Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Last Roll of the Dice

American infantrymen of the 290th Regiment fight in fresh snowfall near Amonines, Belgium.
Seventy-five years ago, from the 16th of December, 1944, until the 25th of January, 1945, a massive struggle took place along what had been known as the Ghost Front. On the 16th of December, three German armies launched a counter-offensive in the Ardennes Forest along the fog shrouded border of Germany with Belgium and Luxembourg. Present for duty on that day were* -
The German Plan for Die Wacht am Rhein**
With the British 21st Army Group (Montgomery) mostly to the north of the Dutch-Belgian border, and the American 12th Army Group (Bradley) to the south of that line, the German plan would have neatly cut the Allied armies in two.With the bonus of seizing the major port of Antwerp further aggravating an already tenuous supply problem for the Allied armies in Europe.

Fortunately for the Allies, the German forces available in the West were by no means sufficient for such a Herculean task. Hitler's plan was something of a pipe dream and his generals tried to convince him to launch this operation as a spoiling attack, hit just hard enough to disrupt the Allied line to give the German military time enough to prepare their defenses along the Rhine River.

Hitler, of course, was having none of that.

Early in the war his generals had also been very cautious about launching a war with the Western Allies (France and Britain) assuming that the French Army alone would be enough to stop the new Wehrmacht dead in its tracks along the Western Front. They had been proven wrong. Hitler saw himself as a military genius, one of his nicknames (among his sycophants) was Gröfaz, short for Größter Feldherr Aller Zeit, the greatest general of all time. In the latter years of the war, German soldiers used the term in a derogatory sense. They'd been screwed by the Führer too many times to take that term seriously.

Hitler had been lucky in the early years of the war. It went to his head. Now, once again, the German soldier would pay the price for his leader's arrogance. (Not to mention all of the civilians in the path of the offensive.)

For most of the battle the weather was terrible, nullifying Allied air superiority. This allowed the Germans to build up forces close to the front without fear of detection or interdiction. While there were some indicators that a German offensive was in the works, many in the Allied intelligence services pooh-poohed the idea.

Many believed that the Germans were on their last legs, some even believed that the war would be over by Christmas. Far too many on the Allied side thought that the war was winding down.

The American front in the Ardennes was manned in many places by divisions new to the front, unseasoned by combat and posted in the Ardennes to "break them in," units like the Golden Lions of the 106th Infantry Division on the hills of the Schnee Eifel. Other American units had been badly damaged in the fighting in the fall, especially units like the 28th Infantry Division, the "Keystone" Division of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, which had seen serious casualties in the Hürtgen forest back in November. (My Great-uncle John had been wounded there while fighting in the 4th Infantry Division, the "Ivy" Division. A German colleague of mine in NATO told me that his father, fighting in the Wehrmacht, had been captured there. Small world...)

Some of the attacking German units were made up of battle hardened SS troops brought from the Russian Front for this battle, but a number of units were brand new, made up of new recruits and former airmen and sailors. Men not used to ground combat and barely trained for such duties.

The Germans had gathered a large number of armored vehicles, especially tanks, for this offensive. If they ran into difficulties, they could scarcely afford the loss in men and vehicles. While the Russian Front was quiet for the moment, the German intelligence services predicted a big Soviet offensive in January. Stripping that theater for troops to use in an ill-conceived offensive in the West probably shortened the war significantly. It denuded the Eastern Front which led directly to the horrors in that area after the war, under Communist occupation.

Could the Germans have succeeded in the Ardennes? Could they have seized Antwerp, split the British from the Americans and at least forced a stalemate in the West? I suppose it was possible, after all it was just as big a shock to the Allies as the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam came as a shock to the Americans. But it, like the Bulge, inflicted serious, irreplaceable casualties on the enemy.

Unlike 1968, however, the West was made of much sterner stuff in 1944. The enemy was defeated badly and we pressed on to win the war. Of course, the American public backed the war in 1944, the press didn't lie about the war in 1944, and there were far fewer traitors holding high political office in 1944. A large part of warfare is the will to succeed, couple that with the necessary resources and victory is practically assured.

