Shortly before noon on 18 December 1944, about a mile up the Stavelot road from the railroad underpasses at Trois-Ponts, Cpl. Bruce W. Frazier and Pfc. Ralph J. Bieker of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion waited beside the road with a daisy chain of ten antitank mines, ready to jerk it across the pavement and run back to the single 57-mm antitank gun behind them. The gun was there only because its half-track had broken down in town that morning. A German tank nosed around the bend, then others; the engineer group commander, watching through field glasses from across the river, counted nineteen (Hechler, Holding the Line, pp. 17–20). (Times use the Army’s twenty-four-hour clock: 1145 is 11:45 a.m.)
The little gun stopped the leading tank before an answering shell killed all four of its crew. The pause gave the engineers at the bridges their warning. Company C, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion, about 140 men pulled from Army sawmill work the night before, blew the Amblève bridge and then the Salm bridge on the road to Werbomont, and Kampfgruppe Peiper, the armored spearhead of the German main effort, lost its paved road west (Cole, The Ardennes, ch. XI, pp. 267–268). For the wider campaign, see the Battle of the Bulge hub.
Battle of the Bulge · Chapter 3 of 9
- Dates
- 16–25 December 1944 (Losheim to La Gleize; Peiper’s survivors rejoin their division Christmas morning)
- Where
- Honsfeld, Büllingen, Baugnez, Ligneuville, Stavelot, Trois-Ponts, the Lienne creek, Cheneux, Stoumont, La Gleize and Malmédy, Belgium
- American forces
- 1111th Engineer Combat Group: 291st Engineer Combat Battalion and Company C, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion; a company of the 202nd Engineer Combat Battalion; detachments of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion; 30th Infantry Division (117th, 119th, 120th Infantry; 105th Engineer Combat Battalion) with the 743rd and 740th Tank and 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalions; 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate); 82nd Airborne Division (504th and 505th Parachute Infantry, 307th Airborne Engineers); Combat Command B, 3rd Armored Division; IX and XXIX Tactical Air Command fighter-bombers
- German forces
- Kampfgruppe Peiper (most of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, a battalion of the 2nd SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, Tigers of the 501st SS heavy tank battalion, a flak battalion, a company of the 3rd Parachute Division); the rest of the 1st SS Panzer Division in relief attempts; Skorzeny’s 150th Panzer Brigade at Malmédy
- Commanders
- U.S.: Hodges (First Army), Gerow (V Corps), Ridgway (XVIII Airborne Corps), Hobbs (30th Division), Gavin (82nd Airborne), Boudinot (CCB, 3rd Armored); engineers Col. H. Wallis Anderson (1111th Group), Lt. Col. David E. Pergrin (291st), Maj. Robert B. Yates (51st, at Trois-Ponts). German: Dietrich (Sixth Panzer Army), Priess (I SS Panzer Corps), Mohnke (1st SS Panzer Division), Joachim Peiper
- Outcome
- Spearhead halted at Stavelot 42 miles from the Meuse, then blocked at Trois-Ponts and the Lienne, cut off, and abandoned at La Gleize; about 800 men escaped on foot, leaving their tanks, half-tracks and guns
Peiper's road in six figures
- 42 miFrom the Meuse when the column halted at Stavelotnight of 17-18 Dec (Cole)
- 124,000Gallons burned to block one road cutStavelot, 18 Dec: the only First Army fuel lost in the Ardennes
- ~140Engineers of Company C, 51st ECB at Trois-Ponts8 bazookas, 10 machine guns, 1 borrowed 57-mm gun
- 94 hrsTrois-Ponts held by the engineersnight of 17 Dec to 21 Dec
- 28 / 70 / 25Tanks / half-tracks / guns left in La Gleize24 Dec
- ~800Men who walked out with Peiper0100, 24 Dec, on foot
Why it mattered
A kampfgruppe is a battle group, a temporary task force named for its commander. Peiper’s was the spearhead of the Sixth Panzer Army, ordered to seize the Meuse crossings at Huy and drive west without regard for its flanks (Cole, p. 264). Two trainloads of gasoline had not arrived, so units were told to supply themselves with captured fuel; Peiper expected to find it at Büllingen and Stavelot (Peiper, ETHINT-10, 1945).
Behind the Amblève lay First Army headquarters at Spa, the depots of Liège, and more than two million gallons of gasoline just north of Stavelot and Malmédy (Cole, p. 260). On the night of 17–18 December the column stood at the Stavelot bridge, forty-two miles from the Meuse (p. 266). It got only a few miles farther, largely because of a handful of bridges, the engineers who blew them, and the divisions that arrived in time to hold what the engineers had bought.
