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The Ardennes Offensive-Today in The Battle of The Bulge

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  • The Ardennes Offensive-Today in The Battle of The Bulge

    69 years outnumbered and outgunned GIs in the Ardennes awoke to attacks across all of the VIII Corps front. It was the opening of the Battle of the Bulge the largest land battle in American history. Some broke, some retreated under orders. But many stood firm over the coming weeks much as their forebears at Brandywine, New Orleans, and Gettysburg.

    THE ARDENNES: BATTLE OF THE BULGE (Contents)

    As I do with the ACW daily updates, I will try to do the same for The Bulge.

    Tonight I begin my annual ritual to commemorate.

    I open a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and reread A Time For Trumpets by Charles B. MacDonald.

    Some highlights

    16 DEC

    35 tough bastids hold up an panzer army. Battle of Lanzerath Ridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The Battle of Skyline Drive Wrote a paper in the Advanced Course about the 110th INF REGT's stand before Bastogne. Battle of the Bulge: U.S. Army 28th Infantry Division's 110th Regimental Combat Team Upset the German Timetable
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

  • #2
    Made me go to the basement to find that bottle of Tennessee's drink.

    Looking forward to another great thread.

    Cheers.
    No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

    To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

    Comment


    • #3
      My maternal grandfather was there, with the 99th Infantry Division. I fondly recall how upset he would get over the historical inaccuracies of the 1965 movie that, apparently, made him feel slighted. I was just happy that it motivated him to talk about it. He had some great stories to tell, when you could get him on the subject.

      Thank you for doing this. Subscribed!

      Comment


      • #4
        Dan, the Checkerboards had a distinguished combat record. They were every men....the ones who win wars.

        I will try to live up to their legacy.
        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
        Mark Twain

        Comment


        • #5
          Kampfgruppe Peiper pushes forward in the north and meets strong resistance from the 99th ID. Elements overrun the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion at the small crossroads town of Mamedy. Malmedy massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

          In the center 2 regiments of the green 106th ID are cutoff on Schnee Effel despite counterattacks by elements of the 9 AD. 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions are alerted to move to the key crossroads towns of St Vith and Bastogne.

          In the south elements of the 28th ID fight bitterly to slow the German attack out of the Our Valley.

          Skorzeny's Operation Greif begins. Operation Greif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
          Mark Twain

          Comment


          • #6
            AR- I really like your blow-by-blow posts about defining moments in US military history; I'm not much of a Civil War buff (my wife is, though), but I am a casual student of Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, or the Battle of the Bulge, in particular Kampfgruppe Peiper's attempted (and failed) drive west toward Antwerp. Since I tend to (mostly) build models of German WWII armor this is, obviously, a subject I am interested in.
            "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge

            Comment


            • #7
              Stitch,

              Thanks for the kind words. And by all means please feel free to amend, correct or blast my entries as needed.

              Happy to share the burden!

              Buck
              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
              Mark Twain

              Comment


              • #8
                Reading Wiki link I found something I didn't know.

                Eisenhower rumor[edit]
                So great was the confusion caused by Operation Greif that the US Army saw spies and saboteurs everywhere. Perhaps the largest panic was created when a German commando team was captured near Aywaille on 17 December. Comprising Unteroffizier Manfred Pernass, Oberfähnrich Günther Billing, and Gefreiter Wilhelm Schmidt, they were captured when they failed to give the correct password. It was Schmidt who gave credence to a rumour that Skorzeny intended to capture General Dwight Eisenhower and his staff.[11] A document outlining Operation Greif's elements of deception (though not its objectives) had earlier been captured by the US 106th Infantry Division near Heckhuscheid, and because Skorzeny was already well known for rescuing Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (Operation Oak or Unternehmen Eiche) and Operation Panzerfaust, the Americans were more than willing to believe this story and Eisenhower was reportedly unamused by having to spend Christmas 1944 isolated for security reasons. After several days of confinement, he left his office, angrily declaring he had to get out and that he didn't care if anyone tried to kill him.[12]
                Not even British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was exempt from Skorzeny's commando paranoia. Upon hearing Eisenhower's confinement, Montgomery took off in his staff car towards Malmédy to increase his own prestige among American troops. Little did he know that a rumor had been spread in the Ardennes that one of Skorzeny’s commandos looked strikingly similar to Montgomery and had identified himself as such at several American checkpoints. When American guards halted his car at the first checkpoint, Montgomery told them that he would not put up with such nonsense and ordered the driver to keep going. The guards angrily shot out his tires and dragged the Field Marshal to a nearby barn where he was detained for several hours. Montgomery was enraged and called for the court martial of the American privates if they did not release him. He was also insulted that they did not recognize him after the guards demanded his identification. He was only released after a British captain known to the Americans properly recognized the fuming Field Marshal. An amused Eisenhower got a great pleasure from the incident, saying this was the best thing for which Skorzeny had ever been responsible.[7][13]
                I knew about Ike rumor, but Monty on a high horse is new (to me).
                No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Doktor View Post
                  Reading Wiki link I found something I didn't know.