The Germans had little of that in 1944.

Look at the comparative strengths in January, a month after the commencement of the attack -
Allied strength had more than doubled, German casualties were increasing, their tank strength had been halved, fuel was running short. The weather was better, the German Army was dying in the Ardennes.

A lot of men died to prove to Hitler that the war was lost in the West. But it took thousands of more casualties, military and civilian, to get the Germans to surrender. A horrible price to pay for the delusions of a sick and twisted man. The Germans finally quit shortly after Hitler shot himself in April of 1945, imagine the outcome if von Stauffenberg's bomb had succeeded in killing Hitler in July of 1944.

History is replete with "what ifs." But the harsh reality is death and destruction.

The cost of the Ardennes Offensive -

Twenty-one years ago, on this very date, I stood in this place with two of my fellow sergeants, pondering the enormity of those events so long ago, and contemplating the bitter cost.

The Malmedy Memorial, very close to where the massacre occurred.
(Google Street View)
Where the massacre took place, across the street and up from the memorial site.
(Google Street View)
The price of freedom, Baugnez, Belgium
(Google Street View)
Remember...

Lest we have to do it again.





* All statistics were drawn from this source.
** "The Watch on the Rhine," the original German name for the operation, meant to deceive the Allies into thinking it was a plan to defend the Rhine River.

48 comments:

  1. And the battle took place during one of the roughest winters in memory, coldest winter in close to 100 years I've read. That last photo underscores what happens when a fanatical enemy is underestimated. Nicely done post Sarge, the lineups for December 16 and a month later are interesting showing how the Nazi war machine was down to the bottom of the barrel. An aside, this battle was the first effort I ran across from the old SPI, had to mount the map and counters myself from that game.

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    1. That game is actually available on Amazon, designed by Jim Dunnigan, a favorite game designer of mine and a founder of SPI. Man, that brings back some very fond memories of my misspent youth playing wargames.

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  2. My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Pierce, told us about her brother. He lost some toes due to frostbite in Bastogne. I'm pretty sure my friend's dad hit the front during this time. He was in Patton's army, and spent 2 years occupation duty in Germany. (There is a neat video on UTube of "Your Job In Germany!" Very informative)

    I have very distinct thoughts on our responses to that massacre, but they aren't very popular. So I keep them to myself. My discussions on the matter, and other views I've heard and read haven't changed my mind on it either. That was a grim time...

    May God have mercy on us all by not giving us what we richly deserve, and giving us what we cannot hope to attain.

    Happy Christmas.

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    1. Those who perpetrated that war crime got off easy. Fate did catch up to Peiper in the long run.

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  3. I'm not a huge George Patton fan but his disengaging the Third Army, wheeling 90 degrees to the North, and sprinting to the relief of the surrounded forces is one of the most magnificent acts in military history.

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    1. There's a lot of 'old school horse cavalry' in Patton, and it showed in that magnificent maneuver. That's right out of a Jeb Stuart or Phil Sheridan playbook, with a dash of Stonewall Jackson added in for flair.

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    2. Patton was certainly a cavalryman, with all the dash and panache of that breed. When wed to an aptitude for handling armor, that's a pretty good combination.

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  4. Dad, who was a Company CO in the 442nd Rgt, 42nd Div. at that time was hospitalized for 30 days due to cold and exposure alone in Dec/Jan of that winter, once told me in answer to my question of "what was it like Dad" : "Son until you've spent five days and six nights in sub-freezing wx in an open field with two feet of snow on the ground with freezing rain in an open fox-hole and with six inches of ice-water covering your feet while under heavy arty fire you haven't really lived." LOL, it was at that moment that I was SURE my choice of the AF was a good one. :)

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    1. Weather conditions were horrible, supplies were spotty, Germans had lots of arty - yeah VX, the Air Force was the smart move.