Terrain and objectives
The Amblève bends west out of the Hohes Venn, takes in the north-flowing Salm at Trois-Ponts, and runs on toward Liège. Cole calls both streams minor, but their valleys are deep-cut, with long stretches of steep rock walls (p. 260). Infantry can wade such a river; tanks in a gorge are tied to the roads, and the roads to the bridges.
Stavelot had one vehicular bridge, reached only by the main highway (p. 265). Trois-Ponts takes its name from three highway bridges, two over the Salm and one over the Amblève. The road from Stavelot passes twice under the railroad, crosses the Amblève, runs a few hundred yards up the valley, and turns west over the Salm to climb straight out toward Werbomont, the fast exit west (Cole, p. 267; Hechler, p. 16). Beyond that lay only a twisting road out at La Gleize, a light bridge at Cheneux, and the Lienne creek (Cole, p. 268). The division moved in four march groups because the roads would not take it as one body; Peiper’s had most of the tanks and most of the gasoline (pp. 260, 368).
Straight-line distance to the Meuse bridge town of Huy
Measured from each place on Peiper's route to the center of Huy. Roads in the Amblève valley twist, so road distances were longer: Cole puts the halt at Stavelot 42 road miles from the Meuse, and the whole route at 75 to 95 miles.
| Lanzerath (night of 16-17 Dec) | 48 miles |
| Honsfeld and Büllingen (17 Dec) | 46 miles |
| Baugnez crossroads (17 Dec) | 37 miles |
| Stavelot bridge (halt, 17-18 Dec) | 32 miles |
| Trois-Ponts (bridges blown, 18 Dec) | 30 miles |
| La Gleize (pocket, 19-24 Dec) | 28 miles |
| Stoumont (high-water mark, 19 Dec) | 26 miles |
| Lienne bridge near Habiémont (blown, 18 Dec) | 26 miles |
16–17 December: through the gap
Peiper spent most of 16 December waiting on the infantry, a blown bridge near Losheim and a jam of horse-drawn artillery; his advance guard reached Losheim only at 1930 and had to swing to Lanzerath (Cole, pp. 260–261). At 0400 on the 17th he took Honsfeld with ease, then used the 12th SS Panzer Division’s paved road through Büllingen, where he found gasoline and put American prisoners to work refueling his tanks (p. 261). He later put the haul at 200,000 liters (ETHINT-10).
Between noon and 1300, at the Baugnez crossroads on the road to Ligneuville, the advance guard shot up a convoy of Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, and rolled on. The prisoners were later shot in a field. Cole: “At least eighty-six Americans were massacred here.” Nineteen unarmed Americans had been shot at Honsfeld and fifty at Büllingen (p. 261). At Ligneuville the column lost about an hour to two Shermans and a tank destroyer of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division (pp. 264–265).
What the engineers knew on 17 December
The engineers in Peiper’s path were First Army troops of the 1111th Engineer Combat Group under Col. H. Wallis Anderson, whose command post was at Trois-Ponts. The 51st alone had been running about 30 sawmills (Hechler, p. 10). Anderson sent Lt. Col. David E. Pergrin, the 27-year-old commander of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion, to take charge at Malmédy (Fowle, Builders and Fighters, p. 455). Pergrin arrived about noon and found Company B, about 180 men, setting up roadblocks (Cain, 1985).
That afternoon four survivors of Baugnez staggered up to a 291st roadblock outside Malmédy (Fowle, p. 455); Cole times the first pickup at about 1430 (p. 263). Company C of the 51st knew nothing of this. It left Melreux at 2200 and reached Trois-Ponts at 2330, knowing only that the group was building a barrier line along the Salm and that it was to block the approaches to the town (Hechler, p. 14; Cole, p. 267).
17–18 December: Stavelot
At dusk the only combat troops in Stavelot were a squad of the 291st, sent from Malmédy to build a roadblock on the bridge approach; a 1985 Army staff college study counts thirteen men with a bazooka, rifles and twenty mines (Cain). Three German tanks rushed the bridge; the leader hit the hasty minefield, and the others turned back. The column halted for the night. Peiper later called the town heavily defended (ETHINT-10). Cole thought he was confusing the 17th with the next day and wrote that the reason for the halt “never will be known” (pp. 265–266).
What the engineers were doing
A roadblock is an obstacle placed where a vehicle cannot drive around it (a road cut, bridge approach or underpass) and covered by fire. A hasty minefield is antitank mines laid quickly, often on the surface. A daisy chain is mines tied to a cord so a soldier under cover can pull them across a road in front of a tank. None holds armor for long, but a column stopped short of a bridge gives the demolition party time.
Stavelot showed the price of being late. Before daybreak on the 18th, Maj. Paul J. Solis brought in a company of the 526th Armored Infantry and towed tank destroyers, but German infantry struck before they were set. “Taken by surprise, the Americans failed to destroy the bridge structure,” and about 0800 a Panther dashed across (Cole, p. 266); the 1985 study says charges placed by the 202nd Engineers failed to fire (Cain). With German tanks loose in the streets and no antitank guns left, Solis had gasoline from the Francorchamps dump poured into a deep road cut and set alight. The tanks turned back. He burned 124,000 gallons, the only part of First Army’s fuel reserve lost in the whole Ardennes operation (Cole, pp. 266–267).
