The Chaplain who wrote the famous war prayer for General Patton was from Montana. Colonel James H. O’Neill, who had been for many years attached to the Helena Roman Catholic Diocese as Vice President of Carroll College, wrote the prayer on Patton’s order, asking for dry weather to assist a breakthrough: “Grant us fair weather for battle.” The date of the prayer was December 14, 1944. Two days later, as the prayer was being distributed to 250,000 troops of the U.S. Third Army, the Germans struck with their surprise strategic offensive. By December 23 the skies cleared for six days. Patton eventually pinned the Bronze Star medal on O’Neill, but in the meantime made arrangements to pivot half his army and move north to relieve Bastogne.

On December 22 Patton’s Third Army began its thrust north from the Luxembourg City-Arlon area along a 30-mile front. The 3rd Corps of Patton’s Army under General Millikin turned 90 degrees north with three divisions. The 12th Corps under General Eddy, with another three divisions of the Third Army protected the right flank of Millikin’s Corps by remaining in contact and holding the German Seventh Army along the German border in Luxembourg. Millikin’s attack had three prongs: The Right comprised mainly of the 80th Infantry (“Blue Ridge”) Division. In the center was the 26th Infantry, or “Yankee” Division. On the left, as the western prong, was the U.S. 4th Armored (“Name Enough”) Division.

U.S. 80th Infantry started its drive from the Luxembourg City area and advanced north in two wings, fighting through some of the toughest terrain in the Bulge. They repeatedly faced German units backed by strong artillery placed in villages and on surrounding heights. Although slowed and incurring heavy losses, the 80th Division managed to advance 16 miles, blocking 79th Volksgrenadier attacks south towards the Sure River, while at the same time, containing the 352nd Volksgrenadier breakthrough.

On the division’s right the 318th Regiment advanced to Ettelbruck, bypassed it and pushed north. One member of the 318th Infantry Regiment recalled fighting near Ettelbruck in minus 20 degrees cold, while suffering frozen feet and knowing that if he fell asleep, he would freeze to death. He received a furlough to Paris, where exhausted, he fell asleep for two days. As the battle shifted west, part the 318th Regiment shifted west to assist the 4th Armored Division in its push to Bastogne.

The 317th Infantry Regiment stayed on the right wing and fought at Welscheid with severe losses, followed by a tough three-day “Battle in the Woods” at Bourscheid. Near Kehmen on December 24-26, they dug in and stopped a major German counter-attack by the 79th Volksgrenadiers.

The 319th Regiment formed the left wing of the 80th Division immediately next to the 26th Infantry. At Eschdorf it continued fighting north after ambushing the 352nd Volksgrenadiers at Merzig, but was stopped near Heidercheid where it held on in the face of counterattacks by the Fuhrer Beiglet Grenadier Brigade and 79th Volksgrenadiers. The 80th Division’s regiments kept advancing until December 27, when they regrouped in place and prepared for the planned January 3rd Allied counteroffensive. Montanan Darroll Knudson was killed fighting as part of the U.S. 80th Division and is buried at Hamm, Luxembourg.

The 26th Infantry Division, as Millikin’s center prong, advanced to the west of Martelange near the Arlon-Bastogne highway, and by taking lesser roads over difficult Sure River crossings they made it to Arsdorf and Eschdorf, only four miles from Wiltz. The route of the 26th Division was physically very tough, through steep ravines and gorges, in bad weather, with very few minor trails and roads. On December 24, they ran up against a German Seventh Army counteroffensive pushing south near Eschdorf to stop the Third Army at the Sure River. In this counteroffensive, General Brandenberger expended the reserves given to him by the German High Command-- the Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade and the 79th Volksgrenadiers Division.

The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade, which consisted of 6,000 mechanized infantry troop, an assault gun battalion and 40 tanks, had fought with the famed Grossdeutchland Division on the eastern front. They were concentrated entirely against the U.S. 26th Infantry Division, while the 7th Volksgrenadiers, also veterans of eastern front winter fighting, focused on the U.S. 80th Infantry Division to the east, starting at Heiderscheid.

