Why the Bulge Didn't Break:
Green Troops Grew Up Fast to Become Heroes of Hofen
by Rob Dean
The master story of the Battle of the Bulge is the German breakthrough that
created the bulge in American lines and the U.S. fight to restore the original
line. Not well known is the story of the U.S. infantry that held the northern
flank. If not for the stand by three rifle companies, the bulge may have become
a break. This study focuses on the defense of Hofen through the first-hand
accounts of 12 soldiers who fought there, the combat reports of units in the
field, the analyses of two infantry officers, and the detailed account of the
battalion commander. This study also places that isolated battle in the context
of the full Ardennes counteroffensive. Analysis of that research identifies
four keys to American victory: (1) sound defensive tactics by battle commanders
and their front-line units demonstrated high levels of unity, adaptability, and
resilience that overcame bad strategic planning at the division level; (2)
fortified key points strengthened a thinly held line after officers surveyed
the terrain, identified the most vulnerable to attack, and concentrated machine
guns and mortars in mutually supporting positions; (3) the battalion
commander's order to meet every enemy movement with armed resistance proved
valuable in confusing the enemy; and (4) a reserve unit was decisive in pushing
back the Germans after they penetrated deep into the village on the final day
of the battle. The first-hand accounts add depth to an understanding about how
a small unit could hold a key point and how U.S. troops outnumbered five to one
prevailed against the Germans' desperate, well planned assault. This project
will contribute to future research on combat motivation, small-unit tactics,
and defense of towns by infantry units. This study adds to a body of research
that makes this point: On the front lines, quick reactions and quick minds made
the difference makers.
The food. Lou Pedrotti never got over the food in the army. Black-eyed peas.
"Tasted like boiled hay," he said. Grits. "A tasteless pile of corn discards
that even a sow would reject." Boiled okra. "Wallowing in its own goo." As his
division wrapped up training at Camp Maxey in Texas and headed for Western
Europe, reality hit Private Pedrotti in his gut. After all, Pedrotti grew up
well off in Southern California, spent the first years of the war at pricey
Occidental College in Los Angeles, got picked to continue his college education
at the U.S. Army's expense, and arrived weeks before D-Day at Camp Maxey for
combat training. The man who had grown up on his mother's fine Italian cooking,
the man for whom campus mess-hall food fell far below his standards, finally
confronted the reality that soon he would be eating K-rations and C-rations,
the ready-to-eat foods at the front.[1] Food was not really the issue. It was
gut-check time, all right, but the issue was this: He and his buddies of the
99th Infantry Division were going to war, and were they ready? In November
1944, the 14,000 men of the division holding the northern sector of the
Ardennes had every reason to wonder.
When Second Lieutenant Sam Lombardo joined the 99th Division that month, he
found a fresh division situated on the edge of battle but unprepared for combat
– reasons aplenty to fear that a crisis might lie ahead. He was there to lead a
rifle platoon, having volunteered his five years as a soldier and two years as
a stateside training officer for combat. On the northern tip of the line that
cut through the Ardennes on the German-Belgian border, too few American
soldiers had too much territory to cover. "The man in one foxhole could not see
the man in the next one," Lombardo said.[2] Scouts dug in way out front, up to
a thousand yards beyond the main line of foxholes. The troops, enough to cover
an eight- or nine-mile front, stretched instead across twenty-one miles. How
could they hold the line? Lombardo could not believe the risky situation. The
brass was overconfident, and the troops were green. "I just couldn't stop
thinking that any German patrol wanting to come through could do it without any
difficulties,'' he said.[3] The army positioned to take the Germans' last-gasp
counterpunch in December was not the same army that landed on D-Day in June.
The rifle companies stretched thin along the Siegfried Line were replacement
units heavily populated with older men called up from the reserves and with
younger men once assigned to the Army Specialized Training Program, a college
program established to train engineers, doctors, and linguists for postwar
duty. The army broke up the ASTP in the spring, assigned most of the bookish
soldiers to rifle companies, and readied them for the final assault on
Germany.[4] About 600 riflemen from three companies of the 395th Infantry
Regiment took up positions on a 6,000-yard, north-south line that skirted the
edge of the village of Hofen. As winter set in, the men and their frozen feet
braced for the cold reality of combat.
The 99th was in the front row as America's citizen army faced its toughest test
since Normandy. What was to become the Battle of the Bulge shaped up as a
contest between the U.S. Army composed of men given to doubts and the German
army made up of soldiers intoxicated by their commander's order to fight to the
death.[5] For Adolf Hitler, the counteroffensive was all or nothing, a bold
stroke that, if not for the few men who defended and held the northern tip of
the line, might have reinvigorated his army and prolonged the war. The
situation, expressed most clearly through the answers to three questions, was
this: In Hofen, could so few troops hold so much ground? Across the Ardennes,
were 83,000 inexperienced U.S. soldiers a match for 200,000 Germans? What would
be the consequences if they were not?
This paper argues that troop characteristics and command decisions added up to
four keys to American victory. First, even green troops demonstrated the unity,
adaptability, and resilience that exemplified the citizen army. Sound defensive
tactics by battle commanders and their front-line units overcame bad strategic
planning at the division level, where officers were caught flat-footed. As a
result, the Allies held the northern shoulder and prevented the bulge from
becoming a break. Second, the defense of Hofen proved that fortified key points
strengthened a thinly held line. Officers surveyed the terrain, identified the
spots most vulnerable to attack, concentrated machine guns and mortars in those
positions, and placed those guns so that each nest could back up the next.