Stavelot, Trois-Ponts and the Lienne, 17-19 December 1944
Lt. Col. David E. Pergrin of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion reaches Malmédy, sent by the 1111th Engineer Combat Group to take charge of its units there.
Peiper's advance guard shoots up Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, at the Baugnez crossroads. About 1430 a 291st patrol picks up the first survivors of the massacre that followed.
The point reaches the heights above Stavelot (Peiper later said 1600). A 13-man squad of the 291st has laid a hasty minefield at the bridge approach. Three tanks rush the bridge; the leader hits a mine and the others turn back. The column halts for the night.
Company C, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion, about 140 men pulled from sawmill work, arrives at Trois-Ponts from Melreux and begins preparing the Amblève and Salm bridges.
After German infantry surprise the 526th Armored Infantry outpost, a Panther dashes across the intact Stavelot bridge. Later in the morning Maj. Paul J. Solis blocks the road to the Francorchamps dump with burning gasoline.
Nineteen or twenty tanks come down the Stavelot road toward Trois-Ponts. A lone 57-mm gun stops the lead tank before it is destroyed and its four-man crew killed. Engineers blow the Amblève bridge.
The Salm bridge on the Werbomont highway goes up. Maj. Robert B. Yates, arriving for a staff meeting, is put in command of the town.
Fighter-bombers catch the column in the Amblève gorge near Cheneux and La Gleize. The 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry, attacks into Stavelot from the north.
S/Sgt. Edwin Pigg's detail of the 291st wires the Lienne bridge near Habiémont and fires it as the lead German tank approaches. Peiper put the moment at about 1800.
A German reconnaissance force that crossed a weak bridge north of the Lienne is ambushed near Chevron by the 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry, and leaves five half-tracks.
Peiper attacks Stoumont. The 3rd Battalion, 119th Infantry, loses 267 officers and men; a roadblock west of the town holds from about 1240.
The 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry, holds Stavelot down to the river. That night its attached engineers dynamite the Amblève bridge, cutting Peiper off from his fuel.
A 291st squad under Lt. Albert J. Walters blows the bridge southeast of Trois-Ponts as German infantry start across; Sgt. Jean B. Miller fires the charge.
18 December: Trois-Ponts
Company C, under Capt. Sam Scheuber, had eight bazookas and ten machine guns, plus a squad each from the 526th and from Company A of the 291st and a few stragglers (Hechler, pp. 16–18). Hechler, who interviewed the participants in February 1945, says the group S-4, Capt. Robert N. Jewett, placed the 57 on Anderson’s order and names its gunners as McCollum, Hollenback, Buchanan and Alonzo B. Higgins. They had seven rounds when the tanks appeared; the third German tank fired four times before the 57 fired once, and Jewett, Lt. Richard Green and Pfc. Andrew Salazar passed shells forward by hand until the gun was hit (pp. 17–21).
On the Aisomont road above the river, Lt. Fred L. Nabors’ platoon met three more tanks; one bazooka misfired, another was shot out of the loader’s hands, but the tanks did not follow into town. At 1300 the Salm bridge on the Werbomont highway was demolished. Shortly afterward Maj. Robert B. Yates, the battalion executive officer, arrived for the group’s daily meeting; Anderson put him in charge of the town and took the group headquarters to Modave (Hechler, pp. 21–22).
Cole quotes Peiper on what had just happened:
“If we had captured the bridge at Trois Ponts intact and had had enough fuel, it would have been a simple matter to drive through to the Meuse River early that day.”
Joachim Peiper, interview of 7 September 1945 (ETHINT-10), quoted in Cole, The Ardennes, p. 267
The sources do not agree on who was in charge that morning. Cole has Yates commanding from the night of the 17th and commandeering the gun crew himself (pp. 267–268). Hechler, writing from interviews with Yates, Scheuber, Jewett and Green within ten weeks of the fight, places Yates’s arrival after 1300. We follow Hechler, the closer record.
What Yates did next was deception. “Every shot of ours seemed to draw about a thousand in return,” he said. After dark the company drove its trucks out on the Werbomont road without lights and back in with lights on, as if reinforcements were arriving; clanked a four-ton truck in chains back and forth to sound like armor; and moved bazookas and riflemen around to fake strength. An American tracked vehicle that had slid into the river helped without meaning to: when the bridge beside it was blown, its ammunition cooked off at intervals into the evening, like a gun firing (Hechler, pp. 17, 22–23).
I would find them asleep standing up after 94 hours on the job, but they were standing up.
