?" the paratroopers would ask those who were not victims of panic.

"Sure, buddy, glad to let you have it."

Cpl. Walter Gordon noted sardonically that by giving away their ammo, the retreating men relieved themselves of any further obligation to stand and fight. They had long since left behind partly damaged or perfectly good artillery pieces, tanks, half-tracks, trucks, jeeps, food, rations, and more. Abandonment of equipment was sometimes unavoidable, but often it was inexcusable. Panic was the cause. Guns that should have been towed out of danger were not. When a convoy stalled, drivers and pa.s.sengers jumped out of their vehicles and headed west on foot.

Panic was costly in every way. Pvt. Ralph Hill of the 99th Division remembered a platoon of infantry who were occupying a deep dugout with a heavy wooden cover. An ant.i.tank gun was set up at the nearest crossroads. At 0530, December 16, heavy artillery sh.e.l.ls began falling around the position. The gun crew, with no cover, dashed for the dugout. "When they tore off the cover, the 99th Division infantry opened fire from the dugout, thinking they were German. All of the gun crew was killed so the gun was abandoned."

Major Winters was not alone in feeling ashamed. Pvt. Kurt Vonnegut was a recently arrived replacement in the 106th Division. He was caught up in the retreat before he could be a.s.signed. To his eyes, it was just rout, pure and simple.

His unit surrendered. Vonnegut decided he would take his chances and bolted into the woods, without a rifle or rations, or proper winter clothing. He hooked up with three others who wouldn't surrender and set off hoping to find American lines.

Every man for himself. It was reminiscent of the German retreat through the Falaise Gap. But there were 138 two critical differences. All along the front, scattered groups of men stuck to their guns at crossroads and in villages. They cut the German infantry columns down as a scythe cuts through a wheat field. German losses were catastrophic. The GIs were appalled at how the enemy infantry came on, marching down the middle of the road, their weapons slung, without outposts or reconnaissance of any sort, without armor support, with no idea of where the American strong points were located. The German soldiers scarcely knew how to march or fire their weapons, and knew nothing of infantry tactics. In launching an offensive, the German army in the first year of the Great War had been better than the German army in the last year of the Second World War. What was happening at the front was exactly what Eisenhower had predicted-the Volkssturm divisions were not capable of effective action outside their bunkers. In far too many cases, however, they were attacking eighteen- and nineteen-year-old barely trained Americans.

Both sides had been forced to turn to their children to fight the war to a conclusion. In this last winter of World War II, neither army could be said to be a veteran army. Another difference between the German retreat in August and the American retreat in December was that as the beaten, terrified GIs fled west down the middle of the roads, there were combat troops on each side headed east, reinforcements marching to the sound of the guns.

In this crisis the men of the U.S. Army in Northwest Europe shook themselves and made this a defining moment in their own lives and in the history of the army. They didn't like retreating, they didn't like getting kicked around, and as individuals, squads, and companies as well as at SHAEF, they decided they were going to make the enemy pay.

That they had the time to adjust and prepare to pound the Germans was thanks to a relatively small number of front-line GIs. The first days of the Battle of the Bulge were a triumph of the soldiers of democracy, marked by innumerable examples of men seizing the initiative, making decisions, leading.

Captain Roland of the 99th put it best: "Our accomplishments in this action were largely the result of small, virtually independent and isolated units fighting desperately for survival. They present an almost-unprecedented example of courage, resourcefulness, and tenacity on the part of the enlisted men, noncommissioned officers, and junior-grade commissioned officers of the line companies."

By midday, December 20, Charlie Company, 395th Infantry Regiment, 99th Division, had been retreating for three and a half days, mostly without sleep and water and not enough food, through daytime mud "that was knee deep, so deep that men carrying heavy weapons frequently mired in mud so others had to take their weapons and pull them out. In one area it took 1 hours to cover a hundred meters."

Sgt. Vernon Swanson said that when word came down at 1700 hours that the regiment was withdrawing to Elsenborn Ridge, where it would dig in beside the 2nd Division and where more reinforcements were headed, "It was certainly good news. We felt it was the equivalent of saying we were returning to the United States."

The journey to Elsenborn, however, Swanson remembered "as the worst march of that week" because of the combination of mud, ice, frozen ground, and snow, seemingly all at once and all along the route. A high-pressure system had moved in from the Atlantic on December 18, temporarily opening the skies so the Allied air forces could fly a few support missions and starting a daytime thaw that slowed German tanks as much as American infantry. After darkness fell on the twentieth the ground began to freeze again; on the twenty-first there was a hodgepodge of snow, blizzards, fog, and sleet. Through this miserable weather Charlie Company marched.

