At about 1500 on 26 December 1944 (3:00 p.m.; this article uses the Army’s 24-hour clock), two lieutenant colonels of the 4th Armored Division stood by a road near Clochimont, Belgium, a few miles south of Bastogne. Creighton W. Abrams’s 37th Tank Battalion had no more than twenty Shermans running. George Jaques’s 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion was 230 men short. Their orders pointed them toward Sibret, which was known to be strongly held. Overhead, cargo planes were flying in to drop supplies to the surrounded 101st Airborne Division. According to the Army’s official history, Abrams suggested skipping Sibret and dashing through Assenois straight into Bastogne, the division’s real objective, and Jaques agreed (Cole, ch. XXI, p. 554).
At 1650, 1st Lt. Charles Boggess’s lead Sherman reached men of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion who were preparing to assault a pillbox beside the road. After nearly five days of fighting north from the Arlon area, Bastogne had a ground link again. This chapter covers how Third Army turned north, how the road was opened and what it cost, and how the southern shoulder of the Bulge held at the same time. For the wider campaign, see the Battle of the Bulge hub.
Battle of the Bulge · Chapter 7 of 9
- Dates
- 18–28 December 1944: the turn north from 18 December, the III Corps attack from 22 December. Fighting to widen the corridor went on into January.
- Where
- The Arlon–Bastogne and Neufchâteau–Bastogne roads, Belgium; the Sure and Sauer valleys, Luxembourg
- American forces
- Third Army. III Corps: 4th Armored, 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions, later joined by the 35th Infantry Division and CCA, 9th Armored. Southern shoulder (XII Corps from 21 December): 4th Infantry, 10th Armored (less CCB) and 5th Infantry Divisions
- German forces
- Seventh Army: 5th Parachute Division; 352nd, 79th, 212th and 276th Volks Grenadier Divisions; Führer Grenadier Brigade. Elements of the 26th Volks Grenadier Division at Assenois
- Commanders
- Patton (Third Army); Millikin (III Corps); Gaffey (4th Armored); Eddy (XII Corps); Brandenberger (Seventh Army); Heilmann (5th Parachute Division)
- Outcome
- Contact with Bastogne at 1650 on 26 December; trucks and ambulances through after midnight; on the southern shoulder the Germans were back across the Sauer by 28 December
The road to Assenois in six figures
- 1650Ground contact with Bastogne26 Dec: Lt. Boggess reaches the 326th Airborne Engineers
- 12 miMartelange to BastogneOn the Arlon highway; the Sure bridges were blown
- ≤20Shermans running in the 37th Tank BnAt Clochimont, about 1500, 26 Dec
- 13Batteries fired on AssenoisTen volleys, called at 1635
- ~500Prisoners taken at Assenois53rd Armored Infantry Bn, night of 26–27 Dec
- 964Casualties evacuated from BastogneLast stretcher case out by noon, 28 Dec
Why it mattered
Bastogne, where seven roads met, controlled the road net on the south side of the salient, and Cole writes that Eisenhower considered holding it “essential” to later offensive operations (p. 509). The mission was larger than reaching the garrison. III Corps had to open a corridor that would stay open, then use Bastogne as a base for attacks farther north. The 4th Armored’s officers believed a tank column could cut its way in. They also believed that a gap one road wide would close again once trucks tried to use it (pp. 524–525).
Terrain and objectives
III Corps attacked on a front of about thirty miles. Its base was the Luxembourg–Arlon–Neufchâteau road, the only main east–west road south of Bastogne. East of the Arlon highway, the gorges of the Sure and Wiltz Rivers blocked vehicles coming from the south. West of it, the tableland was gentler, with woods, fields and small villages wherever roads crossed (pp. 510–511). Two highways ran north. The Arlon road was shorter, and Millikin’s staff preferred it. The Neufchâteau road was more lightly held, and Middleton wanted the weight there (p. 524). North of Martelange the Arlon road climbs onto a chain of ridges and runs through cuts where tanks can hardly leave the pavement (p. 529). Chaumont, west of the highway, sits in a bowl of hills with a wooded rim to the northeast (p. 528).
