The Germans had cut the road back to Consdorf; so the right team of Task Force Standish was withdrawn from the attack on Hill 329 and spent most of the afternoon clearing an exit for the men and vehicles in Berdorf. 1940. On the final night (15-16 December) the division moved into the position for the jump-off: the 423d on the right, north of Echternach; the 320th on the left, where the Sauer turned east of Echternach; and the 316th in army reserve northeast of the city. Other elements of Task Force Riley meanwhile had advanced to the mill beyond Lauterborn where the command post of Company G was located. Meanwhile the sixty-some members of Company F remained in the Parc Hotel, whose roof and upper story had been smashed in by German shelling. Strength to exploit these points of penetration failed when the village centers of resistance were bypassed. The division fusilier battalion was committed against the 12th Infantry center in an attempt to drive a wedge through at Scheidgen while a part of the 23d Festung Battalion crossed the Sauer near Girst to extend the left flank of the German attack. There was, of course, no means by which the VIII Corps commander could know that the Seventh Army scheme of maneuver was limited to a swing only as far as Mersch, eight miles north of the city. Radio Luxembourg, the powerful station used for Allied propaganda broadcasts, was situated near Junglinster. This house-to-house assault gained only seventy-five yards before darkness intervened. One of the Company F men had been rummaging about and had found an American flag. It cannot now be determined whether the German agents (V-Leute), who undoubtedly were operating behind American lines, had correctly diagnosed the beginning of the Third Army shift toward Luxembourg and Belgium, or, if so, whether they had been able to communicate with the German field headquarters. US ARMY 1ST ID FIRST INFANTRY DIVISION PATCH BIG RED ONE 1 VETERAN FORT RILEY. The failure on the part of the 987th to push past Mllerthal on 17 December or to overflow from the gorge onto the flanks of the two American units remains. The superiority in tanks maintained by the 4th Infantry Division throughout this operation would effectively checkmate the larger numbers of the German infantry. The force available was insufficient to continue the attack. As Company C worked its way through the woods south of Osweiler the left platoon ran head on into the 2d Battalion, 320th Infantry; all the platoon members were killed or captured. #23A US Army WII ARMY Infantry 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th patches. The infantry to the front were alerted for their role in the combined attack and half-tracks with radios were moved close to the line of departure as relay stations in the tank-infantry communications net. During the night of 16 December searchlights had been brought down to the river opposite Echternach to aid the German engineers attempting to lay spans on the six stone piers, sole relic of the ancient bridge from whose exit the people of Echternach moved yearly in the "dancing procession" on the feast of St. Willibrord. gathered about sixty men in the Parc Hotel as the enemy closed in. Then the German gunners laid down smoke and a bitter three-hour barrage, disabled some tanks and half-tracks, and drove the Americans to cover. and forward supply dumps in the Trier-Bitburg area. TWS is the largest online community of Veterans existing today and is a powerful Veteran locator. Battle of the Bulge. On the morning of 17 December the 10th Armored Division (General Morris) had moved out of Thionville for Luxembourg, the first step (although at the time not realized) which General Patton's Third Army would make to intervene in the battle of the Ardennes. It was too late. 8th Infantry Division "Pathfinder Division" "Arrow Division" Its nickname is represented by the golden arrow piercing the white "8" on a blue shield. Sharp assault destroyed the German machine gun positions and the attack reached the ridge leading to Hill 329. Ammunition at the pieces ultimately gave out, but a volunteer raced to the. Lieutenant Leake refused permission to sample this cache, a decision he would regret when, after withdrawal from Berdorf, he and twenty-one of his men were returned to the foxhole line with neither their coats nor blankets. All that could be said of the 12th Infantry center was that the situation was fluid, for here the road junction at Scheidgen was in enemy hands and German detachments were on the loose. In Dickweiler the troops of the 3d Battalion, 12th Infantry, had been harassed by small forays from the woods above the village. The two, last of the Americans to come out of Echternach, made the run safely despite direct fire aimed by the German assault gun. The American makeweight would have to be its armor. Although the 212th was at full strength it shared the endemic weaknesses of the volks grenadier division: insufficient communications and fewer assault