early on 17 December, tanks from the 1st SS Panzer Division had been spotted in the vicinity of nearby Bullingen, the division’s supply point. Indeed, M10s from 1st Platoon, C/644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, arrived just in time to drive off a German armored probe toward Wirtzfeld by combining with an AT gun to destroy four panzers and a halftrack. One reconnaissance platoon entered Bullingen to establish and maintain contact with the panzers only to be surrounded and captured except for 2d Section, which broke free. A few towed guns from the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion also knocked out several panzers near the town of Butgenbach.22
The 2d Infantry Division’s 38th Infantry Regiment, supported by battalions of other regiments as conditions permitted and required, established a defensive line at the twin villages to screen the withdrawal. There was snow on the ground, and the fog was thick—as was the seeming confusion. The few available destroyers from the 644th (Company C and 2d Platoon of Company A) could provide only spot antitank defense, and the doughs mostly fought panzers with mines and bazookas when they first struck the defenses at Krinkelt the night of 17 December. (The 741st Tank Battalion was the spine of the antitank defense in Rocherath.)
Two surviving platoons of Reconnaissance Company joined the doughs and TDs in heavy street fighting that surged back and forth among the burning buildings of the village for hours. The Germans reached the recon company CP, but headquarters personnel grabbed their guns and helped drive the attackers away at midnight. Sergeant Melvin Mounts and his crew narrowly escaped a rude surprise when the building behind which their M10 was hiding collapsed, revealing two Panthers twenty yards away.23
About dawn on 18 December, a panzergrenadier regiment supported by a battalion each of tanks and assault guns—all from the 12th SS “Hitlerjugend” Panzer Division—concentrated near the twin villages to join the volksgrenadiers already engaged. The SS panzers were about evenly divided between Panthers and Mark IVs.24
The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had left a company behind with the 8th Infantry Division when it had joined the 2d Infantry Division in the Ardennes in early December, received control over the towed guns of Company C, 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Three guns from the 801st were also attached.25
The Germans again penetrated Krinkelt on 18 December. Lieutenant Robert Parker of Headquarters Company saw seven Panthers approaching his position. He secured a bazooka and made his way to a ruined barn, from which he scored a direct hit on one tank. Parker worked his way through the hail of fire in the streets until he was within forty yards of the panzers. The lieutenant fired again and soon had one Panther burning nicely and a second immobilized. Cannon shells and machine gun bullets now sought Parker out, but he was able to damage three more Mark Vs before he was wounded. Out of rockets, Parker made his way back and organized two bazooka teams from recon that were able to finish the panzers off.26
Five more panzers carrying infantry reached the 38th Infantry Regiment’s CP. A TD located fifty yards away (probably the M10 with Pvt Henry McVeigh acting as gunner) knocked out the first tank, and when the column stopped, it finished off the second and third. CP personnel in the upper floors of the building blazed away at the grenadiers, few of whom escaped, while a doughboy knocked out the fourth panzer with a bazooka. The surviving tank turned around and left, despite a shot from the TD that hit the turret. McVeigh was credited with destroying two Panthers, two Mark IVs, and a halftrack.27
The 2d Infantry Division pulled out of the twin villages on 19 December to man the defenses along Elsenborn Ridge, its mission successfully completed.28 During the withdrawal, a column of twelve Panthers approached a heavy walled church near the northern edge of Krinkelt, firing into every house, until Private McVeigh knocked out the lead panzer with a HVAP round at seventy-five yards. The others pulled back.29
All told, the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion accounted for seventeen panzers, two SP guns, and one halftrack during the fighting around Krinkelt.30
The defense at Krinkelt and Rocherath had accomplished far more than the men involved knew: It had thrown the Sixth Panzer Army hopelessly off schedule. Asked after the war why the 12th SS panzer Division had failed to break through, then-Sixth Panzer Army Chief of Staff Generalmajor (Waffen SS) Fritz Kraemer attributed the failure to “tank destroyers and heavy resistance.”31 By 20 December, Generaloberst (Waffen SS) Sepp Dietrich, commanding the Sixth Panzer Army, privately concluded that the Ardennes offensive had failed.32