On the corps’ right, the 80th Division fought in the “Bourscheid triangle,” a checkerboard of small terrain compartments where a single battalion was often the largest unit anyone could control (p. 532). The southern shoulder around Echternach and Berdorf was Luxembourg’s “Little Switzerland,” a country of wooded heights and gorges where radios failed and tanks were tied to the roads (ch. X, p. 241).
The turn north
The turn began before the Verdun conference. On 18 December Patton told Bradley he could intervene with three divisions “very shortly.” A couple of hours before midnight Bradley called back: the troops had to move at once. By midnight combat command B (CCB) of the 4th Armored, a combat command being a brigade-sized armored task force, was on the road to Longwy. At dawn the 80th Division started for Luxembourg City. The 10th Armored had already gone north on the 17th. Overnight the Third Army staff drafted three plans, one each on the Neufchâteau, Arlon and Diekirch axes (ch. XX, pp. 486–487).
At Verdun on 19 December, according to Cole, Patton said he could start a piecemeal attack in three days and a co-ordinated one in six. Eisenhower thought him a bit too confident and told Montgomery to expect the attack on the 23rd or 24th (p. 487). Cirillo writes instead that Patton “promised a full corps attack in seventy-two hours” (p. 28). The attack began at 0600 on 22 December. Within three days of the order, Third Army handed twenty-five miles of front to Seventh Army, pulled out two corps, and opened supply points around Luxembourg City, Longwy and Esch. SHAEF’s chief logistical planner, Colonel Whipple, called it “one of the most professional performances of the entire war” (Ruppenthal, vol. II, p. 184).
How far the III Corps units drove to reach the attack
Bradley's order to move came on the night of 18 December. The III Corps attack began at 0600 on 22 December, a little over three days later.
| 4th Armored Division tanks | 160 miles |
| CCB, 4th Armored | 150 miles |
| 80th Infantry Division | 150 miles |
The divisions that arrived were tired. The 4th Armored was short 713 men, 19 officers and twenty-one Shermans, and many of its tanks had passed their rated life. Some had turrets that had to be cranked around by hand. The 26th Division had just absorbed 2,585 replacements, many with only a day or two of recent rifle training (pp. 511–513).
What the commanders knew
Little, and Cole writes that the Germans were “equally in the dark.” The VIII Corps screen in front of III Corps had been too weak to fight for information, and no one was sure whether the Arlon road was cut. German intelligence, for its part, did not find the 26th Division in its new sector until two days after the attack began (p. 511). Command confusion also cost an opportunity. On 20 December someone on the VIII Corps staff, never identified, sent a small CCB team under Capt. Bert Ezell into Bastogne by the Neufchâteau road. His own division recalled him that afternoon. At dusk that road was still open, and Cole writes that there is “no certain answer” to why it was not held (pp. 514–515).
22–24 December: the corps attack
The infantry on the right: Ettelbruck, Heiderscheid and Eschdorf
Patton’s last word, as Cole records it, was “Drive like hell” (p. 515). The 80th Division ran almost immediately into the 352nd Volks Grenadier Division, which was marching across its front believing it was in undefended country, and cut between the head and tail of the German column. At Ettelbruck on the 24th, the 1st Battalion of the 318th lost the equivalent of a full company. At Heiderscheid on the 23rd, bazooka teams under 2nd Lt. Michael Hritsik knocked out two of eleven German tanks, and American tank destroyers and a tank accounted for five more (pp. 516–518). In the center, the 26th Division’s green riflemen worked slowly through the woods toward Grosbous and Eschdorf against the Führer Grenadier Brigade. Cole judges that, with so little known of the enemy, “the lack of swashbuckling haste was not abnormal” (p. 523).
The armor on the left: Martelange, Chaumont, Warnach and Bigonville
On the Arlon highway, a paratroop company held CCA at Martelange until about 0300 on the 23rd. On the secondary roads to the west, CCB was in sight of Burnon, seven miles from Bastogne, by noon on the 22nd. Patton then ordered the armor to keep attacking through the night. In his memoir he later admitted that this order was a mistake (p. 526 and n. 11).