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    2. Not just lots of artillery. The very frozen trees added a level of fresh hell by: 1) not allowing themselves to be cut easily for shelter cover, thus making it hard for US troops to have protection from air bursts, and 2) by turning themselves into frozen splinters from hell by the German artillery, hitting the exposed US soldiers like unprotected gunners on a wooden ship of the line getting hit by splinters from their own ship.

      Not to mention, the Germans were very familiar with the grounds, from their experience in WWI and earlier in WWII, going first west, then east through the Ardennes... We, on the other hand, were just getting used to the woods. Which meant the Germans knew pretty much where we were going to be, what critical junction points to hit, what places to best stonk...

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    3. Yup, the Germans had "home field advantage." Good thing for us that they didn't have much in the way of reserves.

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  5. And on a different historical note, the Air Force was made possible 116 years ago today.

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    1. True dat.

      (You are such an airman. 😉)

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    2. Oh, how cruel western civilization is, to combine such evil things as the wheel, fabric, wood, wire and all the evils it entails, the cheap production of aluminum (for the custom engine designed by the devil-bicycle-makers.) And in the most evil of Satan-spawn countries, too! The very home of Satan on Earth!

      We oppressed people of non-western-civ origin must throw off the yoke of the satanic western-civ cultures and fly like (insert whatever name of whatever floats one's un-western-civ boat) intended, during big windstorms!

      Yeah...

      Those two survived huge mosquito, gnat and sand-mite storms, to leave the surface for so few seconds.

      A proud day just for that.

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  6. Bodenplatte:

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kr1ee

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    1. Yup, here's how to kill an Air Force. Your own Air Force.

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  7. And even the band fought, fought and died.

    From 'A History of U.S. Army Bands'

    The 28th Infantry Division Band distinguished itself during WWII. During the Battle of the Bulge, the divisional command post at Wiltz, Luxembourg, came under severe attack. Members of the 28th Infantry Division Band took up arms and fought as part of holding line around Wiltz to stop the German advance. The band put away their instruments, dug foxholes and picked up carbines. A clarinetist, PFC Collins, manned a bazooka and then drove a truck loaded with the band's music. He was going to save the music, but 10 miles out of Bastogne the convoy was ambushed and all the music burned. Only 16 of the band's 60 men survived the fighting in the Ardennes.

    The 28th Infantry Division Band was not the only band involved in the Battle of the Bulge. The 101st Airborne helped hold on to Bastogne preventing it from falling to the Germans. The 82nd Airborne Division Band was caught in the battle after being sent to the Ardennes for R & R. The 82nd front line was stretched thin. The 82nd Airborne Band joined the depleted front line to hold off the German spearhead. The band helped hold off two German Infantry Divisions and a Panzer Division.

    https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/armybands.pdf page 35, sections G and H.

    It was truly everyone fought, or everyone ran, or everyone died. Cooks, drivers, mechanics, clerks, everyone. Bad times were had by all. But bad times begat many heroes. Too many heroes who died with no one to notice, no one to sing their individual praises. Only to sing their death songs.

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    1. When push comes to shove, everyone is a rifleman, or everyone dies. The Marines have the right of it.

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  8. The Bulge was a failure on our part that resulted in a huge victory for us. The damage we did to the Germans was unrecoverable. The losses in tanks, vehicles, planes, artillery pieces, guns, troops, fuel, ammo and everything else needed to power the war, as a percentage, was huge. As damaging as Kursk in the east. D-Day was bad, the Bocage was bad, the troop and equipment and material losses in the Bulge and afterwards was unsurvivable. Pre-Bulge, the Germans could potentially have held the line for quite a longer while. Post-Bulge, it was definitely over except for all the screaming and bleeding.