"We left most of our supplies behind," Swanson said, "but our weapons were always ready. Throughout this entire journey our men made their way, cold, tired, miserable, stumbling, cursing the Army, the weather and the Germans, yet none gave up."

They arrived on the ridge around midnight, and although "we were beyond exhaustion," the men dug in.

139 A good thing, because at dawn a German artillery sh.e.l.ling came down on them. Too late, the Germans had realized the critical importance of Elsenborn. Swanson's company was well dug in, but nevertheless took seven casualties. Four of them were sergeants, "which opened up the field for promotions." One of those hit was Swanson, who got wounded in the neck by shrapnel. "I couldn't make a sound because blood was pouring down my throat." Litter bearers brought him to an aid station, where a chaplain bent over him. "I could dimly make out his collar ornament which was a Star of David. He, in turn, misread my dogtag, thought I was a Catholic and gave me last rites. I remember thinking that I really had all bases covered."

Elsenborn was the Little Round Top of the Battle of the Bulge. Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper, commander of the 1st Panzer Division, could have taken it without difficulty on the seventeenth or eighteenth, but he stuck with Hitler's orders and moved west rather than north once through the American line. The low ridge lay across the direct line from the Eifel to Antwerp and should have been the main objective of the Germans on the northern flank. But the Americans got there first and dug in. Only a direct frontal a.s.sault could oust them from the position.

The Germans tried. "The first night at Elsenborn is unforgettable," Captain Roland of the 99th wrote fifty years later. "The flash and roar of exploding sh.e.l.ls was incessant. In all directions the landscape was a Dante's inferno of burning towns and villages." The men of his regiment, the 394th Infantry, dug furiously throughout the night. "We distributed ammunition and field rations, cleaned and oiled weapons, dug foxholes and gun emplacements in the frozen earth, planted ant.i.tank mines, strung barbed wire, studied maps and aerial photographs by s.h.i.+elded flashlights, plotted fire zones for machine guns, mortars, and artillery, put in field telephone lines to the various command posts, and set up an aid station to receive a fresh harvest of casualties. "Everyone was aware that there would be no further withdrawal, whatever the cost. Moreover, I could sense in the demeanor of the troops at all ranks that this resolution was written in their hearts."

Enemy mortar and artillery fire hit the 99th. American artillery fired continuously. At night the temperature fell well below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. No GI had winter clothing. "The wind blew in a gale that drove the pellets of snow almost like shot into our faces. Providing hot food on the front line became impossible, and we were obliged to live exclusively on K rations. Remaining stationary in damp, cold foxholes, with physical activity extremely limited, we began to suffer casualties from trenchfoot. . . .

In time the combination of extreme cold, fatigue, boredom, and hazard became maddening. A few men broke under the strain, wetting themselves repeatedly, weeping, vomiting, or showing other physical symptoms." But there was no more retreating. The fighting was at its most furious in the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt, on the eastern edge of the ridge. There a battalion from the 2nd Infantry Division engaged a German armored division. The Germans and Americans were intermingled in a wild melee that included hand-to-hand combat. American tank crews knew they could not take on the big German tanks toe-to-toe, so they allowed the Panthers and Tigers to close on their positions for an intricate game of cat and mouse among the twin villages' streets and alleys. Shermans remained hidden and quiet behind walls, buildings, and hedgerows, waiting for a German tank to cross their sights. Most engagements took place at ranges of less than twenty-five meters. The 741st Tank Battalion knocked out twenty-seven panzers at a cost of eleven Shermans. The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion destroyed seventeen enemy tanks at a cost of two of their own vehicles. On December 21 Eisenhower expressed his mood and perception of the enemy in a rare Order of the Day. "We cannot be content with his mere repulse," he said of the Germans. "By rus.h.i.+ng out from his fixed defenses the enemy may give us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat. . . . Let everyone hold before him a single thought-to destroy the enemy on the ground, in the air, everywhere-destroy him!"

His confidence was great because his basic situation was so good. He was rus.h.i.+ng reinforcements to the battle to take advantage of the German audacity, men and equipment in great numbers. Maj. John 140 Harrison, at First Army headquarters, wrote his wife on December 22: "There is something quite thrilling about seeing all of the troops and armour moving in on the Kraut. There has been a steady stream for days and tho the Belgians are mighty worried I am sure they are amazed at the sights they see. The armor moves about 25 miles an hour in and out of towns and to see and hear a tank roar thru a fair sized town, turn on one tread and never slow down is quite a sight. The Belgians still line the streets and tho they are not as joyous as when we first moved in, they still wave and show their appreciation."

