First Army in the Battle of the Bulge

UNITED STATES

12.15.2020

Courtesy Story

First Army

December 1944 was one of the coldest winters Europe had seen in nearly 20 years, one of many factors slowing the Allied armies in their drive across the continent. This temporary pause gave the German army time to complete their planning and preparation for a massive counter attack code named “Wacht am Rhein” or Watch on the Rhine, an operation that that was Hitler’s brainchild. His stated goal was to pierce the thinly held First Army, VIII Corps line between Monschau and Wasserbillig with Army Group B, commanded by Field Marshall Model. Hitler had ambitious goals for the offensive. He expected Army Group B to be through the Ardennes Forrest by the end of the first day. By the end of the second day, Army Group B would reach the Meuse between Liège and Dinant by the end of the third day and to seize Antwerp as well as the western bank of the Scheldt estuary by the fourth day.

Many of the senior German Army staff advised against the attack. They believed the writing was on the wall for the German army, and the massive assault was doomed to fail. Failure would hasten the war’s end by lowering German resistance in the face of the Allied advance on Berlin. Indeed, the situation was dire for the Germans: the Western Allies already had a full 96 divisions at or near the front, with an estimated ten more divisions en route from the United Kingdom. Additional Allied airborne units remained in England for future operations or contingencies. The Germans could only field a total of 55 understrength divisions; they had lost their opportunity to push the Allies off the continent long ago. Hitler disagreed, feeling that his mobile reserves allowed him enough freedom to mount one major offensive. He realized nothing significant could be accomplished in the Eastern Front, but still believed an offensive against the Western Allies, whom he considered militarily inferior to the Red Army, would have some chance of success. Hitler believed it would be possible to split the Allied forces and compel the Americans and British to settle for a separate peace, independent of the Soviet Union. The plan banked on unfavorable weather, including heavy fog and low-lying clouds, which would minimize the Allied air advantage. The attack was originally set for late November, beginning before the anticipated start of the Russian winter offensive, but weather conditions did not cooperate. Additionally, the disputes between British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery and American General Omar Bradley were well known, and Hitler hoped he could exploit their disunity. If the attack were to succeed in capturing Antwerp, four complete Allied armies would be trapped without supplies behind German lines. Despite their overall advantages, weeks of continuous combat were starting to wear on the Allies and First Army’s Soldiers by the beginning of December 1944. Most of the supplies First Army was receiving were still coming ashore at Normandy as the other major ports had not been repaired enough yet for major supply operations. The Allies' efforts to destroy the French railway system prior to D-Day were successful. This destruction hampered the German response to the invasion, but it proved equally problematic for the Allies as they labored to repair the rail network's tracks and bridges. A trucking system nicknamed the Red Ball Express brought supplies to front-line troops, but used up five times as much fuel to reach the front line near the Belgian border as it actually delivered. This deeply compromised supply system also brought the supply of replacement Soldiers to First Army, and as early as November, First Army found itself struggling to keep its units in fighting condition. With these issues affecting First Army as well as the rest of the Allied armies, they had no choice to suspend major offensives until after the New Year to allow for time to improve their lines of logistics. It was at this point in early December that the Third Army G2, COL Oscar Koch, became increasingly concerned. Despite the advances of three Allied army groups along the Siegfried Line, there was a large force of German strategic and tactical troops being held in reserve in the north. These troops included armor and mechanized infantry units, paratroopers, and the brutal Schutzstaffel, or SS, troops. Why were they not being called on to at least slow down the Allied advance? What was the purpose of holding them in reserve? The evidence pointed to a massive German build-up in preparation for a large scale attack.

