the attacking Germans as explosions heated the air around him. Realizing that his gun would not stop the infantry, Knight leaped to a machine gun on a burning halftrack and opened fire. Nearby, other men grabbed small arms and machine guns to fend off the infantry assault. Private First Class Leon Tobin and Cpl Peter Simmons—the only survivors of their crew—continued to pour fire into the attackers until both were struck by bullets. As the Germans fell back, the few remaining tank killers returned to their last serviceable gun.
The American doughs finally pushed forward in a two-pronged assault on Climbach, and American artillery began to seek out the German tanks. The last TD supported the advance and knocked out at least one more machine gun nest for the riflemen.
The action illustrated the unsuitability of towed tank destroyers for mobile operations against a prepared enemy, no matter how determined the tank killers. The engagement had cost the TD company dearly: four enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded, and two officers and seventeen enlisted men were wounded. These heroic soldiers were members of one of the three TD battalions with black enlisted personnel and mostly white officers to see action in Europe with the then-segregated Army. (The other two were the 827th in the ETO and the 679th in Italy.) Lieutenant Thomas was awarded the Medal of Honor many years later, one of seven black recipients from World War II.
While German panzers had appeared to challenge America’s tank killers now and again during the fighting along the border, they had rarely done so in any substantial numbers. Granted, the Anglo-American strategic air campaign was reducing panzer production, but Germany in November and December delivered 2,299 tanks and assault guns (new or repaired) to the Western Front. Indeed, during the same period, only 921 went to the Eastern Front.61
Where were all the panzers?
Chapter 9
“The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster.”
— General Dwight Eisenhower to his American army commanders, 19 December 1944
On 19 August, Hitler—who evidently understood that Germany’s armies in the West would have to fall back to the West Wall—had told a group of intimates that he planned to launch a major counteroffensive in early November, when bad weather would hobble the Allied air forces. The Fhrer calculated that a devastating victory would break the Western Alliance and permit him to strike a separate peace, so he could deal with the Soviet Union. By mid-September, Hitler had already settled on the Ardennes for his bold strike, the seemingly impassable forested and broken plateau where Germany had successfully attacked in 1914 and 1940. He would dole out just enough men and equipment to keep the border defenses from crumbling while gathering his resources in utmost secrecy.1
Delays slowed the project, but by early December, Hitler had assembled twenty-eight divisions for his offensive—Operation Wacht Am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine)—and another six for a supporting offensive— Operation Nordwind (Northwind)—in Alsace. This was the largest reserve Germany had been able to accumulate in two years, albeit much weaker than the strike force available when German troops had slashed through the same area in 1940.2 Moreover, troops below the level of officers and NCOs were often new to battle.
The U.S. 12th Army Group intelligence assessment for 12 December asserted: “It is now certain that attrition is steadily sapping the strength of German forces on the Western Front, and the crust of defense is thinner, more brittle, and more vulnerable than it appears on our G-2 maps or to the troops in the line.” Three days later, the British 21st Army Group appreciation observed: “The enemy is at present fighting a defensive campaign on all fronts; his situation is such that he cannot stage major offensive operations. Furthermore, at all costs he has to prevent the war from entering a mobile phase; he has not the transport or the petrol that would be necessary for mobile operations, nor could his tanks compete with ours in the mobile battle.”3
Bradley understood that a German attack in his thinly held Ardennes sector was a possibility, but believed the risk was acceptable. He had placed no major supply dumps in the area, and he judged he could hit any attack from the flanks and stop it before the Meuse River.4 The consensus view in the Allied camp was that the Fifth and Sixth Panzer armies (the latter controlling the SS armored formations withdrawn from the fighting beginning in late September) formed a mobile reserve to counterattack any American drive to the Rhine across the Roer River.5
Those armies had far different orders than the Allies imagined. Hitler’s plan, delivered to Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt complete to the last detail with “NOT TO BE ALTERED” scrawled across it in the Fuhrer’s own handwriting, called for a three-pronged offensive along a 75-mile front between Monschau and Echternach.6 In the north, the Sixth Panzer Army was to strike to and across the Meuse River and then northwest for Antwerp. In the center, the Fifth Panzer Army was to attack through Namur and Dinant toward Brussels. The armored divisions in the first echelon had nearly a thousand tanks and assault guns, while the armored and mechanized reserve possessed another four hundred fifty.7 The German Seventh Army was to reel out a line of infantry divisions to protect the southern flank of the operation. A “Trojan Horse” unit under special operations veteran SS Hauptsturmfuhrer (Lieutenant Colonel) Otto Skorzeny, using captured American vehicles and uniforms, was to ease the way to the Meuse once the initial breakthrough was achieved.
Allied forces in November and early December gathered a steady trickle of information suggesting that a German buildup was under way in the Eifel, just behind the Ardennes front. Both sides had deployed into this thus-far quiet sector inexperienced divisions for a low-pressure first taste of war or battered ones for rebuilding. The American divisions, north to south, were the 99th Infantry (green), 106th Infantry (green), 28th Infantry (rebuilding), 9th Armored (green), and 4th Infantry (exhausted).
Towed Guns Tested
Most of the tank destroyer battalions along the front line when the German offensive began were towed outfits deployed, as usual, with forward infantry regiments.
The 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion in early December was located in the Honsfeld-Bullingen-Krinkelt area with the 99th Infantry Division. Its towed 3-inch guns almost daily fired interdiction and harassing missions against unobserved targets in the thick forests behind German lines.
The night of 15–16 December, Sgt James Gallagher heard the rumble of approaching tanks near Hoffen and led a reconnaissance section forward to investigate. A German patrol appeared suddenly out of the dark and ordered the Americans to surrender. The men complied, and they were led further east. The next thing they knew, huge panzers became visible amidst the trees. They were probably from the 1st or 12th SS Panzer division, the lead armored formations of the Sixth Panzer Army, which had been dubbed the main effort for the entire offensive.
Gallagher and the other men were questioned and then shunted aside. Dawn was not far off when Gallagher realized that he was not being watched closely. He slipped away into the woods and found his way back to report the Germans were coming. But soon, everyone knew that.8
Near the center of the Ardennes sector, the men of the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion had only just arrived at the front on 9 December, when they were subordinated to the untested 106th Infantry Division and its attached 14th Cavalry Group. All companies reported intense artillery and mortar fire beginning at 0400 hours on 16 December, and all wire communications to them were quickly cut. Soon, German infantry had pressed so close
