Armageddon - Max Hastings [159]
While German armour displayed its usual proficiency, the performance of supporting infantry, especially those of Seventh Army on the southern flank, was as feeble as von Manteuffel had feared that it would be. Ill-trained replacements, some of them newly transferred from the navy or air force, stumbled bewildered on to the battlefield. They proved completely lacking in the skills indispensable to German success. American defenders were taken aback to see some enemy soldiers advancing as uncertainly as sheep, clustering together and going to ground under fire, just as Allied infantrymen were often criticized for doing. Ferocious young Nazis such as Peiper and Skorzeny were exasperated by the poor showing of the footsoldiers. It was no more use for German tanks to advance deep into enemy territory without effective infantry support than for Allied ones to do so. The panzers had broken through on a forty-mile front and were driving west. But the infantry had shown themselves “incapable of carrying out the attack with the necessary violence,” recorded a bitterly frustrated von Manteuffel. Officers were disgusted to find their men lingering to loot the prodigious quantities of American equipment and rations which fell into their hands. Wehrmacht discipline in December 1944 was nothing like that of the German Army which had died in Russia. The offensive lacked the sustained power to fulfil its objectives.
This became plain to the German commanders as early as the second or third day, when von Rundstedt appealed in vain to Hitler to break off the operation. On both flanks, American forces were holding their positions, with reinforcements arriving to shore up the shoulders of the front, preventing the Germans from widening their penetration. Kampfgruppe Peiper missed a notable opportunity after taking Bullingen. Had its tanks continued onwards to Wirtsfeld and Krinkelt–Rocherath, they could have turned the flanks of two American divisions, the 2nd and 99th. Major-General Lauer of the 99th said afterwards: “The enemy had the key to success within his hands, but did not know it.” This was an overstatement, yet there is no doubt that Peiper could have caused much trouble for the Americans. Whatever the achievements of Germans at regimental level and below, in the Bulge battle their command and control were lamentable. Army and corps commanders, hampered by poor communications and misjudgements, again and again missed opportunities. Bullingen provided a striking example. If Peiper had been allowed to exploit a local situation where he discovered American weakness, instead of being obliged to persist rigidly with the plan devised before the operation began, he might have fared better. Instead, the Americans used their breathing space to plug a dangerous gap. As darkness was falling on the evening of 17 December, on a reverse slope between Bullingen and Dom, Lieutenant-Colonel Derrill M. Daniel of the 2/26th Infantry told his company commanders that no one should think his battalion proposed to emulate those who had broken or quit. “We fight and die here,” he said. The performance of Daniel’s men during the days that followed was among the most impressive of the battle.
Henceforward, weakened German units began to meet powerful, well-led U.S. formations, thrown into battle knowing that