The weather was terrible, and our invincible fighter bombers couldn't get into the air.
The Panzers pushed on, past St. Vith, taking back most of Luxembourg.
Eisenhower threw in his reserve divisions, including the 101stAirborne, which took and held the road hub of Bastogne.
In the meantime, Sixth SS Panzer moved steadily on to the west, killing civilians and US prisoners as it went.
Eisenhower, after a few befuddled days, put Montgomery in charge of all troops to the north of the «Bulge» the Germans had created.
Eisenhower called a conference at Verdun on 19 December, giving Custer new orders: Take charge of Seventh Corps, and relieve Bastogne.
Custer smiled grimly, and said he'd do it.
Ike appeared unshaken by the German surprise. "I think this is an opportunity for us, actually."
"Exactly, sir," Custer said eagerly. "Let's let them run us all the way back to the Atlantic, then slam the door on the bastards and destroy them in detail. Assuming we've got the nerve."
Eisenhower smiled, a bit frostily. "I have the nerve, and I know you do, as well. But I doubt if anyone in Paris, London or Washington would appreciate it if we did that."
"The other option we could do," Custer went on, unfazed, "is have me keep pushing past Bastogne, right on up until I run into the limeys. Cut off this damned Bulge, and all the Krautheads in it, like it was a boil."
"General," Eisenhower said, "remember your Shakespeare, and the lion hunter who kept thinking about what he'd do with the lion's skin, when the animal was still alive. You just relieve McAuliffe at Bastogne, and then we'll worry about the next step. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Custer said, but I noted his voice was grudging.
Custer, his assistant Chief of Staff, Colonel Paul Harkins, and I, in the battered old staff car he preferred to a jeep, went back to our headquarters and, the next day, visited seven of his divisions, and told them we were changing the axis of their attack through 90 degrees, moving north against the Germans instead of west.
Custer may have been a braggart, but there have been very few generals who could turn 350,000 men in a single day without panic and utter confusion, which he'd done.
"I wonder what Patton would think of that," he said, as we pulled into his headquarters at Nancy. I was bone-exhausted, but he seemed untouched by the day's freezing weather and the bouncing miles over icy, rutted dirt roads.
"Now," he said gleefully as he bounded up the steps toward his quarters, "now we'll see what we shall see about that famous next step."
I managed a salute, told the driver we were through for the night, reported our return to one of his staff officers, and fell into my sleeping bag across a camp cot, knowing I'd have to be awake and alert before dawn the next morning.
One of my unspoken duties was to keep Custer and the press separated, especially when Custer was either bouncy or angry, for that was when he wasn't as careful with his words as he should be.
The next morning, I was getting Custer a cup of coffee and a croissant from a basket an old Frenchwoman had brought to us. It was black outside, with flurries of snow tapping on the windows. I thought of the poor bastards who were out there on the line, crouched in icy foxholes, looking for movement, waiting for a bush to turn into an SS man in a white camouflage cape, aiming a burp gun at them.
I was starting out of the general's mess with my tray when Colonel Harkins hurried in. He was angry and upset.
"Good morning, sir."
"I'm not sure if it is or not. I just got a call from Beetle Smith, and he's pissed."
I waited. Major General Walter Bedell Smith was Eisenhower's Chief of Staff.
"Last night our noble boss, after we thought he was headed for bed, ran into Ed Kennedy of Associated Press."
"Uh-oh," I said.
"Uh-oh is right. He told Kennedy what he said to us last night, about turning almost half a million men around. And then he kept talking. He hopes that Ike can hold the course, and not let his mind get changed by the next general he talks to… good thing Omar the tentmaker Bradley didn't get this assignment, or it'd be spring before he started moving… Montgomery's in the right spot, being the anvil and sitting on his ass, rather than having to figure out how to maneuver.
"Naturally, Kennedy called SHAEF to get comments on what General Custer said, and naturally the shit has hit the fan.
"Beetle said that Ike's about as angry as he'd ever seen him, and told me that Custer had better pull this one off in roses, or his ass is liable to be running a replacement depot in Scotland somewhere."
"Oh brother," I managed.
"Now, the question I've got," Harkins went on, "is, do we tell Custer?"
I thought about it.
"I don't think so, sir," I said. "I know Kennedy pretty well. He's a good man and won't hold back his story, and there's no way we can change what he said."
"That's what I thought," Harkins said. "And we've got a battle to fight, and our George needs to have a clear head and not worry about other things. Go take the General his coffee."
Custer was awake, and in his comfortable, if rather civilian, fur-lined pants and knee-top boots. There were maps pinned on the walls, with arrows and markings. I glanced at one, which had Bastogne in its center, and saw, with a sinking feeling, that the arrows went on beyond the besieged city.
Custer saw my expression.
"Now's our chance, Jimmy. I'm tired of taking pissant chances, when there's a war to be won here! Hitler's got his ass out there in the wind, wiggling at us, and we're going to run a division or two right up it, and see what he thinks of a little blitzkrieg himself!"
"Yes, sir," I said neutrally, thinking that, with what he'd told the reporter, this could either be the icing on the cake, or else Custer's salvation. Oh well, I thought. I'd always been curious to see the lochs and if I'd look good in a kilt.
"Look," Custer said, and took me to another map, very large-scale, that was a little less scrawled than the others. I decided this showed his final battle plan.
"Bastogne here," he said, pointing. I nodded. "And look at all these little roads to the west. I'll bet a good man, like Bill Roberts, could push CCB through them. All that he'd be facing are those punks of Fifth Parachute Division, who haven't fought worth sour owl crud so far."
"Little roads are right, sir."
"If the goddamned Heinies could do it to start this mess, so can we."
We'd fallen into the practice of setting up Combat Commands within a division, composed of armored infantry, tanks, tank destroyers, engineers, and so forth, each able to fight independently.
"Yessir," I said skeptically.
"We put Tenth Armored over here, to the west of Bastogne, heading up the road from Neufchateau.
"Then you and I ride with CCR and CCA straight on up the Martelans road to Bastogne. We relieve the Battlin' Bastards of Bastogne, link up with CCA and the Tenth north of the city, keep going north and give the Sixth SS a big fat bite in the ass.
"They should be running low on gas, and if we hit 'em hard, immobilize 'em, then we can tell Ike to get Monty off his butt and come on down to finish them off.
"Or maybe," Custer said, and he licked his lips, "we'll be able to hit them hard enough so there won't be anything for Monty to police up.
"I'd like that. I'd like that a lot.
"Plus I've got a little plan to keep anybody from screwing the deal up for us, like the Brits did last time around by hanging on to all the gas."