                  I knew about Ike rumor, but Monty on a high horse is new (to me).
                  Yes, there was definitely a "conflict of personalities" during the Battle of the Bulge; at one point, Bradley and Patton both threatened to resign if Eisenhower didn't "sack" Montgomery. Part of the problem was that Montgomery was very good at self-promotion, and sometimes came off sounding like he won the Battle single-handedly, even though American commanders and, in particular, American soldiers outnumbered their British counterparts at something like a 10-to-1 ratio. Not to belittle the British contribution to the Battle, but the majority of the combatant forces in the Ardennes were American (which included the Army Air Force).

                  Edit: The best website I've found so far describing Kampfgruppe Peiper's drive toward the Meuse is this one: On the Trail of Kampfgruppe Peip
                  Last edited by Stitch; 17 Dec 13,, 19:49. Reason: Additional Information
                  "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    The Jack Daniels is going down too easy tonight!
                    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                    Mark Twain

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I only have on thing to say. Nuts!
                      sigpic

                      Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I want to find a good Belgian bar with a comprehensive collection of local Belgian brews, and drink my way through the Battle of the Bulge with WWII buffs. There was a good one with beers made in Lanzerath, Rochefort and Stoumont, but I can't find it again because I was drunk when I walked in. A prize will be awarded to the man/woman left standing by Yuletide battles.
                        All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
                        -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          On the northern fron the 2d Infantry Division extricates itself from its attack NE towards the Ruhr Dams and digs in along the Elsenborn Ridge. Other veteran American units join them along with masses of artillery. The 82d ABN DIV arrives in ST Vith and Matt Rideway and XVIII ABN CORPS HQ arrive to help control the fight. Heavy fighting evolves in the twin towns of Krinkelt & Rocherath.

                          Krinkelt-Rocherath, December 17, 18 and 19, 1944

                          Side Note: I stood on top of Elsenborn Ridge in May 1984 and looked out at the avenue of approach the Germans faced. No wonder the Allied artillery slaughtered them!

                          From the Wiki a highlight of how the defenses were effective:

                          On the American side, the defense depended on field fortifications, British gun and ammunition design, and innovative use of light anti-tank weapons like the bazooka and anti-tank mines and the support of a formidable array of indirect fire. American tanks and anti-tank guns were considered ineffective against the newer German fighting vehicles. This was compensated to some extent by use of the 76 mm (76.2 mm) M1A1 gun, designated as the 3-inch cannon, mounted on the Sherman tank and the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer. The British had also designed high velocity anti-armor ammunition for the 57mm anti-tank cannon, which gave this gun a new lease on life against the new heavier German units. American gunners were quick to trade for whatever their allies wanted for this highly effective ammunition.[3]: 404 The Americans also adapted the 90mm anti-aircraft gun as an anti-tank cannon, the 90mm cannon, and mounted it on an open turret on the Sherman tank as the M36 Jackson tank-destroyer. This was another innovation effective against German heavy tanks.[27]:167

                          Since the invasion of Europe, the American army had suffered greater than expected losses, and found slashing German armored counter-attacks particularly difficult.[23]:11 Learning from this, overall American tactics began to include a defense in depth, using mobile armored cavalry squadrons with light tanks and anti-tank guns to screen defensive positions behind them. When attacked, these cavalry units would delay the Germans for a short time, then retreat through stronger positions to their rear. These positions consisted of fortifications set around terrain choke points like villages, passes, and bridges. In the area of Elsenborn Ridge, the twin villages and the area of Domäne Bütgenbach proved to be the best areas for defense. Machine gun and infantry positions would be protected by barbed wire and mine fields. Anti-tank mine "daisy chains" were also prepared. These were composed of a line of mines lashed in a row. This chain of mines would be dragged across a road with a rope when a column of German tanks threatened to advance down the road. This defensive line would be backed by bazooka positions in buildings, dug-in anti-tank guns, and tank destroyers firing from covered positions further in the rear.[23]:20–1