Third, the battalion commander's order to meet every enemy movement with armed
resistance was decisive. Fourth, a reserve unit was crucial in providing the
firepower to push back the Germans after they penetrated deep into the village
on the third and final day of the battle.
Moment of Truth, Moment of Doubt
The conditions, some the Americans could see and some they could not know, were
tough – wet snow mixed with bitter cold, lack of preparation on their side, and
a skillfully planned attack by the other side. Winter settled in a bit colder
than normal that year in the thick forest of the border area, and almost every
day brought a fresh layer of snow. Most days the temperature hovered slightly
above zero, dipping into the minus range at night. When the ground warmed
enough, a foot-and-half of earth turned to muck. Each night was a struggle
against fatigue as well as the biting cold. By day, working in teams of two,
they dug deeper and deeper into the hillside, so deep a normal-size guy could
stand tall and still keep his head below ground level. The soldiers scrounged
for scraps of wood, pieces of fallen timber, the rare chunk of concrete, the
rarer-still sheet of flimsy metal — any poor man's building material that could
put a roof on a trench dug out of the cold ground.[6] "We boys from out West
knew how to stay warm," Nebraskan Ed Trumble recalled. "[We] were constantly
looking for straw to fill our foxholes and the city boys soon learned from
us."[7] The men arrived without waterproof boots. Before rubber overshoes
arrived a few days later, the soldiers began feeling the first pains of
frostbite or trenchfoot.[8] Those supply problems were but a hint of greater
challenges ahead.
At that moment of doubt for the Americans, the Germans were lining up to fight.
Having been battered and pushed back in Italy, on the Russian front and in
France, the German army regrouped along its western front and massed troops and
tanks for a series of thrusts in a bold counteroffensive to seize momentum. The
German plan in the Ardennes called for a blitz by three panzer divisions
against American sectors on the northern end of the Allied line. Field Marshal
Gerd von Runstedt's infantry would then secure the break in the line, allowing
the tanks to race through Allied positions. The advancing tanks were to capture
Meuse River crossings and follow an open road to Brussels and Antwerp. Collapse
of the Allied line would give the Nazis hope of regaining control of the swath
of land stretching to the English Channel.[9]
The Americans allowed themselves to get caught off guard. Generally, American
military leaders were overconfident, believing that their success since D-Day
was beating down the Germans physically and spiritually. On Thanksgiving, that
uniquely American holiday, a traditional dinner of turkey, sweet potatoes,
dressing, and cranberries gave a boost to the men and nourishment to the idea
that the war would be over soon, and by early December, U.S. commanders still
considered the Ardennes a calm place to break in two inexperienced divisions
and to rest other battle-worn units. Overconfidence among officers and
inexperience on the line were a bad mix, a combination made worse for the
Americans by lousy planning and coordination.
The flip side of overconfidence was fear. The army of World War II was the army
of a new era that allowed, even encouraged, soldiers to express their
fears.[10] Some having begun the war in safe reserve units and others having
started out as the army's pampered college students, the men of the 99th braced
for battle knowing very well that Hitler was not about to turn the continent
back to the Allies without a fight. The fear of dying overcame some soldiers. A
will to make it home alive drove others. There was one central fact in war:
Victory would come only when the men of one nation's army could stand on the
ground once occupied by the men of the opposing nation's army. Those men were
infantry soldiers, and lots of foot soldiers had to die.[11] For the men of the
99th who poked their chests against German lines than November, the previous
six months had been hectic. National Guard units in Pennsylvania supplied the
guts of the division's manpower. The 2,566 men who arrived from campuses to
fill out the 14,000-man division had been college students in March, uprooted
and thrown into infantry outfits on the fast track to Europe.[12] When news
came of the U.S. breakout in Normandy, the men of the 99th were wrapping up
training at Camp Maxey, and fear would travel with them.
During a summer of training in the brutal heat and humidity of Texas, some
trainees who feared they lacked the stuff to stay alive organized extra hours
running the compass course and repeating drills in night map reading.[13] At
summer's end, the division headed cross-country by train to Boston harbor and
weathered a rough Atlantic crossing and a rougher channel crossing. More fears
surfaced. At the edge of Plymouth harbor, the last slip of American land
pointed the ships toward Europe. Memories and worries rushed over the soldiers,
as deep and vast as the Atlantic itself. Watching Boston melt into the horizon,
a solitary soldier stood inside his thoughts at the rear of a ship. A second
man approached, tears running down his cheeks, and said, "God just told me I
won't be coming back."[14] Once on the European mainland, the division sped
across France and Belgium, and the mood grew increasingly serious and dark. The
unit passed a huge cemetery — white crosses marking American graves as far as
they could see. And grave diggers were busy excavating even more spaces.
