Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble by Antony Beevor Read Free Book Online Page A

and finally drove into the area of the 101st – the first person to make contact with them, and in a purely accidental manner.’
    Confirmation of the tough fighting on the southern side of the perimeter came from a signals intercept. The 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division was clamouring for more Panzerfausts and anti-tank guns to help in its battle against the 4th Armored Division. The Third Army commander appearedto have no doubts about the outcome. ‘General Patton was in several times today,’ Hansen noted. ‘He is boisterous and noisy, feeling good in the middle of a fight.’ But in fact Patton was concealing his embarrassment that the 4th Armored’s advance was not going nearly as rapidly as he had predicted and was meeting tough opposition. The division had also found that VIII Corps engineers in the retreat to Bastogne ‘blew everything in sight’ , so their progress ‘was impeded not by the enemy but by demolitions and blown bridges caused by friendly engineers’.
    The Luxembourgers were more confident. They were reassured by the endless convoys of Third Army troops streaming through the city, and believed that the Germans would not be coming back. Strangely, 12th Army Group intelligence suddenly increased their estimate of German tank and assault-gun strength from 345 to 905, which was rather more than the earlier estimated panzer total for the whole of the western front.
    Despite the terrible cold which made men shiver uncontrollably in their foxholes, morale was high within the Bastogne perimeter. Although the paratroopers and 10th Armored looked forward to relief by Patton’s forces, they rejected any idea that they needed to be saved. With another brilliant day of flying weather, they watched the sky fill with Allied planes of every description. They listened to bombs exploding and the clatter of machine guns, as fighters strafed the German columns. Dogfights against the few Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts provoked ferocious cheers and roars as if it were a deadly boxing match, and bitter cries broke out if an Allied transport dropping supplies was hit by ground fire.
    Allied fighter-bombers during this period proved very effective in breaking up German attacks as they were assembling. They were directed on to targets by air controllers in Bastogne. A warning of the threat, with co-ordinates coming from a regimental command post or an artillery liaison plane, meant that ‘it was usually only a matter of minutes until planes were striking the enemy forces’.
    With priority on artillery ammunition in the airdrops, the food situation for troops barely improved. Many depended on the generosity of Belgian families sharing what they had. Both in Bastogne and on the northern shoulder, ‘rations were frequently supplemented with beef, venison and rabbit when these animals set off the mines by running into the trip-wires’. Snipers shot hare and even boar, but the longing forwild pork was greatly reduced after hogs had been sighted eating the intestines of battle casualties.
    The intense cold and deep snow caused more than discomfort. They greatly affected fighting performance. Those who did not keep a spare set of dry socks in their helmet-liner and change them frequently were the first to suffer from trench foot or frostbite. The newly arrived 11th Armored Division on the Meuse followed, perhaps unknowingly, the old practice of Russian armies for avoiding frostbite, by providing blanket strips to make foot bandages. Tank crewmen standing on metal in such conditions for hours on end, not moving their feet sufficiently, were particularly vulnerable. But at least those in armoured vehicles and truck drivers could dry out their footwear on engine exhausts.
    Condoms were fitted over the sights of anti-tank guns, and also on radio and telephone mouthpieces, because breath condensation soon froze them up. The traverse mechanism on tanks and tank destroyers needed to be thawed out. Snow would get into weapons and