Chaumont on the 23rd was the worst day. During the night a CCB liaison officer carrying the attack orders had driven into the German lines. The assault went in at about 1330 behind a fighter-bomber strike, and the village seemed taken. Then ten to fifteen assault guns of the 11th Assault Gun Brigade came down off the wooded rim, with riflemen riding on them, while the Shermans were stuck in fields thawing in the afternoon sun. CCB fell back at dusk and left eleven tanks behind. Company A of the 10th Armored Infantry Battalion lost some sixty-five men. Its only surviving officer, 1st Lt. Charles R. Gniot, covered the withdrawal until he was killed (pp. 527–529). Patton telephoned III Corps: “There is too much piddling around” (p. 526).
On the 24th CCA took Warnach, killing 135 Germans and capturing as many, at a cost of sixty-eight dead and wounded. The reserve combat command, CCR, took Bigonville with 328 prisoners (pp. 529–531). On the evening of the 23rd, McAuliffe had radioed from inside the perimeter: “Sorry I did not get to shake hands today. I was disappointed” (p. 531).
Demolitions cut both ways
The obstacles that slowed the 4th Armored Division were largely American. During the retreat, VIII Corps engineers had built a barrier line and blown the bridges at Martelange and elsewhere to slow the Germans. Days later the same craters and gaps stood in front of Third Army. Near Martelange a crater held up CCA until it was bridged shortly after noon on 22 December. At the Sure itself the cut was too wide and deep for a pontoon or treadway bridge. Corps engineers had to build a 90-foot Bailey, a prefabricated steel truss put together by hand, and tanks did not cross until the afternoon of the 23rd.
On the western flank the engineering was improvised. At Cobreville on Christmas Day the only bridge had just been blown, so the battalion bulldozer spent an hour pushing a stone wall into the creek to make a crossing. On the Sure, the 26th Division found the two Esch-sur-Sûre bridges demolished and borrowed the Bailey at Bonnal. The Germans did the same thing on their side. They threw a trestle over the broken span at Heiderscheidergrund to keep a crossing open, and on the southern shoulder they held the Dillingen bridge until their rear guard was across and then blew it. In this sector, whoever controlled the river crossings largely controlled the timetable.
Where the Shermans went, 19–24 December
Medium tanks lost to the 4th Armored Division before the switch west, as Cole records them. Each bar counts a different kind of loss.
| Breakdowns, 8th Tank Bn, on the move north | 33 Shermans |
| Chaumont, CCB, 23 Dec | 11 Shermans |
| Warnach, CCA, 24 Dec | 5 Shermans |
Christmas Day: infantry, and the switch to the west
By Christmas Eve, Gaffey and Millikin had concluded that tanks tied to the paved roads would keep meeting frontal fights. Two understrength battalions of the 318th Infantry arrived from the 80th Division to add riflemen. At Gaffey’s request, Millikin moved the division boundary so the 26th took over Bigonville, and CCR was released that night for the open west flank, with entry into Bastogne as its main mission (pp. 531–532, 548).
On Christmas Day, Company B of the 318th rushed Tintange right after eight fighter-bombers hit it on call, captured the assault gun that had pinned the battalion, and took 161 prisoners. Near Chaumont the 2nd Battalion cleared three wood lots with grenades and bayonets and evacuated nearly a hundred men with bullet wounds (pp. 548–549). The next night 1st Lt. Walter P. Carr and four men of that battalion slipped through the German lines using light signals learned from prisoners and reached the Bastogne outposts at 0430. As Cole notes, other Americans had beaten them there (p. 551).