Finally in early November, ahead of supply lines, American units dug in, spread
out along the border and waited for equipment to catch up. Hitler's heavily
fortified western wall was formidable indeed, a 400-mile-long network of mines,
barbed wire, concrete anti-tank blocks and steel-reinforced bunkers. Ed Trumble
described the feeling of the men: "As we set up our pitiful shelterhalf two-man
tents we could hear the constant rumble of exploding artillery a few miles away
and after dark we could see the flashes of light in the night sky above the
treeline. We were a miserable lot of apprehensive young men stumbling around in
the dark eating ice-cold C rations and each of us absorbed in our own thoughts.
To be with our buddies at such a time meant much to each of us."[15] The men
found no sure way to calm the kind of jitters that last. To some, the sound of
the occasional rifle or machine-gun fire accentuated the eerie stillness and
reminded them what lay ahead.[16] For others, the best defense was a macabre
sense of humor. With every blast of enemy artillery, one of Trumble's squad
mates would yell, "We're going to get kissed again!"[17]
Digging in at the Edge of Danger
Trumble was a rifleman with L Company, 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry Regiment,
which formed a link in the J-shaped line that snaked along the east side of
Hofen, a long, narrow village of about 100 houses stretching along a razorback
ridge that ran north and south. The 3rd Battalion spread out among the trees,
over the hills, and down the draws with I Company in the north, L Company to
the south, and K Company in between. The battalion commander, Lieutenant
Colonel McClernand Butler, held one rifle platoon from L Company in reserve.
About 1,000 yards north of Hofen was the town of Monschau, nearly hidden from
the Hofen men because it sat deep in the Roer River gorge. The German-held
village of Rohren was only 2,000 yards east of Hofen. Despite there being towns
nearby, Hofen was isolated. Not only did it sit atop a ridge, but the town also
had the Roer River to the west as a natural barrier to attack or escape.
Vulnerable as it was, Hofen also was strategic as a position from which the
Americans could guard key roads, intersections, and larger villages to the west
and south.[18]
The 3rd Battalion got its first dose of death within days of establishing a
front-line position. When they pulled back from the border region, the German
army created vast mine fields as part of its defense. The arrival of winter
meant that by December those mines buried in the frozen earth were under a
layer of snow as well. Division command assigned the 3rd Battalion to clear one
of those mine fields. "We didn't know anything about clearing mines," Bill
Bradford said of his inexperienced unit.[19] The only technique they knew was
crude and deadly. A soldier, wearing no protection, simply would bend over and
stick his bayonet into the ground. If he hit nothing, he would step forward and
do it again. If his bayonet hit a mine, a blast blew up in his face. "It was a
slaughter," Bradford said.[20] About ten men died in one day, and Butler
decided that was enough and told the men to stop.[21] The unfortunate
experience was a test of Butler as well as the soldiers. He earned respect of
the bright young men under his command, no small matter as it turned out.
Soldiers expected a lot of their leaders, for they knew intuitively that
survival depended on the quality of leadership and the ability of an officer to
stay unemotional and clear-headed under fire. Historian Gerald Linderman said
U.S. infantry soldiers in World War II formulated their test this way: "[T]he
men insisted not only that officers who issued fateful orders know what it was
to risk their own lives but that they give proof of their ability to lead and
thus validate their claim to command."[22]
Ending the mine-clearing carnage was a good move but only the first of several
sound decisions by Butler that would pay off later. Once his men were in place
to defend Hofen by the end of the day on November 10, Butler was ready to
survey the whole strategic plan. He realized the battalion had few heavy
weapons but the responsibility for a long, thin line. From their initial
positions, mortars could not cover the front. Communications were inadequate.
The battalion had no time to waste if it were to improve its position, and
Butler used the next three weeks wisely. "I had time to move in, organize the
battalion and issue orders before the fighting started," Butler said.[23] The
commander called a staff meeting on November 14 and pointed out that in
addition to those deficiencies the battalion could expect little relief from
nearby U.S. units in case of attack. The 3rd Battalion was on its own to hold
its flanks.[24] Butler ordered adjustments he felt were necessary if his men
were to withstand a sustained attack. In place of the uniformly thin line, he
installed a series of mutually supporting strong points, each consisting of at
least a rifle squad and an automatic weapon. The strong points reinforced the
flanks. While most of the strong points sat at the eastern edge of town, some
occupied buildings inside the town. Butler drew up a fallback plan to relocate
the strong points should an attack force his men to withdraw into Hofen. The
addition of a large number of phones and radios improved communications.
Soldiers cut down trees to block roads from the east and buried antitank mines
along the major roads leading into Hofen.[25] Three weeks of hard work improved
the 3rd Battalion's position significantly. An infantry officer said:
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Within the town itself a large number of buildings were prepared for defense,
and gun emplacements were constructed in the streets but were no occupied. The
general rule was that if the units on the front line were driven back they
could carry on the fight in town. … An emergency assembly area was selected in
a covered position about a mile to the rear of town for use in the event the
battalion was forced out of Hofen.[26]
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The battalion was better positioned but not necessarily better prepared.
Replacement units like those of the 99th Division already had overcome a lot of
criticism about preparedness. To Camp Maxey drill sergeants, the young soldiers
were soft and the older ex-guardsmen were ignorant hillbillies. At the front,
the same criticisms filtered back to the green units from battle-worn troops
coming off the front lines. Further, the men read in Stars and Stripes
that the brass called them green troops – or as one correspondent put it,
"battle babies." The term rubbed some the wrong way with the implication that
green troops could not fight. But it was true they had not experienced combat,
or plenty of other things in life for that matter. The youngest among them were
only nineteen. The men were not yet battle tested and, worse, the brass did not
see that as an immediate concern.