Koch had been studying the German buildup in the north for months. He had compiled information on large ammunition and gasoline dumps, mines, and unassembled artillery pieces. All of these were added to his map in the G2 section. From his air reconnaissance section, Koch knew of enemy tanks being loaded onto trains in Frankfurt and heading west. Of fifteen known tank divisions in the western part of Germany, only five were in contact with Allied forces. The status of the others were unknown. The G2 stepped up night photo reconnaissance missions, specifically requesting railroad marshalling yards and important highway intersections deep behind enemy lines as targets of interest. The air reconnaissance teams reported unprecedented rail activity on several separate days in November. An enemy prisoner of war provided more disturbing evidence when he told of a secret order sending captured Allied uniforms and all qualified English-speaking personnel to Osnabruck for training in reconnaissance, sabotage, and espionage. Koch knew that the purpose of intelligence was to assist the commander in accomplishing his mission and to protect the command from surprise. He also knew that General Patton was planning to have the Third Army move east in a few days. An attack by German forces to the west, just north of the Moselle, would be out of his commander's zone of advance, but it would pose a serious threat to the Third Army's flank. General Patton had all of these details of enemy capability estimates that the G2 shop had been collecting and documenting in official reports for weeks. But at a December 9, 1944, special briefing Koch presented a composite analysis of what all this might mean. He laid out the possibility of an enemy counteroffensive, emphasizing known enemy combat strength. Koch told Patton that in such a scenario, the enemy was favored. He provided terrain analysis and a review of friendly strength: the United States had three infantry and two armored divisions available for immediate employment in the general area. But this still left the enemy with a two-to-one advantage, not to mention the psychological advantage of a successful diversionary attack, if Koch was right. Koch's briefing was met with a brief silence, then discussion. Patton stood and told the group, "We'll be in a position to meet whatever happens." Plans for the Allied offensive on Frankfurt would continue, but limited outline planning would begin at once to meet the threat to the north. Patton wanted to be ready, but didn't want to be distracted from his objective. In later years the Battle of the Bulge would often be recounted as an intelligence failure primarily due to Generals Dwight Eisenhower’s and Omar Bradley’s recollections of being surprised by the strength of the German force and the fact that Hitler would use his reserves in an offensive maneuver. In actuality, intelligence had provided enough doubt in commanders’ minds to hold back and create plans for a counter-attack posture. On December 15, 1944, LTG Hodges, the First Army Commanding General, noted in his diary that the First Army advances were limited due to the weather as fact that German “minefields everywhere made the going slow.” He noted that there had been a surprising lack of POWs recently and that VIII Corps was reporting an unusually high amount of artillery fire to their front but no movement. At his headquarters in Spa, many of Hodges’ staff section chiefs
were taking advantage of the relative lull for a leave from the headquarters. The First Army G-3, G-4, and artillery, ordnance, and antiaircraft officers had all returned to England, while the G-2 took a few days of furlough in Paris. For a headquarters whose forces were still in the process of an active offensive despite a tactical pause, the number of staff chiefs absent at one time is striking. LTG Hodges tone would dramatically change in his entry on the 16th of December however he seemed to have an optimistic tone that the Germans had screwed up. “The Boche began a counteroffensive, on which, according to a captured order, was signed by Von Runsteadt, the enemy is gambling its life.” The VIII Corps front was 75 miles in length, representing almost two-thirds of the First Army front line. Even more, that distance was about three times the length a normal corps front should be. First Army headquarters had concentrated most of its units in the V and VII Corps sectors and most of its service installations forward in the triangle between Spa, Verviers to the north, and Liege to the northwest. Thus they lay directly behind the V Corps front. The quiet VIII Corps sector served as a place to acclimate green divisions as well as to rest and refit worn-out veteran divisions in the absence of enough reserves to rotate units out of the line. In the rear areas behind and on the fringes of this thinly held front, the First Army staff had placed only a few major installations. A truck head was stationed near Butgenbach, fifteen miles east of the First Army command post. Just north of Butgenbach, near Elsenborn, was an engineer dump. One ammunition supply point was located near Waimes, twelve miles southeast of Spa, and another lay north of the VIII Corps headquarters at Bastogne, which was thirty-five miles south of the resort. Two dumps with a total of three million gallons of gasoline were stationed eight miles southeast of Spa, near Malmedy. The German intelligence was working overtime to identify these sites, as the capture of American fuel dumps was crucial to their advance.

Thus the First Army headquarters was surprised when German infantry emerged out of the mist early on the morning of December 16th. The first hint of anything unusual came at 0615, when the 491st Antiaircraft Brigade reported several explosions in its area. As the morning progressed, reports of attacks, especially on the VIII Corps' front, began to reach Spa. Initially, the exact scope of the offensive remained obscure. A disruption of communications, especially between the VIII Corps at Bastogne and its forward units, kept MG Middleton (VIII Commander) from providing a clear picture to LTG Hodges. There was indecision within the First Army staff, with debates raging all day and into the evening between the G-2 and G-3 sections over the scope of the offensive. By the next day, December 17th, the scale of the German offensive became clearer, and the supply and administration chiefs acted. The G-1 section made arrangements to cancel all leave, passes, and furloughs, cut short most of its entertainment programs, and recalled the Red Cross club mobiles. At the same time, the G- 4 section called on the 12th Army Group and ADSEC for service troops, truck companies, ammunition, and major ordnance items. Simultaneously, the supply chiefs put their evacuation plans in to operation. From the G2 section, which had the captured German special operations plan by the end of the first day, First Army knew that the Germans were relying on captured gasoline to maintain their offensive. They acted accordingly. After directing the evacuation of the truck head at Butgellbach, LTG Hodges ordered 600 trucks to the huge fuel dumps near Stavelot and Malmedy. Over three days, the First Army staff successfully evacuated all but 124,000 gallons, which were ignited near Stavelot as a roadblock against German tanks.