Paul J. Wiedorfer
Private (later Staff Sergeant), Company G, 318th Infantry, 80th Infantry Division, attached to CCB, 4th Armored Division
Around noon on Christmas Day, a platoon of Company G was pinned behind a low ridge about 40 yards from two German machine guns dug in at the edge of a wood. According to the citation, three inches of snow had fallen overnight on icy ground. Wiedorfer ran alone across the open slope, slipped and fell, got up and kept going. From about ten yards he threw a grenade into the first position and shot the remaining crew, then turned on the second gun. One of its crew was wounded, and the other six surrendered.
When the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were both wounded a few minutes later, the private took command of the platoon and led it to its objective. Cole's history ranks him as a sergeant; the official citation gives his rank at the time as private.
CCR, meanwhile, attacked from near Bercheux on the Neufchâteau road. At Cobreville, where the bridge had just been blown, the battalion bulldozer spent an hour pushing a stone wall into the creek. Remonville, hit by four artillery battalions and a company of Shermans, yielded 327 prisoners (pp. 551–552).
26 December: the dash through Assenois
On the 26th the ground was frozen hard. P-47s bombed ahead of CCR at Remichampagne, and by 1500 it was deployed near Clochimont (pp. 553–554). CCR alone among the combat commands had no telephone wire laid and had to relay radio messages, yet within fifteen minutes three borrowed artillery battalions were added to the fire plan. Abrams gave the shock force to his operations officer, Capt. William Dwight, telling him, “It’s the push!” (p. 554).
26 December: Clochimont to the Bastogne perimeter
CCR moves on frozen ground toward Remichampagne. P-47s that no one had called for, probably from the 362nd Fighter Group, bomb a few hundred yards ahead of the lead tanks.
CCR is deployed near Clochimont. Abrams has no more than twenty Shermans running, and Jaques's battalion is 230 men short. With cargo planes passing overhead toward Bastogne, Abrams proposes skipping Sibret and going through Assenois, and Jaques agrees.
Abrams radios Capt. William Dwight to bring up the C Team. Within fifteen minutes, three artillery battalions borrowed from CCB (the 22nd, 253rd and 776th) are added to the fire plan by relayed radio.
The C Team moves out: Company C of the 37th Tank Battalion and Company C of the 53rd Armored Infantry, Shermans in front and half-tracks behind.
Abrams checks that the 94th Armored Field Artillery Battalion is ready. One minute later Lt. Charles Boggess calls from the lead tank, and thirteen batteries fire ten volleys on Assenois.
Boggess lifts the fire and drives into the village without waiting for confirmation. The armored infantry arrive while 155-mm shells are still landing and fight the garrison as it comes out of the cellars.
Past a mined gap on the road north, Boggess sees men of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion preparing to attack a pillbox, and the tanks make contact with the Bastogne garrison.
Abrams shakes hands with Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, who has come out to the outpost line.
The 53rd fights for Assenois into the night and takes about five hundred prisoners. Pvt. James R. Hendrix wins the Medal of Honor in this fighting.
With the road reasonably safe, the 37th's light tanks escort forty trucks and seventy ambulances into Bastogne. More than two hundred vehicles had been waiting at Rossignol.
Eight German antitank guns were sited around Assenois. At a dip in the road at the village edge, Boggess called for the fire to lift and drove in without waiting for confirmation. The tanks came in so close behind the shells that, according to Cole, no German fired as they entered. Smoke and dust made the streets almost dark. The armored infantry arrived while 155-mm rounds were still falling and fought the garrison, a mix of 5th Parachute and 26th Volks Grenadier troops, as it came out of the cellars, in what Cole calls a “shooting, clubbing, stabbing melee” (pp. 554–555).
Concentration Number Nine, play it soft and sweet.
Lt. Col. Creighton W. Abrams, 37th Tank Battalion, passing Boggess's call to the artillery, about 1635, 26 December 1944
Boggess drove on with three Shermans, a stray half-track and two more tanks behind. A 300-yard gap opened in the column, and the Germans threw Teller mines onto the road. The half-track hit one and blew up. The crews of Dwight’s two tanks removed the rest, and the tanks hurried on. At 1650, a time Cole notes is “indelibly recorded” in the division’s record, Boggess met the airborne engineers. About twenty minutes later Abrams shook hands with McAuliffe at the outpost line (p. 555). S. L. A. Marshall’s 1946 Army narrative records the same minute and calls it “the beginning.”