The Army's posture of self-satisfaction led to a deadly failure to understand
the German threat, to prepare for it, and, finally, to communicate it. Two days
before the German attack, U.S. units took some Germans as prisoners, an
indication of an increased enemy presence.[27] Despite the signs of German
movement, U.S. officers continued to dismiss the threat as nothing more than
possible small, localized attacks. In truth, the Germans possessed detailed
information about American positions and troop strength. The details came from
the same daily reconnaissance flights the Americans dismissed as annoying but
ineffective "bed-check Charlies."[28] It turned out that while Germans were in
the air gathering information they could use to attack places like Hofen, the
Americans stayed grounded, blaming the very same weather conditions as too bad
for flying.[29] Even without help from the air, Major General Walter Lauer,
commander of the 99th Division, and his fellow commanders worried about how
thin the American lines were and how easily the Germans could penetrate.
"However, until the German counteroffensive was well under way, the General and
his staff felt that at the most, the only effort that the Germans could make
would be a limited attack by one or two [battalions], or possibly a Regiment,"
according to an official record of the battle. "Further, that this would be
merely a reaction to our attack. There was no suspicion of an enemy
buildup."[30]
The Ground Shook, the Attack Was On
At 5:25 on the morning of Saturday, December 16, the boom of 250 artillery and
rocket shells shattered the black, frigid silence. "The ground we were in shook
like a bowl of Jell-O from this assault, and all I could think of as I awoke
was, ‘Yea, tho I walk through the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,'"
according to rifleman Thor Ronningen.[31] The German attack caught the
Americans by surprise. Beyond that, confusion reigned. The attacks cut off
communications, isolating command posts and making it difficult for senior U.S.
officers to get a quick assessment of the magnitude of the offensive. It was
clear to the men in Hofen that their positions were in the crosshairs of German
artillery and mortar units. The first thunderous blasts ripped through the
town, wrecking buildings, severing phone lines, and setting off fires. Within a
half hour of the bombardment, the night sky still was providing cover for
attackers. But at that hour the German artillery needed more light to identify
targets, so the Germans pointed searchlights into the sky and bounced the beam
of light off the clouds to create artificial moonlight. The U.S. infantrymen
turned the trick into their advantage. The artificial lighting created a glow
on the horizon that served as backlighting for advancing German foot soldiers,
and the silhouettes made for easy targets. Bill Bradford, situated at the
southern tip of Hofen in L Company's most forward position, was asleep in a
foxhole closest to the enemy line. The shooting shook Bradford and his foxhole
mate awake, and their first sight that morning was a scary scene visible in the
artificial moonlight. "A whole battalion was coming at just the two of us,"
Bradford said. "We high-tailed it back to the rest of the unit. We left
everything but our rifles behind."[32] At the same time, the Germans struck
north of Bradford's position, too.
Six men from I Company occupied a large house, which served as a forward
outpost. Two of the men stood guard while four others slept in the basement.
The men rigged a bell to warn them should Germans approach. The bell startled
Bob Crist and Bob Craft from their sleep, and the two best friends scrambled
out of the basement, crawled across the kitchen, and climbed a ladder to the
loft. Fire chased them back down to the kitchen. By then, the sun was coming
up, and the Germans had advanced beyond the house to the American line behind
Crist and Craft. The men decided they had to get out of there. "We jumped out
the window into the hands of the Germans," Crist said.[33] The Germans barked
orders, but they did not know English and the Americans did not know German.
The Germans and the two Americans faced each other in a momentary standoff,
giving an American rifleman time to close in and open fire. "When he fired at
the Germans, they forgot about us," Crist said.[34] Prisoners no more, the two
men fled back through the house directly into the sound of the sweetest words
Crist and Craft ever heard. "Come on, fellows," a member of their outfit
shouted.[35] Crist and Craft had narrowly cheated death, had fallen into enemy
hands, and had escaped to freedom. It all happened so fast; but, then,
everything seemed to happen quickly in the chaos of that morning.
The 3rd Battalion regrouped in the confusion. The quick response on the front
was not matched by the response at the division's command post. Lauer's
officers were slow to act even after they learned the scope of the
counteroffensive. Early on the first day of the battle, Americans captured a
copy of the attack order from von Rundstedt to his troops. It said in part,
"Everything is at stake. You bear in yourselves a holy duty to give
everything."[36] Even then, Lauer did not communicate to the front lines the
breadth of the German attack. He was in denial or he did not know. Three hours
into the attack, Lauer still believed the German offensive was isolated.[37]
Likewise, Major General Walter Robertson, commander of the 2nd Infantry
Division, at first was unaware of a large-scale attack, but as the day wore on
he grew concerned that the 99th might be in trouble. He went to Lauer's
headquarters, and was appalled by what he found. Charles B. MacDonald, author
of A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge, described
what Robertson saw:
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The living room of the house was in tumult, crowded with enlisted men and
officers, everybody seemingly trying to talk at once, and at one side of the
room the division commander himself, General Lauer, playing the piano – as was
his wont in time of crisis.