In the middle of the Bulge, the Germans had been unable to exploit the breakthrough because the 101st Airborne and elements of the 10th Armored Division got to Bastogne before they did. Although the Germans surrounded the Americans they were denied the use of the roads, and flowing around Bastogne was time-consuming. So from December 19 on they tried to overrun the place, with apparently overwhelming strength. Altogether they launched fifteen divisions at Bastogne, four of them armored, supported by heavy artillery.

Inside the perimeter, casualties piled up in the aid stations. Most went untreated because on December 19 a German party had captured the division's medical supplies and doctors. Nevertheless, spirits stayed strong. Cpl. Gordon Carson took some shrapnel in his leg and was brought into town. At the aid station "I looked around and never saw so many wounded men. I called a medic over and said, 'Hey, how come you got so many wounded people around here? Aren't we evacuating anybody?' "

"Haven't you heard?" the medic replied.

"I haven't heard a d.a.m.n thing."

"They've got us surrounded-the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

As the battle for Bastogne raged, it caught the attention of the world. The inherent drama, the circled-wagons image, the heroic resistance, the daily front-page maps showing Bastogne surrounded, the early identification of the division by PR men in the War Department, combined to make the 101st the most famous American division of the war. As the division history put it, the legend of the 101st was aided by those maps "showing one spot holding out inside the rolling tide of the worst American military debacle of modern times." At Bastogne, the encircled 101st Airborne won its head-to-head battles with a dozen crack German armored and infantry divisions. The Americans went through a much more miserable month than the Germans, who had an open and bountiful supply line. For the 101st, surrounded, there were no supplies in the first week and insufficient supplies thereafter. Those were the weeks that tried the souls of men who were inadequately fed, clothed, and armed. This was war at its harshest, horrible to experience. The 101st, hungry, cold, underarmed, fought the finest units n.a.z.i Germany could produce at this stage of the war. Those Wehrmacht and SS troops were well fed, warm, and fully armed, and they heavily outnumbered the 101st.

It was a test of arms, will, and national systems, matching the best the n.a.z.is had against the best the Americans had, with all the advantages on the German side. The 101st not only endured, it prevailed. It is an epic tale as much for what it revealed as what happened. The defeat of the Germans in their biggest 141 offensive in the West in World War II, and the turning of that defeat into a major opportunity "to kill Germans west of the Rhine," as Eisenhower put it, was a superb feat of arms. The Americans established a moral superiority over the Germans. It was based not on equipment or quant.i.ty of arms but on teamwork, coordination, leaders.h.i.+p, and mutual trust in a line that ran straight from Ike's HQ right on down to the companies. The Germans had little in the way of such qualities. The moral superiority was based on better training methods, better selection methods for command positions, ultimately on a more open army reflecting a more open society. Democracy proved better able to produce young men who could be made into superb soldiers than n.a.z.i Germany. Still, there were Germans of high quality in the battle. Lt. Gottfried Kischkel, an infantry officer outside Bastogne, was in his foxhole on the afternoon of December 22. An American tank was. .h.i.t and began burning. Kischkel heard cries for help from the tank.

"So I crawled to it. An American was hanging out of the hatch, badly wounded. I pulled him out and dragged him to a ditch, where I applied first aid."

Kischkel looked up from his bandaging and saw several Americans staring down with their M-1s pointed at him. An American lieutenant asked, in German, "What are you doing?"

"He cried for help and I helped," Kischkel replied. The Americans put their heads together. Then the lieutenant asked, "Do you want to be taken prisoner, or do you want to go back to your comrades?"

"I must return to my comrades."

"I expected no other answer," the American said. He told Kischkel to take off. The scenery was like a Christmas card. It drew oohs and ahs from even the most hardened warrior. One lieutenant said later, "If it hadn't been for the fighting, that would have been . . . the most beautiful Christmas. . . .The rolling hills, the snow-covered fields and mountains, and the tall, majestic pines and firs really made it a Christmas I'll never forget in spite of the fighting."

The towns evoked memories. In Arlon, Belgium, on December 20, Sgt. Bruce Egger of the 26th was amazed: "This area seemed to be untouched by the war, as the city and stores were bedecked with decorations and Christmas trees." Lt. Lee Otts, who was with Egger, remarked that "the streets were crowded with shoppers and people going home from work. . . . Everything had a holiday look about it. It really made us homesick."