The tank’s name does not appear in Cole. In December 2008, U.S. Army Europe historians and the Patton Museum’s curator matched serial and registration numbers and confirmed that a Sherman standing at Rose Barracks, Vilseck, Germany, was Cobra King. It was one of only 254 M4A3E2 “Jumbo” assault tanks, the heavily armored model Patton had wanted in the lead. It went on display in the National Museum of the United States Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, when the museum opened in 2020 (Army.mil, 2009 and 2011; Stars and Stripes, 2008).
Jaques’s infantry fought for Assenois into the night and took about five hundred prisoners. Capt. Frank Kutak, wounded in both legs, directed his company from a jeep. After midnight the 37th’s light tanks escorted forty trucks and seventy ambulances into Bastogne (p. 555).
James R. Hendrix
Private, 3rd Platoon, Company C, 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion, 4th Armored Division
Hendrix was in the leading element of the final push toward Bastogne. When the column was stopped by artillery and small-arms fire, he got down from his half-track and went at two 88-mm guns with his rifle. His fire drove the gun crews to cover, and then they surrendered. Later he went out again on his own to reach two wounded soldiers lying exposed to machine-gun fire. He silenced two machine guns and kept the enemy back until the wounded men were carried away.
He then went to a soldier trapped in a burning half-track. With sniper fire coming in and mines and ammunition exploding in the vehicle, he pulled the man out and put out his burning clothing. Hendrix, a sharecropper's son from Lepanto, Arkansas, was nineteen. President Truman presented the medal at the White House on 23 August 1945. Cole's history lists him as a staff sergeant, but the citation gives his rank as private.
Widening the corridor
Cole calls the new contact “none too secure” (ch. XXIV, p. 606). On the afternoon of the 26th Field Marshal Model sent the Führer Begleit Brigade to reseal the gap (p. 613). On the 27th the 35th Infantry Division attacked on the right, and CCA of the 9th Armored attacked on the left toward Sibret and Villeroux to open the Neufchâteau road. Frostbite cases among the infantry that day roughly equaled battle casualties (pp. 606–607, 615–616).
By noon on the 28th the last stretcher case had left Bastogne. In all, 964 casualties and about 700 German prisoners went out. Because the corridor was still uncertain, the airlift continued on the 27th. Of thirteen C-47s sent by the 440th Troop Carrier Group, four came back (pp. 608–609).
On 30 December the 1st SS Panzer and 167th Volks Grenadier Divisions struck at Lutrebois. At Villers-la-Bonne-Eau only one of 169 men of the 137th Infantry got out. The Germans took both villages, but their drive toward Assenois was stopped by artillery, fighter-bombers and an ambush by Lt. John A. Kingsley’s six Shermans and a tank destroyer platoon, which knocked out or disabled twelve panzers. Cole warns that the American claim of some fifty-odd German tanks destroyed probably counts more panzers than the 1st SS Panzer actually brought to the fight (pp. 623–627).
The southern shoulder: Echternach and Berdorf
The 4th Infantry Division had come to Luxembourg to recover from the Hürtgen Forest. It held a 35-mile front, its attached tank battalion had only eleven of fifty-four medium tanks running, and only its 12th Infantry stood in the path of the 212th Volks Grenadier Division (ch. X, pp. 238–241). At Berdorf, 1st Lt. John L. Leake’s Company F, about sixty men, held the concrete Parc Hotel. When a German charge blew open a sealed basement annex full of liquor and beer, Leake refused to let anyone touch it. Cole adds that Leake regretted it after the withdrawal, when he and twenty-one of his men went back into the foxhole line without coats or blankets. The company pulled out after dark on 20 December in a planned move (pp. 241, 250, 256–257). At Echternach, Capt. Paul H. Dupuis’s Company E held a hat factory. When tanks reached him on 18 December he declined to withdraw because, as far as he knew, General Barton’s no-retreat order still stood. Barton later said he had revoked it, but the message apparently never arrived. About 132 men probably surrendered late on 20 December (pp. 251, 257, 260 n. 3).
