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Nights ranged from zero Fahrenheit to minus ten and lower. Men without shelter other than a foxhole-or heat stayed awake, stomping their feet through the fourteen-hour night. Major Harrison had as one of his most vivid memories the sight of GIs pressed against the hot stones of the walls of burning houses, as flames came out of the roof and windows. They were not hiding from Germans: they were trying to get warm for a minute or two.

The conditions in Northwest Europe in January 1945 were as brutal as any in history, including Napoleon's and the German retreats from Moscow in midwinter 1812 and 1941. But in this battle the Germans were not retreating. They fought back against the American advance, which could barely move forward anyway in the ice and snow, forcing the Americans to pay the highest price for taking back the territory lost in the Bulge. Eisenhower had under his command seventy-three divisions. Of the total, forty-nine were American, twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish and eight French. He had forty-nine infantry, twenty armoured and four airborne divisions. As against this, the Germans had seventy six divisions.

Given the near equality in firepower and the brutality of conditions, a winter offensive had little appeal. Nevertheless, Eisenhower decided to launch attacks north and south of the Bulge to trap the Germans at its western tip and regain the lost ground. He felt he had no option. The Allies could not shut down offensive operations while V-ls and V-2s continued to bombard Antwerp, London, and other cities.

The initial January offensive by the Allies was directed against the German salient. It was agreed that First and Third armies would meet at Houffalize, a village five miles north of Bastogne. When the linkup took place, the Bulge would be cut in half. Eisenhower insisted that there would be a broad-front advance into Germany once the Bulge was eliminated. He emphasized, "We must regain the initiative, and speed and energy are essential."

For the frontline infantry, armour, and artillery of First and Third armies, the battle that raged through January was among the worst of the war-if possible, even more miserable than Hiirtgen. It was fought in conditions so terrible that they can only be marvelled at, not really imagined. Only those who were there can know.

The combat soldiers of ETO at this time numbered about 300,000. In the junior officer ranks the turnover had been almost three quarters. Still there was a core of veterans in most divisions, including junior officers who had won battlefield promotions-the highest honour a soldier can receive-and sergeants, most of whom had been the privates of Normandy, St. Lo, Falaise, Holland, and the Bulge; survivors who had moved up when NCOs were killed or wounded. These newly made lieutenants and sergeants, some of them teenage boys, provided the leadership that got the US Army through that terrible January.

There were some unusual junior officers on the front. One was Lieutenant Ed Gesner of the 4th Infantry Division. He was a 40-year-old who had been transferred out of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) because he was too old to jump behind enemy lines. He knew survival tricks that he taught his platoon, such as how to create a foxhole in a hurry in frozen ground: he shot eight rounds into the same spot, quickly dug out the loose dirt with his trench knife, placed a half stick of TNT in the hole, lit the fuse, ran back 30 metres, hit the dirt, got up and ran back before the dust settled, and dug with his trench shovel. Within minutes a habitable foxhole.

The junior officers coming over from the States were another matter. Pink cheeked youth, they were bewildered by everything around them. Major Winters, himself a private back in 1942, commented that during the Bulge, "I looked at the junior officers and my company commanders and I ground my teeth. Basically we had weak lieutenants. I didn't have faith in them." Winters did what he could to get his most experienced NCOs with the weakest officers and scattered the veterans among the new lieutenants.

In the hundreds of companies stretched along the front, when the order to attack got down to the line, the men were outraged. Major Winters said, "It pissed me off. I could not believe that after what we had gone through and done, after all the casualties we had suffered, they were putting us into an attack."

It wasn't just that they figured it was some other guy's turn; it was that they were exhausted, completely drained, men. Practically every one had a bad cold to add to the misery (pneumonia sent many back to hospitals), and they were jumping off into conditions that would have taxed them at their peak physical condition.

In the woods in the Ardennes the snow was a foot and more deep, frozen on top, slippery, noisy. To advance, a man had to flounder through the snow, bending and squirming to avoid knocking the snow off the branches and revealing his position. Visibility was limited to a few metres. An attacker could not see a machine-gun position or a foxhole until he was almost on top of it. There were no landmarks. Squads had to move on compass bearings until they bumped into somebody-friend or enemy. But attacking through the cleared grazing fields was equally daunting. There was no concealment, and many GIs had no camouflage.

On January 9 an officer from the Criminal Investigation Corps asked Colonel Ken Reimers of the 90th Division if he had a Lieutenant Barry in his outfit. Reimers did. The CIC officer wanted to arrest Barry; it seemed he had stolen some sheets from a civilian house in the 90th's area. The CIC claimed a lot of looting had been going on, and he was going to put a stop to it. But Reimers discovered that Barry had hit on the idea of sheets for camouflage in the snow, and had cut holes in the centre of them and distributed one to every man in his platoon. When Reimers explained this to the division commander. General Earnest Bixby, Bixby said, "Promote him." Reimers explained that Barry was already a first lieutenant. "Well, give him a Bronze Star then, for his initiative."

Under the sheet, if he was lucky enough to have one, the average infantryman had the pockets of his combat jacket crammed with rations, shaving articles, pictures, cigarettes, candy, dry socks, writing paper and pens, and mess kit. He had his raincoat folded over the back of his belt or wore it to help keep warm. He carried two to four army-issue thin wool blankets. Whenever the GIs had to make a forced march of more than a few miles, the roadside would be strewn with blankets, overcoats, overshoes, and gas masks. A truck would follow along behind, collect the equipment, bring it forward, and reissue it-hopefully, before dark.

PRIVATE KURT Gabel of the 17th Airborne Division was in the attack on January 3 near Mande St.-Etienne, some ten kilometres north of Bastogne. His platoon moved through a wood, then spread out to cross an open snow-covered field. "Suddenly the air directly above us was alive with sounds I had not heard before," Gabel wrote. It was the screeching sound of the "screaming meemies," the German nebelwerfer, or multiple rocket. "The first salvo crashed into our formation as the next rounds already howled above us. The platoon leader yelled, 'Hit it!' I hit the snow, face first, and felt multiple concussions as the rockets pounded down. They howled and burst, and I clawed the ground and whimpered."

Between explosions Gabel heard a yell, "Move!" It struck him as incongruous. He turned his head as best he could while pressing his body into the ground and saw "a captain running towards the rifle squad. 'Get up!' he yelled, his face contorted with rage. 'Get up, you stupid bastards. You'll die here. There's no cover. Move! Move!' He grabbed one soldier by the shoulder and kicked another. I had never seen that kind of rage. 'Get 'em up, goddamn it!'"