Maj. Robert B. Yates, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion, on Company C at Trois-Ponts, interviewed February 1945
18 December: Cheneux and the Lienne
Blocked at Trois-Ponts, the column turned north through the gorge toward La Gleize and found the Cheneux bridge intact. Then the sky cleared, and fighter-bombers knocked out two or three tanks and seven half-tracks, blocking the narrow road. Liaison planes had tracked the column all afternoon; by evening surprise was gone (Cole, pp. 268–269).
Ahead lay the Lienne. Anderson radioed Company A, 291st, at Werbomont to prepare the bridge near Habiémont; the 1985 study says S/Sgt. Edwin Pigg gathered the fifteen men left there with wire and TNT, reached the bridge at 1500, and blew it as the first German tank came within about 200 yards (Cain). Cole puts it near nightfall (p. 268); Peiper, at about 1800, “just when we were starting to cross” (ETHINT-10). Other bridges proved too weak for the Tigers. A detachment that crossed one to the north was ambushed near Chevron by Maj. Hal D. McCown’s 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry, and fled, leaving five half-tracks (Cole, pp. 268, 343).
How a hasty bridge demolition works, and how it fails
A bridge is dropped by cutting what carries the load: the stringers or girders of the span, or the piers and abutments under them. When Company C had to drop the repaired timber trestle over the Salm at Trois-Ponts on 21 December, Lt. Joseph Milgram Jr. had his men make nine necklace charges, explosive tied around the stringers, and join them with primacord, a detonating cord that fires every charge it touches almost at once. He lit it with a time fuze so the man pulling the lighter could run for cover. Heavier spans took far more: the same battalion prepared the Hotton bridge on the Ourthe with 800 pounds of TNT and 300 pounds of satchel charges on one abutment and three piers.
Preparing a bridge and firing it are separate acts. A prepared bridge stays open for friendly traffic, and the decision to blow it is a command decision, usually made under fire and with incomplete information. At Trois-Ponts the order came at 1650 on 21 December, while the company covered the withdrawal of paratroopers who had crossed to the east bank. Stavelot shows the other side of the ledger. Surprised before daybreak on 18 December, the defenders did not destroy the bridge, and a 1985 Army staff study says charges placed by the 202nd Engineers failed to fire. One intact bridge carried the column west that morning.
An obstacle is only as good as the fire that covers it. A blown span in a gorge stops tanks, but infantry can wade the Amblève and the Salm, which is why Company C kept machine guns and bazookas in the houses on the river line and why German infantry still tried the wreckage at night. Demolitions can also be undone. German engineers strengthened a footbridge east of Trois-Ponts until it carried a self-propelled gun, and the 307th Airborne Engineers repaired two blown bridges so the 505th Parachute Infantry could cross. The engineers' advantage was time, not permanence: each blown bridge cost Peiper hours or a road, and he had little of either.
18–19 December: the 30th Division shuts the door
The 30th Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Leland S. Hobbs) left the Aachen area at 1630 on 17 December (Cole, p. 335). Next day the 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry (Lt. Col. Ernest Frankland), was told on the road that the Germans held Stavelot and attacked anyway, without artillery; fighter-bombers broke up a counterattack by ten tanks returning from Trois-Ponts (p. 337). By noon on the 19th the battalion held the town to the river, and the 118th Field Artillery fired 3,000 rounds that afternoon, cooling its tubes with water. That night the battalion’s attached engineers dynamited the Amblève bridge, “the most telling stroke of all” (p. 338). Without it there was no fuel for Peiper (p. 339).
At first light on the 19th Peiper struck Stoumont. The 3rd Battalion, 119th Infantry, had dug in overnight; its tank destroyer gunners could not see fifty yards in the fog, and all eight towed guns were captured. Two antiaircraft crewmen firing bazookas for the first time, Pvt. Albert A. Darago and a Private Seamon, crippled or destroyed two tanks and won the Distinguished Service Cross. The battalion lost 267 officers and men (Cole, p. 340).
Survivors and ten tanks of the 743rd, low on ammunition, fell back along the river road to a bend between a steep hill and the river, where Lt. Col. Robert Herlong’s 1st Battalion and newly arrived artillery held at about 1240. The only other armor between there and Liège was ten Shermans from First Army repair shops, manned by ordnance mechanics; the newly arrived 740th Tank Battalion drew what a depot had, including Shermans with unfamiliar British radios and five amphibious tanks (p. 341). Just beyond Stoumont lay an untouched bridge to the Werbomont highway. “We began to realize,” Peiper said, “that we had insufficient gasoline to cross the bridge west of Stoumont” (p. 342).
