De Guingand, hearing that Eisenhower was writing to Marshall, begged him to wait; and, although quite seriously ill, he immediately flew back to Zonhoven and explained to Montgomery that he was heading straight for the rocks. At first Montgomery refused to believe that things could be so bad. In any case, who could replace him? Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, came the reply. Montgomery was shaken to the core when the truth finally sank in. He had confidently told Eisenhower on an earlier occasion that ‘the British public would not stand for a change’. From what de Guingand was telling him, that no longer counted. The Americans were now definitely in charge. ‘What shall I do, Freddie?’ an utterly deflated Montgomery asked.
De Guingand produced from the pocket of his battledress the draft of a letter. ‘Dear Ike,’ it read. ‘Have seen Freddie and understand you are greatly worried by many considerations in these difficult days. I have given you my frank views because I have felt you like this … Whatever your decision may be you can rely on me one hundred percent to make it work and I know Brad will do the same. Very distressed that my letter may have upset you and I would ask you to tear it up. Your very devoted subordinate, Monty.’ He signed, and it was encyphered and transmitted by cable without delay. The estimable Freddie de Guingand had once again saved his chief from his insufferable self. He then went to 21st Army Group’s rear headquarters in Brussels to speak to journalists. He emphasized that Montgomery’s command over the two American armies was temporary, and that in the interests of Allied solidarity the clamour for him to be made ground commander and the veiled criticism of Eisenhower must stop. They promised to consult their editors. De Guingand then rang Bedell Smith in Versailles to assure him that the field marshal had backed down completely.
All that needed to be settled was the date of the northern offensive. Eisenhower had convinced himself that it would be New Year’s Day. Montgomery had at first favoured 4 January, but now brought it forward by twenty-four hours to 3 January. But a groundswell of hostile opinion lingered on. Many American senior officers regretted later that Eisenhower had not seized the opportunity to get rid of the field marshal. They wanted a strategic victory in the Ardennes, utterly destroying all German forces in the Bulge. Montgomery believed that this was impracticable, and felt that they just wanted to wipe out the embarrassment of having been caught napping. He was impatient to get on with Operation Veritable to clear the Reichswald before crossing the Rhine north of the Ruhr. Bradley and Patton, on the other hand, had no intention of waiting until 3 January. They planned to launch their counter-offensive from Bastogne on 31 December.
On the southern side of Bastogne, the 35th Infantry Division, which had been greatly weakened during the battles in Lorraine, arrived to fill the gap between the 4th Armored Division and the 26th Infantry Division. The 35th was to attack north-east towards Marvie and the Longvilly–Bastogne road while the rest of the 4th Armored helped clear the villages east of the Arlon road. The infantry, with sodden boots from fording streams, were suffering as many cases of frostbite and trench foot as battle casualties. ‘It was so cold … that the water in our canteens froze right on our bodies,’ an officer in the 51st Armored Infantry wrote in his diary. ‘We ate snow or melted it down to drink or make coffee.’ His battalion, which had been 600 strong, suffered 461 battle and non-battle casualties in three weeks.
To the west, the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command A advanced up the road from Neufchâteau which ran close to Sibret, an important American objective. German reinforcements also began to arrive as the fighting for Bastogne intensified. On Thursday 28 December the Führer Begleit took over the Sibret sector on the south-west side. Oberst Remer claimed that, on the way down from the northern front, their medical company was shot up during ‘a fighter-bomber attack lasting 35 minutes, although all vehicles were painted white and bore the red cross’. Manteuffel believed that Remer’s formation would make all the difference, and its Panthers and Mark IVs went straight into action against the 9th Armored’s tanks, setting a number of them on fire.
Remer was angry and mortified to learn that he was now under the orders of the greatly reduced 3rd Panzergrenadier-Division. The Führer Begleit, despite being less than half the size of a standard division, was heavily armed at a time when the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division was left with little artillery support, and the 26th Volksgrenadier had no more armour-piercing shells. Remer, who had a battery of 105mm anti-aircraft guns, transferred them to Chenogne ready to take on Patton’s tanks. His 88mm batteries were deployed five kilometres further north round Flamierge where they claimed to have shot down ‘ten cargo-carrying gliders’. But the Führer Begleit was too late to save the key village of Sibret. After a heavy artillery bombardment, the Americans forced the Germans out that night. A shot-down glider pilot had been captured by the Germans near by. He hid in a potato bin when they withdrew, and found himself a free man again.
