Memorial Day: The Battle of the Bulge and the Common Soldier

 

My dad was an MP attached to the 28th division — the old PA National Guard. In November 1944, his MP platoon was responsible for directing traffic on what GIs called “Skyline Drive.” The route ran more or less north/south through Luxembourg and Belgium along the front line between the US and German Armies. It was called Skyline Drive because it ran along the crest of ridges and reminded GIs of the roadway along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia and West Virginia.

The 28th division occupied this section of the front in the Ardennes Forest. It was considered a “quiet” sector and the 28th was supposed to be resting and absorbing replacements after their hard fighting in the Hurtgen Forest. Each regiment of the 28th occupied a stretch of front that would ordinarily be occupied by a full division. As a result, there was no continuous front.

During the day, the 28th occupied an outpost line on the east side of Skyline Drive. After dark, the troops were withdrawn to the west side of Skyline  Drive and the roadway became a no-mans-land owned by no one, with patrols of both Armies crossing this way and that. That being the state of  affairs, the MPs could expect contact with Germans at any time during the morning. Instead of sidearms and nightsticks, they carried regular infantry weapons. And It’s a good thing they did.

The morning of December 16 was foggy and misty with visibility down to 200 yards max. My dad’s MP section was up and moving in the pre-dawn hours … getting ready to meet the day, dressing, shaving, and gearing up. That’s when the German machine-gun fire began. No one outside the farm building they occupied made it. My dad said he was shaving. He had the shaving mirror attached to a post of the post-and-beam barn. Machine gun rounds peppered the building but he was spared by the thick beam he was standing behind.

The surviving Americans boiled out of the farm building … heading for the nearby woods. This began an hour-long game of hide-and-seek between American GIs and German paratroopers. There were long periods of walking and hiding punctuated by short, fierce, terrifying firefights as each group sought the other in the mist and fog.

At one point, the Americans had a few German prisoners; the Americans were divided about what to do. Some wanted to execute the Germans, but it was agreed that, with Germans all around, shooting the prisoner was too noisy. And no one volunteered to kill them quietly with a knife or bayonet. So they were bound and gagged and left in an out-building.

Eventually, the scratch group of MPs hooked up with an infantry company screening a battery of the 109th field artillery battalion — our hometown National Guard outfit. My dad said he really had no idea how bad things really were until then. They reported to the company CO. He was visibly relieved to have eight additional guys with carbines. My Dad says they tried to explain that they needed to report back to their division commander in Clervaux. The Company CO said, “No. You two guys are in this hole. You two guys are in that hole. You two guys are in that hole over there.”

They spent the rest of the long morning defending the guns of 109th. The artillerymen had the fuses, range, and elevation set to “zero” and were shooting right over the heads of the infantrymen defending their positions. But the guns were not overrun. In the afternoon, the artillery was ordered to displace and the infantry CO released the MPs to go about their business. They headed for division HQ in Clervaux.

They made it back to the 28th HQ in just in time for the order that everybody — “and I mean everybody, every swinging d—k, clerks, typists, cooks, supply officers, everybody who could hold a rifle” — to form up and defend the town. They got some coffee and a fresh load of ammunition and headed back out to the line. They spent the rest of the day and night desperately trying to keep the Germans out of Clervaux. To no avail. On the 17th, they displaced again to the town of St. Vith.

My Dad always had kind words to say about airborne troops. The 101st Airborne is the unit most remembered — made famous by their defense of Bastogne. But the 82nd was detailed to the defense of St. Vith. My Dad and the remnants of the 28th Infantry, 7th Armored, and 9th Armored divisions gathered into the horseshoe defense were never so happy as to see the trucks containing the 82nd Airborne arriving in St Vith. They considered themselves saved. Between then and December 22, they wrestled the northern prong of the German offensive to a halt. They had the advantage of position. They could, and did, trade a kilometer or two or three for time. It worked.

In a 1965 analysis of the attack on St. Vith, German General Hasso von Manteuffel said:

It is the war of the small men, the outpost commanders, the section commanders, the company commanders; those were the decisive people here, who were responsible for success or failure, victory or defeat. We depended upon their courage; they could not afford to get confused, and had to act according to their own decisions, until the higher command was again in a position to take over. I believe I can say, and I have the right to make this judgment, that the Germans did this admirably well, at the same time however, I am also convinced this was the case with the American forces, who after all succeeded in upsetting the entire time schedule, not only of the attacking unit in St. Vith, but also of the 5th and 6th Panzer Armies. That is a fact which cannot be denied.