                          As German mobile units stacked up against these defenses, the Americans would call into play their superior communications and artillery tactics like “time on target”, a sequence of firing so that all shells impacted on the target simultaneously, to rain specially fused shells upon them with indirect fire. This allowed vast arrays of artillery pieces, distant from the battle to concentrate unprecedented firepower on concentrations of German attacking units. This defense would also involve abundant tactical air support, usually by P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers. These “flying tanks” were armed with air to surface rockets which were very effective against the thinly armored upper decks of German armored vehicles. The snowstorms of December forestalled this dimension of the defense. The U.S. Army was also lavishly supplied with the self-propelled artillery, aircraft, and the ammunition it took to make these firepower based tactics successful. If effectively employed and coordinated, these attacks negated the advantage of superior German armor and armored tactics, although at a cost paid by the U.S. infantry, for saturation indirect fire tended to destroy both friend and foe alike.[3]:396

                          Elsenborn Ridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                          In the south the gallany stand of the 110th Infantry Regiment 28th ID was crumbling.

                          Down to a single battalion it joined with makeshift task forces of corps troop like engineers and are thrown into the fight. Here is one battle account near the town of Wiltz.

                          With the American defenses collapsing east of Bastogne, the corps commander ordered the last of his reserves, the 35th Engineer Combat Battalion-a corps unit-and the 158th
                          Engineer Combat Battalion-an army unit which happened to be working in the area-to defend Bastogne until reinforcements
                          could arrive. On the morning of the 19th, German tanks attacked an engineer roadblock in the darkness. Unsure of his target in the gloom, Private Bernard
                          Michin waited until a German tank was only 10 yards away before firing his bazooka. The explosion which knocked out the tank blinded him. As he rolled into a ditch, he heard
                          machine gun fire close by. He threw a grenade at the sound, which ceased, and struggled back to his platoon. Private Michin, who regained his sight several hours later, received
                          the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery under fire. During the evening of the 19th and the morning of the
                          20th, the 101st Airborne Division, which had rushed to the defense of Bastogne, relieved the 158th and the 35th ECBs.

                          The stand of the 110th Infantry was complete. Though almost completely wiped out this one overstretched regiment took 2 German corps in the face and almost fought them to a standstill. The German rear area was a madhouse shamble because of the lack of roads, timetables doomed and Allied strategic bombers shifted their focus to rail and road nexus behind the German front lines.

                          The 101st Airborn Division arrives in Bastogne.
                          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                          Mark Twain

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            A little background on the 28th ID

                            Let me add a little bit about the 28th Infantry Division and the Ardennes Campaign. The 28th ID was/is an infantry division from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. It entered combat 22 July 1944 when it landed at Omaha Beach. It was assigned to the XIXth Corps of First Army. They entered combat as part of the force trying to close the southern arm of the Falaise Gap.

                            In late-July, due to poor performance, the division commander was relieved and replaced by Major General James Wharton. Wharton would be killed by a sniper and be replaced by MG Norman “Dutch” Cota…..yeah, THAT Dutch Cota. Robert Mitchum played him in The Longest Day. Look him up. Big Brass Ones.

                            The division was selected to march through Paris in the Allied parade on 29 August 1944 . At bivouac that morning the men shaved, cleaned their uniforms and those soldiers with the cleanest uniform with division patches sewn on were placed to the outside of the ranks. The division completed the parade, mounted up and continued to attack towards the northeast.



                            Cota discovered one of the problems with the 28th ID was so many of its senior leaders were old National Guardsmen, some of who had been in their positions since mobilizing in 1940. The division attacked haltingly while attacking the Siegfried Line, and suffered 1700 casualties in 4 days. It was during this time that the Germans gave the 28th a nickname that would remain with them for the rest of the war. Mistaking the red keystone emblem worn on the left shoulder of each soldier’s jacket for a bucket, they became known as the der blutiger Eimer or the “Bloody Bucket” Division. One other consequence of the fight was Cota relieved 2 regimental and 3 battalion commanders.



