Bastogne was important because of the vital junction of seven roads and two railroads. Successful defense of Bastogne came against great odds. The difficulty was in being able to ultimately control a cluster of five municipalities: Bastogne proper, Longvilly, Noville, Villers and Wardin. General Middleton, Commander of the U.S. 18th Corps, made the initial decision to hold onto Bastogne, the key crossroads, as the Germans advanced around it. That decision turned out to be decisive to the outcome of the Battle of the Bulge. He made some good and important tactical decisions as well. Upon arrival of the U.S. 10th Armored Combat Command B he had it scatter its tanks to meet all the German probes. He didn’t wait for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division to arrive in Bastogne as planned, instead halting the U.S. 101st Airborne which was passing through Bastogne on its way to Werbomont. He admitted going against the book by overruling 10th Armored Deputy Commander, General Roberts, and breaking up the 10th’s tanks into three task forces. He reasoned that without armor to back up our roadblocks, they couldn’t have stopped anything. In his memoirs he admitted always having faith in the 101st Airborne Division. “I simply did not think the Germans could run the 101st out. I had them with me at Cotentin Peninsula (in Normandy) and knew they wouldn’t run away.” Patton later said Middleton’s decision to hold Bastogne was “good common sense soldiering.”
Active defense of sequential roadblocks by the U.S. 9th Armored Division Combat Command R allowed time for the U.S. 10th Armored Combat Command B and 101st Airborne Division to arrive in the Bastogne area on the afternoon and evening of December 18, just as the Germans were approaching. The U.S. 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived in the dark barely in time. The German 26th Volksgrenadiers and Panzer Lehr Divisions had already begun to probe Bastogne’s outskirts on the afternoon of December 18. They returned on the 19th at 10:00 a.m.
As Combat Command B, 10th Armored, arrived after being rushed north from Patton’s army in the Saar, its elements were broken into three combat teams, Team Cherry, Team Desobry, and Team O’hara. These were sent to villages on the edge of Bastogne to block three of the seven roads leading into the city. Team Cherry went east to Longvilly, Neffe, and Mageret. Team Desobry positioned eight miles north in Noville. Team O’hara went southeast to Marvie and Wardin. As the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion made it through from the north and the 101st Airborne Division arrived from France, both were immediately funneled toward the action.
General McAuliffe, an artillery branch officer commanding the 101st Airborne, was given command of the overall defense of Bastogne. He chose to concentrate available artillery fire from the center to provide support fire around the entire perimeter. This efficient arrangement of direct fires worked well as combat intensified between 6,000 GIs with 60 tanks, and 12,000 German infantry with 200 tanks. In time the American defenders faced German 5th Fallschirm, 26th Volksgrenadiers, 2nd Panzer, and Panzer Lehr Divisions. American forces retained control with a series of battles fought around the city in the outlying small hamlets that comprised each of the municipalities. Only U.S. artillery and command and control at Bastogne Barracks were located in the town itself.
On December 18, Team Cherry rushed east toward Wiltz to support the 9th Armored roadblocks, but it was caught in the open at Mageret and cut to pieces by the Panzer Lehr Division and passing elements of the newly arrived 2nd Panzer Division. That first evening Panzer Lehr, continuing to finish off Team Cherry, stopped only when the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) arrived on the scene and U.S. artillery lowered their gun sights and used proximity fuses to keep the Germans at bay. The Panzer Lehr commander, General Bayerlein, mistakenly drove his tanks into muddy side roads without infantry support. Local villagers had misled him, saying 50 American tanks were on the road ahead, causing him to stop for the day. The 501st PIR also succeeded in blocking other elements of the Panzer Lehr at Bizory to the north of Mageret. A bit to the south, Team O’Hara pushed back the 26th Volksgrenadiers near Wardin but retreated after encountering a German battalion backed by tanks. The 501st PIR went into action here as well, but was thinly stretched covering the eastern approaches to Bastogne.
First Lieutenant Bob Harrison of Helena, Montana, platoon leader with Company I of the 501st, was thrown into defense of the woods near Wardin where he was surrounded and outnumbered four-to-one. Company I was finally overrun on the evening of the 19th by German infantry and ten Tiger tanks, with only 20 American wounded making it back to the rear, as the rest were killed or captured. Harrison was one of those captured, but was killed later in Germany after escaping a POW camp. Bob’s brother, John Harrison, who was serving with the First Army investigating German war crimes, was quickly alerted to the fact that his brother was missing at Bastogne. John’s letters home describe his and his family’s concern and his efforts at the time to locate his brother.