… [B]ut Lauer insisted he had matters in hand. On the basis of the confusion at
the command post, Robertson was inclined to think otherwise.[38]
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Some of the first German artillery blasts had badly damaged battalion
headquarters in Hofen and killed many of the Americans on duty.[39] The
attackers were prepared to the point that they knew where they thought the
American line was weakest. Waves of enemy infantrymen rushed into the gap
between K and I companies and sped to get around I Company's left flank.[40]
The soldiers of the 3rd Battalion kept their composure and waited until the
attackers were out in the open. The enemy got so close, an observer noted, that
"in three known cases, bodies of Germans fell into the foxholes from which the
men were firing."[41] The network of strong points worked. Each one succeeded
in giving cover and support to the next, preventing the Germans from isolating
the small U.S. units.[42] Instead, it was the Germans who took heavy losses.
According to infantryman Bob Crist, "Dead German soldiers were everywhere,
piled up where they fell and froze."[43] From the U.S. perspective, "since the
attack was generally centralized, it was possible to use 10 mortars per
concentration and the effect was devastating," Captain Keith Fabianich,
commander of K Company, said. "The German losses were terrific …. [I]n the
shell marked snow, lay the bodies of over 100 enemy dead and 41 prisoners of
war who had fought their last battle."[44] At thirty minutes past noon, the
Germans tried again, setting their sights on a sunken road that would give them
a free lane into several U.S. strongholds. The Americans stopped the assault,
and the Germans withdrew.
While the 3rd Battalion held on in Hofen, Americans patched together enough of
a communication system so that reports from surrounding positions were
filtering back to the battalion. Scary news from Monschau said the Germans had
broken through there. The village of Monschau sat in the valley just down the
hill from Hofen. If Monschau were to fall, the Germans would have a clean shot
at Hofen and the 3rd Battalion. But in Monschau, too, the Americans fought back
and reclaimed the village, putting an end to that German threat. Between
nightfall on the 16th and daybreak on the 17th, the 3rd Battalion experienced
another long night, but the fear in the cold air made this one a night like no
other. The Americans rested when they could as time dragged on, keeping their
intense focus on surviving one hour at a time, all the while bracing for a new
assault.[45] "It was extremely cold," Butler said. "A man who got hit in the
open could die within 15 minutes unless he got evacuated. … [I]t was a
miserable time." [46] Three feet of snow buried everything, and some drifts
were twelve-feet deep. On the second day, a Sunday, U.S. commanders were
starting to piece together details from other points along the front. "You have
to realize that the scope of what one man knows is going on extends to about
only 4 or 6 feet on either side of him," Butler explained.[47] It took a full
day to catch on, but finally the Americans learned that the German attack was
an all-out assault across the wide front.
The Bloodiest Day
The Germans, having failed to land a knockout blow the day before, spent the
second day of the battle dancing along the line, like a prizefighter waiting
for his opponent to drop the left hand. German patrols jabbed at the front
lines, penetrating a few times with an assault just strong enough to keep the
Americans on edge then falling back to their established line. After dark on
that relatively uneventful day, one of those German patrols approached the
position held by I Company. A Browning automatic rifle, commonly known as a
BAR, was the infantryman's best friend. Thor Ronningen said:
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We fired at them, but they took off down the road. We could not see what
happened as they passed another position, but from the sounds knew that a real
fight went on. We could hear our BAR go almost continually with sporadic firing
from enemy weapons and also heard some grenades. The next day we could see what
happened. George Nothwang had opened up on them with his BAR while two men with
him loaded magazines for him as fast as they could. There were 19 dead Germans
in the shallow ditch about 20 feet from George's gun. We could see in the snow
where German grenades had gone off near George and he told us he did not even
see or hear them in the frenzy of action.[48]
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The third day of the German offensive started early, and what followed was to
be the bloodiest day in battalion history.[49] Beginning their assault before 4
a.m., the Germans launched a vicious, precise strike on Hofen. A heavy aerial
attack softened 3rd Battalion positions just enough to permit a force of
Germans to break through, advancing as far as an American observation post.
Ronningen, asleep in a potato cellar, awoke to the sound of someone trying to
break through the door. "One fellow mounted a grenade launcher and a grenade on
his M-1 and positioned himself immediately below the door, ready to fire if
they got it open," Ronningen said. "He would have killed or injured the enemy,
but the explosion probably would have killed us too. For some reason, the men
outside gave up trying to open the door and we lived to fight another day."[50]
At daylight, the Americans fought back, at times in hand-to-hand combat, and
killed or captured the entire German platoon.[51] The enemy retreated and
regrouped as if tightening the tension on a loaded spring. They sprang another
attack at 10 a.m. The German force of almost 800 drove a wedge 100 yards deep
and 400 yards wide into the heart of Hofen, and about 100 Germans seized four
stone houses.[52] Again, the Americans fought back. Lieutenant Stanley
Llewellyn and the five men from his squad were serving as forward observers.
Occupying a three-story building in the heart of Hofen, the observers found
themselves surrounded soon after the Germans attacked before 5:30 a.m.