The loss of Sibret dismayed Manteuffel as well as Lüttwitz, for now their chances of re-establishing the encirclement of Bastogne were greatly reduced. Lüttwitz ordered Remer to recapture Sibret the next morning with help from a Kampfgruppe from the 3rd Panzergrenadier-Division. ‘If this attack failed,’ Lüttwitz wrote, ‘the Corps believed that it would be necessary to begin the immediate withdrawal of the front salient.’ But Hitler, refusing yet again to accept reality, announced the creation of a so-called ‘Army Group Lüttwitz’ to crush Bastogne. In theory, it included the 2nd Panzer-Division, the Panzer Lehr, the 9th Panzer-Division, the 3rd and the 15th Panzergrenadier-Divisions, the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division and the Führer Begleit Brigade. But, despite its typically Hitlerian appellation, most of the formations designated were little more than remnants.
During the early hours of Friday 29 December, the Führer Begleit Brigade assembled on the southern edge of the woods near Chenogne for its counter-attack against Sibret. But as soon as Remer’s troops emerged from the trees they were greeted by a massive concentration of fire from the field artillery battalions brought up to crush this expected riposte. Flanking fire from Villeroux to the east, which the Americans had taken after a fierce fight on 28 December, also caused many casualties. The woods south-east of Chenogne changed hands several times. One of Remer’s 105mm anti-aircraft guns knocked out several American tanks during the fighting, but eventually its crew, despite defending their gun as infantrymen in close-combat fighting, were overwhelmed. A Sherman tank crushed their gun under its tracks. That evening Remer reported that the Führer Begleit was now too weak to attempt another attack against Sibret.
Luftwaffe bombers raided Bastogne on the night of Friday 29 December just as the weather turned, with snow and mist now coming down from Scandinavia. But at least the corridor was secure, so hundreds of trucks ferried in large quantities of supplies for the defenders of Bastogne as well as 400 replacements for the 101st Airborne. General Taylor visited his troops in the front line of the perimeter to congratulate them. Some found his manner irritating. ‘His instructions before leaving us’, recorded Major Dick Winters of the 506th, ‘were “Watch those woods in front of you!” What the hell did he think we had been doing while he was in Washington?’
The paratroopers were dejected to find that, despite their heroic treatment in the press, they were not to be replaced and returned to Mourmelon-le-Grand. At least they had received their mail and Christmas packages from home. The contents were shared with other platoon members or Belgian civilians. And finally they had enough to eat, with their preferred ‘ten-in-one’ ration packs. Some paratroopers also managed to ‘liberate’ the store of spirits which VIII Corps headquarters had left behind: it had been revealed when one of the Luftwaffe bombs had blown down the wall of a building. But the bitter cold and the routine of deadly skirmishes and dangerous patrols at night continued. Their commanders still wanted intelligence on the enemy units opposite, so snatch squads had to go out to seize a ‘tongue’ for interrogation. (German officers had confisc
ated their men’s paybooks because they revealed too much information about their unit.) But moving silently at night was impossible, since every step made a noise as each foot crunched through the hard crust on top of the snow. And their white capes, frozen stiff, crackled as they moved. Experiments with bleached fatigue suits for camouflage were not very successful. Paratroopers envied the Germans’ reversible jacket with a white lining, which was far better.
Since it was common practice to set up dummies out in front of defensive positions to prompt an enemy patrol to open fire prematurely, paratroopers resorted to using frozen German corpses propped up in the snow. One was called ‘Oscar’ after the unit’s puppet-like mascot, which parachuted with them. It also served as a directional marker for fire orders in the event of a surprise attack. Paratroopers had been surprised to find that the faces of men who died in that extreme cold did not have the usual grey tinge, but went a burgundy colour as the blood capillaries froze rapidly under the skin.
