Driving the final nail in Hitler's coffin

Editor's note: Following is the full text of the remarks of Brig. Gen. NYG (Ret.) Eliot S. Hermon, made at the Dec. 14 commemoration at the Galleria mall in Middletown on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

The night of 15 December, 1944, was cold and quiet along the Ardennes Front, the “Ghost Front.” From Monschau in the north, south across the Losheim Gap, across the Scnee Eifel, and terminating at Echternach, in the jungle the lion slept that night.

But the lion was not sleeping! The lion was prowling behind the German lines, and to the west of those lines, the Allied generals far behind the lines refused to accept any intelligence that in any way indicated the immediacy of a German attack.

In Echternach in Luxembourg a single rifle company garrisoned the town. No one saw any activity from the enemy across the Sauer River.

To their north, the 4th Infantry Division was holding the line while it licked its wounds after suffering 7,500 in losses during the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest.

To the north of the 4th Infantry Division was one Combat Command of the 9th Armored — just arrived in Europe and stationed on the “Ghost Front.” Sent for experience in anticipated skirmishes, sent to be blooded, to gain some easy combat experience before being totally committed in combat.

North of the 9th’s lines, where the Our flows into the Sauer, the lines were taken over by the 28th Infantry Division, like the 4th, also recovering from heavy fighting in the Hurtgen.

At Vianden an observation post manned by 37 GIs, who earlier had accepted the surrender of a German sergeant who warned them that “The Germans come tonight! The Germans come tonight!” The 28th’s positions continued north for another 22 or 23 miles, where the 106th Infantry Division, the “Golden Lions” had taken over from the 2nd Infantry Division only two days before.

The 106th, the newest Allied division in Europe, was commanded by Major General Alan Jones, who was very concerned by the fact that the entire division was occupying the Schnee Eiffel, a salient thrust deep into the German lines, and imminently in danger of being cut off and isolated. In addition, he was defending five miles of the seven-mile width of the Losheim Gap with the 14th Cavalry Group, troops left to him when he relieved the 2nd.

General Jones had good reason to be concerned. He was positioned beside the route the Germans had used to invade France in 1860, 1914, and 1940, and if they decided to come through again, he could be cut off and isolated from the Allied lines, and in the final two miles of the Gap there wasn’t a single tank or Allied foxhole! However, his concerns were ignored by Hodges, Bradley, and Eisenhower, none of whom, of course, were there on the ground.

Finally, at that point VIII Corp’s lines ended and V Corp’s began, with the 99th Division, and here again was a weakness, a weakness where two Corps areas joined, and a corridor through the lines of the 99th Division where the 2nd Division was attempting to penetrate the Seigfried Line through a two mile gap in the 99th’s lines.

Word had come to Major General Middleton, commanding VIII Corps, that massive German movements had been observed. Concerned, he sent the information on to General Hodges, commanding 1st Army, who chose to ignore the warnings, despite the fact that his own Intelligence Officer, Colonel “Monk” Dickson, had stated unequivocally that the Germans were about to attack through the Ardennes, but Hodges’ staff recommended ignoring Dickson’s warnings, because “he was a pessimist.” Even more, up the line of command, at Bradley’s 12th Army Group, the G2 announced that “it is now certain that attrition is steadily sapping the strength of German forces on the Western front.”

Back at SHAEF, Eisenhower’s G2 issued a report that the German forces were all but finished. Then that supreme egoist, British Field Marshal Montgomery, chimed in with a flat statement that the Germans “cannot stage major offensive operations,” and asked if he couldn’t have a few days of R&R in England.

In the Ardennes, it was now past midnight. It was the night of the 15 of December, 1944, and to the east some 250,000 Wehrmacht infantry, Panzer Truppen, and SS were moving up quietly over straw covered roads, the sound of their movement muffled, and by 0600 of the 16th, the axe had fallen!

As early as October, the German High Command was planning Wacht am Rhein, later renamed Herbstnebel, or Autumn Mist, and at 0600 hours, six a.m. on the morning of the 16th, German shells began raining down on the forward American positions in the Ardennes.

Now the Supreme Command finally realized their blindness, and reinforcements were dispatched to support the troops trying desperately to stem the German attack. General Bradley ordered the 10th Armored to Bastogne, and placed the 7th Armored under General Middleton’s command in the IIIrd Corps, while Eisenhower agreed to the shift of the XVIIIth Airborne Corps to the Ardennes as well.

The American forces fought heroically to stem the German tide, and although the Germans managed to break through in some areas, they were unable to do so in others.

Unfortunately, they did manage to drive through the 106th lines in some areas, capturing among others the crossroads at Baugnez, and there captured troops of the American 385th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, together with other POWs who had been forced to surrender, were murdered by SS troops of the 1st SS Panzer Division, commanded by SS Standartenführer Joachim “Jochen” Peiper, in the action referred to as "the massacre at Malmedy."

By nightfall on the 18th, elements of the 101st Airborne began to arrive in Bastogne, and by the 21st III Corps of the 3rd Army began a drive to relieve Bastogne, now under heavy pressure from the Germans. But when on the 22nd Germans demanded its surrender, Brigadier General McAuliffe made his historical response. History records that as “Nuts,” but many of us insist that his actual response was a suggestion to perform a biologically difficult, if not impossible act.

On Christmas morning the weather finally cleared, and American air attacks on the Germans and accurate supply drops to the Americans signaled the beginning of the end.

By the 4th of January the last major attack of the Ardennes was launched by Wehrmacht General von Manteuffel, in a final attempt to capture Bastogne. It failed, and American resistance throughout the area began driving the German forces back. By the 16th, the US 1st Army linked up to Patton’s 3rd, signaling the total failure of the Germans to break through to the Channel and create massive nightmares in the resupply and reinforcement of the Allied forces.

The Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, marked the final Allied nail in Hitler’s coffin. The troops destroyed in the Ardennes had been the German reserve intended to defend against the Allied crossing of the Rhine. Indeed, it has been said that this was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, since as a result, Allied troops on the Western front were finally able to carry the war on to German soil.

For example, from February to May, 3rd Army troops were able to drive from the German border, across the Rhine, and as far East as Weimar, before turning south to finally meet the advancing Russian troops in Czechoslovakia and Austria. On April 6th, 3rd Army troops liberated the first concentration encountered on the ground, an action which could not have happened, at least so soon, were it not for the Battle of the Bulge, for the men who stood and fought, fought and died, in the snow and freezing temperatures of the Ardennes Forest winter.

Nowadays, the Battle of the Bulge is fought with blank ammo by reenactors at Fort Indiantown Gap, Annville, Pa., and by other reenactment groups around the country. The Indiantown Gap reenactment is a long-running annual program, fascinating to observe, and a heck of a lot less dangerous than the real thing.