                            Not long after this Cota would lead the division in the wet hell of the Huertgen Forest Campaign. The division would be bludgeoned in the slugfest and almost be wrecked. Coming out of the Huertgen the 28th would suffer 6,184 casualties out of 15240 assigned. The casualties were almost exclusively within the infantry battalions and rifle companies. The 112th Infantry Regiment would lose 2093 out of 3100 (67%), the 110th Infantry Regiment would lose 2316 out of 3202 (72%) and the 109th Infantry Regiment got off light, 1275 out of 3007 (43%). 85% of rifle company commanders were casualties, 6 out of 9 battalion commanders and 2 of the 3 regimental commanders. While not casualties, Cota also cleaned house on the divisions staff, sacking his chief of staff and G1 through G3. The unit was moved to a quiet sector in the Ardennes to refit, rest and rearm.

                            They would place their headquarters at small Belgium spa town which would serve as a rest center…Bastogne.
                            Attached Files
                            Last edited by Albany Rifles; 18 Dec 13,, 21:57.
                            “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                            Mark Twain

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                            • #15
                              From the US Army’s Green Book series:

                              WACHT AM RHINE'S timetable had placed Dietrich's and Manteuffel's panzers at the Meuse four days after the attack began. The stubborn American defense made this impossible. The Sixth Panzer Army, the designated main effort, had been checked; its attacks to open the Hohe Venn's roads by direct assault and airborne envelopment had failed, and Kampfgruppe Peiper's narrow armored spearhead had been isolated. To the south the Fifth Panzer Army's northern corps had been blocked at St. Vith; its center corps had advanced nearly 25 miles into the American center but was still meeting resistance; and its southern corps had been unable to break the Bastogne roadblock. The southern flank was in no better straits. Neither the Seventh Army's feint toward the city of Luxembourg nor its efforts to cover Manteuffel's flank had gained much ground. Hitler's key requirement that an overwhelming force achieve a quick breakthrough had not occurred. Six divisions had held twenty, and now the American forces, either on or en route to the battlefield, had doubled. Nevertheless, the Sixth Panzer Army's II SS Panzer Corps had yet to be committed, and additional divisions and armor existed in the German High Command reserve. The unspoken belief among Hitler's generals now was that with luck and continued poor weather, the more limited objectives of their small solution might still be possible.
                              Eisenhower's actions had also undermined Hitler's assumption that the Allied response would come too late. When "Ike" committed two armored divisions to Middleton on the first day of fighting and the theater reserve on the next, a lightning German advance to the Meuse became nearly impossible. Meeting with his commanders at Verdun on 19 December, Eisenhower, who had received the latest ULTRA intelligence on enemy objectives, outlined his overall operational response. Hodges' First Army would break the German advance; along the southern flank of the German penetration Patton's Third Army would attack north, assuming control of Middleton's VIII Corps from the First Army; and Middleton's Bastogne positions would now be the anvil for Third Army's hammer.
                              Patton, content that his staff had finalized operational planning, promised a full corps attack in seventy-two hours, to begin after a nearly 100-mile move. (NOTE: There is a great set of scenes in the movie Patton about this.) Devers' 6th Army Group would take up the slack, relieving two of Patton's corps of their frontage. In the north Montgomery had already begun moving the British 30 Corps to backstop the First Army and assume defensive positions behind the Meuse astride the crossings from Liege to Namur.
                              Eisenhower began his Verdun conference saying, "The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not disaster." That opportunity, as his generals knew, hung not on their own operational plans but on the soldiers on the battlefield, defending the vital St. Vith and Bastogne road junctions, holding on to the Elsenborn ridge, and blocking the approaches to the city of Luxembourg, as well as on the soldiers in numerous "blocks" and positions unlocated on any command post map. These men knew nothing of Allied operational plans or even the extent of the German offensive, but in the next days, on their shoulders, victory or disaster rested.

                              In the north the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge intensifies, the twin towns of Krinkelt-Rocherath are leveled and the Big red One pulls into position to extend the line to the southwest, centered on key high ground around Dom Butgenbach.
                              In front of Bastogne Team Desobry (elements of the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored Division, 1 Tank company and tank destroyers under Major William Desobry) team up with 1 BN, 506 PIR and conduct a spoiling attacking towards Noville, BE. The attack of 1st Battalion and the M18 Hellcat tank destroyers of the 705th TD Battalion together destroyed at least 30 German tanks and inflicted 500-1,000 casualties on the attacking forces in what amounted to a spoiling attack. This allowed the remainder of the 101st Airborne to dig in at Bastogne.
                              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                              Mark Twain

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