Anecdotes from the Battle of the Bulge
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Late on the night of December 23rd, Sergeant John Banister of the 14th Cavalry Group found himself meandering through the village of Provedroux, southwest of Vielsalm. He'd been separated from his unit during the wild retreat of the first days and joined up with Task Force Jones, defending the southern side of the Fortified Goose Egg. Now they were in retreat again. The Germans were closing in on the village from three sides. American vehicles were pulling out, and Banister was once again separated from his new unit, with no ride out.
A tank destroyer rolled by; somebody waved him aboard and Banister eagerly climbed on. They roared out of the burning town. Somebody told Banister that he was riding with Lieutenant Bill Rogers. "Who's he?" Banister wanted to know. "Will Rogers' son," came the answer. It was a hell of a way to meet a celebrity.
An hour later they reached the main highway running west from Vielsalm. There they found a lone soldier digging a foxhole. Armed with bazooka and rifle, unshaven and filthy, he went about his business with a stoic nonchalance. They pulled up to him and stopped. He didn't seem to care about the refugees. "If yer lookin for a safe place," he said, "just pull that vehicle behind me. I'm the 82nd Airborne. This is as far as the bastards are going."
The men on the tank destroyer hesitated. After the constant retreats of the last week, they didn't have much fight left in them. But the paratrooper's determination was infectious. "You heard the man," declared Rogers. "Let's set up for business!" Twenty minutes later, two truckloads of GIs joined their little roadblock. All through the night, men trickled in, and their defenses grew stronger.
Around that single paratrooper was formed the nucleus of a major strongpoint.
At 3:26 PM on December 23rd, the "American Luftwaffe" carried out another bombing run. Six B-26s from the 322nd Bombardment Group, a unit of the Ninth Air Force, were nearing their secondary target. Despite the crystalline clarity of the day, the flight leader had somehow failed to locate their primary target, the town of Zulpich, Germany. After consulting his maps, though, he decided that he was close to Lammersum, another German town that was also a legitimate target. He decided to proceed with the bomb run on Lammersum.
From 12,000 feet, the six bombers dropped a total of 98 250-pound bombs, using their top-secret Norden bombsights for precise targeting. Twelve tons of high explosives whistled down and pulverized the small town. Another successful mission accomplished, the B-26s banked and returned to their base in England. Below, in Malmedy, Belgium, the survivors of their attack, Belgian civilians and GIs from the 30th Infantry Division, screamed futile imprecations at the departing bombers. 37 Americans and scores of Belgians died in the attack.
General Hobbs, commanding the 30th Infantry Division, telephoned an Air Force general to berate him for yet another fatal screwup. This was not the first time that the Ninth Air Force had bombed American ground forces. It wasn't even the first time that they'd bombed the 30th Infantry Division. The Air Force general apologized and promised that it wouldn't happen again. But his superiors later denied that any error had occurred. And over the next five days, there were four more mistaken bombings.
Max Pabel eased the Me109G up to 1,000 feet, then leveled off, heading west for Bastogne. The rest of his squadron was all around him; Pabel felt a sense of security that he knew to be illusory. Within minutes the Allied fighters were on them. P47s and P51s dove down, machine guns hammering, and the German fighters jettisoned their bomb loads and scrambled about to dogfight the Americans. But Pabel had flown into a cloud just as the Americans jumped them; when he emerged, he was all alone. The radio was alive with the sounds of combat, the warning calls and commands, but he could see nothing. But then he remembered his squadron leader's insistence that morning that they had to get to the front, they were desperately needed. Pabel hesitated only a second; then he set his heading back to 270 degrees, due west, towards Bastogne.
"This is crazy" he told himself. "You don't stand a chance alone up here." But four times they had set out for Bastogne to support the ground troops, and four times they'd been intercepted east of the Rhine. If Fate had smiled on him and given him a golden opportunity to sneak to the battlefield, who was he to spurn her?
At 350 mph, the lone 109 covered ground fast. Already he was over the Schnee Eifel; Bastogne was only four minutes away. With so many familiar landmarks, navigation was easy. There was the Our River; that collection of villages must be Clervaux. Soon he was passing the hilltop town of Wiltz with its picturesque castle.
Suddenly the 109 shook as 50-caliber bullets ripped through its frame. Pabel felt their impact on the armor plating behind the seat. He'd been caught napping by a passing fighter-bomber. Engine oil splattered over the canopy. He yanked the stick but the controls were shot. He threw the canopy release, unbuckled his seat belt -- and the plane smashed into the ground.
"Back up!" screamed Heinz, the tank commander. "Schnell! Schnell!" The driver threw the tank into reverse, and with a great grinding of gears and treads, 50 tons of Panther lurched backward with a start. An instant later, Gunther Bermann, the gunner, heard the whoosh of an antitank shot passing just inches in front of the turret. There was no time to contemplate the whims of fate; already the turret was turning towards the ambusher who had nearly killed them all. Gunther hunched over his gunsight waiting for the turret to stop. "There -- you see? To the left of the fencepost!" Heinz shouted. Gunther already had it in sight, an American tank destroyer that had lain in wait for them coming down this road. They weren't backing away, either, so they were reloading for another shot. But this time Gunther had the initiative. He lined up the shot carefully; an old pro at 22, it took him less than two seconds to register the crosshairs. Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger. The kick of the mighty gun rocked their big tank. Before the tank had stopped rocking, before Heinz had whooped triumphantly, Gunther had verified the kill.
Already he was traversing the turret further. American TDs didn't travel alone; there were more out there. Sure enough, he spotted a towed antitank gun, probably one of those weakling 57mm guns. "HE!" he called out without looking up. The gunloader had already popped out the shell casing; he grabbed a high-explosive shell instead of the armor-piercing shells they used for antitank fighting. By the time he rammed the breech closed, Gunther was ready. A second later, the big gun roared again, and Gunther noted with satisfaction fragments of gun and bodies leaping away from the explosion.
Captain Seymour Green of the 9th Armored Division was commanding a small supply unit that had spent the night of December 16th in Ligneuville, three miles south of Baugnez. It was a Sunday morning, and he was awaiting orders to move out when a bulldozer driver came roaring down the hill road from Baugnez, screaming that German tanks were right behind him. Green had good reason to think that perhaps the excited bulldozer operator was exaggerating. He decided to check things out for himself.
Grabbing a carbine, he ordered his men to get ready to move out and grabbed a jeep and driver. They proceeded up the road to a sharp bend; there Green told the driver to stay behind while he went ahead for a look. Creeping forward stealthily, he rounded the bend -- and came face to face with the lead tanks of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Green stopped dead in his tracks. So did the Germans. For a long moment, the most powerful thrust of the German offensive was stopped cold by one petrified American captain armed with a carbine. Then the Germans started laughing. They waved him aside and drove past, laughing. Green stood sheepishly by the side of the road. This incident would NOT go down in history books as "Green's Last Stand".
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