Battered Bastards of Bastogne Read online

  Dedicated to the memory of all the defenders of Bastogne and the airmen who provided manna from Heaven and those tankers who provided relief from the south.

  Also by the author:

  D-Day with the Screaming Eagles

  Hell’s Highway

  The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

  A Chronicle of the Defense of Bastogne

  December 19, 1944-January 17, 1945

  George E. Koskimaki

  CONTENTS

  Glossary/U.S. Army Rankings

  Foreword

  Introduction

  1. INTERLUDE

  2. THE ALERT

  3. THE TRIP TO BASTOGNE

  4. DECEMBER 19

  5. DECEMBER 20

  6. DECEMBER 21

  7. DECEMBER 22

  8. DECEMBER 23

  9. CHRISTMAS EVE

  10. CHRISTMAS DAY

  11. THE SIEGE IS BROKEN

  12. DECEMBER 27

  13. CALM BEFORE A STORM

  14. DECEMBER 31

  15. JANUARY 2, 1945

  16. JANUARY 3, 1945

  17. JANUARY 4, 1945

  18. A RESPITE

  19. ON THE OFFENSIVE

  20. MOPPING UP

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Contributors

  Notes

  Bibliography

  MAPS

  Drawn by Peter Barnette

  1. Troop Deployment

  2. Deployment of 501st

  3. Wardin

  4. 1st/506 to Noville

  5. 2nd/3rd 506th

  6. Crossroads “X”

  7. Withdrawal from Noville

  8. 2/327 at Marvie

  9. Pinching Them Out

  10. Mande St. Etienne C/401

  11. Senonchamps

  12. B/326 Engrs. at Marvie

  13. Attack Christmas Day 401-C/502

  14. Attack thru A/502HQ/502

  15. Mavarick Tank

  16. Breakthrough by 4th Armd

  17. New Year’s Eve—Robinson

  18. Attack on 2/502—Jan. 3

  19. Bois Jacques—Jan. 3

  20. Attack thru 1/327—Jan. 4

  21 Attack toward Bourcy

  22 Staplefeld Sketch of Foy

  23 Tragedy on the Railroad

  24 Noville

  PHOTOS

  Loading up in Mourmelon

  Hospital Tents at Crossroad “X”

  Commandeered Half-track

  Pathfinder Team

  Retrieving Supplies

  Crowded Aid Station

  Decorating the Tree

  Christmas Eve Mass

  Destroyed Aid Station in Bastogne

  Christmas Snowfall

  German tank with ruptured gun

  Resupply Drop—December 26

  Meeting Place—Bunker

  F/O Herb Ballinger beside glider

  “Ain’t Misbehavin”

  Unloading glider

  Patton-McAuliffe-Chappuis

  Mopping up in heavy snow

  Reviewing the troops

  GLOSSARY

  AA Anti-Aircraft

  AT Anti-Tank

  AWOL Absent without official leave

  BAR Browning automatic rifle

  CG Commanding general

  CO Commanding officer

  DZ Drop zone

  EM Enlisted man

  F/O Flight officer

  GI Government issue; enlisted man

  IP Initial Point

  LD Line of departure

  LMG Light machine gun

  LZ Landing zone

  MLR Main line of resistance

  NCO Non-commissioned officer

  OP Observation post

  Streamer Parachute which failed to open properly

  TCC Troop Carrier Command

  TCG Troop Carrier Group

  TCS Troop Carrier Squadron

  TE Table of Equipment

  TO Table of Organization

  U.S. ARMY RANKINGS

  Pvt. Private

  PFC Private First Class (one stripe)

  Cpl. Corporal (two stripes)

  T/5 Technician Fifth Grade (two stripes and a “T”)

  Sgt. Sergeant (three stripes)

  T/4 Technician Fourth Grade (three stripes and a “T”)

  S/Sgt. Staff Sergeant (three stripes and a rocker)

  T/3 Technician 3rd Grade (three stripes, a rocker and a “T”

  T/Sgt. Technical Sergeant (three

  M/Sgt. Master Sergeant (three stripes and three rockers)

  1/Sgt. First Sergeant (three stripes, three rockers and a diamond)

  WOJG Warrant Officer Junior Grade

  CWO Chief Warrant Officer

  2Lt. Second Lieutenant

  1Lt. First Lieutenant (one silver bar)

  Capt. Captain (two silver bars)

  Maj. Major (one bronze leaf)

  LTC Lieutenant Colonel (one silver leaf)

  Col. Colonel (silver eagle)

  BG Brigadier General (one star)

  MG Major General (two stars)

  LTG Lieutenant General (three stars)

  Gen. General (four stars)

  FOREWORD

  The segment of World War II history that follows has never been recorded before. This history of the defense of Bastogne is the product of contributions by 530 soldiers who were on the ground or in the air over Bastogne. They lived and made this history and much of it is told in their own words.

  Pieces of a 50 year old puzzle come together in this book, when memories related by one soldier fit with those of another who may have been in a different unit, or when pursuing the battle from a nearby piece of terrain.

