The Opening Hours: Wacht am Rhein and the Surprise in the Ardennes

At 0530 on Saturday, 16 December 1944 (military time; 5:30 a.m.), the guns and rocket launchers of the German XLVII Panzer Corps opened fire on the villages of Col. Hurley E. Fuller’s 110th Infantry along a ridge road in northern Luxembourg. Within minutes the telephone lines between the villages were cut, and Fuller, at his command post in Clervaux, could not reach his battalions. With few shells at the guns, the barrage faded after about half an hour (Cole, ch. VIII, p. 181). Shortly after 0615, Company L at Holzthum reported figures in the half-light. Through the ground fog the men could not tell whether they were Americans or the enemy. They were German infantry of the 26th Volks Grenadier Division, whose engineers had begun ferrying assault companies across the Our River in rubber boats at about 0300 (pp. 180–182).

This chapter covers how that morning was planned, why the Allies missed it, and the first five days along the thin American line from the Our to the Sauer. The wider campaign is on the Battle of the Bulge hub page.

By the numbers

The morning of 16 December 1944

• 0530H-hourGerman guns opened along the front; Hitler set the time
• ~85 miVIII Corps frontabout three times the doctrinal frontage for three divisions
• 68,822VIII Corps assigned strengthofficers and men, morning of 16 Dec
• ~970German tanks and assault gunsseven armored divisions in the first wave
• 4 of 10German divisions VIII Corps had identifiedopposite its front before the attack
• 48 hrsDelay credited to the 110th Infantryagainst the XLVII Panzer Corps

Why it mattered

The German plan ran on a clock. Sixth Panzer Army allowed one day to break through, a second to cross the Hohes Venn plateau, and the evening of the third to reach the Meuse (Cole, ch. V, p. 77). Gen. Hasso von Manteuffel expected his assault troops on the crest above the Our, the line Lascheid–Heinerscheid–Roder–Hosingen, before noon on the first day (ch. VIII, p. 175). Surprise was complete, but the schedule failed. Company-sized garrisons in stone villages, many of the men still waiting for their first action, held long enough that Roger Cirillo credits the 110th Infantry with delaying the XLVII Panzer Corps “for a crucial forty-eight hours” (Cirillo, p. 25).

Wacht am Rhein: Hitler’s plan

The idea surfaced on 16 September 1944 at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, when Hitler cut off a briefing by Gen. Alfred Jodl and announced a counterattack out of the Ardennes toward Antwerp. The scene survives because the Luftwaffe chief of staff, Werner Kreipe, kept notes against orders (Cole, ch. I, pp. 1–2). The front there was “very thinly manned,” Hitler said, a blow would split the British from the Americans, and Antwerp could be reached “even in bad weather” (p. 17). He wanted bad flying weather above all; Cole writes that he “tended to look at the sky rather than the ground” (p. 18).

Even the names were part of the security. When the chiefs of staff of OB West and Army Group B, Gen. Siegfried Westphal and Gen. Hans Krebs, reported to the Wolf’s Lair on 22 October, they had to sign a secrecy pledge before hearing the plan; a leak meant they would be shot. Wacht am Rhein (“Watch on the Rhine”) was a cover name chosen to suggest a defense at the Rhine (ch. II, p. 21). Army Group B called its version Herbstnebel, “autumn fog” (p. 26), and the XLVII Panzer Corps planners knew it as Christrose (ch. VIII, p. 176). Model warned in writing that if the attack stalled at the Meuse, “the only result will be a bulge in the line” (ch. III, p. 38). The date slipped from 25 November to 16 December (ch. IV, p. 69).

Manteuffel won two points that shaped the first hours in Luxembourg. He opposed a two-hour barrage beginning at 0800, arguing that the Americans “literally must not be awakened”; Hitler ruled that the guns along the whole front would open at 0530. And his assault detachments would infiltrate in the dark, so they were already inside the American positions when the shelling began (ch. VIII, p. 173). The means behind the first wave were thin. Perhaps half the promised fuel was still in dumps back at the Rhine, and the artillery had one and a half units (basic loads) of ammunition where the Sixth Panzer Army’s artillery commander had asked for twelve to fifteen. The offensive, Cole concludes, “began on a logistical shoestring” (ch. IV, pp. 68, 73).