Llewellyn realized that if he were to lose that lookout, the Americans would
lose their biggest advantage. He had to hold the position or risk losing the
whole battle. As the Germans closed in, Llewellyn ordered artillery down on his
own position. The men held their positions even in the face of fire from German
automatic weapons. And they kept calling for artillery fire against the
attacking Germans, even as the observers knew that the shelling would be right
on top of their position. The lieutenant's report of the incident said: "Shells
hit on and near the observation post blowing gaping holes in the roof and sides
of the building, showering plaster, bricks and shrapnel on the men as they
stayed at their posts and returned the small arms fire taking a high toll from
the attackers, keeping the observation post from being taken."[53]
Butler decided that was the time to call on the rifle platoon he had kept in
reserve. As American artillery continued to pound away, anti-tank crews turned
their heavy guns on the stone houses as well. The artillery, anti-tank, and
mortar barrage was not enough to destroy the houses or force a German retreat,
but the heavy fire provided cover for the reserve unit. The rifle platoon
sealed the area against new German infiltrations, and Butler ordered the
platoon to move in for a grenade attack. Meanwhile, the same platoon kept up
the pressure with its rifles, taking down the Germans one by one with well
placed shots through unobstructed windows. The Americans followed up with their
grenades. In less than two hours, the Americans were able to overrun the
buildings and take twenty-five German prisoners. Inside the stone houses, U.S.
soldiers found the gruesome remains of about seventy-five Germans who had been
shredded by anti-tank fire.[54] Only after the shooting stopped did Butler
realize that the American lines collapsed as units fell back on either side of
the 3rd Battalion. "We were sticking out like a finger there," Butler said.[55]
Isolated and running low on ammunition, the resourcefulness of a platoon leader
saved the day when he brought up a truck load of ammunition scrounged from an
abandoned German ammo dump. "We stopped the tail end of that push with guns and
ammunition taken off the German dead," Butler said.[56]
After three days, the Germans' heavy assault on Hofen ended. From December 19
to December 24, the battle was reduced to a cat-and-mouse game in which the
Germans would send out a raiding patrol and the Americans would force them back
with mortar fire. "The battalion prepared for another full scale attack against
the position but none developed," Fabianich said.[57] Hitler's Ardennes
offensive had failed. Hofen held. The Americans stopped the Germans in their
snowy tracks at the mouth of the gap, where the leaders of the German army
surveyed the chunk of forest separating their homeland from Belgium and France,
figured it was the surest route to those neighboring countries, and found
visions of conquest irresistible. Because the Battle of the Bulge was a series
of small battles like Hofen, individual units failed at the time to see the
significance of the overall battle and failed to see it as a signature moment
of the history of World War II. In time, the men who saved Hofen came to know
the big picture and to see their contribution with humility. As company
commander Fabianich concluded, "It is reasonable to expect that the heroic
defense of Hofen was insignificant when one considers the weight of the German
counter-offensive but the men of the 3rd Battalion consider it the acme of
their contributions to the winning of World War II."[58] The 101st Airborne's
hanging on at Bastogne, the massacre at Malmedy, the heroic stand at Lanzerath
by the eighteen men of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon; those became
the lead stories from the Battle of the Bulge. The battle marked Germany's
final, desperate kick before ultimate defeat. "[I]f we hadn't held, the 99th
and 2nd Infantry divisions would have been outflanked and surrounded," Butler
concluded.[59] Only after six weeks of war along the border would the men who
fought there come to understand that the battle was the last gasp of an army
Hitler expected to fight to the last bullet. After the Bulge, American victory
was only a matter of time.
Conclusion: The Mind of a Winner
Despite the outcome, at least some of the men on the front line felt that the
senior officers had let them down in important ways and put them at risk by
supplying only a feeble safety net. From the perspective of the dogface who
stuck his nose in the middle of the action, the men of the 99th Division went
to the front with tension in the ranks, with too little equipment, and with
faulty intelligence. They found themselves dumped off in the woods under the
most severe conditions, spread too thin over rough territory, and cut off from
communication with command and other units. The result was a front line
twenty-one miles long with big gaps between American positions. Once surprised
by the German assault, the troops who were new to the front had to fight by
common sense and instinct – and with fearlessness that came from the gut, not
from training. The bottom line was they won. But victory came at a high price.
Outnumbered five to one, the soldiers of the 99th inflicted casualties in the
ratio of eighteen to one. The division lost more than one in five men,
including 465 killed and 2,524 evacuated with wounds, injuries, fatigue, or
trench foot. German losses were enormous. In the northern sector of the Bulge,
those losses included more than 4,000 deaths and the destruction of sixty tanks
and big guns.[60]
The men who held Hofen had kept it together through the sort of hell that saw
the German enemies advance to within nine feet of the 3rd Battalion's position,
the sort of hell created in a firefight so ferocious the retreating Germans
could not take time to gather their dead and wounded. The battalion earned a
distinguished-unit citation. But to the men who survived, there was no glory.
"That was a tough winter in Hofen," Ed Trumble matter-of-factly. "We spent
many, many nights together in snowy foxholes and trudged many a mile together
on night patrols. We saw many friends wounded and others die."[61] It was not
sentiment that beat the Germans; quick thinking and swift response were the
stuff of victory.
