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Special Units · Battle of the Bulge, 1944
The I&R Platoon, 394th Infantry
A platoon meant to watch and report held a wooded rise above Lanzerath through the first day of the Battle of the Bulge, 16 December 1944, and was overrun only at dusk.
- U.S. Army · 99th Infantry Division
- Lanzerath, Belgium
- 16 December 1944
Eyes on an open flank
An intelligence and reconnaissance platoon was supposed to find the enemy and report what it saw. Each infantry regiment had one: a small group of scouts working for the regimental intelligence officer, lightly armed and mounted in jeeps. On 16 December 1944 First Lieutenant Lyle J. Bouck Jr.’s platoon of the 394th Infantry had to do something different. It had to fight (Battle of the Bulge collection).
The 99th Infantry Division was new to combat. It held about nineteen miles of the Belgian–German border, from Monschau and Höfen in the north to the railroad above Lanzerath in the south. Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow of V Corps had accepted that wide a front for an untried division because he wanted his strength for the attack toward the Roer dams and because the ground seemed unlikely to draw a major German attack (Cole, p. 78). The division could man only a chain of strongpoints with gaps between them.
The 394th’s southern flank was open. Beyond it lay the Losheim Gap, the corridor through which German armies had come in 1914 and 1940, screened by a thin line of cavalry of the neighboring VIII Corps. Bouck’s platoon was dug in on a wooded rise just northwest of Lanzerath, watching the village and the road. The ground mattered: a poorer road the Germans called Route D branched north of Lanzerath through Buchholz and Honsfeld, and it led into the American rear (Cole, pp. 80–81; Chapter 2).
16 December: three assaults
The German barrage along the 99th Division front opened at 0525. Lanzerath lay in the path of the German 3rd Parachute Division, moving west to open the way for the 1st SS Panzer Division. The I&R Platoon lost physical contact with the cavalry and with its own regiment early in the day. At 1140 its radio relayed that the cavalry was pulling out of Lanzerath, and less than an hour after 1315 the radio link failed. By dusk the Germans held the village (Cole, pp. 85, 90).
The official history does not name the platoon’s leader or say how long its position held. A 1996 article in the Army’s Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, drawing on a Command and General Staff College study and the Department of the Army order that later honored the platoon, fills in the rest. When a battalion of the 9th Parachute Regiment came up the road in column, the platoon held its fire, because a girl had run from a house toward the German officers. The paratroopers saw the danger and dove into the ditches (Della-Giustina, 1996).
What followed was a fight the platoon was never organized for. The paratroopers attacked three times across an open, snow-covered field below the American foxholes, and three times the platoon threw them back. Bouck’s calls for artillery fire went unanswered. At dusk about fifty paratroopers worked around the flank and cleared the foxholes one by one. Bouck was shot in the leg; one man was killed, and the rest were taken prisoner (Della-Giustina).
Sources differ on how many men there were: about thirty in the official history, eighteen in the 1996 bulletin, and in many later accounts eighteen plus a four-man forward observer team from the 371st Field Artillery Battalion. They differ more on German losses. The bulletin claims 400 to 500 German casualties but cites no German count, and the figure is not repeated here as fact.
What the delay meant
The significance of Lanzerath was delay, not a claim that a handful of men defeated an army. The Sixth Panzer Army had the main effort of the German offensive and a tight timetable: one day to break through, one day to cross the Hohes Venn, and the Meuse by the evening of the third day. Its two leading panzer divisions were each to use a single road, and both roads ran through the 99th Division’s sector (Cole, pp. 75–77).
Joachim Peiper’s armored task force of the 1st SS Panzer Division reached Lanzerath only that evening. At midnight it struck Buchholz, and about 0500 on 17 December an American radio operator hidden in a cellar there counted thirty tanks and twenty-eight half-tracks heading for Honsfeld. Peiper’s column, by the Army campaign history’s count over 100 tanks and about 5,000 men, took Honsfeld before dawn. There and at Büllingen his men shot American prisoners (Cole, pp. 90–91, 261; Cirillo, p. 20). The hours lost on the first day did not stop Peiper, but they came out of a schedule that had no room for them, and his road west ended at La Gleize (Chapter 3).
