sector by isolated groups of American soldiers that created a domino effect and wrecked the German timetable.
Heavy snow was falling through the freezing night air as Tigers carrying volksgrenadiers crawled past burning buildings into St. Vith. Clarke ordered a retreat to a new defensive line west of the town, but in the chaos many small units never got the word.42
The Fuhrer Begleit Brigade drove a wedge between Combat Commands A and B of the 7th Armored Division on 22 December, and Clarke withdrew to another line with his headquarters in Commanster, a town set deep in the forest. The remaining M36s of A/814th shifted one mile to the vicinity of Crombach and dug in with the doughs from 23d Armored Infantry Battalion. The exhausted men repulsed repeated infantry attacks with the help of artillery called in as close as twenty-five to one hundred yards in front of the foxholes. First Platoon M36s claimed three Tigers with direct fire and one by indirect fire, but one M36 sustained a hit that destroyed it.43
During the day, differences surfaced between MajGen Maxwell Ridgeway, commanding XVIII Airborne Corps, who wanted to hold on to the territory between the Salm and St. Vith, and 7th Armored Division general officers who believed the command was in danger of imminent destruction. Clarke’s CCB had already been reduced by half. British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who on 19 December had taken command of all Allied forces on the north side of the salient, decided the men at St. Vith had delayed the Germans long enough and ordered a withdrawal across the Salm.44
The extrication began the next morning when the temperature dropped far enough to freeze the mud and permit vehicles to move. Tanks and TDs bearing riflemen were just forming up at Hinderhausen when the Fuhrer Begleit Brigade struck again. Cavalry deployed as a rearguard while two M36s engaged the lead panzers.45 Lieutenant Jack Dillender related:
A German tank attempted to round a curve into Hinderhausen. We were fighting our TDs over the rear end to help out maneuvering and our withdrawal. I was with my lead destroyer. James Cochran, the gunner, attempted to point the 90mm at the tank (a Panther). He could not get low enough because a camouflage net stopped the tube. We could see that German tank gun traversing our direction. My number-two TD was just across the road, and I [ran over and] called to Gilbert Dahms to get him quick. When he fired, we could hear the click— we had a misfire. Needless to say, our pucker strings were straining.
Dahms and Cochran kept each other supplied with chewing tobacco and both were cool country boys. Dahms reached up to the top of that 90mm breechblock and quickly moved the cocking lever to recock the gun. He then checked his aim and fired, and we hit that tank with an APC [armor piercing, capped] round head-on. We quickly loaded an HE round and let him have it again. That started him to burn.
A German opened the hatch and attempted to jump off. Cochran on the other side of the road aimed a rifle and shot the guy. He then spat a big wad of tobacco and said, “That’s one you missed, Dahms.”
Fortunately, it had turned cold, and we had had some snow the night before. If that hadn’t happened, we would not have been able to make it. Anyway, we took a couple more tanks trying to enter Hinderhausen. [The battalion’s AAR indicates three Tigers were destroyed.] I was on the deck of my number-two TD with [James] Foss, the commander. We had to back up for some shots, and in doing so we were no longer covered by a building on our right side. Shortly thereafter, we took a hit in the side. Foss was knocked off the deck. They repeated with another hit, which gave me a wound to my left leg and knocked me off the deck. I fell on top of Foss, who was not wounded, but I fell on him as he was getting up, which really clobbered him.
Our TD was starting to burn so we started helping to get everybody out and rolled in the snow to put the fire out. Everybody got out burnt and wounded, some worse than others, but all alive…. We could not put our wounded inside the other TDs because we still had to fight, so we strapped them on the outside of the TDs. It hurt us to do that, but it was the only way to get them out. Our mad run out of Hinderhausen was successful, and we got to a ridge near Commanster where we could make another stand.46
Indeed, the two remaining M36s engaged the pursuing panzers and destroyed one Tiger and two Panthers. One more TD fell victim to German fire, however. The remaining gun joined the withdrawal through Neuville.47
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Jones, CO of the 814th, commanded a task force that fought a rear-guard action to cover the retreat. Jones had two of his TD companies, his recon company, a company of light tanks, and the remnants of the 14th Cavalry Group.48
All but the last elements had crossed the bridges across the river when Lt Hugh Bertruch saw more panzers from the Fuhrer Begleit Brigade approaching. His four TDs began a raging fire fight that cost the Germans seven tanks and the 814th all four M36s. The crewmen retreated through the moonlight, where they found engineers who were just finishing preparations to blow the bridge. The TDs had won the time needed to close this road.49
The 2d SS Panzer Division, however, had worked its way to the west side of the Salm from the south, and Task Force Jones had to fight for every mile toward the safety of the 82d Airborne Division lines. The command broke up into small groups, many of which made it back to American lines over the next several days.
Jones’s battalion escaped the St. Vith battle with remarkably low casualties: Two men were killed, nineteen were wounded, and twenty were missing in action. Nevertheless, nearly half the 814ths M36s had been damaged or destroyed. But the 814th’s gunners had KO’d eight Tigers, twelve Panthers, six Mark IVs, six other tanks of unknown type, and various other vehicles.50
The stubborn defense at St. Vith, combined with that at Rocherath-Krinkelt, had limited the Sixth Panzer Army to a twenty-mile-deep but only five-mile-wide salient carved out by Oberstleutnant Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Division spearhead. To the south, the Fifth Panzer Army sent the 2d Panzer and Panzer Lehr divisions racing for a second key road junction: Bastogne.51 But Fifth Panzer Army’s commanding general, General der Panzertruppe Hasso von Manteuffel, on Christmas Eve recommended to Hitler’s adjutant that the attack be abandoned because of the time lost at St. Vith.52
Channeling the Flood
The American response to Wacht am Rhein followed the outlines foreseen by Bradley, although by 19 December he had largely lost his ability to control the northern wing of First Army.53 Reinforcing divisions initially deployed mostly along the flanks of the German penetration to build two solid containing walls. On the north, the 1st and 30th Infantry divisions and 82d Airborne Division shifted into what would become an east– west line anchored on the shoulder formed by the 99th and 2d Infantry divisions at Elsenborn Ridge.
The battle-tested 30th Infantry Division on 17 December had been ordered south from the Roer sector, and the crews of the 823d Tank Destroyer Battalion—who had never fired their new M10s’ guns in anger— accompanied the division on its march south through a bitter cold night along unfamiliar roads. Worse yet, Company B still had several towed 3-inch guns, while Company A remained entirely towed. By dawn on 18 December, the men arrived in the area of Malmedy, Belgium. Company B deployed its towed guns forward and held its M10s back as a mobile reserve. Company A received orders to move to Stoumont, while Company C was sent to Stavelot.
In Stavelot, where Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Regiment had pushed through a day earlier without leaving a holding force behind, columns from the two sides arrived almost simultaneously on 18 December. The M10s had hardly taken up firing positions when panzers struck from the east and west. Second Platoon claimed between nine destroyed and eleven tanks probably destroyed, while 1st Platoon accounted for a Panther and a halftrack.
A platoon of towed guns from the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion—which had been engaged in rear-area security duties since arriving in France four months earlier—had also arrived in Stavelot about 0330 hours to establish two road blocks with the doughs. Two halftracks trying to move guns to high ground south of town had come under fire and been knocked out. One of the two surviving 3-inchers began pounding German-occupied
