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By Root 898 0

village of Winterspelt, and lay awake all night listening to distant firing and watching flares go up. There were explosions nearby. Ray Ahrens, their scout, scuttled hastily through the door of a neighbouring house and found himself in a toilet. He stayed there for a while, feeling safer. The shelling became more intense next morning, 17 December. Their company commander was killed. His replacement told the men, “I’m going for help,” and disappeared, not to be seen again. Men began to slip away towards the rear, “not wounded, but dazed and wandering aimlessly.” At dawn Doubek’s platoon was sixteen strong. By the time the Germans took the survivors prisoner, there were only four of them. Doubek, hit in the hip by grenade fragments, found himself loaded into a captured Dodge weapons carrier, and driven away towards a PoW camp. His mother was handed a telegram reporting him “missing” just as she walked down the main street of El Dorado, Kansas, to buy stock for her little hat and dress shop. She collapsed and had to be taken to hospital.

Many men learned of the German assault the hard way. Lieutenant Feinsilver, supply officer of the 2/12th Infantry, was riding his jeep to Berdorf in 4th Division’s sector to collect laundry when he suddenly saw German soldiers advancing across a field beside the road. The jeep was fired upon as it performed a hasty U-turn, wounding the driver. Feinsilver seized the wheel and raced to the divisional CP in Consdorf with his companion slumped beside him. Soon afterwards, the officer commanding 12th Infantry’s cannon company drove up, having bailed out of Berdorf after a fierce firefight. Battalion headquarters was near the church, where there was a big crowd of civilians. They were gathered for a local double wedding. The two brides and grooms walked from the ceremony in the burgomaster’s office to the church for a service. An American officer said: “For God’s sake, get this thing over with and tell these birds to get the hell home. I’ll marry them myself if it’ll help.” A few minutes later, German shells started falling around them.

Word came to evacuate the entire 800-strong civilian population of the town. To the bafflement of the Americans, many preferred to remain in the cellars of their homes. Behind the front, “the tension in Luxembourg City was very great,” said an American officer, “and could be seen written all over people’s faces.” Private Murray Mendelsohn, a combat engineer from New York, was initially exasperated by the German offensive because he had left a precious roll of unit snapshots to be developed by a chemist in the village of Ettelbruck, which was burned out in the first days. When he first heard that the Germans were closing on Bastogne, the name rang a bell. Just a week or two earlier, he had bought some perfume for his mother there.

On 28th Division’s battlefield, a young officer of the 109th Infantry, Lieutenant James Christy, found himself struggling to persuade two tanks and a platoon composed of unwilling new replacements to advance into action. When Christy told Technical-Sergeant Stanislaus Wieszcyk that he was now platoon sergeant, the horrified NCO said: “Listen, lieutenant, I got these stripes for running a consolidated mess hall at Camp Fannin, Texas!” On the road to Fouhren at the southern end of the front, in deepening darkness, the tanks refused to go further without infantry leading them. Christy ordered his sergeant to take a squad to the point, and Wieszcyk said: “The guys have had more than enough today. They won’t go.” Lieutenant Christy doggedly set out down the road, leading the tanks alone. After a few minutes, Wieszcyk and a squad caught him up. “OK, lieutenant,” said the sergeant resignedly, “you made your point.” They marched on. The 28th Division inflicted significant damage upon the advancing Seventh Army, an overwhelmingly infantry force, though the 28th’s positions were demolished one by one over the days that followed. The Division’s 110th Infantry lost 2,750 men, virtually its entire strength, before the battle was over.

Further north,