20–22 December: Cheneux, the sanatorium and the net
On the 20th Combat Command B, 3rd Armored (Brig. Gen. Truman E. Boudinot), came south in three task forces; a combat command is a brigade-sized armored task force. Task Force Lovelady cut the Trois-Ponts–La Gleize road and found that German engineers had strengthened a footbridge east of Trois-Ponts to carry a self-propelled gun. Some gasoline reached Peiper that way, but not enough (Cole, p. 348).
Paratroop patrols found Company C still holding Trois-Ponts, a surprise at Gavin’s headquarters (Cole, p. 351). Yates greeted Col. William E. Ekman of the 505th Parachute Infantry with “Say, I’ll bet you fellows are glad we’re here” (Hechler, p. 14; Cole, p. 351, n. 10, has “guys”). At 1930 two companies of the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, attacked Cheneux across 400 yards of bare, wired slope in four waves. The first two were almost completely shot down; a few men of the third reached the houses and held, then hunted the flak-wagon crews through the night with knife and grenade. On the 21st Lt. Col. Julian A. Cook’s 3rd Battalion marched six hours to come in from the north and finished it. The 504th lost 225 dead and wounded; Company B had 18 men and no officers left (pp. 352, 366–367).
West of Stoumont, the 1st Battalion, 119th Infantry, took the sanatorium on the evening of the 20th, with about two hundred sick children and elderly people sheltering in its basement. The Germans retook it that night while Sgt. William J. Widener and eleven men held an annex, Widener calling the fall of shells to an artillery observer fifty yards away; two companies lost half their strength (Cole, pp. 349–351). The solution on the night of the 21st was field engineering: a 740th Tank Battalion officer crawled forward to scout a route, and volunteers built a ramp over the blocking embankment, “constructed from shell castings.” By midnight four Shermans were firing into the building and the Germans left. None of the civilians had been killed or injured (p. 372).
21 December: Malmédy and the Salm
The same day Skorzeny’s 150th Panzer Brigade, trained for disguised raids on the Meuse bridges, attacked Malmédy and broke against the 120th Infantry and the 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate), helped by the new POZIT proximity fuze, which bursts a shell in the air over its target. In the fog on the Stavelot road it overran a platoon of Company K, 120th Infantry, where Pfc. Francis S. Currey earned the Medal of Honor described below (Cole, pp. 360–363).
The rest of the 1st SS Panzer Division tried to break back in to Peiper. German assault guns collapsed a temporary bridge above Trois-Ponts; at Stavelot grenadiers wading the icy river were shot in the stream (Cole, pp. 363, 370). Across the Salm the 505th fought for a cliff-top bridgehead, and many paratroopers leaped into the river during the daylight withdrawal (p. 370). Company C had prepared its bridges again. At 1650, covering that withdrawal, it got the order to blow them, and Lt. Joseph Milgram Jr. lit the fuze on the Salm trestle in full view of the enemy before running for cover (Hechler, pp. 27–28). Pvt. Carl Strawser and S/Sgt. William W. Rankin of the company had been killed by shellfire the night before (p. 27). Yates pulled the company out at 1930; he counted 94 hours on the job (pp. 14, 29). Upstream, a 505th platoon blew the Salm bridge at La Neuville at dark, and on the 22nd the Grand Halleux bridge went up with Germans on the span (Cole, pp. 371, 373).
22–24 December: Stoumont retaken, La Gleize abandoned
The 22nd came in with intense cold and falling snow, and the promised fighter-bombers did not fly (Cole, pp. 371–372). The barrage before the final assault on Stoumont was called off when shells began bursting in the American assembly areas; the attackers reached the town at 1410 without drawing fire, for Peiper had pulled back to La Gleize overnight (p. 373). That night twenty Luftwaffe planes dropped supplies, many of them at Stoumont, into American hands (p. 374). Cole also describes a single drop on the night of the 21st (p. 369) and does not reconcile the two dates.
On the 23rd, six rifle companies cleared the woods north of the Amblève, and at Petit-Coo near Stavelot S/Sgt. Paul L. Bolden won the Medal of Honor (Cole, pp. 374–375). Artillery pounded La Gleize, some with POZIT fuzes. Each advance up the ridge roads meant losing a tank, working infantry around the gun, and then “the engineers would remove the mine field” (pp. 375–376). Late on the 23rd Mohnke radioed permission to break out. Peiper could take neither vehicles nor wounded. Leaving a rear guard to wreck the equipment, he and some eight hundred men slipped out in single file at 0100 on 24 December, crossed the Salm the next night after a brief firefight with the 82nd Airborne, and rejoined the division south of Stavelot on Christmas morning (p. 376). In La Gleize the Americans freed about 170 Americans, took 300 prisoners, nearly all wounded, and counted 28 tanks, 70 half-tracks and 25 artillery pieces (p. 377).