The 3rd Battalion was cut from the great citizen army envisioned by General
George Marshall, army chief of staff. The soldiers were smart, borderline
insubordinate, and scared. On the issue of fear, the army of World War II was
progressive. It taught soldiers that there was no shame in fear. They could
control it, and in time it would ease. A training manual instructed: "If you
say you're not scared, you'll be a cocky fool. Don't let anyone tell you you're
a coward if you admit being scared."[62] If acceptance of fear redefined
manhood, so did the celebration of sharp minds. About half of the men who
filled the ranks of the 3rd Battalion's rifle companies were former trainees of
the Army Specialized Training Program, college education for bright soldiers.
They may have been replacements, but they were not second string. They were
high-quality replacements who proved adaptable and resilient, exactly the
qualities it took to hold Hofen. According to battalion commander Butler,
"Those young men were in good shape physically as well as mentally – most of
them were being trained to be engineers, so they were pretty sharp."[63] At a
critical phase of the war, the U.S. Army tapped a reserve of young, fit, and
smart soldiers while most of the exhausted armies of Europe were settling for
replacements that were too old, young, or frail to be effective.
Butler gave the men what they needed in a commander. He had time to prepare for
the German offensive and he used the three-week grace period to construct
shelters from the cold, establish strong points, reposition mortars, and
strengthen communications. Butler called off the deadly mine-clearing mission.
He rode the Hofen perimeter every day in his jeep. He exposed himself to sniper
fire.[64] He won over the men. He was one ninety-day wonder – a National Guard
officer sent to three months of command school – who had absorbed the lessons
in tactics at Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, and the men caught on to that,
too. In Hofen, Butler ordered the battalion to fire on every German patrol. To
some officers, resistance aimed at non-threatening patrol was at least a waste
or at worst a means to give away vital American positions. The decision to
engage every patrol proved advantageous. The small-arms fire scattered the
patrols, caused confusion, and kept the Germans from gaining information of
concrete value.[65] Butler's best move may have been his decision to hold a
rifle platoon in reserve. During the Germans' final attempt to take Hofen,
Butler called on the fifty men of the reserve platoon at the critical time to
block and destroy the enemy's penetrating force.
While it was true that smart soldiers might not respect authority, might
question tactics, or might not love the army, it was also true that assigning a
soldier without smarts and skills to combat was like sentencing him to death.
On the front lines, quick reactions and quick minds were the difference makers.
The 3rd Battalion put a bunch of smart soldiers on the front lines, and Butler,
the able commander, took advantage. He practiced to a T what the army high
command preached.
From his Washington office in 1943, Lieutenant General Lesley McNair, the man
in charge of building the Army Ground Forces, launched the Army Specialized
Training Program with these words: "Intelligent men who have been trained to
think and who can apply scientific knowledge to the everyday problems in combat
are urgently needed in the leadership of our combat units."[66] From one
foxhole to another in the Ardennes, came a rallying cry of sorts in the form of
a wise-crack, succinct and simple, that made Trumble and his buddies laugh out
loud: "A bitching soldier is a happy soldier. Aren't we happy, Trumble?"[67]
The distance was not as far as it seemed between the carefully chosen words of
the general and the wisecrack of a dogface curled up in the mud. Both offered
advice on how to build an army to win, on how to create an adaptable fighting
force that held the line at Hofen against the odds.
Show Footnotes and
Bibliography
Footnotes
[1]. Robert E. Humphrey, "The Story of Lou Pedrotti is Shared with Readers," Checkerboard,
http://www.99div.com (accessed May 1, 2006).
[2]. Samuel Lombardo, O'er the Land of the Free (Shippensburg, Pa.:
Beidel, 2000), 79.
[3]. Ibid.
[4]. U.S. Army, Office of the Chief of Staff, Press Office, "Army Cuts
Specialized Training Program," George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office
Collection, General Materials, Lexington, Va.: George C. Marshall Research
Library (February 18, 1944). Marshall memo on break up of ASTP.
[5]. Samuel A. Stouffer and others, The American Soldier: Combat and Its
Aftermath (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949), 196; ;
and Richard Bessel, Nazism and War (New York: Modern Library, 2004), 35-89.
[6]. Lombardo, O'er the Land of the Free, 76-77; and Robert Crist,
e-mail message to author, June 9, 2006.
[7]. Ed Trumble, letter to Dale D. Dean, 1995.
[8]. Ibid.
[9]. Keith P. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry, 99th
Infantry Division, prior to and during the German Counter-Offensive, 10
November - 24 December 1944 (Ardennes Campaign)," (Fort Benning, Ga.: Advanced
Infantry Officers Class no. 1, U.S. Army Infantry School, 1948), 13-15.
[10]. Stouffer, The American Soldier, 196.
[11]. Ibid., 102.
[12]. Charles P. Biggio, "Summary of the U.S. Army's ASTP – 1942-44,"
Checkerboard (January 1, 2006); and Peter R. Mansoor, The GI Offensive in
Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 (Lawrence,
Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 38.
[13]. Trumble.
[14]. Robert E. Humphrey, "The 99th Trains For War," Checkerboard (January
21, 2004), http://www.99div.com (accessed May 1, 2006).
[15]. Trumble
[16]. Lombardo, O'er the Land of the Free, 78.
[17]. Trumble.
[18]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 8.
[19]. Bill Bradford, interview by author, June 16, 2005.
[20]. Ibid.
[21]. Ibid.