Forces engaged

The odds on 16 December

German first-wave forces against the American effective strength in the area attacked

GermanAmerican

Men

200,00083,000

Tanks and assault guns / medium tanks and tank destroyers

970424

Guns and rocket projectors / corps and division artillery

1,900394

The odds on 16 December

Men	German 200,000	American 83,000
Tanks and assault guns / medium tanks and tank destroyers	German 970	American 424
Guns and rocket projectors / corps and division artillery	German 1,900	American 394

Deception: keeping the Eifel dark

Hitler’s cover plan turned on a half-truth. Northwest of Cologne the Germans let the Allies see a counterattack force gathering: daylight movement, heavy radio traffic, extra flak and, from 20 November, a fictitious Twenty-fifth Army of ten divisions. In the Eifel, the forested upland opposite the Ardennes, movement was confined to darkness, a radio blackout covered all units not already in the line, and only guns already in the line could register, a few rounds a day (Cole, ch. IV, pp. 49–51). In the last three nights, army artillery was dragged forward by horses with straw to muffle the wheels, “just as had been done in 1918”; motorized guns moved up while low-flying German planes droned over the American listening posts; and the troops learned their mission only on the night of the 15th (pp. 69–71). On that last day OB West estimated no more than 370 American tanks opposite the three assault armies (p. 73).

What the commanders knew

Allied staffs expected the Sixth Panzer Army to be thrown against the American drive toward the Roer and disagreed only about where it was waiting; SHAEF on 10 December had “no further news” of it “beyond vague rumours.” The 12th Army Group map of 15 December showed only five German divisions between the Moselle and Monschau, and VIII Corps had identified four of the ten divisions gathering in front of it (Cole, ch. IV, pp. 58–59, 74).

What the staffs believed

It is now certain that attrition is steadily sapping the strength of German forces on the Western Front and that the crust of defenses is thinner, more brittle and more vulnerable than it appears on our G-2 maps or to the troops in the line.

12th Army Group intelligence summary, 12 December 1944

The estimate most often cited as a warning, First Army’s of 10 December by its G-2 (intelligence officer), Col. B. A. Dickson, predicted an all-out armored counterattack but placed it between Roermond and Schleiden, north of the Ardennes, after the Americans crossed the Roer. Dickson later told the Army historian Forrest Pogue that he had given every warning he could; badly in need of rest, he was on leave in Paris when the attack came. Pogue’s test is blunt: no commander changed his dispositions (Pogue, ch. XX and nn. 25, 32). Cole finds seven signposts in VIII Corps reports for 13–15 December, including night vehicle noise, a woman escapee who said the woods near Bitburg were jammed with equipment, and four prisoners who spoke of an attack before Christmas; only four reached corps headquarters (ch. IV, pp. 59–61). Air reconnaissance was grounded on only one of the last five days, but just three missions were flown directly opposite VIII Corps (pp. 61–62). Cole calls the failure general rather than personal: the Allies “had looked in a mirror for the enemy and seen there only the reflection of their own intentions” (p. 63).

The German plan assumed speed. Lüttwitz was not to let his attack slow to an infantry pace and was to disregard his southern flank until his main body was west of the Meuse (Cole, ch. VIII, p. 176). Doubts surfaced lower down: Col. Ludwig Heilmann warned Model only days before the attack that his 5th Parachute Division was a “Class IV” outfit, and Model replied that success would come from the paratroopers’ “usual audacity” (ch. IX).

Terrain and objectives

The Ardennes is a broken plateau cut by deep, winding rivers. Cole judged the problem one of “movement control rather than maneuver” (ch. III, pp. 43, 46). In the 28th Division’s sector the key ground was one ridge. The Our River, in many places forty feet wide and fordable, marked the border. One and a half to two and a half miles west, the road the Americans called the Skyline Drive followed the crest. Of four roads climbing over it, only the one from Dasburg through Marnach and Clervaux was a good all-weather route to Bastogne (ch. VIII, p. 179). German tanks needed bridges at Dasburg and Gemünd. Beyond the Clerf (Clerve) River, the Wiltz valley offered the next route west (p. 206). In the south, the Sauer and the gorges of “Little Switzerland” around Berdorf favored a few defenders; the Schwarz Erntz gorge runs three to five hundred feet below the tableland (ch. III, p. 44; ch. X, p. 249).