German vehicles and guns abandoned or captured on Peiper's road
Counts of equipment found by American troops at three places. They are not a complete loss tally: tanks knocked out earlier at Stavelot, Stoumont and on the road are not included.
| La Gleize: half-tracks | 70 vehicles or guns |
| La Gleize: tanks | 28 vehicles or guns |
| La Gleize: artillery pieces | 25 vehicles or guns |
| Cheneux: flak wagons (self-propelled 20-mm guns) | 14 vehicles or guns |
| Near Chevron: half-tracks | 5 vehicles or guns |
Logistics and the cold
Peiper’s campaign was a race between fuel and bridges. He started with most of the division’s gasoline and a plan to live off captured stocks, found one at Büllingen, and never reached the big ones. By 19 December he had almost drained his tanks (Cole, p. 368). He said his tanks burned as much fuel in 25 kilometers of Eifel hills as they would normally use in 50 (ETHINT-10).
Gasoline on Peiper's road, in U.S. gallons
The fuel he found, the fuel he never reached, and the fuel the Americans burned to keep him from it.
| First Army dumps north of Stavelot and Malmédy | 2,000,000 gallons |
| Burned by Maj. Solis in the road cut above Stavelot | 124,000 gallons |
| Captured by Peiper at Büllingen | 52,800 gallons |
In September 1945 Peiper listed what he would do differently: faster gasoline supply, no horse-drawn artillery on the roads, more and shorter columns, and a bridging unit with each armored point. His interviewer was Maj. Kenneth W. Hechler, the combat historian who had interviewed Company C about Trois-Ponts seven months before (ETHINT-10).
Take along a bridging unit with each armored point.
Joachim Peiper, listing what he would do differently, interview with Maj. Kenneth W. Hechler, 7 September 1945
People and civilians
Cole concludes that by 20 December Peiper’s command had murdered approximately 350 American prisoners and at least 100 unarmed Belgian civilians at twelve places along its route (p. 262); Lovelady’s infantry found evidence of atrocities in the river villages (p. 364). At Trois-Ponts, group officers watching from across the river saw an elderly couple come out and wave as German tanks reached a blown bridge; a dismounted tank crewman shot the woman, and the man who caught her was shot too (Hechler, p. 24). So far as could be determined, Cole wrote, these were the only organized and directed killings of prisoners by either side in the Ardennes, and Peiper himself gave such an order at least once (pp. 262–263). He also records American talk of shooting SS troops on sight, and one written regimental order, while finding no evidence that American troops acted on it (p. 264, n. 5).
On the 23rd, planes sent against La Gleize bombed Malmédy instead, burying civilians in a hotel. On the 24th and 25th American planes struck Malmédy again, killing at least thirty-seven men of the 120th Infantry on the first day and a considerable number of civilians (Cole, pp. 376–377).
The trial and the Senate report
In 1946 a U.S. military court at Dachau tried Peiper and 73 other men in the “Malmédy case”; Cole drew on its 3,268-page transcript (ch. XI, n. 1). After charges that confessions had been coerced, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee chaired by Sen. Raymond E. Baldwin heard 108 witnesses and reported in October 1949. It found that the confessions “were not secured through physical mistreatment,” called the use of mock trials in no more than twelve cases “a grave mistake,” and recorded that of 43 death sentences adjudged, 12 were finally approved and later recommended for commutation (Senate report, pp. 1–2, 8, 16, 27–28).
Honors
We found two Medals of Honor for actions on Peiper’s road in these days, both to men of the 120th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division.
Francis S. Currey
Private First Class (the citation calls him Sgt.), 3rd Platoon, Company K, 120th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division
Currey was a 19-year-old automatic rifleman when Skorzeny's 150th Panzer Brigade struck the 120th Infantry west of Malmédy in fog on 21 December. German tanks overran the tank destroyers and antitank guns near his platoon's strongpoint and forced the men back into a factory.
According to his citation, Currey found a bazooka, crossed the street under fire to get rockets, and with a companion knocked out a tank with one shot. He then went forward alone to within 50 yards of a German-held house and knocked down half of one wall with a rocket, drove German tank crews from three vehicles with antitank grenades, and fired machine guns from a half-track and from a position whose crew had been killed. Five Americans pinned down for hours, two of them wounded, got out under his covering fire. Maj. Gen. Leland S. Hobbs presented the medal at Reims on 27 July 1945.
Paul L. Bolden
Staff Sergeant, Company I, 120th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division
On 23 December six American rifle companies were clearing the woods north of the Amblève between Stavelot and Trois-Ponts, where part of the 1st SS Panzer Division relief force still held on. At Petit-Coo, Bolden's company was pinned down by fire from a house 200 yards ahead.