[22]. Gerald F. Linderman, The World Within War: America's Combat Experience in
World War II, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 204.
[23]. McClernand Butler, interview by Matthew Cappellini, Military History,
Weider History Group, June 1996.
[24]. Ibid.
[25]. Charles J. Canella, "Defense of Small Towns and Villages by Infantry: The
Defense of Boos, France, by a ‘Groupe France', 7-8 June 1940; Defense of
Schmidt, Germany, by the 3rd Battalion, 112th Infantry, 28th Division, 3-4
November 1944; Defense of Hofen, Germany, by the 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry,
99th Division, 10 November-18 December 1944; Defense of Butzdorf and Tettingen,
Germany, by the 1st Battalion, 376th Infantry, 94th Division, 14-18 January
1945," (Fort Benning, Ga.: Advanced Infantry Officers Class no. 2, U.S. Army
Infantry School, 1949), 41-43.
[26]. Ibid., 42.
[27]. U.S. Army, 99th Infantry Division, "The German Breakthrough (16 Dec 44-16
Jan 45)," Combat Reports, in 99th Infantry Division: The Bulge, edited
by Thomas F. Pike, Pike Military Research reports (Washington, D.C.: Office of
Adjutant General, declassified 1946), 5-6.
[28]. Ibid., 13.
[29]. Ibid., 13.
[30]. Ibid., 3-4.
[31]. Thor Ronningen, "Thor's War: Memoirs of a World War II Infantryman," Checkerboard,
http://www.99div.com (accessed May 1, 2006).
[32]. Bradford.
[33]. Robert Crist, e-mail message to author, June 8, 2006.
[34]. Ibid.
[35]. Ibid.
[36]. U.S. Army, 99th Infantry Division, "Intelligence Notes on the
Breakthrough (16-28 December 1944)," Combat Reports, in 99th Infantry Division:
The Bulge, edited by Thomas F. Pike, Pike Military Research reports
(Washington, D.C.: Office of Adjutant General, declassified 1946), 3.
[37]. Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle
of the Bulge (New York: Perennial, 1985), 179.
[38]. Ibid., 179-180.
[39]. Canella, "Defense of Small Towns," 43.
[40]. Ibid., 44.
[41]. U.S. Army, 99th Infantry Division, 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry
Regiment, "Man Breakthrough (16 Dec 44-16 Jan 45," Combat Reports, in 99th
Infantry Division: The Bulge, edited by Thomas F. Pike, Pike Military
Research reports (Washington, D.C.: Office of Adjutant General, declassified
1946), 2.
[42]. Canella, "Defense of Small Towns," 44.
[43]. Crist, e-mail, June 9, 2006.
[44]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 17.
[45]. Trumble.
[46]. Butler.
[47]. Ibid.
[48]. Ronningen.
[49]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 18.
[50]. Ronningen.
[51]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 18.
[52]. Ibid., 19.
[53]. U.S. Army, 99th Infantry Division, "Excerpt from Report of Lt. Llewellyn
on the Action of the Forward Observation Party," Combat Reports, in 99th
Infantry Division: The Bulge, edited by Thomas F. Pike, Pike Military
Research reports (Washington, D.C.: Office of Adjutant General, declassified
1946), 1-2.
[54]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 20.
[55]. Butler.
[56]. Ibid.
[57]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 21.
[58]. Ibid.
[59]. Butler.
[60]. Walter E. Lauer, Battle Babies: The Story of the 99th Infantry Division
in World War II (Nashville, Tenn.: Battery Press, 1985).
[61]. Trumble.
[62]. Stouffer, The American Soldier, 196.
[63]. Butler.
[64]. Ibid.
[65]. Fabianich, "Operations of the 3rd Battalion," 22.
[66]. Essential Facts about the Army Specialized Training Program, Records
of the Army Specialized Training Division, Office of the Director of Military
Training, National Archives and Records Administration II, Modern Military
Reference Branch, College Park, Maryland (1943), 2.
[67]. Trumble.
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Butler, McClernand. Interview by Matthew Cappellini, Military History.
Weider History Group, June 1996.
Canella, Charles J. "Defense of Small Towns and Villages by Infantry: The
Defense of Boos, France, by a ‘Groupe France', 7-8 June 1940; Defense of
Schmidt, Germany, by the 3rd Battalion, 112th Infantry, 28th Division, 3-4
November 1944; Defense of Hofen, Germany, by the 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry,
99th Division, 10 November-18 December 1944; Defense of Butzdorf and Tettingen,
Germany, by the 1st Battalion, 376th Infantry, 94th Division, 14-18 January
1945." Fort Benning, Ga.: Advanced Infantry Officers Class no. 2, U.S. Army
Infantry School, 1949.
Crist, Robert. E-mail message to author. June 8, 2006.
Crist, Robert. E-mail message to author. June 9, 2006.
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Copyright © 2008 Rob Dean.
Written by Rob Dean. If you have questions or comments on this article,
please contact Rob Dean at:
RKDean4680@aol.com.
About the author:
Rob Dean is a newspaper editor in Santa Fe, N.M. He is on track to earn a master of arts in military history from Norwich University in Vermont in June 2008. His primary interests are civil-military relations and World War II. He earned a B.A. in journalism and history-political science at the University of Montana.
Published online: 03/09/2008.
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