The “ghost front”

Cirillo records that the quiet Ardennes was called a “ghost front,” and one company commander called it a “nursery and old folk’s home” (Cirillo, p. 7). Maj. Gen. Troy H. Middleton’s VIII Corps held about eighty-five miles with three infantry divisions, roughly three times the frontage doctrine allowed, with 68,822 men assigned (Cole, ch. IV, p. 56). The 28th Division had taken 6,184 casualties in the Hürtgen Forest in two weeks of November, and the 4th more than 5,000 battle casualties plus 2,500 from trench foot and exposure (ch. VIII, p. 179; ch. X, p. 238). Fuller’s 110th Infantry, with two battalions on nine to ten miles of front, held a chain of company-sized strongpoints in the Skyline Drive villages. No one suspected that two of the three German divisions opposite were armored (ch. VIII, pp. 179–180).

Thin line

How much front each American force held

Approximate frontage on the morning of 16 December, north to south

99th Infantry Division (V Corps)19 milesheld the northern shoulder

Losheim Gap: 18th Cavalry Squadron5 miles9,000 yards, about five miles

28th Infantry Division30 milesthree regiments along the Our

110th Infantry (two battalions)10 milesthe division center, astride the road to Bastogne

9th Armored Division: 60th Armored Infantry Bn3 milesa narrow sector on the Sauer

4th Infantry Division35 milesSauer and Moselle; only the 12th Infantry lay in the attack's path

How much front each American force held

99th Infantry Division (V Corps)	19 miles
Losheim Gap: 18th Cavalry Squadron	5 miles
28th Infantry Division	30 miles
110th Infantry (two battalions)	10 miles
9th Armored Division: 60th Armored Infantry Bn	3 miles
4th Infantry Division	35 miles

16 December: the Skyline Drive villages

The decisive hours

16 December 1944, hour by hour

Mostly the 28th and 4th Division sectors in Luxembourg; times from American unit records as Cole reports them

1. 16 Dec · About 0300

   Engineers of the 26th Volks Grenadier Division begin ferrying 80-man assault companies across the Our in rubber boats, jumping the gun on Army Group B's order that no troops cross before the barrage.

2. 16 Dec · 0530

   Guns and Werfers (rocket launchers) open fire across the front. In the 110th Infantry's villages the telephone wire is cut within minutes; artillery radios keep working.

3. 16 Dec · About 0545

   At Höfen on the northern shoulder, as the shelling dies away, searchlights glow to the east 'as artificial moonlight.' Grenadiers walk out of the haze about 0600.

4. 16 Dec · Shortly after 0615

   Company L at Holzthum reports figures in the ground fog and cannot tell whether they are American or German.

5. 16 Dec · 0620

   Shells land on the 112th Infantry's 1st Battalion command post; German searchlights sweep the pillboxes on the Our.

6. 16 Dec · 0800

   Infantry of the 2nd Panzer Division, across the Our by boat, reach Marnach, where Company B and a tank destroyer platoon hold them off.

7. 16 Dec · About 0900

   Fuller gets a warning through to the 28th Division command post at Wiltz. The 109th Infantry receives its first firm report of Germans west of the Our.

8. 16 Dec · About 1000

   Cota orders Companies A and B of the 707th Tank Battalion to the 110th Infantry. At 1015 the 12th Infantry learns that Germans are approaching Berdorf.

9. 16 Dec · Before noon

   Five German assaults on Consthum are beaten off. Battery C, 109th Field Artillery, fires its howitzers on one- and two-second fuzes between Holzthum and Buchholz.

10. 16 Dec · Noon

    Barton commits the 12th Infantry's reserve battalion with eight medium and ten light tanks.

11. 16 Dec · 1330

    At Weiler the Germans cease fire, send forward a white flag and offer surrender terms. Company I refuses.

12. 16 Dec · Shortly before dark

    German engineers finally complete the 60-ton tank bridges at Dasburg and Gemünd. An American abatis and bomb craters jam the Gemünd exit road.

13. 16 Dec · About 1830

    The Company I platoon at the Wahlhausen road observation post calls American artillery onto its own position. One man escapes.

14. 16 Dec · 2100

    Cota returns the 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry, to Fuller for a dawn counterattack toward Marnach.

15. 16 Dec · About 2200

    Four tanks fight through to Hosingen with no rifle ammunition aboard.

16. 16 Dec · Midnight

    Tanks of the 3rd Panzer Regiment enter Marnach, breaching the VIII Corps final defense line. Middleton has just told Barton that part of the 10th Armored Division will leave Thionville at daybreak.