  The material contributed by these men of the 101st Airborne Division, the Armor, Tank Destroyer, Army Air Force and others, is tailored meticulously and placed on the historical framework known to most students of the Battle of the Bulge. The author, George Koskimaki, has again demonstrated his ability to use recollections provided by soldiers, from private to general, to fashion a narrative that could not be made more exciting by an author of fiction.

  There is no evident and repetitious formula, from interview forms, emerging from the introduction of contributors as most works of military history that include personal offerings display. The story is the thing and each individual contribution, by a participant in the defense of Bastogne, is placed in historical perspective and becomes a logical, effective and personal part of this unique history of the men who amazed friend and foe with their tenacious defense of Bastogne.

  An additional bonus for the reader is the fact that George Koskimaki was there. He was assigned to Signal Company. He was the Radio Operator for the division commander and he knows most of those who submitted their recollections to be used in the book.

  The Battered Bastards of Bastogne follows D-Day With the Screaming Eagles and Hell’s Highway, the intimate historical accounts of the 101st Air-borne Division’s vital role in the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of the southern part of the Netherlands. It completes the trilogy of the most hard fought and bloody battles by the Screaming Eagles in World War II.

  The Battered Bastards of Bastogne will take you from the peaceful interlude in Mourmelon, where the major action was between the airborne soldiers of the 101st and the 82nd Airborne Divisions on pass to Rheim, to the mopping up operations that followed the resolute defense while enormously outnumbered by German Mechanized and Infantry Armies.

  The word that propelled the defense of Bastogne into the media and the attention of the world was NUTS. NUTS was an audacious answer to the Germans demanding surrender. This was a clear indicator of the spirit of the Screaming Eagles and the general
disdain for the ability of the German divisions to overrun the 360 degree perimeter.

  Many who read about the NUTS answer to the surrender demand did not know the price in life, blood and frozen limbs the men of the 101st paid for their stubborn and arrogant stand against the infantry, tanks, artillery and air bombardment of the Germans.

  The pages that follow are probably the only chance you will ever have to read, in their own words, how the men who held Bastogne accomplished that momentous task and their feelings about its accomplishment while they were involved in winning one of the pivotal battles of World War II.

  Sixty of those who contributed material for this book have died. They leave a legacy of courage and fortitude to all Screaming Eagles who now serve and who will serve in the 101st Airborne Division in the future.

  Ivan G. Worrell

  Executive Secretary

  101st Airborne Division Association

  INTRODUCTION

  Twenty years after the cessation of World War II, I began research on the actions of the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagle” Division. My three years in the Army of the United States were spent with the 101st. My basic training was with the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

  After learning the rudiments of soldiering, I was sent to the 101st Airborne Signal Company to begin my training as a radioman. While I became familiar with the operation of several kinds of radio sets, others were training to string telephone lines and run switchboards. Still others were assigned to the message center where they became proficient at encoding and decoding messages.

  During July, The Division was moved to Tennessee where we took part in month-long maneuvers. Upon return to Fort Bragg, we received seven day furloughs and then shipped out for Europe from Camp Shanks, New York. About a third of us earned the American Theater Ribbon after we spent a month in Newfoundland, when the H.M.S. Strathnaver developed engine trouble. Our trip lasted 43 days while the other two troop ships carrying our comrades made the crossing in about ten days.

  The men quickly adapted to life in England. We were fascinated with the thatched roofs, fish and chips, mild and bitters. We crammed our pockets with candy and gum for our visits to towns such as Newbury, Hungerford, Ramsbury, Reading, Tilehurst and Swindon. We’d have been disappointed if groups of youngsters didn’t quickly tail us and call out, “Any gum, chum?”

  When the call went out for an echelon of parachutists to be trained for Division Headquarters I volunteered, along with about two dozen members of Division Signal Company. As a result of this qualification, I was assigned as the radio operator to accompany the commanding general, Brig. General Maxwell D. Taylor, on the D-Day mission. (The General received his second star a few days into the Normandy mission.)

  The D-Day mission of the 101st Airborne Division became the focus of the first book, D-Day With The Screaming Eagles which was published in 1970. It is currently in its third printing. The book is based on the interviews of 518 former airborne soldiers of the 101st. (I wrote to 1,361 of my former comrades.) Each man was provided with a copy of his unit roster, a map of our Normandy action areas and a questionnaire. The lists of comrades shook the cobwebs from the memory cells and triggered recall of actions of that day, now twenty years in the past. Letters, pictures and scrapbooks were dug out of dusty old trunks. Their stories fit together like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle.

  Upon the urging of former airborne soldiers and their family members, members of the British airborne forces and airborne history buffs, I took it upon myself to do a second account. This one was the 72-day campaign of the 101st Division in Holland as part of the Market-Garden operation. The second account became Hell’s Highway. A total of 612 individuals provided narrations for this one. Included were stories by parachutists and glidermen of the 101st Division, a member of the British 1st Airborne Corps, pilots and crewmen of the troop carrier planes, glider pilots, members of the Dutch underground and many Dutch citizens who recalled our mission to their land in September of 1944. Hell’s Highway was completed in 1989 and is now in its second printing. It has been translated into the Dutch language.

