On December 19, General Dietrich shifted the 12th SS Panzer Division south to attack Dom Butgenbach in order to avoid the Elsenborn defenses and open Rollbahn C, the main road from Bullengen to Malmedy in the west. This was to be another significant battle. Dom Butgenbach sat astride the Malmedy route and was by now occupied by the veteran U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment. The storied 26th was to achieve more glory here.

On the night of the 20th, Dietrich launched his largest attack against Dom Butgenbach, using two battalions of 12th SS Panzer grenadiers, tanks, and self-propelled assault guns against the right flank of the 26th Regiment supported by elements of the U.S. 613th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The Germans were once again stopped cold after a number of ferocious attacks over two days.

In a postwar assessment by the U.S. Army Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the 1st Division credited its success to artillery, including using illumination rounds at night. Keeping their own dug-in infantry positions well informed, they called in concentrations of fire to separate German infantry from German tanks, making the latter easier prey for anti-tank guns and bazookas. Ten thousand U.S. artillery rounds were fired over eight hours, some using new new proximity (“posit”) fuses in “time-on-target” barrages. One U.S. battalion commander was forced to call in a volley on his own position.

Combat engineers placed a thousand mines to channel German armor into killing zones.

The 26th Infantry Regiment’s motto at Dom Butgenbach had been, “we fight and die here.” Today, an obelisk at the Butgenbach traffic circle show the importance of that slogan, listing the men of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division who lost their lives blocking this major east-west attack route (Rollbahn C). Out of its strength of 2,500 men, the 26th Regiment lost 500 men killed. The 12th SS Panzer experienced 800 killed among its 1,200 casualties. German assaults continued until December 23, but, as at Elsenborn Ridge, they never broke through. German Rollbahns A, B, and C were now blocked.

Private First Class John Horton of Helena, Montana, was in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s 5th Field Artillery Battalion and said in a newspaper interview on July 11, 2004, that his hands were still constantly shaking as a result of 443 day in combat. Including the Bulge, his run under fire had taken him through North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.

Horton described the fighting at Dom Butgenbach, where his division fought in sub-zero temperatures and five feet of snow, blocking the 12th SS Panzer and 3rd Fallschirm Divisions. He mentioned one particular attack when “six German tanks broke through American line but were taken care of by American anti-tank gunners, engineer, clerks and cooks, fully repelling the enemy after hand-to-hand fighting.

The U.S. Army’s official history described this assault by “some twenty truckloads” of 12th SS grenadiers deployed behind a dozen tanks against the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment on December 19. The German tanks that managed to break through the initial U.S. artillery bombardment, anti-tank fire, and bazooka kept on the road to Dom Butgenbach, until the 155-mm howitzers of the 5th Field Artillery Battalion began to lob high explosive “uncomfortably close. Possibly crippled by concussion, the tanks were abandoned…”

Another Helenan, John Viereck, who received two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman Badge while serving with an anti-tank company, was in the Bulge as a radioman and cryptographer, also with the U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment. Viereck’ main memory was that “he was the coldest he’s every been in his life, and used blankets belonging to his compatriots who’d been killed in action.”

At the same time, the 16th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Division, with help from the 745th Tank Destroyer Battalion and Corps artillery, delayed four elements of the German 1st SS Panzer Division going south of Butgenbach between Faymonville and Waimes to join Peiper’s drive west. Each of the German elements was battered at roadblocks and pushed south into German Rollbahns D and E, jamming the routes intended for use by Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army attacking St. Vith.

Field Marshal Model, in charge of the German western front, summed up the northern shoulder campaign after the war, linking the failure of the entire Ardennes offensive to the inability to take Elsenborn Ridge quickly. Elsenborn, Model said, was the prerequisite for further advance west, “Without quick breakthrough and high ground we faced a threat to our flanks and to our tanks following Peiper’s success.” Head of the German High Command, General Jodl, concurred, saying Germany, “had it controlled Elsenborn Ridge and Butgenbach, would’ve had a screen to face north, using infantry to block U.S. reinforcements.” Patton, he said, was still a long way south, not an immediate threat.”

While touring Elsenborn Ridge, we praised the U.S. artillery advantage to our guide. Mignon agreed, but reminded us that the battle was really a victory for American logistics. Imagine, he said, getting all those shells from the U.S. factories over the ocean to Antwerp and Cherbourg, then on to Liege, and finally to Elsenborn. We were reminded of Montana’s home front contributions, including sled-dog teams used to supply snowbound troops and treat and recover casualties in hip-deep snow. After a call went out to bring sled-dog teams into the Bulge from their normal aircrew search-and-rescue assignments under the air bridge to Europe, 209 dogs with their drivers and sleds were flown to Toul, France.

Dave Armstrong, who trained with sled dogs at Camp Rimini outside of Helena, returned to the area after the war to live. He remember his team being one of two that mushed toward the southern sector of the Bulge to retrieve casualties. The two sleds returned with two flyers, one alive and one dead. A newsreel of the time shows him with his team on the way to the battlefield, passing the Arc de Triomph in Paris. Armstrong later became instrumental in starting the Montana Race to the Sky annual sled dog and driver endurance race. Eddie Barbeau, a member of the Ojibway Tribe who also trained at Camp Rimini, remembered using his sled and team to bring supplies to isolated front line units under attack in the Bulge. Barbeau returned to Helena, and taught traditional native technologies such as the tanning of hides. He left a big hole in the community when he died, having started the Helena Indian Alliance to serve the health and cultural needs of 5,000 Metis and tribal members passing every year through the Prickly Pear Valley.

In sum, starting at 5:30 a.m. December 16, 1944, the German 6th SS Army drive on the northern shoulder was slowed and blocked by the heroic U.S. stances at Hofen, the Twin Villages, Elsenborn Ridge, and Dom Butgenbach. The only German success was by the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by Kamfgruppe Peiper, which had broken through to Stavelot and constituted a major threat. We now turn to that.

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