CCA of the 10th Armored counterattacked from 18 December, and on the 19th Patton gave Maj. Gen. William H. H. Morris Jr. a provisional corps to hold the sector (pp. 249, 255). Cole concludes that “the southern shoulder of the German counteroffensive had jammed” (p. 258). Eddy’s XII Corps took over on the 21st, and the 5th Infantry Division drove to the Sauer. At Berdorf at dawn on the 26th, an American officer saw troops forming in the street and called out, “Is that Easy Company?” The answer came back in German. The village was cleared on the morning of the 27th, and the last Germans blew the Dillingen bridge behind them just after daybreak on the 28th (ch. XX, pp. 488, 504–506).
5th Infantry Division losses, 22–28 December 1944
The division's attack to the Sauer on the southern shoulder. Cole ties the high nonbattle figure to the cold.
- Battle casualties (46 officers, 899 men)945
- Nonbattle casualties (22 officers, 598 men)620
1,565 casualties in seven days (not deaths)
| Battle casualties (46 officers, 899 men) | 945 |
| Nonbattle casualties (22 officers, 598 men) | 620 |
Logistics, medicine and the cold
The weather shaped every day of the drive. The road CCR took toward Bigonville was “sheer ice.” At Chaumont the morning fog cleared and let in the fighter-bombers of the XIX Tactical Air Command, but the afternoon thaw trapped the Shermans. By the 26th the frozen ground allowed fast tank movement (pp. 526–527, 530, 553). The 5th Parachute Division was down to seven rounds per howitzer a day and fell back on rifles and machine guns (pp. 531, 549).
Medical evacuation made the corridor urgent. As early as 21 December the 101st’s surgeon estimated about 1,300 casualties, 150 of them needing surgery. Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, Third Army’s chief of staff, planned on his own authority to send surgeons in under a white flag. That proved unnecessary when Third Army surgeons flew in by liaison plane on the 25th and by glider on the 26th, and the ambulances followed the light tanks in after midnight (pp. 555, 609).
People and civilians
Cole names a few men and leaves most unnamed. Besides Gniot and Kutak, he records Capt. A. J. Cissna of the 294th Engineer Combat Battalion, who stayed behind at Bilsdorf on 24 December to cover his company’s withdrawal and fought alone until he was killed (p. 544). Pfc. O. M. Laughlin of the 318th broke up a German position with grenades after a shoulder wound left him unable to use his rifle (p. 550). Cole also records an unnamed artillery captain whom Ezell’s team found on 20 December, trying alone to hitch abandoned guns to their prime movers. Lt. Kiley’s tanks towed three of them away (p. 514).
Civilians appear only at the edges of the official record. Refugees crowded the roads near Berdorf (ch. X, p. 254). Eschdorf was a town of perhaps two thousand people when the 26th Division attacked it at night (p. 540). When the Luftwaffe bombed Bastogne on 30 December, a large part of its population fled (p. 632). The record gives no reliable count of civilian deaths along the Assenois road, and none is offered here.
Honors
Two Medals of Honor were awarded for actions in the III Corps drive between 22 and 28 December: Wiedorfer near Chaumont on Christmas Day and Hendrix near Assenois on the 26th. Division lists compiled from Center of Military History and Medal of Honor Society records for the 4th, 9th and 10th Armored and the 4th, 5th, 26th, 35th and 80th Infantry Divisions show no others for this sector and period. Sgt. Day G. Turner’s medal, for Dahl, Luxembourg, dates from 8 January 1945 and belongs to Chapter 9.