  Again, on the coaxing of my comrades, I undertook the task of doing a third segment of the division history, part of a trilogy concerning the major campaigns of the “Screaming Eagle” Division. This, of course, is the account you are reading—The Battered Bastards of Bastogne.

  As was the case in the earlier accounts, this story is a composite of the stories of 530 individuals. I have felt strongly for years that an account of this campaign should provide recognition for those units which fought beside us within the Bastogne perimeter. Other military formations were ordered into the small city of Bastogne. Had it not been for the actions of three combat teams of Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division who arrived in Bastogne in the late afternoon of December 18, there might not have been a Bastogne to defend. The enemy was already within a few miles of the city when hasty roadblocks were set up at key points east of Bastogne. From the northwest came the men of the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Many of the enemy tanks approaching our lines were stopped by their guns.

  To the units which became surrounded with us at Bastogne, it was a new experience. For the sky-troopers it was “old hat,” a situation that was common in airborne warfare. The cocky confidence of the troopers rubbed off on the armored and tank destroyer personnel.

  After the first four days, when the troops were cut off from the outside world except for radio communication, the arrival of the airlifts with rations, ammunition, gasoline and medical supplies was “manna” from heaven. We owe much to the pilots and crew members of the various troop carrier groups and squadrons. They flew through horrendous flak to drop those valuable supplies to us. The glider pilots, frantic to get out of the streams of flak, watched in horror as the fuselages of their tow planes were eaten away by exploding 20mm and 40mm shells. Their hope was that the tow planes would stay aloft long enough for the motorless craft to reach the safety of the landing zones near Bastogne. Their big worry was that the loads of ammunition might explode as the result of a direct hit or the cans of gasoline being carried might be incinerated by a tracer bullet. We remember those great air crews. Our artillery battalions were down to their last shells when the resupply arrived.

  The work of the hard-driving men of the 4th Armored Division in breaking through the enemy positions on the afternoon of December 26 is not forgotten. They lost a thousand men in their drive to provide relief for us.

  In the two earlier accounts, our 326th Airborne Medical Company and their attached 3rd Auxiliary Surgical Team had suffered many casualties when their field hospital facilities had been bombed. At Bastogne, over three-fourths of their personnel were lost the very first night west of the city when enemy armor overran the medical set-up. These men spent the rest of the war as prisoners. The regimental and battalion surgeons, dentists and aidmen were called on to perform Herculean tasks in looking after a thousand casualties during the encirclement.

  Once the siege was lifted, the defenders were called on to go on the offensive. They became part of the effort to trap the enemy forces which had penetrated far behind Allied lines.

  Battling the elements as well as the stubborn troops holding off our attacking forces is also a major part of this account. The weather conditions in the Ardennes during January, 1945 were among the most severe in the memories of local residents who lived through those days with us during the Battle of the Bulge.

  Well over 1,300 participants in the Bastogne actions were contacted in this latest effort. I followed the same procedure of providing unit rosters, maps of action areas and questionnaires.

  Censorship restrictions were usually lifted within two to three weeks after an action was completed and men were permitted to write in some detail of their experiences. Letters of this nature were found among family artifacts and scrapbooks. While recuperating for long periods of time in military hospitals, some of these veterans wrote long, detail
ed accounts of the actions. Copies of these letters were supplied.

  One soldier, Ted Goldmann, had made a pact with his buddy, John Ballard that if only one lived to tell about their experiences, the survivor was to write or visit the buddy’s family and relate what the war had been like for their loved one. As the war came to an end in Europe, Goldmann wrote two long letters to Ballard’s parents describing their role in the war. When the soldiers returned to their homes in the United States, Ballard’s parents returned the letters. These letters play an important part in this account.

  As a highly decorated veteran of the 101st Airborne Division, Robert J. Houston, wrote a book (D-Day to Bastogne) about his experiences with 3rd Battalion of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. His widow has graciously consented to the use of selected material in the Bastogne account which helped tie together the stories of several men.

  Some men kept diaries or daily logs of actions (including the author) which helped pinpoint specific dates. Unit after-action reports were also used.

  Readers should be impressed by the fact that stories have been provided of events which occurred a half century ago and, though most of the participants haven’t seen or heard from these old comrades during the interim, the accounts fit together amazingly well.

  As was the case with research in Holland for the Hell’s Highway book, with young Peter Hendrikx doing much “gopher” leg work for me, I have a great appreciation for the efforts of a former Belgian airborne soldier, Andre Meurisse, who interviewed local inhabitants, did follow-up work on communities, made sketch maps of action areas and related his own story. As an eight-year-old fleeing Bastogne with his parents, Andre was wounded by shrapnel from a bomb dropped by an American plane. His story blends in with the accounts of the American soldiers.

  There has been much pressure on me to finish this account in a shorter period of time (than the first two narratives) with the admonition from the old veterans—“Get it done so we can read it before we die!”