Every strongpoint was hit. Lt. Col. Donald Paul’s 1st Battalion held Marnach with Company B and a tank destroyer platoon; Maj. Harold F. Milton’s 3rd Battalion held Hosingen with Company K and Company B of the 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion, Weiler with Company I, and Holzthum and Consthum (Cole, ch. VIII, p. 181). Before noon Consthum beat off five assaults, and Capt. Norman G. Maurer, the battalion operations officer, led twenty men in a sortie that drove back a German attempt to cut the Holzthum road. Battery C of the 109th Field Artillery lost its commander and fifteen gunners in a close-range fight, firing its howitzers on one- and two-second fuzes (p. 182). At Weiler the mortarmen and antitank gunners, out of ammunition, joined the riflemen, and at Marnach the battalion executive officer, Capt. J. H. Burns, took over when the company commander was wounded (pp. 182–184).

The German infantry fought all day without heavy weapons, because the tank bridges at Dasburg and Gemünd were not ready until shortly before dark. “The hope of a quick breakthrough had proven illusory,” Cole writes (pp. 186–187). That night Cota ordered his regiments to hold “at all costs,” and Middleton ordered every VIII Corps unit to hold until its position was “completely untenable.” At midnight German tanks entered Marnach (p. 187). To the north the 112th Infantry held east of the Our. “Nobody able to sleep and no hot meals today,” one of its men wrote in his diary. “This place is not healthy anymore” (pp. 198–199).

17–18 December: Clervaux and Hosingen

On 17 December Cota’s last reserve battalion counterattacked toward Marnach and was stopped within a thousand yards. A light tank company of the 707th Tank Battalion, caught in column on the Skyline Drive past Heinerscheid, lost eleven tanks in about ten minutes (Cole, ch. VIII, pp. 188–189). Clervaux, Cole’s “Clerf,” sits in a horseshoe bend of the river below steep, wooded slopes. Fuller’s command post was in a hotel near the north bridge; his headquarters company was in the old château, whose walls had commanded the river bend since the twelfth century. At about 0930 a platoon of the 707th climbed out of town to meet the German Mark IVs; four German and three American tanks were destroyed. Nineteen Shermans from the 9th Armored Division’s CCR arrived around midday (pp. 189–191). At dusk German tanks came in from north and south. At 1825 Fuller reported enemy tanks in the town; he got out and was later captured leading stragglers west. At 1839 the regimental switchboard operator called division to say he was alone (p. 191).

In the château, 102 officers and men of the headquarters company fought on through the night while most of a German tank battalion assembled around them. Their last radio contact was at 0528 on 18 December. They held up the German infantry for several hours more, until engineers and self-propelled 88-mm guns set the château afire and forced a surrender. Cole concludes that 2nd Panzer’s race to Bastogne “was lost” at the Clerf crossings (pp. 191–192). On the ridge, Company K and the engineers held Hosingen for two days and nights in a town set ablaze by tank fire, fighting with hand grenades after the rifle ammunition ran out, and surrendered on the morning of the 18th. At Consthum, Col. Daniel Strickler’s perimeter held until “a thick, soupy December fog” let German tanks in about 1300, and the 3rd Battalion slipped out to the west (pp. 192–193).

Men for time

The 110th Infantry's stand, 16-18 December

• ~2,750Officers and men lostestimate by former regimental staff; no official record exists
• 80%+Casualties in the regimentCirillo's figure
• 11Light tanks lost in about ten minutes707th Tank Battalion on the Skyline Drive, 17 Dec
• 102Officers and men in the Clervaux châteauheadquarters company, night of 17-18 Dec
• 0528Last radio contact from the château18 December
• ~48 hrsDelay imposed on the XLVII Panzer CorpsCirillo's estimate; Cole declines to put it in hours

18–20 December: Wiltz

The Clerf bridges were in German hands, and “no preparations had been made to destroy them” (Cole, ch. VIII, p. 206). Cota made his stand at Wiltz, his command post, twelve miles from Bastogne. Middleton sent the 44th Engineer Combat Battalion, about 600 men who had been running sawmills and rock crushers, to hold north and east of the town alongside bandsmen, linemen and paymasters and the last of the 707th Tank Battalion: six crippled tanks and five assault guns (p. 206). On 19 December division headquarters moved to Sibret and Strickler took command in Wiltz. That afternoon the crossroads near Erpeldange changed hands four times, and at dark the 44th fell back into the town, having lost four officers and 150 men (p. 208).