Charles MacDonald describes the Wardin engagement in A Time of Trumpets, saying a Panzer Lehr battalion with seven tanks attacked one end of Wardin just as 130 men of Company I, 3rd Battalion of the U.S. 501st entered the other. Company I was no match for the German force, but they fought bravely. One man knelt with a bazooka in the middle of a little dirt road that passed for a street and knocked out the leading German tank before return fire cut him down. Other men with bazookas accounted for three more tanks. But there were still other German tanks and too many panzer grenadiers. Ordered to pull back, it was too late for many of the paratroopers. The company lost all of its officers and 45 men, most of them killed, or so badly wounded that they had to be left behind. On that day, the 501st was repulsed at Neffe, Wardin, and Mageret. Another participant the Wardin battle said later that if Company I had not gotten to those streets in Wardin to battle the German tanks, “in ten minutes they would have been in Bastogne.”
Private First Class Bob Crowe, the old smokejumper working at the Veterans Hospital in Miles City who remembered sharing his defensive hole under a barn outside Bastogne with a rat, also shared the 501st PIR defense of Bastogne with Harry Cummings. Wearing two Purple Hearts when he was discharged, Cummings later showed up in Missoula, Montana, for training with Crowe in the 1946 smokejumpers’ new-man or rookie class.
Action was also heavy in the northern outskirts of Bastogne. On December 19, Team Desobry was in place at Noville with support from 30 tanks, 4 tank destroyers from the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion, a few artillery pieces, and 450 troops from the 506th PIR arriving on the run. Colonel Desobry and the 506th immediately found themselves engaged in a fight with the German 2nd Panzer Division trying to skirt Bastogne on its race to the Meuse River. A furious two-day battle erupted, and the Americans were forced into a slow retreat, losing 400 men and 20 Sherman tanks but delaying the 2nd Panzer and causing German losses of 600 men and 31 tanks.
The Americans were pushed back in a fighting withdrawal to Foy and the Jacques Woods, and partially surrounded, with severe losses on both sides. Easy Company of the 506th PIR found itself engaged in attacks and counterattacks against the 26th Volksgrenadiers, with the Foy area changing hands four times. Private Glenn Knerr of Lewistown, Montana, with the 506th PIR, was killed on December 21 during the fighting for Noville and Foy.
The U.S. strongpoints east of Bastogne were continually under attack, but proved formidable to the 26th Volksgrenadiers and Panzer Lehr Divisions. However the U.S. 9th Armored and 10th Armored Combat Commands had been almost annihilated. Supplies, shells, and ammunition were running short everywhere.
On December 20, as Bastogne was finally surrounded, the Panzer Lehr and 2nd Panzer Divisions departed for the Meuse leaving one element of the Panzer Lehr Division, the 901st Regiment, and the 26th Volksgrenadier Division. Reinforcements from a regiment of Deckert’s 15th Panzergrenadiers arrived December 23. During this time the Germans launched infantry attacks on the western and southeastern perimeter, supported by tanks in a piecemeal fashion. German infantry divisions attacking alone proved insufficient to get the job done.
The U.S. 502nd PIR held the northwest near Longchamps and Champs. The 506th PIR, with Easy Company in Jacques Woods, held the north from Foy to Noville. The 501st PIR held the east near Bizory, Longvilly, and Neffe, and the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment held the southeast near Marvie and Wardin. The 326th Airborne Engineering Battalion held the south approaches towards Sibret, and another battalion of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment plus the 401st Parachute Infantry Battalion held the west and southwest side near Mande-St.Etienne below the 502nd PIR Sector.
Sergeant John Greene, of Butte, Montana fought in the 377th Parachute Field Artillery, serving in a combat relationship with the 502nd PIR. He joined the U.S. 101st as it was being formed after serving at Schofield Barracks with the 119th Pursuit Squadron during the attack on Pearl Harbor. At Normandy he was cited for individual actions taken during nine days behind enemy lines. During Operation Market Garden he was pinned for two days under an overturned jeep in the Netherlands, recovering just in time to participate in the Battle of the Bulge, and the invasion of Germany. After returning stateside wearing the American Defense ribbon, Paratroopers Wings with three spearheads, the European and Mediterranean ribbon with five Bronze Stars, the Bronze Star Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Purple Heart, a Presidential Citation, the Belgian and French Croix de Guerre, and the Victory Medal with one star, he went to work for the Vallejo, California City Police Department. On September 21, 1946, the 29-year old Montanan lost his life to a live round in one of six chambers of his service revolver, showing his wife in their family kitchen how to play “Russian roulette.”
