that gun crews were fighting for their lives with small arms and hand grenades. Gunner Private First Class Rosenthal destroyed five tanks during the day, but by evening almost all battalion elements—some on foot—were in retreat along with the infantry and cavalry.9 By early the next morning, the Germans surrounded the two forward infantry regiments.
Just to the south, the towed guns of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion were deployed with the regiments of the 28th Infantry Division when the German offensive hit. Most of the armor controlled by the German Seventh Army (which consisted largely of infantry divisions) attacked in the division’s sector, as did much of the Fifth Panzer Army.10 The 630th moved its 3-inchers into previously prepared positions when tank-infantry formations struck the forward lines. But German infantry pushed forward rapidly, and one gun section accompanied by a recon platoon stumbled into a fire fight before it could even reach its assigned spot. By dusk, the 28th Infantry Division was just managing to hold on to some strongpoints at road junctions while the German flood flowed around them. That night, two TD guns were overrun at Hupperdange.11
At the southern extreme of the assault zone, the 802d (towed) and 803d (M10) Tank Destroyer battalions were in southern Luxembourg with the 4th Infantry Division, which had been moved to the Ardennes to rest after suffering terrible casualties in the Hurtgen Forest. Although spared the brunt of the panzer assault, the doughs had to fight desperately to hold the line. The 803d deployed Reconnaissance Company, the security section, and cooks as infantry. Nonetheless, the 803d did not record a single confrontation with a German tank during the first two weeks of the battle, and the M10s were employed mostly in the indirect-fire role.12 The 4th Infantry Division would bend but not break and, soon reinforced by the lead elements of the 10th Armored Division, would form the southern shoulder of the German penetration.
Eisenhower was meeting with Bradley when the first reports of the German offensive reached him. Ike thought it a major operation, but Bradley suspected it was only a spoiling attack. Nonetheless, they agreed to order the 7th Armored Division from Ninth Army and the 10th Armored Division from Third Army to redeploy to the Ardennes as a precaution. The next day, Eisenhower alerted his reserves, the 82d and 101st Airborne divisions, for movement.13
At 0500 hours on 17 December, the 3-inch gun crews of 3d Platoon, A/801st Tank Destroyer Battalion watched the main road southeast of Honsfeld. The second section of the recon platoon was deployed a short distance forward. Elsewhere around the town, another platoon from the 801st and several towed guns from the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion supported the doughs of a provisional infantry unit culled from division rest camps.14 The men had been under frequent artillery fire since early the day before. But the 99th Infantry Division had been putting up a defense so stiff that the Sixth Panzer Army had been forced to commit the SS armor to help the infantry assault wave.
The sound of tanks reached the men from the gloom ahead. Sergeant James Gallagher, the recon section leader, had been told to expect the arrival of an American cavalry unit; Gallagher set out to investigate, but not before telling his men to pull back if he did not return. The sergeant approached the lead vehicle and was relieved to make out the lines of an M5 light tank. Gallagher called out to the commander in the turret. Suddenly, a rifle butt struck the back of his head.
The rest of the column consisted of Mark IVs.
The column stopped at the road junction in front of 3d Platoon. Recon men creeping back reported that the vehicles were German, so the gun platoon leader ordered his crews to swing their 3-inchers to the right and fire. As the men struggled to shift their ungainly weapons, German infantry who had dismounted from the panzers heard the sounds and cut loose with machine pistols and machine guns. With nothing between them and the Germans but air, the crews hit the dirt and returned fire with their small arms. Turrets turned, and 75mm shells crashed among the 3-inch pieces, wrecking equipment and flesh. The platoon leader yelled for his men to pull back. The men—including Gallagher, who had crawled away and made his second miraculous escape—raced toward the cover of a railroad line as bullets whipped around them.15
Oberstleutnant Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Regiment spearhead joined the flow of retreating American vehicles and rolled into Hongen against virtually no further resistance.16
A short while later and not far away, a section of 1st Platoon was shifting its guns into position west of Hunningen to deal with an armored column that had been spotted headed toward Bullingen and Hongen in the thin gray dawn. The crews opened fire and efficiently destroyed four Mark IV tanks and a halftrack. The rest of the panzers withdrew. Counter-battery fire crashed into the 1st Platoon’s positions, wounded the platoon commander, and disabled one gun. The men hitched up their weapons and withdrew to Murringen with the infantry.
By the end of the day, the 801st had lost to enemy fire or deliberate destruction to prevent capture seventeen 3-inch guns, four M8 armored cars, and many of its other vehicles. Known casualties had thankfully been relatively light, but several tens of men were missing. By dark, most of the remaining crewmen were fighting as infantry. The battalion nevertheless KO’d another five panzers with landmines.17
The next day, the 801st was ordered to withdraw toward Camp Elsenborn. The consensus among platoon leaders was that the battalion’s losses of guns and the failure to destroy more of the enemy was due to “the non-mobility of the towed gun and the lack of armor protection for the gun crew.”18
In a similar experience, 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion had most of its towed guns overrun between 16 and 18 December, although the 3d Platoon of Company B claimed to have destroyed fourteen tanks, one 88mm SP gun, and several other vehicles. Nearly two hundred men quickly went missing in action.19 Likewise, by the evening of 17 December, the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion had lost twelve towed guns and nearly one hundred thirty men missing.20
The freedom to maneuver quickly to good firing positions could make a tremendous difference in the face of overwhelming odds.
The M18s of 1st Platoon, C/811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 3d platoon of Reconnaissance Company, arrived near Ouren early on 17 December, among the first SP destroyers to respond to the German penetration. The CO of the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, ordered the guns into position east of town, where German tanks were reported to be concentrating. The TDers learned while under way that the Germans had already seized the hill they were to occupy. Confirmation came in the form of small arms fire and retreating doughs, who said that panzers were advancing up the far side of the hill.
Lieutenant Dan Orr decided to try to stop the enemy. His gunners opened fire as eighteen German tanks, supported by infantry, silhouetted themselves atop the crest. Return fire killed seven men and wrecked the recon vehicles and two M10s, and the German infantry began to flank the position. But panzers were burning—ten in all—when Orr ordered a withdrawal. Sergeant Dominic Zacharilla took up a position from which he could cover the retreat by the rest of the platoon, while the recon men grabbed a bazooka and provided flank support. Zacharilla held his lonely position for twelve hours under constant fire, destroyed three more German tanks, and helped knock out a fourth. The small band held up the German advance long enough for the regimental headquarters and trains to evacuate.
The elements of the widely scattered TD company, including Orr’s platoon, made their way toward Bastogne. Company CO Capt David Collins encountered disorganized elements of the 9th Armored Division parked along the road and ordered them to join his column. At Bastogne, Collins was instructed to proceed to Neufchateau, where he discovered that his column had grown to more than one hundred fifty vehicles. Other men from the 811th trickled in to Bastogne over the next few days, mostly on foot, and joined the town’s defenders.21
The Hitler Youth Grab a Porcupine
On the northern edge of the battle zone, the 2d Infantry Division had orders to organize a defensive line along the Elsenborn Ridge. The twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt sat astride the Wirtzfeld road, which the division had to hold if it was to extract both its forward elements and those of the 99th Infantry Division. But by