    As to Tet, it was another blunder by us (in the intelligence department) that ended in a total victory for us. We effectively smashed the North and the Viet Cong's forces, and pretty much could have walked into Hanoi and forced a surrender to pretty much any terms we wanted. Until Walter Cronkite and the other newsies put forth the great lie of us losing Tet. Never before had such a huge victory been thrown away by such few men, at least in the US. Custer? His stupidity sealed the fate of the American natives. McClellan? His careful marshalling and moving of Union forces, refusing to fight, may have slowed the pace of the war, but it actually gave the North the time to get it's collective head together. But Tet? On TV, America watched its troops smash, destroy, crush, and not front line troops, but HQ troopers, garrison troopers, civil affairs troopers, clerks, cooks, and front-line troopers, all fought and won and won BIG. We should have been whooping it up like we collectively just won every Olympic event, the World Cup, every sports money competition worldwide, all in one. We spiked the ball! We were Victorious! And then the newsies, led by Comrade Cronkite, pulled the rug out from under our victory, took power away from us and gave all the moral and philosophical power to our enemies.

    Comrade Cronkite must be liking his warm place in hell. He certainly paid for it with his lies and evil machinations against the truth.

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    1. Indeed.

      Not a favorite of mine that one is.

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    2. "A large part of warfare is the will to succeed, couple that with the necessary resources and victory is practically assured." Somebody forgot about this when I was growing scared.

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    3. The ee-jits in DC who sent you guys up north knew nothing of war. They also wouldn't listen to those who did know war.

      Your generation paid for their arrogance. A pox on them.

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  9. My "Sense of History" for the ETO is sadly lacking, other than just basic knowledge of the history.

    Two of my Dad's brothers served there, one a paratrooper who went in at midnight before D-Day officially kicked off, and the other an officer who did "something vital to the war effort". I never knew exactly what he did, but I heard whispers about something called "G2" when I was a kid growing up.

    So thanks for the history lesson, Sarge. I knew the losses on both sides were high, but didn't quite know how badly the Germans suffered. Gees....half their tanks in one campaign....wow....

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  10. My oldest uncle was in a unit further North from the main German thrust. What he talked about was the weather, how cold it was. This from a man born and raised in the high Rockies.

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  11. Followed links from The Feral Irishman to here--

    https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/12/10/the-battle-for-noville-during-the-battle-of-the-bulge/

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    1. Team Desobry paid a heavy price to slow the Germans down.

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  12. The weather was as bad as Montana and Nebraska in the 1870's. Which, to weather watchers, was just about the worse we've ever recorded. Cattle freezing standing up. Snow not leaving in the summer in some years at places normally seeing 80's and 90's.

    Weather like what Napoleon experienced on his retreat from Moscow.

    The Germans had the training and equipment to handle the temperatures and harsh conditions, having learned in the winter of 41-42. We did not. We were not equipped at all for severe cold weather.

    And the sad part about it? What lessons learned and equipment designed was just... forgotten after the 44-45 winter. We made our troops tough it through, promised better winter equipment, clothing and doctrines. We knew in 44 that the rifle powder in the M1 Carbine sucked in cold weather, that the powder specified for the Carbine worked well. But who cares? We Won!!!

    Then Korea came around. Troops equipped worse than what the Army had in '44, because most of our winter stuff, especially the stuff that worked, was surplussed and new designed stuff just was never bought or what was bought wasn't issued because we needed to keep stock levels up and other such administrative garbage. (Much like what had our troops buying their own red-dot systems and other optics and body armor and extra mags and land nav equipment (gps) during the Global War on Terror in the early 2000's...) We really didn't equip our troops properly for winter until the end of the open-fire phase of the Korean war. Just in time to get engaged in a jungle conflict... Ooops.

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    1. All armies make those types of mistakes, over and over. The contractors get rich and the troops at the front suffer.

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  13. For a very entertaining novelized account of action in the Schnee Eifel during the battle check out "Runner" by Milar Larsen (cover) or Lance Jensen (title page). Published in 1975. Out of print but not hard to find and relatively inexpensive.

    Over the last decade or so a lot of good evidence has been gathered which makes it look like Hitler was a much better listener and much more open to reason than the generals who survived (and wrote much of the history for us) were willing to let on. Those generals were perhaps not themselves the greatest generals of all time, though they sure wrote it that way! From the top down and essentially without exception, the entire nation took an insane path. No one and no nation is immune. More than anything I fear those among us who are certain they can control the dragons they long to let slip.