It was during this fighting around Sergeant Greene that Captain John Sheehan, also of Butte, Montana, an Army Chaplain earned a Silver Star, awarded by 101st Airborne Division Commander, Lieutenant General McAulliffe for actions above and beyond the call of duty, on January 3, 1944, near Saint Vith. The citation states: “Captain Sheehan repeatedly risked his life to treat the wounded and the dying. In one occasion, when the aid man had been forced back, he coolly crossed almost 100 yards of open terrain which was being swept by fierce enemy, artillery, mortar and automatic weapons fire, to drag to safety three of his badly wounded comrades. This necessitated making the perilous trip four times. Five bullets passed through his clothing and a mortar-shell fragment gashed his knee. On another occasion he ventured within fifteen feet of the enemy lines to salvage a desperately needed case of first-aid goods. Due to his vigilance also, two enemy attacks were successfully repulsed.” Before the end of the shooting war he received two other citations for valor, by rescuing fellow artillery-stunned men from drowning in a partly frozen river, and for gathering men scattered by their jump plane crashing near the place that would become a major Rhine River crossing. His last citation was a Purple Heart for being severely wounded by a 20-mm cannon while running under enemy fire, carrying two wounded medics, one on each shoulder.
After returning to Butte Father Sheehan didn’t talk about his service except to say that he admired the soldiers who saw no glamour in war. They realized they were up against a tough job, which they did without fanfare. Their motto was “let’s get it done.” At Bastogne, they were cold, hungry, and miserable, but not for one moment did they ever consider the word “surrender,” even though they were hopelessly cut off from their own forces. When he died of his wounds in Butte on September 13, 1946, his loving parishioners laughed at the memory of him often saying that he “was retreating when he got shot.” Today, there is a small city park in Butte named for Father Sheehan.
We noted that Father John Sheehan and Sergeant John Greene were part of the hidden toll of war, having never been counted as part of Montana’s U.S. Army casualties from World War II. Neither authentic hero is listed among Butte’s 61 Killed in Action, 8 Died of Wounds, 37 Non-Battle Deaths, or 14 Findings of Death.
Carrying out a personal order from Hitler on Christmas Day, the Germans launched their most dangerous attack on Bastogne. The 15th Panzergrenadiers struck from the northwest and west with 30 tanks and tank destroyers and a reinforced infantry battalion. Eighteen German tanks broke through the U.S. lines at Mande-St.Etienne, but the 327th Glider Infantry stayed in their foxholes in the fog and let the tanks pass. Then they stalked them from behind using rifles to shoot German infantry off those tanks that made it past the bazookas. The tanks that survived kept heading towards where McAuliffe’s command post was located in the Bastogne Barracks. American field artillery finished the job, catching the remaining Germans in the open fields and destroying all but five of the tanks, which were later eliminated at Rolley Chateau by the 502nd PIR, supported by P-38 and P-47 fighters overhead. A simultaneous attack by the 26th Volksgrenadiers in the southeast sector near Neffe was also stopped.
With clear skies, U.S. aircraft were now beginning to strafe and bomb German positions around Bastogne, and C-47 “Skytrains” of the 440th Troop Carrier Group were replenishing U.S. supplies and ammunition. On December 23, 241 C-47s dropped 144 tons of supplies. For four days starting on the 24th, with the exception of Christmas due to weather, 962 C-47’s dropped an additional 850 tons of supplies, facing heavy fire from German anti-aircraft guess defying U.S. fighter escort cover. Eleven U.S. gliders delivered not only medical supplies but surgeons as well. During the five days of air deliveries, the Germans shot down 19 planes and badly damaged 50 more.
Fred Brauer, who left the newly organized U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers after working the 1941 and 1942 fire seasons, joined the Army Air Corps and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroic supply missions in support of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne. When he returned to Montana he became a smokejumper legend as a key supervisor in the evolution of the no-nonsense parachute program. He figured prominently in recommending and monitoring many of over 100 smokejumpers that eventually worked with the Central Intelligence Agency during classified paramilitary operations in Nicaragua, Cuba, Indonesia, Tibet, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Another of the decorated C-47 pilots tossing winter clothing and ammo out of the cabin door on December 26 was Lieutenant C.W. “Bill” Leaphart of Helena, Montana. He was forced to circle and make a second round over Bastogne under heavy anti-aircraft fire, seeing tracers come up but keeping the cabin door open despite the flak, knowing how miserable and tough the situation was down there for the soldiers. He received the Air Medal as a result. The mission was only for volunteers, who had been told to expect a 50 percent casualty rate.