Nearly every one of those four million men on the Western Front was homesick. Loneliness was their most shared emotion. Christmas meant family, and reminders of Christmas were all around these men at war. Family and home meant life. The yearning for home was overpowering. Beyond thinking of loved ones, the men in the holes thought of the most ordinary day-to-day activities of civilian life-being able to flick a switch to light a room, no need for blackout curtains, able to smoke at night, hot food on dishes served at a table, cold beer, a bed!, clean sheets, regular showers, changes of clothes, n.o.body shooting at you!-they thought of these things and could have cried for missing them. One of the loneliest GIs on the Western Front on Christmas Day was Pvt. Donald Chumley, a replacement a.s.signed to the 90th Division. "I was nineteen, just out of high school-a farm boy with little experience in anything." He was led to his one-man foxhole and told to get in and watch for Germans. Chumley didn't catch the sergeant's name. He couldn't see the men to his right and left. He didn't know what squad, platoon, company, or battalion he was in. For Pvt. Bill Butler of the 106th it was a day of "fog, rain, snow, freezing sleet combined with someone trying to kill you. I was in a fox hole alone. I had no one to wish me a Merry Christmas." For Pvt. Wesley Peyton of the 99th Division, it was a turning-point day. He was on Elsenborn Ridge. "Christmas Day dawned clear, bright and cold." American planes were in the air, hot food came forward, along with ammunition and replacements. "I began to believe I might celebrate my 20th birthday after all."

142 Many men were in houses. That is where most rear-echelon people lived and slept. Sometimes front-line men, too, but only when the line ran down the middle of a village. But if the houses were within the enemy's artillery range the GIs were staying in the cellars. In many cases the second and first floors had been blown away anyway, and if they weren't they made inviting targets. So even in town men lived below ground level.

Almost any civilian walking into one of those cellars would have immediately declared it uninhabitable.

The air was a mixture of sweat, brick dust, soot, and cigarette smoke. It could not be breathed. It was too dark to see much more than outlines. It was either too hot or too cold and it had no running water.

Every front-line soldier who walked into one of those cellars thought it the most desirable place in his entire world. The cellars were secure from all but a direct hit. They were dry. There was coffee on the stove. The cooks provided hot food. Sometimes there was a radio and "Axis Sally" playing American music. The exhausted GI could push some straw into a corner, lie down, and plunge into a deep sleep, completely relaxed because he felt secure. Usually, he was right-he was secure. Even during heavy sh.e.l.lings, direct hits on cellars were rare. Still, they happened. Capt. Gunter Materne of the German artillery was in Belgium. "On Christmas Eve of 1944, my men and I were lying in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a corner house. I was lying near the back on some straw. At about 2200 a sh.e.l.l exploded in our cellar. It came through the wall before it exploded." Materne's two radiomen were killed instantly. His sergeant was badly wounded and he had shrapnel in his back. As he was being pulled out the house burned down with the others still inside.

Pvt. Phillip Stark was a nineteen-year-old machine gunner in the 84th Division. He arrived on Christmas Eve at a position outside the Belgian village of Verdenne on the northern shoulder of the Bulge. His company had been on the offensive for a month and as a result lost 175 out of the original 200 men.

Replacements had brought it back to strength. "Upon arrival in this sector," Stark wrote three years later, recording his experiences on paper for fear of forgetting details, "we were told no prisoners. They didn't say, 'Shoot any German who surrenders,' but there was no alternative. Our forces were spread thin. We had no one to take care of those who surrendered or were wounded. Few people back home were aware of or could understand the necessity of the thing." At twilight the German troops in Verdenne began to celebrate. "Sounds and songs carried well across the cold clear air." Too well for Stark's safety-officers at regimental level heard the songs and decided to give the Germans a reminder of Was.h.i.+ngton crossing the Delaware to attack the Hessian troops on Christmas Eve 1776. Stark's platoon was ordered to attack and drive the Germans from the town. That meant going up a hill. In the dark the company got to the top, only to be sh.e.l.led by American artillery. Stark and his buddy Wib tried to dig in, but below the frozen earth there was rock. They were digging from the p.r.o.ne position, and despite frantic efforts, when dawn came "our hole was only about a foot deep and six feet long. Wib was 6'2" and I'm 6'6", but at least we were able to keep ourselves below the all important ground level. "This is how we spent Christmas Eve in 1944."