Strickler decided to get out by infiltration. The column that left before midnight met a chain of roadblocks. At the first, an unidentified half-track crew of the 447th Antiaircraft Artillery drove onto the mines, guns firing, and set them off. At the second, a platoon of Black soldiers cleared the position in the dark with grenades and bayonets. At the third the column broke up under fire, and survivors scattered toward Bastogne and Vaux-lez-Rosières. The rear guard, the 44th Engineers, lost 18 officers and 160 men in the final withdrawal (pp. 209–211).

“Without the gallant bargain struck by the 110th Infantry and its allied units — men for time — the German plans for a coup-de-main at Bastogne would have turned to accomplished fact.”

Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. VIII, p. 211

The southern shoulder

The 109th Infantry and the 9th Armored’s CCA

South of the 110th, the 109th Infantry, led by Lt. Col. James E. Rudder, a former Ranger commander, faced the 5th Parachute and 352nd Volks Grenadier Divisions. Company E held the crossroads at Führen for two days until it fell silent on the night of the 17th, and the 107th and 108th Field Artillery Battalions fired 3,123 rounds on 17 December alone. The regiment lost about 500 officers and men in three days but kept the Germans short of the Ettelbruck crossing, then withdrew west of the Alzette on the night of 19 December (Cole, ch. IX).

Next in line, the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion of the untried 9th Armored Division had held a three-mile sector on the Sauer for only six days; from 17 December it fought under Combat Command A, a brigade-sized armored task force. The 276th Volks Grenadier Division opposite had no assault guns, and American shells smashed its bridging at Wallendorf. Beaufort fell on the evening of the 17th after Troop A of the 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron held the streets until 2030. On the 18th two task forces trying to reach the cut-off rifle companies lost seven tanks in a Panzerfaust (one-shot antitank rocket) ambush in the Eselbour woods. The 276th’s commander, Generalleutnant Kurt Moehring, was killed by machine-gun fire on the road from Beaufort to Müllerthal, and the capture of Waldbillig on 20 December marked his division’s high-water mark (ch. IX).

Berdorf, Echternach and Lauterborn

Barton’s 4th Division held thirty-five miles of the Sauer and Moselle, but only Col. Robert H. Chance’s 12th Infantry lay in the attack’s path. Many of its rifle companies were at half strength, and the attached 70th Tank Battalion had eleven of its fifty-four medium tanks running (Cole, ch. X, pp. 238–239). At Berdorf, 1st Lt. John L. Leake gathered about sixty men of Company F in the concrete Parc Hotel, and a 21-man platoon at Birkelt Farm held for four days. In Echternach, Company E fortified a hat factory, and American artillery wrecked German attempts to bridge the Sauer on the stone piers of the old bridge (pp. 241–245). Barton had ordered “no retrograde movement.” Middleton could offer only the 159th Engineer Combat Battalion, then working on the roads, and told Barton that if he could find the engineers he could use them (p. 243).

Help came from the Third Army. CCA of the 10th Armored Division made a 75-mile run from Thionville and on 18 December attacked toward Berdorf, Echternach and into the Schwarz Erntz gorge (pp. 249–250). A tank team reached the hat factory, and Capt. Paul H. Dupuis declined to withdraw because Barton’s order was still in effect; Barton later said he had revoked it, but the word apparently never arrived (pp. 250–251, n. 3). The garrison, about 111 men of Company E and 21 of Company H, probably surrendered late on 20 December. Berdorf was evacuated that night, and a new line from Dickweiler through Osweiler and Consdorf held. “The southern shoulder of the German counteroffensive had jammed” (pp. 256–258).

North of the 28th: the shoulder and the Schnee Eifel

The same barrage hit the 99th Infantry Division’s 19-mile front. After an hour and five minutes of it, one battalion executive officer, whose intelligence had found only two horse-drawn guns opposite, reported, “They sure worked those horses to death” (Cole, ch. V, pp. 78, 82). The 30-man I&R (intelligence and reconnaissance) Platoon of the 394th Infantry near Lanzerath lost touch with its regiment as the 3rd Parachute Division poured through, and Joachim Peiper’s tanks reached Lanzerath that evening (pp. 85, 90); see Chapter 2. In the Losheim Gap the 3rd Parachute Division struck a sector held over more than half its width by one cavalry troop and a tank destroyer company (Cirillo, p. 17), the breach that led to the 106th Division’s encirclement (Chapter 4). By nightfall Eisenhower had personally ordered the 7th and 10th Armored Divisions to Middleton (Cirillo, p. 19).