That was the day that Patton’s relief tanks, supported by massive registered fire from the U.S. 94th Artillery Battalion, broke through near Sibret and stopped the 26th Volksgrenadiers from re-closing the corridor. By the time they were finally relieved, the U.S. defenders in Bastogne had suffered 2,000 casualties.
Staff Sergeant Charles Caudell, a rancher from Miles City, Montana was on the ground attached to the 101st at Bastogne. He described it as a “bad one,” saying, “You talk about killing some people, we did.” He described seeing a P-47 shoot 50 Germans in a field with two bursts. He claimed that after Patton reached the city on December 26, Eisenhower sent up an order: “No prisoners for ten days. That was,” he said, “because the Germans really gave us a hard time. Fighting until January 3, we were dug in underground because we had to. All we had were combat jackets.”
There was another Montanan who was at Bastogne, Technician Fifth Grade Tom Donovan of Anaconda, serving in Company A of the 35th Engineer Combat Battalion. The 35th was in the thick of Bastogne from the beginning, being General Middleton’s reserve when the Bulge broke. Middleton immediately called on the 35th plus Combat Command R of the 9th Armored Division, which was in nearby Luxembourg, placing them along the roads leading toward Bastogne, blocking the Germans coming from the east. The 35th ECB fought a rearguard action, slowing the 5th Fallschirm Division on the southern approach. By the 18th, they met General Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division as it arrived on the eastern outskirts of Bastogne, joining the 10th Armored Division there in fierce action against Germany tanks and infantry. Donovan’s company, Company A, stretched along the Bastogne perimeter from Foy to Neffe.
On the night of December 20, the 35th was moved to the western outskirts of Bastogne, blocking the road between Ortheville and St.Hubert. Here they wound up slowing the Panzer Lehr Division again as it moved around Bastogne and on west towards the Meuse River. At Pironpre and Ourtheville, in a series of tough small-arms engagements, elements of the 35th also engaged the 2nd Panzer Division, which was also racing west on its course towards the Meuse. By the night of the 21st, the 35th was battered and depleted. After dark, the 35th was relieved and trucked through the forest south to the town of Bouillon, near the French border.
Tom Donovan was typical of the survivors, proud to talk about building the Alaska-Canada (AlCan) highway in the Yukon winter in 1942 but hesitant to talk about European combat later on. All he would jokingly tell his family about Bastogne was that he and a couple of his buddies got separated from their unit during the battle and spent time in the cellar of a French farmhouse drinking wine. After a rest on the French border, the 35th Engineers were sent back to Bastogne on December 30 to support the 11th Armored and 17th Airborne Divisions during Patton’s bloody counteroffensive to drive the Germans out of the western strongholds of Bastogne.
The French farmhouse is a good story, but who knows what really happened?
Soldier-chroniclers Manteuffel, Middleton, and MacDonald, described the battles in the Bulge after the war- -as a series of company level or smaller engagements, with units fitting pretty much on their own. Middleton called Bastogne a “battle of small units, people from different units pulled together and fought, and stragglers joined them. Roadblocks were held by small units.”
For the 101st Airborne Division perspective on Bastogne, its strain on the paratroopers, and the long duration of the battle, we can also turn to Arnold Kantola of the 502nd PIR. He kept a diary of his time in Bastogne, arriving on the 19th and facing a German night attack on the 20th when the German threw everything at them - -tanks, artillery, and infantry. He wrote that he really didn’t expect to survive that night. The next day brought snow, and his unit was half-starving and half-freezing. He knew the 101st was now cut off, with numerous firefights taking place, usually at night.
By December 28, after Patton had broken through and supplies had been dropped, the fighting in the Bastogne perimeter continued, as both sides brought up reinforcements. On January 4, Kantola could see U.S. tanks up on a nearby hill having a tough time, with a major German attack in zero degrees. The battle was getting hotter and he was dug in and “not expecting at this point to live too long.”
On January 9, the 502nd attacked in support of the neighboring 506th PIR, taking Noville. The 502nd attacked again on the 12th Kantola’s “nerves were about to crack” from so much combat. The Germans counterattacked with tanks and infantry well into the second week of January.
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