Since December 27 it has been possible to come up from the south into
Bastogne through the corridor originally established by elements of
the Fourth Armored Division. The corridor is still so narrow that you
can see and hear the battle on both sides of the main Arlon-Bastogne
highway, but since the 26th there is no longer any Bastogne pocket.
Now the fight takes place three quarters of the way around Bastogne,
but the evidence of the desperate eight days of fighting until the
Fourth Armored Division broke through has not entirely disappeared.
* * *
Meanwhile, to the south, elements of the Fourth Armored Division
commanded by Colonel Creighton W. Abrams and its attached unit of
infantry from the 80th Division, the 318th Regiment, were fighting
north in a series of savage encounters, trying to force some kind of
passage to Bastogne.
Farther away, at the 12th Evacuation Hospital, volunteer doctors and
medics prepared to take off by plane and drop down by glider into the
Bastogne pocket. The next day five doctors and four sergeant medics
took off.
Some of them had never been in a plane before. The doctors thought it
was going to be a parachute jump at first but were ready anyway. They
took off on Dec. 26, landed near Bastogne in the snow, and set up
their hospital. There could be no question of taking their wounded
out, not until the lifeline from the south could reach Bastogne.
The lifeline was being made down below Bastogne. It was being forged
by tanks through teller mine fields on the roads.
The Fourth Armored was going north. Stopped cold at noon of the 26th
by heavy resistance and with further movement possible only at the
heaviest cost, they decided to force through at once. They knew it
would have to be a very fast and continuous movement. The armor took
off, playing machine-gun fire on the woods and surrounding hills. In
that drive through to Bastogne, lasting more than four days, they
killed, captured, and took prisoner more than 2,000 Germans. But they
did not come through easily. The straight rush through the German ring
cost lives.
In the woods north of Assenois, Lt. Charles Boggess Jr., lifted his
head out of a turret and spoke to the first American soldiers on the
inside of the pocket. They were engineers of the 326th Airborne who
had maintained the southernmost salient of the perimeter. As Lt.
Boggess lifted his head out of the turret nobody said anything to him.
He said, “Come on out, it’s all right. It’s the Fourth
Armored.” Nobody moved or answered. It was late afternoon under the
dark green firs. Boggess yelled again, and again nobody answered.
Finally a young officer crawled out of a hole, but the two men kept
each other covered. The engineer officer said at last, “I’m Lt.
Webster.” They shook hands. Later Gen. McAuliffe rode out in a jeep
and shook hands with some of the men. And as dusk started to come down
Col. Abrams rode through--a short stocky man with sharp
features--already a legendary figure in this war.
The Fourth Armored seems to span the history of this war. In France,
you met the division as it made its first big play in the hot summer
days, going through Coutances in our big breakthrough after St. Lo.
Again you ran across the outfit in the fall as its big tanks lumbered
through the mud of Vollerdingen, near the German border, with the
tanks out of contact across the mine-covered hills where neither man
nor jeep could follow them.
And now they showed in Bastogne, lumbering through the snow with the
men of the 80th Division, against the blooming green of the pine trees
and into the town itself ...
The battle of the Bastogne pocket ended at 1545 on December 26, 1944.
DEFENSE OF BASTOGNE
PROVED EPIC BATTLE
By Jack Bell
Columbus, Ohio, Citizen, January 6, 1945
WITH THE U. S. FOURTH ARMORED DIVISION, Belgium--The road to Bastogne
is paved with bad intentions--enemy and friendly tanks which slugged
it out during the dramatic drive up from the south to relieve the
101st Airborne Division and its complement of tanks.
Other battles are in progress as generals feint and parry with armies
across the frozen wastes. But the soldiers have their pets, and every
man of the Fourth Armored Division has the battle of Bastogne heading
the “Hit Parade.”
Bastogne caught the public fancy. We shot 20,000 troops in to save it.
Every soldier overseas knew of the encirclement which shut them off,
the days of fog which shut off air power for four days. The entire
Allied Expeditionary Force had one question: “What about
Bastogne.”
I was with the powerful and confident “Fourth Armored” the day its
tanks and armored infantry rolled off the line of departure toward
Bastogne. Snow fell gently. Mud was deep, but day after day they
forded and bridged streams, mopping up the steadily stiffening German
opposition. Each night they paused, then fought on.