    Also, Patton's Third Army could not have done what it did if it hadn't been prepared to do what it did. And it wouldn't have been prepared if Patton had really been George C. Scott.

    Great post!

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    1. The 106th was overwhelmed in the Schnee Eifel. Green troops who shouldn't have been posted that far forward.

      I'll have to chase those books down.

      The generals who survived the war blamed everything bad on Hitler, who, at best, was a semi-talented amateur. He tried to micromanage the war and near the end thought that if a unit was marked on the map as an army, then it was an army. Even if they only had one tank, a couple of clapped out trucks and a bunch of old men and boys. But those generals supported him until they started to lose the war.

      Real "heroes" that bunch.

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    2. I wasn't very clear in my comment. The author of "Runner" is a fellow who copyrighted the book under his real name, Lars Jensen, but published it under the pen name Milar Larsen. An amazon review of the book says he was a Paratrooper in WWII and was highly decorated. I read somewhere that he was in radio or television or newspapers in Iowa at some point. I believe he died in 2000. In the book "Runner" the protagonists are part of the "822nd" Infantry Regiment which may well be a stand-in for the 422nd, which along with the 423rd was destroyed in detail in the Schnee Eifel during the battle. If I have my facts straight, which is never a sure bet! :-)

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    3. Ah, I see, said the blind man. (Sometimes I don't pay close enough attention...)

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  14. (Don McCollor) [from "There's A War to be Won", Geoffrey Perrot, 1991]...the 110th Regiment, 28th division blocked the road twelve miles east of Bastogne.."The 110th Infantry, outnumbered by more than eight to one and full of replacements, held off the 2nd Panzer and Panzer Lehr for two days and nights"...they gave ground only after suffering 90% losses...

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    1. Which is, by the experts' opinions, impossible. As most units will break and run after only 30% casualties.

      90% losses are just unbelievable.

      But, well, American soldiers have been doing the unbelievable since Day 1 on the international scene. The Germans in WWI could not understand why we kept going forward when 'professional' forces like the Germans, British or French would have stopped. 'Gifted Amateurs.'

      Only gifted amateurs would keep going when faced with such death.

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    2. Don - The 28th fought hard in the Bulge, they were superb.

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    3. Beans - Experts? Pshaw. I've heard of units breaking after one casualty, same unit, a few days later would fight like enraged tigers. Gifted amateurs? How do you explain the Japanese military's blithely accepting death rather than defeat in WWII?

      How well a unit can stand is based on many factors. In truth a green unit will attack and take horrible casualties because they don't know any better, whereas a veteran unit might be overly cautious.

      War is messy and unpredictable.

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    4. (Don McCollor) [From "Glory Road" by Bruce Catton]...At Gettysburg in the Civil War, the First Minnesota Regiment probably saved the battle and the Union, holding back a vastly superior Confederate force until more Union troops arrived. They took 262 men into action, and afterwards there were 47 left alive. Then the survivors were posted at the very center of where Pickett's charge was aimed for...

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    5. A fine outfit, superb conduct at Gettysburg!

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    6. (Don McCollor)..The statue of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg was posed by the grandfather of my aunt's husband (not blood related). He was not at Gettysburg, but was chosen to pose for the statue of a charging Union soldier. There is a duplicate (or replica) statue in the cemetery at Morris MN. His name was Zimmerman, but he enlisted in place of another, and had to legally change his name to Smith to get his pension...

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  15. (Don McCollor) [From Operation Northwind by Charles Whiting, 1986]...Almost forgotten in the shadow of the Battle of the Bulge was Operation Northwind, launched in the south by the Germans on Dec 31 against the American 7th Army and the French First Army. The fighting lasted for a month and was every bit as savage and miserable...

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    1. My uncle's outfit was there, 63rd Infantry Division. They arrived at the front in December of 1944, just in time for Operation Northwind.

      Though they weren't in the ETO as long as some units, they saw their share of bloody fighting.

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  16. And so it goes...

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/12/bill-harris-the-bulge-and-christmas-1944.html

    I hope so too.

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