76mm gun spat fire, and the Mark V started to burn.61
Desobry sought and received permission to withdraw his own small force but decided to attack instead when he was reinforced by a platoon of M18s from C/705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and a battalion of paratroopers from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.62
A meeting engagement ensued, in which the paratrooper battalion, supported by a few tanks and TDs, attempted to take high ground east of Noville while an estimated battalion of German grenadiers backed by panzers tried to push westward. For some reason, the German tanks generally held back, and when a few advanced, the TDs engaged them from the flank and destroyed five at fifteen hundred yards range. The clash resulted in a draw. Overnight, artillery pounded the American lines, and Major Desobry was badly wounded; panzer engines growled in the dark along the perimeter.63
The Germans attacked again out of thick fog at about 0400 on 20 December, when C/705th reported contact with German infantry near Foy and Noville. Between 0800 and 1000, heavy artillery concentrations crashed down on the defenders, followed by the appearance of panzers and grenadiers out of the murk. The fog did not lift until mid-day, and until then the action took place at distances of only a few yards. The eight remaining Shermans were out of AP ammo, and Company C’s 1st Platoon M18s moved forward. When the fog lifted suddenly as it had the day before, the gunners could see a skirmish line of fifteen panzers. The TDs fairly quickly dispatched five Mark IV tanks and raked the escaping crews with .50-caliber machine gun fire while the remaining panzers retreated out of sight.64
The battered command was now surrounded, however, and late in the day fought its way back through fog and smoke to the main Bastogne defensive line. Lieutenant Hagen ordered Sergeant Pilon to join the rearguard, which consisted of a paratrooper company and four TDs. Looking back into the village, Pilon spotted German infantry accompanied by a panzer entering the ruins. He fired HE at the infantry and was pleased to hear cries for medics in German. Armor piercing rounds convinced the panzer to pull back. Pilon then ordered his driver to follow the rest of the column westward.65
Team Desobry had lost about half its men, eleven Shermans, and five tank destroyers, but it had held up the German advance on Bastogne for two critical days.66
While the 609th’s 3d Platoon fought in Noville, 2d Platoon, commanded by Lt Edward Gladden, had joined Team Cherry in Longvilly due east of Bastogne. The destroyers mainly fought against infantry attacks, but the platoon claimed a single Mark V, with the credit going to an M18 destroyer that battalion records say was manned by a makeshift crew composed of personnel from company HQ. The M18 had been recovered under fire, manned, and successfully employed. This M18 may actually have been crewed by men from Company C, 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, who made their way through German lines and attached themselves to the 609th on 20 December.67
After waging a more scattered and confused defensive action than that in Noville, the remnants of Team Cherry fell back to the MLR near Neffe, one mile outside Bastogne.
Company B/705th’s 1st and 3d platoons were deployed near Neffe with the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment when the panzers and grenadiers attacked at 1930 hours on 20 December. 1st Platoon’s M18s fired flares to illuminate the enemy and destroyed three panzers while raking the infantry with machine-gun fire. Third Platoon also reported destroying three panzers.68
Company A/705th was at Ortheuville helping defend a roadblock. The crews drove off the first German force to appear and KO’d a Mark III and several halftracks during the exchange. Artillery fire soon exploded around the M18s, and this time a large force of tank-supported infantry appeared. The outnumbered Americans fell back toward Bastogne.69
The Germans probed the main line at Bastogne on 21 December, by which time they had enveloped the town. The TDs shifted firing positions as needed by the paratroopers, although the 705th’s AAR suggests that the coordination did not gel until late in the day. Still, that battalion’s M18s knocked out four panzers and three halftracks during the fighting.70
On 22 December, the Germans launched a concerted effort to take Bastogne, this time from the west.71 This would be the day on which BrigGen Anthony McAuliffe, acting CG of the 101st Airborne Division and all other troops in the pocket, issued his famous reply to a surrender ultimatum: “Nuts!” The 705th committed the men of Reconnaissance Company to the foxhole line to fight beside the paratroopers for the remainder of the siege. The recon platoon from the 609th also manned the front line, and the 101st Airborne Division placed 2d Platoon, A/705th, in mobile reserve. By 1000, the platoon had already had to deploy once to the outlying village of Monty, where it destroyed a panzer and helped convince the enemy to withdraw.72
The skies finally cleared on 23 December. Planes dropped supplies to the defenders of Bastogne and vast quantities of explosive ordnance on the enemy.73 The defenders grimly held on and hoped that relief on the ground would follow soon.
By Christmas Eve, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion had worked out a standard procedure for supporting the paratroopers (who had little prior training or experience working with armor of any type). Guns worked by platoons. One section took up positions in or within a few yards of the MLR, while the second section stood back one to two hundred yards to provide supporting fire. The Germans, for their part, were by now typically attacking in small battle groups of four or five panzers supported by fifty to a hundred infantrymen following an artillery preparation.74
The defense, meanwhile, was reorganized into combined arms teams built around the four regiments of the 101st Airborne Division. Roadblocks were established on all routes into Bastogne, each supported by two M18s from C/609th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Four M18s and forty men from the 705th formed part of a small new central reserve force.75
At 0400 hours on Christmas morning, tanks and panzergrenadiers struck the defenses after a mortar preparation. The panzers preceded the infantry by about two hundred yards, and a few succeeded in making a potentially disastrous penetration. The 705th’s AAR describes how the defenders exploited the situation: “The infantry of the 101st Airborne Division permitted the tanks to pass through them and then effectively stopped the following enemy infantry. In some instances, our guns permitted the tanks to pass them and were enabled to place effective fire on their flanks and rear. In places, the enemy armor was able to penetrate the MLR but denuded of their own infantry were excellent targets for the antitank defenses of all arms of the division as well as our own guns. In several instances, the tank destroyers were able to effectively assist friendly infantry by HE and .50-caliber machine-gun fire on the enemy infantry.”76
1st Platoon, Company B, was able to KO seven of ten panzers that penetrated the MLR between Champs and Hemroulle at about 0300 hours. Other platoons claimed their prizes, too, and by day’s end the crews had destroyed fifteen panzers, two AT guns, and an armored car.77
Everyone was learning. Colonel W. Roberts, CCB/10th Armored Division, wrote shortly after the battle: “The TDs taught me and my tanks a lesson that is being straightened out right now in this command. Properly employed in the defense, some tanks must be up with the infantry (I do not say what proportion) and some in reserve in the “socker” role. Those with the infantry must act in the TD role 98 percent of the time. The TDs know how to do it. Tankers are not as well trained, and they suffered. My eight TDs lost only three while getting twenty-two sure kills. My tanks did not approach that proportion.”78
Far to the east, in Berlin, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian met with Hitler on Christmas Day and urged him to suspend the offensive because it had failed. Guderian was already thinking privately about whom he would prefer occupying Berlin and wanted to shift the armored reserves to the Eastern Front. Hitler refused.79
The German attack resumed on 26 December, but with less vigor. The TDs used the same successful tactics to handle the armor. The Germans escaped the day’s encounter with the guns of the 705th short four panzers.80
During the period 19–26 December, the 705th accounted for thirty-nine German tanks, three halftracks, and assorted other vehicles and weapons. The battalion suffered casualties of twenty men killed, thirty-five wounded,
