Ardennes artillery 'wonder weapon'.....

I just came across this anecdote in Roland Gaul's 'Battle Of The Bulge In Luxembourg' and couldn't resist repeating it here.

One of the personal accounts comes from a very young Forward Observer of Artillery Regiment 1352. A very serious-minded young man, he recounts passing a gun battery and : -

'...I noticed beside a stack of half-buried ammunition boxes a big chest with the inscription : ' Feuer nur auf Befehl von dem Fuhrer ' ( ' Fire only at the Fuhrer's order ' ).

What was that all about ? Was it really the 'wonder weapon' promised by Hitler ? The chest was equipped with a padlock as well.

Later the whole thing turned out to be a joke played by the soldiers. Although the lettering looked deceptively genuine, a gun crew had simply hidden a supply of food in this ammunition chest and thought to keep it safe from their comrades that way.

I never knew of our guns to fire anything other than high explosive, incendiary or smoke shells.' ( p.176 ).

 

I think the proximity fuze was used against infantry for the first time during the Bulge!