Cole records Distinguished Service Crosses, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, for:
- Lt. Col. Creighton W. Abrams, for Assenois
- Capt. Frank Kutak, for Assenois and other actions
- 1st Lt. Charles R. Gniot, posthumously, for Chaumont
- Capt. A. J. Cissna, posthumously, for Bilsdorf
- Pfc. O. M. Laughlin of the 318th Infantry
- On the 80th and 26th Division front: Lt. Col. Paul Bandy at Heiderscheid, 2nd Lt. Michael Hritsik, Lt. Col. R. W. Kinney of the 102nd Field Artillery Battalion, and Sgt. Lawrence L. Hatfield, whose platoon covered the withdrawal at Rambrouch (pp. 523, 529, 544, 550, 555, 556 nn. 6, 7, 9)
The division as a whole was cited. A 1945 Stars and Stripes report, reprinted in the division’s own booklet What They Said About the Fourth Armored Division, says the War Department cited it “by direction of the President” for “extraordinary tactical accomplishment” from 22 December to 27 March. An Army Board for Correction of Military Records decision identifies the order as War Department General Orders No. 54 of 12 July 1945. The citation’s full text could not be checked, so it is not quoted here.
Losses and uncertainty
Neither Cole nor Cirillo gives a single total for the 4th Armored’s drive. “Casualties” below means killed, wounded and missing combined, not deaths. The figures come from separate actions and periods and should not be added together.
| Action | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Chaumont, 23 Dec | 11 Shermans lost; Company A, 10th Armored Infantry Bn, lost about 65 men | Cole pp. 528–529 |
| Warnach, 24 Dec | 68 Americans killed and wounded; 135 Germans killed and about as many captured | Cole p. 530 |
| Chaumont woods, 25 Dec | Nearly 100 men of 2nd Bn, 318th Infantry, evacuated with bullet wounds | Cole p. 549 |
| Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, 30 Dec | 1 of 169 men of the 137th Infantry escaped | Cole p. 625 |
| Southern shoulder, 16–21 Dec | Over 2,000 American casualties; about 800 Germans captured | Cole p. 258 |
| 5th Infantry Division, 22–28 Dec | 945 battle and 620 nonbattle casualties | Cole p. 507 |
| Bastogne, by noon 28 Dec | 964 casualties evacuated | Cole p. 609 |
German figures are rougher still. The 212th Volks Grenadier Division’s commander estimated about 4,000 losses from all causes, and the 276th lost about 2,000 between 20 and 28 December (p. 507). Prisoner counts are better recorded: 328 at Bigonville, 327 at Remonville, 161 at Tintange and about 500 at Assenois.
Questions readers ask
Did the 4th Armored “rescue” the 101st?
The 101st had not surrendered and was still fighting. Cole frames the task differently: contact had existed as late as 20 December, and the problem was to restore a permanent corridor and loosen the ring so Bastogne could serve as a base (p. 524). The fighting around the corridor got heavier after the 26th, not lighter.
Was Cobra King the first American tank into Bastogne?
It led the column that broke the encirclement. Ezell’s small team had driven into Bastogne and back on 20 December, before the ring closed (Cole, pp. 514–515), and CCB of the 10th Armored had been inside since the start. The Army describes Cobra King as the first tank to reach the besieged garrison, which is the accurate way to put it.
Did Patton’s weather prayer clear the skies?
The prayer is real. Third Army’s chaplain, Msgr. James H. O’Neill, wrote it at Patton’s request in early December, before the German attack, when rain was hampering operations in Lorraine. Patton ordered about 250,000 copies printed on a card with his Christmas greeting on the back. Accounts of when the cards reached the troops vary, and some men received them around 22 December (Stout, War on the Rocks, 2014). The skies cleared on the 23rd, and the fighter-bombers and cargo planes came back (Cole, p. 526). The record shows both the prayer and the change in weather. It cannot show that one caused the other.
Did Patton promise to attack in seventy-two hours?
The official accounts differ. Cole has Patton offering a piecemeal attack in three days and a co-ordinated one in six. Cirillo has him promising a full corps attack in seventy-two hours. The III Corps attack began less than three days after the Verdun meeting.