Bolden and T/Sgt. Russell N. Snoad went forward on their own initiative. With Snoad covering from across the street, Bolden threw a fragmentation grenade and a white phosphorus grenade into the house and opened fire with his submachine gun on about 35 SS soldiers inside. He was hit in the shoulder, chest and stomach by the burst that killed Snoad, withdrew, and, when no one came out to surrender, went back in and fought until his ammunition ran out. The citation credits him with all 35. Snoad received the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously. President Truman presented Bolden's medal at the White House on 23 August 1945.
Cole also names Distinguished Service Cross recipients: Darago and Seamon (Stoumont, 19 December); Widener and Pfc. John Leinen, who kept the annex supplied (sanatorium, 20 December); 1st Lt. Kenneth R. Nelson (posthumous) and T/Sgt. John Van Der Kamp (Malmédy, 21 December); Pfc. Jack Gebert (posthumous, Stoumont, 21 December); Pfc. Daniel Del Grippo and S/Sgt. William Walsh (Cheneux); T/Sgt. Russell N. Snoad (posthumous, Petit-Coo); and Sgt. John Bueno and Cpl. Adam F. Burko of the 105th Engineer Combat Battalion, who helped recapture an aid station on 22 December (pp. 340, 350, 362, 366–367, 375, ch. XVI n. 1).
The 51st Engineer Combat Battalion’s unit citation (First Army General Orders No. 29, 17 February 1945) covers 17 to 22 December at Trois-Ponts, Hotton and Marche and praises its “excellent terrain appreciation and the use of ingenious ruses.” France added the Croix de Guerre with Silver Star; Yates received the Silver Star (Hechler, appendixes B–D). The 291st’s own unit citation for 17–26 December is widely reported, but we could not reach an official copy, so we give no order number.
Losses and uncertainty
The figures below are losses or casualties, which include wounded and captured; they are not death tolls. Cole gives no total for Peiper’s personnel losses, and subtracting the 800 who escaped from Cirillo’s starting strength of about 5,000 would mislead, since wounded were left behind and other elements fought outside the pocket (Cirillo, p. 21). Peiper said he left more than three hundred men in La Gleize (ETHINT-10).
| Item | Figure | What it counts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honsfeld and Büllingen, 17 Dec | 19 and 50 | Unarmed Americans shot | Cole p. 261 |
| Baugnez, 17 Dec | At least 86 | Americans massacred (Cirillo: “more than 80”) | Cole p. 261; Cirillo p. 21 |
| All Peiper killings to 20 Dec | ~350 POWs, 100+ civilians | Murders at twelve locations (Cirillo: at least 300 POWs, over 100 civilians; 1949 Senate report: about 350 and about 100) | Cole p. 262; Cirillo p. 21; Senate report p. 2 |
| Fuel burned at Stavelot | 124,000 gallons | Only First Army fuel lost in the operation | Cole pp. 266–267 |
| 57-mm gun crew, Trois-Ponts, 18 Dec | 4 | Men of the 526th Armored Infantry killed at the gun | Cole p. 268; Hechler p. 21 |
| 3rd Bn, 119th Infantry, Stoumont, 19 Dec | 267 | Officers and men lost (all causes) | Cole p. 340 |
| 504th Parachute Infantry, Cheneux, 20–21 Dec | 225 | Dead and wounded | Cole p. 367 |
| 120th Infantry, Malmédy bombing, 24 Dec | At least 37 | Americans killed by U.S. bombs, first day | Cole p. 377 |
| Left at La Gleize | 28 / 70 / 25 | Tanks / half-tracks / artillery pieces | Cole p. 377 |
| Escaped from La Gleize | About 800 | Men who walked out, 24 Dec | Cole p. 376; ETHINT-10 |
Where the sources differ: Cole’s approximately 350 murdered prisoners exceeds Cirillo’s “at least 300”; both are minimums. Cirillo calls the Baugnez convoy a 7th Armored Division battery, where Cole names Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, and says an engineer squad stopped Peiper at Stavelot, where Cole declines to say why the column halted (Cirillo, p. 21).
Myths and the record
- “A handful of engineers stopped Peiper.” They took away his roads; infantry, armor, artillery and aircraft then broke the pocket. Cole’s verdict on Trois-Ponts, that “a battalion antitank gun and a handful of engineers” left Peiper “no quick exit from the valley,” is exact and enough (p. 268).
- “Peiper’s account settles the details.” It does not. His 1945 interview runs events together, and he dates his withdrawal from Stoumont to the night of the 20th, where the American record shows the night of 21–22 December (ETHINT-10; Cole, pp. 265–266, 373). He is useful for what he knew and intended, not for times.
- “He ran out of gas because he was unlucky.” Fuel was planned short, with captured stocks written into the plan, and the decisive cut was deliberate: the Stavelot bridge blown behind him on 19 December (ETHINT-10; Cole, pp. 338–339).