Engineer's eye

The battle of the bridges

Read the opening days as an engineer and the decisive objects are not villages but crossings. Manteuffel knew the Our would be hard to bridge, and his heavy 60-ton spans at Dasburg and Gemünd were not finished until shortly before dark on the first day, slowed by inexperienced crews and the work of moving heavy sections down to the river bed. At the far end of the Gemünd bridge an American abatis and a string of bomb craters stalled the Panzer Lehr reconnaissance battalion for the night. Farther south the 5th Parachute Division's bridge at Roth was not ready until the evening of 17 December, partly because of a bomb crater in its approach road, and the 276th Volks Grenadier Division lost equipment and engineers to American shellfire at Wallendorf and had no bridge of its own until 19 December, at Bollendorf.

The American side of the ledger is harder reading. Cole records that the bridges at Clervaux and Wilwerwiltz on the Clerf fell to the Germans with 'no preparations' made to destroy them, and that the bridge at Weidingen near Wiltz was ordered blown on 18 December and was not. Where demolitions and artillery did work, as at the six stone piers of the old Echternach bridge, where American guns shot out the first German span and later a pontoon bridge, the attacker's infantry had to keep fighting without its heavy weapons. Engineers also fought as infantry: Company B of the 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion at Hosingen, the 44th at Wiltz, the 159th on Hill 313.

Logistics, weather and the cold

Both sides fought short of something. Cole calls the German Seventh Army the “stepchild” of the offensive, short of bridge trains, heavy weapons and artillery ammunition (ch. X, p. 258). On the American side, many 4th Division radios and part of its artillery were in repair shops when the attack came (ch. X, pp. 239, 241), and near Berdorf on 19 December wounded men had to be left behind when the Germans cut the road (ch. X, p. 254). In the first seven days the Ninth Air Force’s medium bombers could fly on only one day, 18 December (Craven and Cate, vol. III, p. 686). German commanders later reported unusually high exposure and trench-foot cases on the southern shoulder, because the defenders in stone villages had more shelter than the attackers (Cole, ch. X, p. 258).

Voices from the record

The Parc Hotel, Berdorf. When American tanks broke into Berdorf on 17 December they began shelling the hotel, believing it held Germans, until one of Leake’s men unfurled an American flag on the shattered roof. The company cook made hot meals in the basement and served the men at their firing posts. On 20 December a German charge blew in part of a wall and opened a sealed annex full of liquor and beer; Leake refused to let his men touch it, a decision he regretted when he and twenty-one of his men were sent back to the foxhole line without coats or blankets (Cole, ch. X, pp. 247, 250, 256).

Medics, gunners and supply men. Pfc. T. J. Zimmerer, an aid man with the 9th Armored’s CCA, stayed behind German lines for eleven days with a severely wounded soldier. On the first night, Capt. John W. Schalles and Capt. Roger L. Shinn of the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion each ran a half-track of rations and ammunition through to their cut-off companies (ch. IX, nn. 7–8). Near Maisons Lelligen on 18 December, when the 12th Infantry’s cannon company was ambushed on the move, Sgt. J. C. Kolinski fired a howitzer still coupled to its truck; others copied him, some at sixty yards, while a volunteer drove up an ammunition truck with its canvas smoldering from German bullets (ch. X, pp. 251–252).

Civilians. Luxembourgers appear mostly at the edges of the American records. At Diekirch, members of the local gendarmerie fought alongside the Americans and took a score of German prisoners. When the 109th withdrew, some three thousand men, women and children left the town at midnight on 19 December, in freezing cold, on the road to Mersch; about four hundred stayed behind with aged relatives or property. Cole drew the account from a report of the Grand-Ducal Gendarmerie (ch. IX and n. 6). The sources used here give no count of Luxembourg civilian deaths in these first days, and none is offered.

Honors

We found no Medal of Honor awarded for actions in the 28th Infantry, 4th Infantry or 9th Armored Division sectors in Luxembourg between 16 and 20 December. The recognition documented in Cole is the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor: S/Sgt. William J. Bennett, 687th Field Artillery Battalion, at Wiltz; Pfc. W. S. Rush of the 112th Infantry, who fought on at an exposed post, badly wounded, until he died there; Lt. Col. James C. Rosborough of the 107th Field Artillery; Capt. Paul P. Gaynor, 2nd Lt. Samuel Leo and Pvt. J. W. Jones of the 109th; Capt. John W. Hall of the 9th Armored; Pfc. Zimmerer; and 1st Sgt. Gervis Willis at Berdorf (Cole, ch. VIII, nn. 16, 20; ch. IX, nn. 3, 5, 8; ch. X, n. 2). On the northern shoulder, the opening barrage began a fight that earned a 99th Division squad leader the Medal of Honor:

Medal of Honor

T/Sgt. Vernon McGarity

Technical Sergeant, Company L, 393rd Infantry, 99th Infantry Division

16-17 December 1944 · Near Krinkelt, Belgium

McGarity was wounded in the barrage that opened the offensive on the morning of 16 December. He had the wound treated, refused evacuation and went back to his squad, which had orders to stand firm. Through the day and the night that followed he rescued a wounded friend from a forward position and kept his men beating back infiltration.