By December 18th, First Army headquarters was considering evacuation of its command post at Spa. At about 1500 that day, after the command group finished meeting with the commander of the 30th Infantry Division, word reached Spa that enemy tanks were only six miles down the road. Most of the staff turned out to man the roadblocks. The report turned out to be false, but the command group decided that the time for evacuation had come. LTG Hodges described the situation the same day. “The situation is rapidly deteriorating and the position of the enemy is uncertain.” He goes on to further describe how the 82nd and 101st Airborne as well as the 30th Infantry Division were being moved into the attack to attempt to slow the German advance and to determine the extent.

A major German assault came on the 18th from the German Kampfgruppe Peiper which attacked Stavelot but was unable to capture the town before First Army evacuated the large fuel depot there. Three German tanks attempted to take the bridge, but the lead vehicle was disabled by a mine. Following this, 60 grenadiers advanced forward but were stopped by concentrated American defensive fire. After a fierce tank battle the next day, the Germans finally entered the town when U.S. engineers failed to blow the bridge. Capitalizing on his success and not wanting to lose more time, Peiper rushed an advance group toward the vital bridge at Trois-Ponts, leaving the bulk of his strength in Stavelot. When the Germans reached it at 11:30 on December 18th, retreating U.S. engineers blew it up. Peiper detoured north towards the villages of La Gleize and Cheneux. At Cheneux, the advance guard was attacked by American fighter-bombers, destroying two tanks and five halftracks, blocking the narrow road. It was at this same time that LTG Hodges received more bad news: two surrounded regiments from the 106th Infantry Division had surrendered to the Germans in the largest surrender of American troops since Bataan in 1942. The following message was received from VIII US Corps: "26th Division [Headquarters] had enemy small arms fire very close by and we now lost contact with them-The situation in the vicinity of Bastogne looks critical now too.” By dawn on December 19th, Peiper surprised the American defenders of Stoumont by sending infantry from the 2nd SS Panzergrenadier Regiment in an attack as well as a company of Fallschirmjäger to infiltrate their lines. He followed this with a Panzer attack, gaining the eastern edge of the town. An American tank battalion arrived, but after a two-hour tank battle, Peiper finally captured Stoumont at 10:30. Peiper had received reports the Americans had recaptured Stavelot to their east. Peiper ordered Knittel to retake Stavelot. Assessing his own situation, he determined that his Kampfgruppe did not have sufficient fuel to cross the bridge west of Stoumont and continue his advance. He maintained his lines west of Stoumont until the evening of December 19th, when he withdrew them to the village edge. On the same evening, the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division under Maj. Gen. James Gavin arrived and deployed at La Gleize and along Peiper's planned route of advance. German efforts to reinforce Peiper were unsuccessful. Kampfgruppe Hansen was still struggling against bad road conditions and stiff American resistance on the southern route. Schnellgruppe Knittel was forced to disengage from the heights around Stavelot. Kampfgruppe Sandig, which had been ordered to take Stavelot, launched another attack without success. Sixth Panzer Army commander Sepp Dietrich ordered Hermann Prieß, commanding officer of the I SS Panzer Corps, to increase efforts to back Peiper's battle group, but Prieß was unable to break through.

The first phase of the German attack ended on December 22nd far short of its original goals. The lead elements had overrun the VIII US Corps’ front and penetrated almost 50 miles when they ran out of gasoline within four miles of the Meuse River — its first day’s goals. During the next three days, the Germans continued to attack. On Christmas day the VII US Corps counterattacked with the 2d Armored Division in the lead. By the next day they had succeeded in surrounding the major portion of the German 2d Panzer Division. Also on the 26th, the Third US Army broke through to Bastogne and the lead German units began to fall back, abandoning their equipment as they went due to lack of fuel. LTG Hodges reorganized the First US Army again on December 27th. The V and XVIII Airborne Corps were to continue to hold, and the VII US Corps was to prepare to continue the attack. The remainder of 1944, all four days, were taken up with the preparations for the Allied attack, scheduled to begin on 3 January 1945. But for all practical purposes, the German counteroffensive was stopped by the 26th of December. More than 33,000 casualties were suffered by the First US Army, one third from the VIII US Corps alone. Some 29,000 German losses were estimated to have been inflicted from 16 to 31 December.

• Date Taken: 12.15.2020
• Date Posted: 12.15.2020 16:15
• Story ID: 385060
• Location: US