How it connects
Peiper’s lost first day began with the infantry’s failure in the opening hours, and he ran alone partly because the 12th SS Panzer Division was held at Krinkelt-Rocherath and Elsenborn Ridge (Cole pp. 369, 374; see The Northern Shoulder). 7th Armored columns passed through Stavelot and Trois-Ponts on their way to St. Vith. The rest of the 51st Engineers held the Ourthe at Hotton, and the 3rd Armored fought at Parker’s Crossroads, in The Western Tip.
What happened afterward
By 26 December the north bank of the Amblève was clear. The fighting had cost the 1st SS Panzer Regiment nearly all its heavy equipment, and the rebuilt division “could no longer be considered an armored division” (Cole, p. 377). Less than three months later both engineer battalions were bridging the Rhine at Remagen; on 11 March 1945 the 291st completed the first Allied tactical bridge across the river and the 51st the second, at Kripp (Fowle, pp. 465–466). The fighting that erased the bulge is told in The January Counteroffensive.
Walking the ground today
The route can be driven in an afternoon, and the gorge explains the battle better than any map: from Stavelot the road runs under the railroad and down to the confluence at Trois-Ponts, and the climb west toward Werbomont is plain to see. In La Gleize the December 44 Museum is devoted to the offensive and particularly to Kampfgruppe Peiper; its hours change in winter, so check the Wallonia tourism listing before you go (365.be). A Tiger II of the 501st SS heavy tank battalion stands in the village. These are places where people died and families still live; the memorial at Baugnez and the markers along the route deserve quiet.
Questions readers ask
Why didn’t the Germans just ford the rivers? Their infantry did. Tanks could not climb in and out of the gorges, and after Trois-Ponts and the Lienne Peiper’s last way out, west of Stoumont, needed gasoline he no longer had (Cole, pp. 265, 342, 363).
Did Peiper know about the gasoline dumps? He said he expected fuel at Büllingen and Stavelot and did not know of the larger dumps near Spa. His column’s closest approach to the First Army stocks was Solis’s burning road cut above Stavelot (ETHINT-10; Cole, p. 266).
Who was Major Yates? Robert B. Yates was the 51st’s executive officer, a Texan who had commanded the battalion in 1943 and came back from months in the hospital only days before the attack. He held Trois-Ponts for nearly four days with a sawmill company and a few attachments (Hechler, pp. 4, 11–14).
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. XI, “The 1st SS Panzer Division’s Dash Westward, and Operation Greif,” pp. 259–271: HyperWar text
- Cole, ch. XV, “The German Salient Expands to the West,” esp. “The 30th Division Meets Peiper,” pp. 334–352, and “The Net Closes on Peiper,” pp. 359–367: HyperWar text
- Cole, ch. XVI, “One Threat Subsides; Another Emerges,” section “The Attempt To Relieve Peiper’s Kampfgruppe,” pp. 368–377: HyperWar text
- Ken Hechler, with prologue and epilogue by Barry W. Fowle, Holding the Line: The 51st Engineer Combat Battalion and the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944–January 1945 (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History, Studies in Military Engineering No. 4, EP 870-1-38, 1988), “Defense at Trois-Ponts,” pp. 14–29, and appendixes B–D: USACE Digital Library
- Barry W. Fowle, ed., Builders and Fighters: U.S. Army Engineers in World War II (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History, EP 870-1-42, 1992), “Engineers in the Battle of the Bulge,” pp. 453–461, and “The Rhine River Crossings,” pp. 463–466: USACE Digital Library
- Maj. Francis M. Cain III, The 1111th Engineer Group in the Bulge: The Role of Engineers as Infantry in AirLand Battle (School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1985): DTIC
- Joachim Peiper, interviewed by Maj. Kenneth W. Hechler, ETHINT-10, 1st SS Panzer Regiment in the Ardennes (11–24 Dec 1944), 7 September 1945 (a follow-up, ETHINT-11, covers 16–19 December): catalog entries in Guide to Foreign Military Studies 1945–54; text consulted in a transcription of the National Archives copy
- U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Malmedy Massacre Investigation: Report of a Subcommittee, 81st Cong., 1st sess. (October 1949): PDF
- Congressional Medal of Honor Society, official citations: Francis S. Currey; Paul L. Bolden
- Roger Cirillo, Ardennes–Alsace (CMH Pub 72-26), p. 21: Internet Archive text
- Janice Holt Giles, The Damned Engineers (1970; reprinted by the Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1985), the standard history of the 291st; cited here through Cain, as the full text is not public online: USACE catalog record
- Wallonia tourism portal, “December 44 Museum,” La Gleize: 365.be; Tiger II at La Gleize, photographed 1 February 2024: Wikimedia Commons
- Campaign overview, atlas and timeline: Battle of the Bulge campaign hub, The Lake Norman Brief
Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps / National Archives via Wikimedia Commons, public domain unless noted. The Stavelot Tiger and Kaiserbaracke images are German photographs from captured film held by the National Archives.
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