When German tanks and infantry attacked the next morning, he knocked out the lead tank with a bazooka round, rescued another wounded man under fire, ran about 100 yards toward the enemy to bring back ammunition, and killed or wounded the crew of a machine gun that had been set up behind the squad. Only when the squad's last round was gone were he and his men captured. His citation credits the stand with buying time to assemble reserves. He received the medal from President Truman at the White House on 18 December 1945.

Read the official citation →

Losses and uncertainty

In Army usage “casualties” means killed, wounded, missing and captured together, not deaths. The figures below cover different units and periods and should not be added together.

Unit or place	Figure	What it counts	Source
110th Infantry, 16–18 Dec	About 2,750 officers and men	Losses estimated by former regimental staff; Cole says no official record exists	Cole, ch. VIII, p. 192, n. 11
110th Infantry	“Over 80 percent casualties”	Proportion of the regiment	Cirillo, p. 25
109th Infantry, 16–18 Dec	About 500 officers and men	Losses in the three-day battle	Cole, ch. IX
44th Engineer Combat Bn, Wiltz	4 officers and 150 men (19 Dec afternoon); 18 officers and 160 men (final withdrawal)	Losses in two actions; Cole does not say whether the figures overlap	Cole, ch. VIII, pp. 208, 211
60th Armored Infantry Bn, 9th Armored Division	About 231	Estimated casualties in the three-day fight on the Sauer	Cole, ch. IX
Troop A, 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Sqn, Beaufort, 17 Dec	43 casualties; 16 jeeps; 7 of 12 armored cars	Losses in the rear-guard action	Cole, ch. IX
Companies E and H, 12th Infantry, Echternach	About 111 plus 21	Captured, probably late 20 Dec	Cole, ch. X, p. 257
American units on the southern shoulder, 16–21 Dec	Over 2,000	Killed, wounded or missing; about 800 Germans captured	Cole, ch. X, p. 258
German 560th Volks Grenadier Division, 16 Dec	About 1,000	Estimated casualties on the first day, including a fusilier company lost in the woods for two days	Cole, ch. VIII, p. 198
All U.S. forces, 16 Dec–2 Jan	41,315	Battle casualties: 4,138 killed, 20,231 wounded, 16,946 missing	Cole, ch. XXV, p. 674

Cole judges that German losses in the center “may have equaled” the American and on the southern shoulder “probably ran somewhat higher,” but gives no firm German totals for these sectors (ch. VIII, p. 211; ch. X, p. 258).

Myths and the record

“The Allies thought the Ardennes was impassable.” Only in part. Cole allows “some subconscious assumption” of that kind, but the main reason was that the sector had been quiet for months. Eisenhower and Bradley had discussed an Ardennes counteroffensive in November and judged it unprofitable for the enemy (Cole, ch. IV, pp. 56, 59).

“The forty-eight hours is a measurement.” It is a judgment. Cirillo gives the figure; Cole writes that it is “impossible to assess in hours” the damage to 2nd Panzer’s timetable, while showing that Manteuffel expected the ridge by noon on the first day and that Lüttwitz, that first evening, still hoped to cross the Clerf by the evening of the second (Cirillo, p. 25; Cole, ch. VIII, pp. 175, 187, 192).

How it connects

The time the 28th Division bought went into Bastogne, where Panzer Lehr and the 26th Volks Grenadiers, the divisions that came through Hosingen and the Clerf crossings, met the 101st Airborne (Chapter 6). The 2nd Panzer Division, which took Clervaux, reached the western tip of the bulge near Celles (Chapter 8). The 28th’s 112th Infantry, cut off on the first day, joined the defense of St. Vith (Cole, ch. VIII, p. 205; Chapter 5). Peiper’s drive west is Chapter 3. The 10th Armored’s move from Thionville on 17 December was, Cole notes, the Third Army’s first step into the battle (ch. X, p. 249), which leads to Chapter 7.