Thanks to you, Dad, and to all the others who did then what I doubt we’d be able to do today.

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  1. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    The division patch of the 28th Infantry Division is a red keystone (above). It landed at Normandy shortly after D-Day and fought its way across Western Europe before ending up in the Ardennes. By that time the members of the division were calling the patch “the bucket of blood.”

     

    • #1
  2. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    Years later I found his CIB in his dresser drawer.    

    “Dad, I never knew you were at the front.”

    “I wasn’t.  Not really… But once the front came to me.”

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  3. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    Years later I found his CIB in his dresser drawer.

    “Dad, I never knew you were at the front.”

    “I wasn’t. Not really… But once the front came to me.”

    Thank you for the telling of your father’s participation in this battle.

    My dad fought in the Bulge as well, with an artillery company. (Would have to look up the number of that company.)

    Several of the men he fought with remained lifelong friends. Of course several of his other friends didn’t make it through the battle. The fatalities included a man who was his best friend and who had been out in a canoe in the shallows of Pearl Harbor canoodling with a Navy nurse on the morning of Dec 7th 1941.

    Have you watched this film rendition of the day to day   as the soldiers lived it? It is titled “Battlefield” but I think its earlier title was “Bastogne.” One amazing film.

    There is a short vignette as the men  in the unit are being hammered by snipers and mortars, and then one of the group happens upon a “Herald” newspaper. So during a break in the fighting everyone gathers around to read it.

    “Gosh we have nothing to complain about! The paper says there is this huge operation of the war here in Europe called the Battle of the Bulge – and those fellows are in real desperate straights.”

    Like your dad said, “The war came to them” and they didn’t even realize that they were part of  The Bulge.

    https://www.imdb.com › title › tt0041163

    Battleground (1949) – IMDb

    Play trailer 1:57 1 Video 38 Photos Action Drama History True tale about a squad of the 101st Airborne Division coping with being trapped by the Germans in the besieged city of Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. Director William A. Wellman Writer Robert Pirosh (story and screenplay) Stars Van Johnson John Hodiak

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  4. Ole Summers Member
    Ole Summers
    @OleSummers

    My uncle was one of those of the 101st …. but their defense was made possible by those like your father who held on to those needed toe-holds against all odds and gave everyone else a chance. Great generals can not overcome weak, indecisive, timid field commanders ….. but strong, decisive and brave men in the field make the difference even with top brass blunders …. those in the ranks who seize the moment and understand the depth of what they fight for …. the citizens soldiers of a republic …. our strength for so long.

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  5. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    My father, too, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Except for one innocuous anecdote, he never spoke of his war experiences. I wish I had questioned him about it, but maybe he wouldn’t have answered. I now realize the sort of horrors he probably saw.

    A different time and a different people.

    • #5
  6. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    Ole Summers (View Comment):

    My uncle was one of those of the 101st …. but their defense was made possible by those like your father who held on to those needed toe-holds against all odds and gave everyone else a chance. Great generals can not overcome weak, indecisive, timid field commanders ….. but strong, decisive and brave men in the field make the difference even with top brass blunders …. those in the ranks who seize the moment and understand the depth of what they fight for …. the citizens soldiers of a republic …. our strength for so long.

    Thanks on his behalf for the kind words.   And thanks to you uncle and all the others who had the fortitude to do what needed to be done at that critical time.

    • #6
  7. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Suspira (View Comment):

    My father, too, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Except for one innocuous anecdote, he never spoke of his war experiences. I wish I had questioned him about it, but maybe he wouldn’t have answered. I now realize the sort of horrors he probably saw.

    A different time and a different people.

    Yes your take on what your father’s answer might have been  resonates with me.

    My father did speak of various things that occurred during his time in Europe. Nothing gory – stories such as  when “the bullet clearly meant for me whizzed on by, so I went back to eating my can of Spam.”

    As he got into his upper 80’s, I tried to encourage him to write it all down, that he was a gifted story teller and so many of those who had experienced what had gone on in those long hard months fighting the Third Reich had already shuffled off this mortal coil.

    As old as he was, his mind was a razor sharp as ever. He could have written quite a book.

    But when I finished my spiel about how much history was his to relate, he looked at me sadly and said “I’d rather not think of those things ever again.”

     

    • #7
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