How it connects
For the garrison Boggess reached, the surrender demand and the airdrops, see Chapter 6, Bastogne. For the 28th Division’s stand along the Our and at Wiltz, which bought time for this move, see Chapter 1. The Führer Begleit Brigade, sent on 26 December to reseal the Bastogne ring, had just come from the Manhay and Ourthe fighting covered in Chapter 8 (p. 613).
What happened afterward
Bradley steered Third Army’s next attack north from the Bastogne area rather than Patton’s preferred blow at the base of the salient (pp. 610–612). VIII Corps attacked on 30 December and III Corps on the 31st. The drive toward Houffalize is covered in Chapter 9. Abrams became Army Chief of Staff in October 1972 (CMH Pub 70-14) and died in office in 1974. The Army’s main battle tank is named for him.
Walking the ground today
Remichampagne, Clochimont and Assenois are still linked by country roads running north toward Bastogne. Between Assenois and Bastogne stands a small concrete Belgian bunker from the 1930s, near the place where Boggess’s tanks met the airborne engineers. Now known as “Fortress Boggess,” it has been made into a quiet place of remembrance (Liberation Route Europe). Treat it as a memorial and park well off the road. Many Third Army soldiers lie in the Luxembourg American Cemetery at Hamm, where the American Battle Monuments Commission cares for 5,070 graves and the names of 371 missing, and where General Patton is buried (ABMC).
Sources and further reading
- Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (U.S. Army in World War II, CMH Pub 7-8), ch. X, “The Battle of the Sauer,” pp. 238–260: HyperWar
- Cole, ch. XX, “The XII Corps Attacks the Southern Shoulder,” pp. 482–508: HyperWar
- Cole, ch. XXI, “The III Corps’ Counterattack Toward Bastogne,” pp. 509–556: HyperWar
- Cole, ch. XXIV, “The Third Army Offensive,” pp. 606–632: HyperWar
- Roger Cirillo, Ardennes–Alsace (CMH Pub 72-26), pp. 28, 35–37: Internet Archive
- Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, vol. II (U.S. Army in World War II), ch. VI, “Forward Movements,” pp. 181–185: HyperWar
- S. L. A. Marshall, Bastogne: The First Eight Days (U.S. Army in Action series, 1946): GovInfo PDF
- Medal of Honor citation, Pvt. James R. Hendrix: Congressional Medal of Honor Society; Mark T. Calhoun, “James Hendrix’s Medal of Honor,” The National WWII Museum (2022)
- Medal of Honor citation, Pvt. Paul J. Wiedorfer: Congressional Medal of Honor Society
- “Tank that helped end Battle of the Bulge takes place in Army history,” Army.mil (2009); “Final Armor School museum vehicles arrive,” Army.mil (2011); Jennifer H. Svan, “Vilseck tank confirmed as ‘Cobra King,’” Stars and Stripes (2008)
- 4th Armored Division Public Relations Section, What They Said About the Fourth Armored Division (Landshut, 1945): Project Gutenberg; Army Board for Correction of Military Records, Docket AR20090016433 (cites WD GO 54, 1945): DoD Boards
- Mark Stout, “Warchives: Patton’s Christmas Prayer and the Reality of War,” War on the Rocks (2014)
- William Gardner Bell, Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff (CMH Pub 70-14), preface: CMH PDF
- “Breakthrough at Assenois and Fortress Boggess,” Liberation Route Europe; “About Luxembourg American Cemetery,” American Battle Monuments Commission
- Signal Corps photograph SC 364310, Bastogne corridor, 3 January 1945: Wikimedia Commons
- Cole’s own sources for the 4th Armored, for readers who want to go further: the division’s combat interviews and combat command after-action reports; Lt. Col. D. M. Oden, 4th Armored Division: Relief of the 101st Airborne Division, Bastogne (Command and General Staff College, 1947); the Armored School manuscript Armor at Bastogne (1949); and K. A. Koyen, The Fourth Armored Division (1945) (Cole, ch. XXI, n. 10)
- Charles B. MacDonald, The Last Offensive (CMH Pub 7-9), ch. II, for January: HyperWar
Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps / National Archives via Wikimedia Commons, public domain unless noted.
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