There were pitched battles as well with the 352nd Volksgrenadier Division’s advance regiment pushing west near Grobous. As a result, the 26th Division took three days to cross the Sure River, followed by more bitter fighting at Kaundorf and in the Wiltz valley, before finally breaking off near Nothum and regrouping to prepare for the January 3rd Allied counteroffensive. The 26th Division and gone through as grim a fight in bitter cold as any that occurred in the Bulge.

Men died in droves on both sides.

Dean Van Landingham of Michigan, in the Division’s 328th Infantry Regiment, described this action, saying his real “hell” started in Grobous and Eschdorf, where the Germans were not taking prisoners. His unit killed any German wearing a black uniform. The Division “continued the terrific fighting in the hills and river valleys, driving all the time, no rest, with each man just focusing on the next 200 yards to the front at all time.” Van Landingham pointed out that the 26th Division suffered a 168 percent casualty rate, and by the end of the Bulge, only 17 of the 168 guys he arrived with in Europe were still around. Replacements from “repo depots” were being killed daily, “just bodies, so no one got to know them.” It was, he said, best not to think about it, it was too personal.”

A Dillon, Montana rancher’s son, Ed Swetish, was with the 390th Anti-Aircraft Automatic Weapons (AAA) Battalion attached to the 26th Infantry Division in the drive north. He provided his perspective on the battle, saying “Patton was always quick to respond to trouble so off we went from Metz to Luxembourg. The job included ground support missions, but we were needed at Bastogne to ward off Luftwaffe attacks.” According to the Army historian, this included the 390th protecting American infantry crossing the Sure River under Luftwaffe strafing attacks designed to slow them down. Using 90-mm and 37-mm guns and .50-caliber machine guns mounted on half-tracks, Swetish said AAA units were able to shoot down 200 German planes during the Ardennes campaign. On December 23, Swetish was strafed at Clairfontaine, Belgium by 35 ME-109 Messerschmitt fighters, but the 390th shot down 13. The 390th AAA ground support role involved leading the way for the infantry along the narrow, wooded roads, and blasting though ambushes.

Ed gave his greatest tribute to the combat engineers who detected mines, cleared roads, and repaired bridges in combat situations. His message was that no place was safe, even in artillery units. A veteran of Sicily and France, where he was wounded, Ed had seen a buddy killed, “shot through the neck that sent his helmet flying with his body hitting the ground so fast, and with bullets ripping the ground all around.” Like the other veterans of the Bulge, Ed had no regrets. He saw the need to fight Hitler. “It was something anyone would do. I would do it again if I had to.”

The 26th and 80th Divisions together had made it far enough north to thwart Brandenberger’s buildup east of Bastogne in support of Manteuffel. The drive north had turned into a plodding five-day series of repetitive and costly frontal assaults against skilled, determined German paratroopers and infantry, fought in icy, extremely cold conditions. The final 17 miles, from Martelange on, were the toughest. For the infantry divisions, it would turn out to be roller coaster country. Patton’s insistence on bypassing centers of resistance proved to be impossible due to the terrain and weather.

On the left prong of Millikin’s corps was the 4th Armored Division, Patton’s crack unit. It fought north on icy roads in gently rolling farmland resembling the American Midwest, with scattered trees, hills, and plains, and slight rises. The 4th Armored split onto two axes of advance, with the right thrust, Combat Command A, with Combat Command R in support, started east of Arlon and advanced on the Bastogne Highway through Martelange to Bigonville, where another regiment of the German 5th Fallschirm Division counterattacked on December 24. After a tough one-day battle, CCA continued north, to be held up again at Warnach by strong resistance from yet another regiment of the 5th Fallschirm Division. In house-to-house fighting, “the worst of its entire Bulge campaign,” CCA suffered 68 killed and missing, to the German’s 135. By December 24, all three of Patton’s prongs were meeting tough resistance and counterattacks. These continued into Christmas Day.

On the left of the 4th Armored Division, Combat Command B moved up secondary roads west of the Arlon-Bastogne highway. This wing ran into stiff opposition from the German 5th Fallschirm Division at Chaumont on December 23. There, 15 German self-propelled anti-tank guns, including five 128-mm Jagdtigers, or “Hunting Tigers,” executed an ambush, destroying 11 Shermans and stalling the attack for 36 hours.