Christmas morning, Stark got to talking to Wib about the stories he had heard or read from the First World War, when on Christmas the front-line soldiers would declare a truce. "We longed for a lull, for a day of peace and safety." Instead they got a German barrage, intended to cover the retreat of German vehicles from Verdenne. Stark began cutting down fleeing enemy infantry: "Only on this Christmas Day did I ever find combat to be as pictured in the movies. We blazed away ruthlessly. This action could not be understood or accepted by persons not having combat experience."

At dawn the following day, German infantry and tanks counterattacked. The remainder of the platoon retreated, but Stark stayed with his machine gun, even when Wib took a bullet in the middle of his forehead. "Now I was alone and for the first time I was sure that I too was going to die. But I kept on firing, hoping to keep them off. By now three enemy tanks were very close and firing their machine guns and cannon directly at my position. I was nearing the end of my second box of ammunition." A German 143 bullet ricocheted off his machine gun, broke into bits, and slammed into his left cheek, blinding him in the left eye. He ran to the rear only to b.u.mp up against a burning German tank. Then over the hill and back to where he had started three days ago, on Christmas Eve. He had lost an eye and won a Silver Star. In his sector, nothing had been gained by either side in this series of attacks and counterattacks. Through the first weeks of January, the battle continued. Eisenhower insisted on an offensive that was effective but terribly costly. The total toll of American casualties in the Bulge was 80,987. More than half the killed or wounded came in January. For the period December 16 to January, the defensive phase of the battle for the Americans, the figures were 4,138 killed in action, 20,231 wounded in action, and 16,946 missing.

For the period January 3 through 28, when the Americans were on the offensive, the losses were 6,138 killed, 27,262 wounded, and 6,272 missing. Thus January 1945 was the costliest month of the campaign in Northwest Europe for the U.S. Army. Such figures boggle the mind. Bringing them down to the individual level helps comprehension. Easy Company, 506th PIR, was in the Bastogne battle from December 18 to January 17. Easy's losses were heavy. Exact figures are impossible to come by; in the hurry-up movement out of Mourmelon the company roster was not completed; replacements came in as individuals or in small groups and were not properly accounted for on the roster; wounded men dropped out of the line only to come back a few days later. An estimate is that Easy went into Belgium with 121 officers and men, received about two dozen replacements, and came out with 63. The Easy men killed in action in Belgium were Sgt. Warren Muck, Cpl. Francis Mellett, and Pvts. A. P. Herron, Kenneth Webb, Harold Webb, Carl Sowosko, John s.h.i.+ndell, Don Hoobler, Harold Hayes, Alex Penkala, and John Julian. The best description of the cost of the Battle of the Bulge to Easy Company comes from Pvt.

Ken Webster, who rejoined the company during the truck ride to Alsace. He had been wounded in early October; now it was mid-January. He wrote, "When I saw what remained of the 1st platoon, I could have cried; eleven men were left out of forty. Nine of them were old soldiers who had jumped in either Holland or Normandy or both: McCreary, Liebgott, Marsh, Cobb, Wiseman, Lyall, Martin, Rader, and Sholty. Although the other two platoons were more heavily stocked than the 1st, they were so understrength that, added to the 1st, they wouldn't have made a normal platoon, much less a company."

Beyond the wounded and killed, every man at Bastogne suffered. Men unhit by shrapnel or bullets were nevertheless casualties. There were no unwounded men at Bastogne. As Winters put it, "I'm not sure that anybody who lived through that one hasn't carried with him, in some hidden way, the scars. Perhaps that is the factor that helps keep Easy men bonded so unusually close together." They knew each other at a level only those who have fought together in a variety of tactical situations can achieve, as only those who endured together the extreme suffering of combined cold, not enough food, and little sleep while living in constant tension could attain.

They knew fear together. Not only the fear of death or wound, but the fear that all this was for nothing.

Glenn Gray wrote, "The deepest fear of my war years, one still with me, is that these happenings had no real purpose. . . . How often I wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost." They got through the Bulge because they had become a band of brothers. The company had held together at the critical moments in the snow outside Bastogne because 1st Sgt. Carwood Lipton and his fellow NCOs, nearly all Toccoa men, provided leaders.h.i.+p, continuity, and cohesiveness. Despite a new CO and new officers and enlisted recruits, the spirit of E Company was alive, thanks to the sergeants.

That spirit was well described by Webster. By this time Webster had been wounded twice and returned to combat after each occasion. He would not allow his parents to use their influence to get him out of the front lines. He would not accept any position of responsibility within E Company. He was a Harvard intellectual who had made his decision on what his point of view of World War II would be, and stuck to it.