What happened afterward

The held southern shoulder covered the Third Army’s assembly for its counterattack, which began after 21 December; on the 19th Patton had put the 10th Armored, 9th Armored, 109th Infantry and 4th Division under a provisional corps to hold that ground (Cole, ch. X, pp. 255, 258). The ground lost in the first days was retaken in late January. The 5th Division fought north along the Skyline Drive; the 6th Armored and 90th Divisions crossed the Clerf on 23 January and the 26th Division the next day. Mopping up on the Our ran through 28 January, when MacDonald writes the bulge “was erased” (MacDonald, ch. II, pp. 50–53). The January fighting is in Chapter 9.

Walking the ground today

The château at Clervaux, where the headquarters company made its last stand, now houses the Musée Bataille et Châteaux, whose Battle of the Bulge exhibition centers on a detailed diorama by Claude Joachim of the fighting around the castle. In Diekirch, the National Museum of Military History presents the battle through some fifty life-size dioramas and about fifty vehicles from both sides. Both note that opening hours are subject to change (Visit Luxembourg). The strongpoint villages, from Marnach to Hosingen and Consthum, are small working communities today, best seen from public roads and paths.

Questions readers ask

Why was it called Wacht am Rhein? To mislead. The cover name suggested a defensive battle at the Rhine (Cole, ch. II, p. 21).

Did the 28th Division’s stand earn a Medal of Honor? Not that we could find. The documented awards for these sectors are Distinguished Service Crosses, listed under Honors above.

Was the 110th Infantry wiped out? Cole writes that on 18 December what was left of it “was wiped out or withdrew to the west”; survivors fought on at Donnange, Wiltz and around Bastogne (ch. VIII, p. 192).

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. I, “The Origins,” pp. 1–18: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. II, “Planning the Counteroffensive,” pp. 19–32: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. III, “Troops and Terrain,” pp. 33–47: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. IV, “Preparations,” pp. 48–74 (deception, the intelligence failure, German logistics): HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. V, “The Sixth Panzer Army Attack,” pp. 75–106: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. VIII, “The Fifth Panzer Army Attacks the 28th Infantry Division,” pp. 173–211: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. IX, the Seventh Army attack on the 109th Infantry and CCA, 9th Armored Division, 16–20 December, pp. 212–237: HyperWar text
• Cole, ch. X, “The German Southern Shoulder Is Jammed,” pp. 238–258: HyperWar text
• Cole, p. 650 (American strength in the attacked sector) and ch. XXV, “Epilogue,” p. 674 (casualty totals): HyperWar table of contents
• Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (U.S. Army in World War II), ch. XX, “The Winter Counteroffensives,” section “Allied Estimate of Enemy Intentions” and notes 22–36 (First Army G-2 Estimate No. 37, Dickson interview): HyperWar text
• Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. III, Europe: ARGUMENT to V-E Day, ch. 19, “Battle of the Bulge,” pp. 672–686 (air reconnaissance, searchlights, sorties on 16 December): HyperWar text
• Roger Cirillo, Ardennes–Alsace (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II, CMH Pub 72-26), pp. 4, 7, 13–19, 25: Internet Archive text
• Charles B. MacDonald, The Last Offensive (U.S. Army in World War II), ch. II, “Victory in the Ardennes,” pp. 50–53: HyperWar text
• Congressional Medal of Honor Society, “Vernon McGarity,” official citation and award details: cmohs.org
• German Foreign Military Studies manuscripts used by Cole for these sectors, including MS # B-151a (Manteuffel, Fifth Panzer Army), A-939 and A-940 (Lüttwitz, XLVII Panzer Corps), B-040 (Kokott, 26th Volks Grenadier Division), A-876 (Brandenberger, Seventh Army) and B-023 (Heilmann, 5th Parachute Division), cited in Cole, ch. VIII, nn. 2–3, and ch. IX, n. 2. Copies are described in the Hoover Institution finding aid “United States Army European Command, Historical Division Typescript Studies, 1945–1954”: Online Archive of California
• Visit Luxembourg (national tourist office), “Museum Bataille et Châteaux – Battle of the Bulge and castle models,” Clervaux: visitluxembourg.com; and “National Museum of Military History Diekirch”: visitluxembourg.com
• U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph SC 335398, 28th Division Band and Quartermaster Company men at Bastogne, 20 December 1944: Wikimedia Commons record

Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps / National Archives via Wikimedia Commons, public domain unless noted.