As well as trench foot and frostbite many paratroopers, already filthy and bearded, were suffering from dysentery, largely due to the impossibility of cleaning mess kits properly. Temperatures as low as minus 20 Centigrade could make the cooling jackets of their heavy machine guns burst. These weapons could be seen by their muzzle flash from a great distance, while its German equivalent could not be spotted at over a hundred metres. Paratroopers were not alone in preferring to use captured German MG-42 machine guns. New replacements needed to learn to avoid firing too long a burst which gave away their position.
Many soldiers liked to debate the best way to throw a grenade: whether like a baseball, a shot-put or an overarm lob. The baseball throw was rejected by many as it was liable to wrench the arm and shoulder. To prevent the Germans catching it and throwing it back, experienced soldiers would pull the pin, count to two or three and then throw. Grenades were often carried with the lever hooked into buttonholes. Officers despaired, knowing that they would fall off and be lost when men lay down. Clueless replacements were also found attaching them to their equipment by the rings, which was a quick way of blowing yourself up. A spare canteen cover usually proved the best carrier.
On 30 December, General Patton entered Bastogne wearing his famous pearl-handled revolvers. He congratulated officers and men in his curiously high-pitched voice, presented medals, had his photograph taken in many places, examined burned-out German tanks and visited the main battle sites. They included the Château de Rolley, where he slept for a few hours before continuing his tour. An artillery observation officer with the 327th Glider Infantry, already under fire on a ridge from German tanks, was infuriated to see a group walking up quite openly from behind to join him. He swore at them to get down only to find an imperturbable General Patton who had come to watch. Having ranged in with a single gun, the captain ordered ‘fire for effect’ from his field battalion on the panzers. One lucky round scored a direct hit on the turret, setting off the ammunition inside and blasting the tank to pieces. ‘Now by God that is good firing!’ a triumphant Patton exclaimed. It had clearly made his day.
While the Führer Begleit and the 3rd Panzergrenadiers attacked from the west, a Kampfgruppe from the 1st SS Panzer-Division together with the 14th Fallschirmjäger-Regiment and the 167th Volksgrenadier-Division, newly arrived from Hungary, attacked from the east around Lutrebois. A battalion of the American 35th Infantry Division in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau was taken by surprise in the fog before dawn. Two companies were wiped out, but the field artillery once again played a major role in saving the situation. With divisional and corps guns firing shells with the new Pozit fuses, the 167th Volksgrenadiers were ‘cut to pieces’, in the words of their commander.
When Shermans and tank destroyers from the 4th Armored, drawn by the sound of battle, joined in this chaotic battle, the infantry passed on their sightings of German tanks in the woods. The 134th Infantry Regiment claimed that twenty-seven tanks had been knocked out and the estimates of other units brought the total to over fifty, but this was a gross exaggeration. Even so the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had suffered heavy losses, and blamed its failure on the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division. According to its commander, Generalmajor Heilmann, ‘The SS spread the rumor that [my] paratroopers sat down in peace with Americans in the cellar of a house in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau and made a toast to brotherhood.’ The Leibstandarte commander Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke wanted to court-martial the officers of the 14th Fallschirmjäger-Regiment for cowardice, and apparently said that a ‘National Socialist leadership officer* should be set at the throat of the Fallschirmjäger division’.
The mutual dislike between the Waffen-SS and other Wehrmacht formations reached new depths. The SS Panzer formations demanded priority on every route, causing chaos. ‘These road conditions reached their peak when SS formations arrived in the Bastogne combat sector,’ wrote Generalmajor Kokott. ‘These units – unduly boastful and arrogant anyway – with their total lack of discipline so typical of them, with their well-known ruthlessness combined with considerable lack of logic, had a downright devastating effect and in all cases proved a handicap for any systematic conduct of fighting.’ This hatred of the SS did not exist solely at senior officer level. Feldwebel Rösner in Kokott’s division described how the SS ‘broke into houses in Luxembourg and out of vandalism destroyed everything’. They had also destroyed holy pictures in the German Eifel, because the region was very Catholic.