Later popular histories, among them Charles B. MacDonald’s A Time for Trumpets, describe Peiper arriving in Lanzerath that night, finding the paratroopers halted, and taking the advance in hand himself. Those accounts rest largely on postwar interviews and recollection. The record that is not in dispute is simpler: the I&R Platoon held its ground until dark on the first day, and the road north of Lanzerath was not open until then.
Thirty-seven years to a citation
Bouck’s men spent the rest of the war as prisoners. The photograph of a Tiger II passing a column of Americans captured in the 99th Division area shows what that looked like on the road (Chapter 2). Their stand drew little notice at first. Records were thin, the platoon’s leader was a prisoner, and the battle that followed was enormous.
Renewed attention came with John S. D. Eisenhower’s The Bitter Woods in 1969 and later congressional interest. In October 1981 the Army awarded the platoon the Presidential Unit Citation (Department of the Army General Orders No. 26). Bouck and three others received the Distinguished Service Cross and five the Silver Star. The 1996 bulletin says nine more received the Bronze Star with “V”; a 2021 Army Reserve article gives eight and adds four Distinguished Service Crosses for the artillery observer team, which this collection has not confirmed from an order.
The platoon is often called the most decorated American platoon of the war. That claim comes from the 1992 Command and General Staff College study quoted in the bulletin, which called it “the most heavily decorated platoon for a single action in World War II.” The awards themselves are documented; the superlative is that study’s judgment. Today the National WWII Museum in New Orleans includes the platoon among the oral histories in its Battle of the Bulge gallery. This is a story of a small unit meeting an extraordinary situation, and it reads best beside the wider map, where the many other units, blown bridges and command decisions of the northern shoulder can be seen too.
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. The 99th Infantry Division’s own shoulder patch was a black shield crossed by a band of blue and white checks, the source of its nickname, the Checkerboard Division.
Timeline
- The German barrage opens along the 99th Infantry Division’s front.
- The platoon’s radio relays that the cavalry is pulling out of Lanzerath.
- The radio link fails within an hour after 1315; the platoon throws back three assaults across the snow-covered field.
- About fifty paratroopers work around the flank; the position is overrun and the Germans hold Lanzerath.
- Peiper’s armored task force reaches Lanzerath; at midnight it strikes Buchholz.
- A hidden American radio operator counts thirty tanks and twenty-eight half-tracks heading for Honsfeld, which falls before dawn.
- Losheimergraben falls; the 2nd and 99th Divisions fight for the twin villages and Elsenborn Ridge.
- John S. D. Eisenhower’s The Bitter Woods brings the stand at Lanzerath to wide attention.
- The platoon receives the Presidential Unit Citation (DA General Orders No. 26); four Distinguished Service Crosses and five Silver Stars follow.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 2: The northern shoulder
- Chapter 1: The opening hours
- Chapter 3: Peiper’s road and the engineers
- Lanzerath: a reconnaissance platoon forced to hold (Battle of the Bulge collection)
- The Battle of the Bulge collection and atlas
By the numbers
The I&R Platoon at Lanzerath by the numbers
Decorations for one day’s fight
Individual awards to the platoon for 16 December 1944, made mostly in 1981; the Bronze Star count differs by one between sources
Source: Capt. John Della-Giustina, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (1996), citing DA General Orders No. 26 (1981); U.S. Army Reserve article of 20 December 2021
How many men held the rise?
The platoon’s strength on 16 December 1944 as different sources give it
Source: Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (CMH Pub 7-8); Della-Giustina (1996); Alex Kershaw, The Longest Winter (2004)
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
Sources
- Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, United States Army in World War II (CMH Pub 7-8), chapters V and VI and p. 261.
- Roger Cirillo, Ardennes–Alsace (CMH Pub 72-26), pp. 10–12, 19–22.
- Capt. John Della-Giustina, “The Heroic Stand of an Intelligence Platoon,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (1996), citing Finch and Mordica, “Miracles: A Platoon’s Heroic Stand at Lanzerath,” in Combined Arms in Battle Since 1939 (CGSC Press, 1992), and DA General Orders No. 26 (1981).
- U.S. Army Reserve, “Army Reserve division remembers service in Battle of the Bulge” (20 December 2021).
- John S. D. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods (1969); Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets (1985); Alex Kershaw, The Longest Winter (2004).