Slowing the Surge at St. Vith
Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model, commanding Army Group B, believed that the Ardennes offensive would become a battle for road junctions because of the restrictive terrain.33 With the Sixth Panzer Army tangled by the tenacious defense offered by the 99th and 2d Infantry divisions, and with the German Seventh Army making slow progress on the southern shoulder, the Fifth Panzer Army in the center badly needed one such road junction: St. Vith. It expected to capture the objective by 17 December.34
The town was still in the hands of what was left of the 106th Infantry Division when the lead combat elements of the 7th Armored Division arrived late on 17 December after a sixty-mile road march over clogged and slippery roads. The men in the attached 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion (who had been in Holland converting from the M10 to the M36) had seen the fear on the faces of the Belgian civilians they had passed en route, but they did not know the cause.35
The CG of the 106th Infantry Division passed command to BrigGen Bruce Clarke, commanding CCB. Clarke set about organizing a horseshoe-shaped defensive perimeter around the town, supported by CCB/9th Armored Division and the remnants of a regiment each from the 106th and 28th Infantry divisions. The TDs and recon teams of the 814th were parceled out to support division elements manning roadblocks along the defensive line.36
Clarke’s goal was to delay the Germans as long as possible, not to hold St. Vith indefinitely. The Germans were preoccupied with reducing the two surrounded regiments of the 106th Infantry Division (both eventually surrendered) and first attacked the defenses at St. Vith in any strength on 20 December. That day, the Fuhrer Begleit (Escort) Brigade—formed around the cadre of a battalion that had protected Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters—tried to push down the roads behind St. Vith to bridges across the Salm River. At dusk, a company of Mark IVs crested a hill in front of 1st Platoon, A/814th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The waiting M36s cut loose with their 90mm guns and destroyed five Mark IVs with seven rounds. The remainder retreated into the growing darkness.37
Late on 20 December, patrols from the 7th Armored and 82d Airborne divisions established contact. The paratroopers were establishing a defensive line on the far side of the Salm River, and the defenders of St. Vith were now subordinated to the XVIII Airborne Corps.38
The following morning passed in ominous silence.39 As evening approached, the 18th and part of the 62d Volksgrenadier divisions launched an attempt to reach St. Vith in the wake of a terrific artillery barrage. Third Platoon of A/814th was supporting Company B of the 23d Armored Infantry Battalion at the far right of the 7th Armored Division’s lines southeast of St. Vith, where a six-hundred-yard gap separated the men from CCB/9th Armored Division. The volksgrenadiers began infiltrating about 1630, and the doughs were soon in trouble as the Germans detected the gap and charged in. The platoon’s three M10s and one M36 quickly ran out of HE shells, and the crewmen resorted to .50- and .30-caliber machine guns, side arms, and hand grenades.
The infantry began to backpedal under the pressure, and two M10 crews—bereft of infantry support—were alarmed to discover that their vehicles were sunk too deeply in mud to move. The German fire was too heavy for the other destroyers to pull them free, so the men bailed out and accompanied the rest of the platoon back to St. Vith to set up a roadblock.
Royal Tigers from the Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 now joined the attack and wreaked havoc on a few Shermans that tried to cover the widening gap in the line. The remaining 3d Platoon gun section laid mines that knocked out three panzers. The volksgrenadiers pressed on fiercely and came close enough to disable the one M36 with a bazooka about 2330 hours. The crewmen in the last TD faced a column of eight approaching Panthers and knocked out the leader, which blocked the road. Return fire damaged a track, but the crew was able to repair it.40 The stubborn little roadblock held the main route through St. Vith until nearly midnight.41 This was just one example of the many small, desparate fights waged throughout the