The most encouraging event for Patton’s III Corps was the arrival of forward elements of the 6th Armored Division to take over from the exhausted 4th Armored. This formation was both at full strength and experienced, a rare combination at that time. Some of their Shermans had the new 76mm gun – based on the British 17-pounder – which could finally take on a Mark VI Tiger with confidence. Although one combat command was delayed on its approach by having to share the same road as the 11th Armored, the other one moved into position on the south-east of the perimeter near Neffe ready to attack Wardin the next day.
Not all mistaken attacks on American troops came from Thunderbolt and Lightning fighter-bombers. On 31 December Third Army reported that ‘bombers from the Eighth Air Force unfortunately bombed the headquarters of 4th Armored Division, the town of Wecker, and that part of the 4th Infantry Division at Echternach’. An urgent meeting was called with the air force generals Doolittle and Spaatz to discuss accidental bombing of ‘our own forces’ and ‘inversely the firing upon our own airplanes by our own anti-aircraft guns’. The ‘accidental bombing’ was hushed up in order ‘not to shake the faith of the troops’. Faults lay on both sides, but after several incidents many American troops reverted to the slogan from Normandy ‘If it flies, it dies’, and they frequently opened fire at any aircraft approaching whether in or out of range. The army was also openly sceptical about the air force’s inflated estimates of the number of panzers it had destroyed. ‘It is obvious that Air Corps claims must be exaggerated,’ 12th Army Group observed, ‘otherwise the Germans would be without tanks whereas our recon indicates plenty of them.’
The Luftwaffe still made night bombing raids on Bastogne. On 1 January, German prisoners of war under guard were clearing debris near Bastogne’s central square when one of them stepped on a ‘Butterfly’ bomblet dropped in the previous night’s raid. It exploded upward into his groin. He fell to the ground screaming. The scene was witnessed by soldiers from the 52nd Armored Infantry of the 9th Armored Division. One of their officers wrote later: ‘You could hear laughter coming from the throats of our GIs in the trucks.’
On the First Army front to the north, Montgomery had now moved in the 53rd Welsh Division and the American 83rd Infantry Division to relieve the 2nd Armored in the west and the 84th Infantry Division round Marche. The 51st Highland Division became a First Army reserve. As more of Horrocks’s XXX Corps arrived, the rest of Collins’s VII Corps could pull back to redeploy ready for the counter-attack on 3 January.* The British 6th Airborne Division which moved in east of Celles tried to dig defensive
positions, but the ground was frozen so hard that the men’s spades were useless. They resorted instead to hammering hollow camouflet rods into the ground, and then filled them with explosive to blast holes. They soon found that dealing with Teller mines buried under the snow was a dangerous task.
All around the area of maximum German advance, starving and frozen stragglers were being rounded up. A farmer’s son went to look after the horses near Ychippe. When he returned a German soldier, whom he had seen limping towards their house, knocked at the door. Pointing to his feet, he said: ‘Kaput!’ He had been sleeping in a barn. He sat down by their stove, put down his pistol and removed his boots. An American patrol arrived, and took the German prisoner before he had a chance to seize his pistol. Other German soldiers had been hiding in neighbouring houses and farm buildings. One of them refused to come out of a barn when they were surrounded. He was wearing American uniform and feared being shot. Eventually he was persuaded to come out when the Americans threatened to burn the barn down. They forced him to strip off the items of American uniform and then took him away in a Jeep. The villagers had no idea what happened to him.
In a number of places, such as Conjoux, villagers watched with sadness as American tank drivers smashed down their little orchards and hedgerows. They were less anxious when they saw American infantry approaching with columns of men on both sides of the road in Indian file. The parsimonious existence of farming folk in the region meant that nothing could be wasted. They took whatever they could from abandoned German vehicles, since this was likely to be the only compensation they could hope for in exchange for the damage to their fields, barns and houses, as well as the loss of fodder, horses and carts seized by the Germans. A caterpillar-tracked motorcycle constituted a great prize. They siphoned fuel from abandoned vehicles and took tool kits, tinned rations, tyres and wheels, and stripped almost anything else which could be disassembled. A few took away grenades in the hope of some productive fishing in the summer.