“For if we get only 2,000 yards we’re that much nearer the men in
Bastogne,” was the expression of Lt. Col. Delk Oden, Elgin, Tex.,
tank battalion commander.
At last they met in pitched battle. South of Bastogne in the villages
of Chaumont and Assenois, dozens of tanks along the streets and in the
field are mute evidence of the mighty struggle that preceded the entry
into Bastogne, leaving both armies weaker when it was over.
Then one evening at 4 o’clock, Lt. Charles Boggess, Jr., Greenville,
Ill., up in the hatch of a tank, said: “You all know we’ve got to
get to those men in the town. All you’ve got to do is keep em
rollin’ and follow me. It won’t be any picnic but we’ll make
it.”
He buttoned down the hatch, roared away and the others followed. They
rumbled through wrecks of tanks in Assenois, through a terrific
barrage from American guns, a daring maneuver that paid fat dividends
for the artillery kept the Germans in holes and 400 prisoners were
taken by the infantry which followed.
Up the road Lt. Boggess and the tanks rolled. The smoke in Assenois
caused a slight break in the column after four had rounded a turn. The
others stopped to check the route. The pause gave the Jerries time to
toss Teller mines onto the road. A halftrack hit one. Captain Bill
Dwight, Grand Forks, Michigan, leaped from a tank and threw the mines
off the road and the rescue party rolled on.
They went full speed, with every machine gun spraying the roadside and
the woods every foot of the way, turning the quiet dusk into mad
warfare. Germans were running everywhere, usually away from the
blazing guns.
Lt. Boggess met outposts of besieged Americans outside of the city,
but the men were not quite convinced that his tanks were friendly. It
had been a long time since they had seen friendly troops. Nor was the
lieutenant sure that he had met friends, or Germans in American
uniforms, which they have been wearing wholesale since taking American
prisoners.
But both soon were convinced, and the siege ended.
That is, it ended after a fashion. The infantry followed the tanks,
mopping up both sides of the road. Trucks of food and shells and
ambulances dashed into town.
The world was joyous, excepting Germany and Japan that the Fourth had
fought through and everybody said, “Bastogne is saved; thank God.”
At which time the “Fourth Armored” men dug in for what they knew
would be a grim battle to keep the breach open. But, they’re old
hands at this business of war and went to work. Hardly had they had
time to set up their defenses before giant Tiger tanks rolled down
from north of Bastogne. Our pilots came through the clouds to bomb the
Tigers. We 30 lost tank destroyers, but wrecked the Tigers. A flock of
light tanks shot 30,000 rounds into the woods in five minutes, and the
Jerries lay dead by the hundreds. Infantrymen crawled through the snow
to hit the tanks, and--
Yes, the Germans swarmed into them so furiously at times that they had
to withdraw. But they never ran. Day and night they fought on,
unheeded because the world which had been so concerned and had heard
that Bastogne had been saved--and forgot it.
They’re having birthday celebrations just now, with fingers on
triggers--just one year overseas and six months in combat. They were
in the Normandy breakthrough and cut off the Brittany peninsula. One
combat team liberated Nantes, and Orleans. They drove to the Seine and
took the bridgehead at Troyes. They crossed the Marne three times,
forced the withdrawal of the Germans from Nancy on the Moselle, and
went on across the Saar. And when the Bastogne situation grew
desperate, the Fourth Armored was rushed up to spearhead the corps
drive to save it.
It is one of our Army’s good, tough outfits, the type that has made
General George S. Patton, Jr., famous. Its skipper (then) Major
General Hugh Gaffey, was Patton’s chief of staff until he came here.
What a swath they have cut in Jerry’s army: thousands of prisoners,
thousands killed and wounded, 450 tanks, 250 artillery pieces and
1,600 other vehicles since their landing in France.
And as this is written they await further attacks by the increasing
German power, in the war’s biggest winter battle.
[Illustration: The Saturday Evening Post: Rat Chase to the Rhine]
_“There has never been anything like it,” reports a Post war
correspondent, and that about labels the story of the immortal 4th
Armored Division’s stampede to glory._