To our north, the Sixth SS Panzer Army's offensive was bogging down against tough stands by Custer's old commands, the Second Armored and the Fourth Infantry. Its general, Sepp Dietrich, was plaintively asking Hitler for permission to turn south, and find another way toward the Meuse and Antwerp.
And the Panzers were running low on fuel…
I've made my dislike for Custer clear, but I'll never forget, on Christmas Eve, his giving me a tiny bottle of schnapps someone had liberated in one of the villages we passed through. I tucked it in my parka, determined to drink it when we relieved Bastogne.
On the day after Christmas, we broke through, and the 101stand the other, less famous but equally hard-fighting units, were safe.
Custer ordered us to stay the night and refuel and rearm. He hoped that CCB and the Tenth would join us the next day, but they were still being held back by stiff German resistance, the roads and the weather.
Colonel Harkins asked if we shouldn't hold in Bastogne until the other two columns reached us.
Custer thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"We stooge around here, and sure as hell Ike'll hear about my plan and pull the plug.
"No, Paul. We move out at dawn."
"The roads look pretty terrible, General."
"I've got confidence in my boys," Custer said. "They've done okay so far on the cowpaths. The Tenth and CCB should link up with us…" and he checked his map "… at this place called Houffalize, if not sooner."
Custer had gotten away with splitting his forces in Sicily and, so far, here. But luck only holds for so long.
And so we were on the road at dawn, Colonel Creighton Abrams' 37thTank Battalion on point. I drank my little bottle of schnapps before we moved. I wonder if I sensed something, and figured I'd better drink it then, rather than not be able to drink it at all.
That day, heading toward Foy and on north, was a horror as we moved past burned-out US vehicles abandoned in the retreat toward Bastogne when the battle began, and saw the unburied bodies of our soldiers scattered everywhere, and the destruction of the farms and villages on either side.
I'll never forget seeing a jeep, parked beside the road. Its driver was turned to his passenger, a colonel, who held a map in his lap, possibly asking for instructions. But both of them were headless, the Panzerfaust that had blown the jeep's engine out neatly guillotining the two.
German resistance was light, but determined, and we drove them back from the roads into the snowy wasteland.
"Another two days, maybe three," Custer promised, "and we'll be hanging some SS scalps on the lodge pole."
For the first time since Sepp Dietrich had joined the Nazi Party and the SS, in 1928, he disobeyed an order of Hitler's. He ordered his Sixth Panzer Army to turn south, toward Bastogne.
Custer's feared presence on the battlefield, and his reaching Bastogne and continuing his attack had been reported by German scouts. Dietrich decided he couldn't chance having the mad cavalryman in his rear. No one knows if he heard of the pot-sweetening convoy of tankers trundling along behind CCA.
His decision, and disobedience, was reported to Hitler in Berlin. The Fuhrer went into one of his typical screaming rages, then quieted, and examined the map.
"No," he is reported to have said. "Perhaps my Sepp is right in this. Perhaps, when he smashes the American Third Army, takes whatever fuel they might have, and then renews the attack… perhaps this might be the real surprise that turns the tide."
Of course, he didn't communicate his semi-approval to Dietrich. Hitler never admitted he might be wrong.
The SS was on the move-four armored divisions, about 30,000 men, First SS Panzer "Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler," Second SS Panzer "Das Reich," Ninth SS Panzer "Hohenstauffen," and Twelfth SS Panzer "Hitler Jugend," plus one division of paratroopers, Third Parachute Division.
They were heading south, toward us… and we didn't know it.
The first sign of trouble was in a nameless little village. We took fire from well-positioned heavy machine guns and some light cannon. The infantry came off the tanks, and started forward, using the shattered building walls for cover.
Then three Panthers ground into sight. They'd been hiding, hull down, in a covert just below the village, a scattering of panzergrenadiers covering them. Two Shermans exploded as they opened fire, then an M10 blasted one and a second with its 90mm. The third German tank had time to reverse back for cover, and somebody hit its turret in the rear with a bazooka round. The round exploded, doing little damage, and the Panther was gone. The German soldiers were quickly gunned down by our machine gunners, and scouts darted forward to check the bodies.
In a minute, Custer's radio cracked.
"Curly Six, this is Arrowhead Six."
Curly Six was Custer's call sign, Arrowhead Six Abrams.
"This is Curly Six," Custer said.
"Those troops who just hit us were SS," Abrams said. "They've got the sleeve tabs of the Twelfth Division."
The troops of Hitler Jugend Division were known for their ruthlessness, as well as suicidal fanaticism in combat. And, as far as we knew, they were supposed to be miles away, to the northeast.
Custer looked worried, told Abrams to push on, then ordered his commo officer to make contact with Tenth Armored and CCB. "Tell them hubba-hubba one time," Custer said. "The game's afoot."
We went on, the road winding past small farms and fields. To show how memory is tricky, I remember it being deathly quiet, with the only sound the low rumble of engines and the ominous grinding of treads on the frozen ground, but of course this is absurd. There would have been shouts, the occasional blast of gunfire as a machine gunner reconned some building he wasn't sure was empty by fire, the crackle of radios and other sounds of an army on the move.
We approached another village, little more than a dirt crossroads with a scattering of walled farmhouses around it, trees not yet torn apart by shellfire around the farmhouses.
The land opened on the other side, climbing through virgin snow to trees and a second group of buildings that appeared abandoned.
Then German 88 shells exploded around us, too fast for us to hear their approach, greasy black against the snow.
"Son of a bitch," Custer said. "They're up there, in those buildings."
Foot soldiers were coming off the tanks, finding any cover available. More 88s came in, airbursts in the trees, and I saw men pirouette, go down, be scattered like bowling pins. Inexperienced soldiers went flat, experienced ones stood close to the trees, giving a narrow target to the overhead bursts.
Abrams didn't need any orders. He put the 37thon line, and the M4s went up the hill, men stumbling through the deep snow behind the tanks.
There was another explosion… a 75mm, I think… against the brick wall our armored car sat beside. The driver stood up, turned back to us without a face, fell dead, and the engine died.
"Unass this pig," Custer shouted, and the surviving crew obeyed.
A staff halftrack rumbled toward us, Paul Harkins standing next to the driver. An 88 drilled through its engine compartment, and Harkins vanished in the blast. Flames rose out of nowhere, and a Panther rumbled from behind a barn, smashed over the halftrack toward us.
A self-propelled gun had a clear field of fire, and put a 105mm shell into the Panther's belly, and it exploded.
"They're in a damn' minefield," Custer shouted, and I looked upslope, and saw explosions, men falling, a Sherman's track rolling, like a huge rubber band, back downhill as the tank flamed up.
There were men pushing, shoving, some trying to get forward to fight, others to get the hell out of the way. A man screamed, the scream abruptly cut off, as a tank backed over his legs.
Custer ran for an M4, pulled himself up on the deck, grabbed the track commander's mike, got through to the command net.