Combat Command R, which consisted of 20 Sherman tanks of the U.S. 37th Tank Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion, and a battery of 155-mm howitzers, had the assignment of protecting CCA’s right flank from the nearby Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade. On Christmas Day, CCR was split off from CCA at Bigonville and shifted to the west on the far left side of CCB. Here, CCR made progress, defeating the Germans at Remichampagne and Remonville, and advancing side-by-side with CCB and battalions borrowed from the 318th Infantry Regiment of the 80th Division. Combat Commands R and B moved north to Bastogne with a “fire and maneuver” rhythm, “leap-frogging” each other as resistance was encountered. After days of no sleep and constant German counterattacks all along the line on December 24-25, they became engaged in a tough battle at Assenois. On December 26, elements of the 37th Tank Battalion, of the 4th Armored Division’s CCR finally broke through near Sibret. Using a massive artillery barrage for cover, they created a very narrow corridor and overwhelmed a fortified blockhouse in the Bastogne perimeter to meet up with the U.S. 326th Airborne Engineering Battalion.

Bastogne had been relieved.

Getting to Bastogne had been a costly drive by the 4th Armored. The division had suffered 1,000 casualties during the toughest winter conditions yet seen. During that hard battle on the December 26 breakthrough date for Patton’s units into Bastogne, Private First Class David Manning of Hysham, Montana was killed in action while in Company F of the 318th Infantry Regiment. Twenty-year old Manning graduated from Hysham High School as a prominent athlete and student with the Class of 1942, and left his studies at Montana State University in Bozeman to join the army in May 1943. He was in the Army’s V-12 training program when he and his fellow students were transferred to Infantry to make up severe manpower losses in Europe. In September 1944 he shipped out to England as a replacement machine-gunner and in France was immediately assigned to the 80th Infantry. By November 29, in France, he was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. His father, Montana State Senator David Manning, who designed and completed many essential engineering projects across Eastern Montana, received the notification of his son’s death on January 19, by War Department telegram as he was leaving a morning legislative session in the State Capitol at Helena.

Patton said that the relief of Bastogne was not only the greatest accomplishment of his army, but “the substantial achievement of the war….forcing the enemy now to dance to our tune, not we to his.” No other army other than his Third, he said, could have moved as far so fast and driven north against heavy resistance and cold, advancing at a night along an unknown route to grapple with a substantial enemy force at close range.

Patton was a veteran field commander with experience in North Africa, Sicily, and France. This is evident from his diary and letters at the time. He wrote December 22 that his start from Martelange was slow, but it is always difficult to get an attack rolling and the Germans, too, could not mount any serious reaction to his move north for 36 hours. He realized he made a mistake in insisting on day and night attacks, saying it was okay for one day, but after that men get tired, and the key factor is the bad weather. It was difficult, too, he said, for Armored Divisions to operate at night. But on January 6, he observed, “Our (German) prisoners have had no food for three days; we are tired but so are the Germans. We will,” he concluded, “have to push men past endurance to bring this war to an end. We have to keep attacking or the enemy will.”

While the 50,000 men of the U.S. 4th Armored, and 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions were driving north against tough opposition, Patton was bringing up and receiving additional replacements he had been gathering since December 20. He knew he would need them to expand the gains made in reaching Bastogne. In fact, it was those fresh divisions, including the 5th, 90th, and 95th Infantry Divisions, which ultimately tipped the scale during the first two weeks of January.

General Montgomery warned General Eisenhower on December 21 that he doubted Patton, despite his boasting, could deliver his three divisions to relieve Bastogne within a few days, saying “I (Montgomery) will have to deal with the German 5th and 6th Armies.” Monty wrote Eisenhower again on the 24th when Patton was stalled, noting that two German Divisions, the Panzer Lehr and 2nd Panzer, were already past Bastogne, tapping against the U.S. and British reserves near the Meuse River, and that Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army was breaking off in the north and heading towards the Meuse as well. On December 26th he told Ike it was time to take troops from Patton and the southern front, and create a new line of defense, “hold a shorter front,” near the Meuse. But Ike held out for Patton’s Third Army being the spear from the south, which would ultimately turn the Bulge. Patton’ presence at Bastogne by the 26th turned out to be vital, because Hitler soon began massing divisions there.

In the meantime, as Montgomery forecast, crucial battles were being fought to the west of Bastogne and St.Vith on the new US. line of defense between the Ourthe and Meuse Rivers.

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