The 1st platoon's being decimated! Christenson thought. He shouted again. Bull Randleman came through the woods to answer. "Have you seen Martin or Peacock?" Randleman had not. Another burst of machine-gun fire cut through the trees.
"We have got to make a move," Randleman said. He joined Chris in calling for Martin. No answer. "Let's get the hell out of here," Chris suggested. Bull agreed. They called out the orders to their men and fell back to the railroad. There they met Martin, Peacock, and the remainder of the platoon.
The patrol had not been a great success. 1st platoon had uncovered the German MLR and discovered that the German OPs were thinly manned and stretched out, but it had lost one man killed (Julian) and one wounded and failed to bring in a prisoner. It spent the night shivering in the foxholes, eating cold beans and fritters, wondering if the weather would ever clear so that the 101st could be resupplied by air.
The next couple of days were about the same. Easy sent out patrols, the Germans sent out patrols. Occasional mortar attacks. Sporadic machine-gun fire. Bitter cold. Inadequate medical supplies. No hot food. Not enough food. Constant shivering was burning off energy that was not being replaced. For the privates, not enough sleep. For the N.C.O.s, almost no sleep. This was survival time, and reactions were slow due to the near-frozen limbs. Shell bursts in the trees sent splinters, limbs, trunks, and metal showering down on the foxholes. To protect themselves, the men tried to cover their holes with logs, but not having axes made it a difficult task. One man solved the problem by putting two or three German "stiffs" over the top.
Most maddening was the inability of the American artillery to respond to German shelling or to disrupt German activity. Easy's OP men would watch with envy as German trucks and tanks moved back and forth behind the German line, bringing in the shells and food that the Americans so badly missed. Back in Bastogne, the Americans had plenty of guns, including 105 and 155 mm howitzers. They had been active the first few days of the siege, firing in a complete circle at all German attempts to break through the MLR. But by the twenty-third they were almost out of ammunition. Winters recalled being told that the single artillery piece covering the Foy-Bastogne road—his left flank— was down to three rounds. They were being saved for antitank purposes in the event of a German panzer attack down that road. In other words, no artillery support for Easy or 2nd Battalion. This at a time when the men of the company were down to six rounds per mortar, one bandolier for each rifleman, and one box of machine-gun ammo per gun.
That day, however, the snow stopped, and the sky cleared. C-47s dropped supplies, medicine, food, ammunition. American artillery got back into action, curtailing German daytime activity, boosting morale on the MLR. K rations were distributed, along with ammo. But the 30-caliber for the light machine-guns and M-1s was insufficient to the need, and the 24,406 K rations were enough for only a day or so. Not enough blankets had been dropped to insure that every man had one.
The afternoon of December 23, 2nd Lt. Edward Shames prepared to lead 3rd platoon on a patrol. "OK, Shifty, let's go," he said to Cpl. Darrell Powers, a dependable man who was the best shot in the company.
"Sir, I can't go. I cannot go," Powers replied. "What the hell do you mean? That's a court-martial offense." "Do what you want with me," Powers answered, indicating that he was not moving.
Powers had done everything asked of him up to this moment, and more. Shames thought, It would be asinine of me to say, "OK, buddy, I'm going to get you on a court-martial." Instead he said, "Corporal, rest up. I'll see you when we get back."
Shames (who stayed in the Army Reserves and made colonel) felt forty-seven years later that it was one of the best decisions he ever made. He knew Powers had broken, but thought he would recover. He knew that every man had his breaking point, that "there but for the grace of God go I. We all knew we were one firefight, one patrol, one tree burst, one 88 mm from the same end." He believed that "if I had not had a command of these people, I would have broken too, but the fact that I had something to hang onto, to know that these people depended on me, carried me through more than anything else."
In an interview in 1990, Powers described his feelings: "I never, never really got discouraged the whole time I was in service until that day. And one place, one time up there, the Germans were shooting and shelling, and Lieutenant Shames wanted a patrol, and this one particular time I really didn't care whether to get in a foxhole to get out of the way or not, or go on a patrol, or anything. You see, you have nothing to look forward to. The next day is going to be the same or worse."
Officers watched for signs of breaking. When Winters sensed that Private Liebgott was on the edge, he brought him back to battalion CP to be his runner. This gave Liebgott a chance to rest up and get away from the tension of the MLR. "Just being back 50 yards off the front line made a tremendous difference in the tension," Winters wrote.
The temptation to stay put when a patrol went out was very strong; even stronger was the temptation to report back at the aid station with trench foot or frozen feet and hands or an extreme case of diarrhea. "If all the men who had a legitimate reason to leave the MLR and go back to the aid station in Bastogne had taken advantage of their situation," Winters wrote, "there just would not have been a front line. It would have been a line of outposts."
The temptation to get out altogether via a self-inflicted wound was also strong. It did not get light until 0800. It got dark at 1600. During the sixteen hours of night, out in those frozen foxholes (which actually shrank as the night went on and the ground froze and expanded), it was impossible to keep out of the mind the thought of how easy it would be to shoot a round into a foot. A little pain—not much in a foot so cold it could not be felt anyway—and then transport back to Bastogne, a warm aid station, a hot meal, a bed, escape.
No man from Easy gave in to that temptation that every one of them felt. One man did take off his boots and socks to get frostbite and thus a ticket out of there. But for the others, they would take a legitimate way out or none. Winters recalled, "When a man was hit hard enough for evacuation, he was usually very happy, and we were happy for him—he had a ticket out to the hospital, or even a ticket home—alive.
"When a man was killed—he looked 'so peaceful.' His suffering was over."
At first light on Christmas Eve morning, Winters inspected his MLR. He walked past Corporal Gordon, "his head wrapped up in a big towel, with his helmet sitting on top. Walter sat on the edge of his foxhole behind his light machine-gun. He looked like he was frozen stiff, staring blankly straight ahead at the woods. I stopped and looked back at him, and it suddenly struck me, 'Damn! Gordon's matured! He's a man!' "
A half hour later, at 0830, Gordon brewed himself a cup of coffee. He kept coffee grounds in his hand grenade canister, "and I'd melted the snow with my little gas stove, and I'd brewed up this lovely cup of coffee." As he started to sip it, the outposts came in with word that a German force was attempting to infiltrate Easy's lines. His squad leader, Sgt. Buck Taylor, told him to "get on that machine-gun."
Gordon brushed snow from his weapon and the ammo box adjacent to the gun, telling his assistant, Pvt. Stephen Grodzki, to look sharp, pay attention to detail. A shot from a German rifleman rang out. The bullet hit Gordon in the left shoulder and exited from the right shoulder. It had brushed his spinal column; he was paralyzed from the neck down.