I looked at the map carefully. I could see Custer's temptation. If all went perfectly, there was a chance we'd not only relieve Bastogne, but break the back of the German offensive. Without the SS Panzers, the rest of the Germans, name-only paratroopers and volksgrenadier units made up of recruits and middle-aged men for the most part, could well fall apart.
If everything went perfectly.
In war, nothing goes perfectly.
But lieutenant colonels, if they wish to stay at their present rank, aren't recommended to tell lieutenant generals that they are, in the words of the popular song of the time, "Wishing on a Star."
"Call the staff, Jimmy. I want the troops in the saddle by noon."
We were, in a driving snowstorm, wheeled vehicles skidding in the slush and ice. At least no one was afoot. The infantry was either in 6x6 trucks, halftracks or on the backs of tanks. That sounds grim, but the rear deck of an M4 Sherman, with its gridded ventilation ducts, is a lot warmer than a lot of other places.
Custer's secret was that he'd gotten every gasoline tanker that Third Army had filled to the brim, and following us in a guarded convoy. If I felt sorry for the men in the foxholes, I felt doubly so for those incredibly brave drivers in the thin-skinned tankers with no armor, thousands of gallons of explosive fuel behind them, and no protection except an occasional ring-mounted antiaircraft machine gun above the cab.
Custer's driver ditched the staff car after five miles, and we stopped an M20 armored car, and squeezed into the open troop compartment. The rest of the staff was, sensibly, already riding halftracks to our rear.
We were moving fast, almost five miles an hour when we could, and the roadblocks the Germans threw up were smashed aside.
The weather got worse, but we kept moving. It became a pattern: make contact, the infantry drop off and move forward under covering tank or tank destroyer fire, smash the strong point, remount and move on.
But each time, there were a few less infantrymen and tanks. The stink of burning men and tanks pulled at my nostrils as we'd pass some motionless figures in olive drab, blood staining the snow beside them.
We went on until dusk, made crude laagers, ate half-frozen K rations, stayed on 50 % alert, started off again before dawn.
CCA and CCR were moving steadily, but Tenth Armor was running into trouble from the Panzer Lehr division and, to our east, CCB was not only having trouble with the icy, narrow tracks, but Fifth Parachute Division had suddenly changed their style, and were fighting like German paratroops had on other fronts.
But, slowly but surely, we ground west, toward Bastogne.
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.