Armageddon - Max Hastings [164]
The Germans bypassed Bastogne, leaving the town surrounded, and pushed on beyond St. Hubert, only twenty miles from the Meuse. But with the 101st in their rear it was immensely difficult for the panzers to exploit their advance. Von Manteuffel considered it one of the major German errors of the battle to leave Panzer Lehr to deal with Bastogne while pushing forward 2nd Panzer without support. Each division was independently too weak for its task.
Meanwhile on the northern flank, early on the morning of 21 December 12th SS Panzer launched the strongest attack thus far on the positions of the 2/26th Infantry north of Bullingen. German artillery and mortars began their bombardment long before dawn, and engineers had laid mines on the road approaching Colonel Daniel’s positions. The colonel called for an artillery “ring of steel” to support his infantrymen. Twelve American 105mm howitzer battalions, drawn from three divisions, were made available to give fire support. The Americans were amazed by the suicidal courage of the advancing German infantry. It was in vain. The artillery swept them away in a storm of explosives, smoke and heaving earth. Corporal Henry F. Warner became one of the American heroes of the battle, fighting a 57mm anti-tank gun until he was mortally wounded by machine-gun fire from a Mark IV he had knocked out. German armour achieved a brief breakthrough on the 2/26th’s right flank, and began crushing infantrymen in their foxholes. But an American tank destroyer entered the fray and hit seven German tanks in succession. Five others continued to advance, but two were wrecked by two Shermans before they, in turn, were knocked out.
The surviving Germans began to fire on the manor house which sheltered Daniel’s command post. Just when his position began to seem desperate, a platoon of American self-propelled 90mm guns arrived. Under cover of a smokescreen, they hit two of the German tanks. The last survivor retired. Several hundred Germans had died, and the enemy had lost some forty-seven tanks and self-propelled guns. The Americans suffered 250 casualties. Colonel Daniel’s force was now so weakened that he began to wonder if he should pull back. Yet the arrival of an additional company of reinforcements persuaded him that he could hold on. He was right. The Germans had exhausted themselves. The 2/26th had performed a memorable feat of arms, of the kind which decided the outcome of the battle. The regiment’s performance caused the commander of 12th SS Panzer to describe 21 December as “the darkest day of my life.” At Hitler’s insistence, Sepp Dietrich’s men continued to press forward against the Elsenborn Ridge for four more days. But the critical moment had passed. Model now recognized that, if a breakthrough was to to be achieved anywhere, it would have to be made by Fifth Panzer Army in the south, not Sixth SS Panzer Army in the north.
ON 20 DECEMBER, despite Bradley’s bitter protests, Eisenhower gave Montgomery command of the entire northern flank of the Bulge, placing most of Hodges’s First Army and Simpson’s Ninth under his orders. This was a stroke of wisdom of the kind which justified all the Supreme Commander’s claims to his authority. Montgomery, as has been observed, was the object of intense dislike among his American peers. It would have been understandable if Eisenhower had thus felt unable to give the British field-marshal authority over U.S. troops. Yet in this crisis he showed his statesmanship and was rewarded by a highly competent performance from Montgomery. Now that the Germans had broken wireless silence, Bletchley Park was decoding a flood of signals about their deployments and intentions. Montgomery therefore possessed advantages denied to his American counterparts in