guns than provided by regulation (only four were with the division on 16 December). Activated again on Jul 1, 1940, as part of the build-up of military forces prior to the US's entry into World War II. American artillery, now increased in the 12th Infantry zone, gave as good support as communications permitted and succeeded in destroying a pontoon bridge at the Echternach site before it could be put in use. At dark the Germans had lost. General Barton, it may be added, had refused absolutely to permit the artillery to move rearward. others a few hours in Luxembourg City, ice cream in several flavors, well-watered beer, and the dubious pleasure of hearing accordionists squeeze out German waltzes and Yankee marching songs of World War I vintage. The tanks were hardly out of sight before the Germans began an assault on the hat factory with bazookas, demolition charges, and an armored assault gun. Despite the presence of the tanks, which here could maneuver off the road, the infantry were checked halfway to their objective by cross fire from machine guns flanking the slope and artillery fire from beyond the Sauer. Intervention by elements of the 10th Armored Division on 18 December, as a result, was viewed only as the prelude to a sustained and forceful American attempt to regain the initiative. 1 Jun-. The 87th Infantry Division ("Golden Acorn" [1]) was a unit of the United States Army in World War I and World War II . Thirty minutes later the answer came back from CCA: a section of tanks and some riflemen were fighting at the outskirts of Echternach. The company radio was back for repair but each of the artillery observers, forward, had a radio. The counterattack moved off on the morning of 18 December in a thick winter fog. As before, the maneuver was a flanking movement designed to seize the high ground overlooking Mllerthal. 8th Infantry Division The 8th Division was activated 1 July 1940. Company G, now some forty men, and the last of Riley's tanks withdrew to the new main line of resistance. Farther to the west another part of the German force which had come from Scheidgen surrounded the rear headquarters of the 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry, and a platoon of towed tank destroyers in Geyershof. Also included are units of the 8th and 9th Army Air Forces. Gen. Edwin W. Piburn), the leading combat command, should make an immediate drive to the north between the Schwarz Erntz gorge and the main Echternach-Luxembourg road. The tanks and riflemen proceeded to run a 2,000-yard gauntlet of bursting shells along the high, exposed road to Dickweiler (probably the enemy guns beyond the Sauer were firing interdiction by the map). antitank gun which had been placed here to block the gorge road. But a thick winter fog rolled in before the Americans could occupy the hill. About forty men were wounded, creating a problem for evacuation by this small force. General Morris drove ahead of his troops and reported to General Middleton at Bastogne. Barton was apprehensive that the enemy would attempt a raid in force to seize Luxembourg City, and in the battle beginning on the 16th he would view Luxembourg City as the main German objective. The little column came in on the flank of the 2d Battalion, 320th Regiment, which was in the process of moving two companies forward in attack formation across the open ground northwest of Dickweiler. Apparently the crews manning the rubber boats had trouble with the swift current, and there were too few craft to accommodate large detachments. There was no guarantee, however, that the enemy had committed all his forces; the situation would have to develop further before the 4th Division commander could draw heavily on the two regiments not yet engaged. Perhaps these German divisions faced from the onset the insoluble tactical dilemma, insoluble at least if the outnumbered defenders staunchly held their ground when cut off and surrounded. After suffering more than 6,000 casualties in heavy fighting in the Hrtgen Forest during the autumn of 1944, Maj. Gen. Norman Cota's 28th "Keystone" Division was sent to an area that First Army thought would be a quiet sector to rest and replace their losses. eleven tanks and six half-tracks and made their way past burning buildings to the new 4th Division line north and east of Consdorf. Actually the 9th Armored (-) did not abandon the right flank anchor at Waldbillig and so continued direct contact with the friendly forces deployed near the Waldbillig-Mllerthal road. American infantrymen jumped on top of the enormous Panthers and Jagdpanthers, as they rolled through the streets and killed the crews, with thermite grenades thrown into the turrets. Pole charges or bazooka rounds had blasted a gaping hole in one side of the hotel, but thus far only one man had been wounded. The failure to open the divisional bridges over the Sauer within the first twenty-four hours had forced the German infantry to continue to fight without their accustomed heavy weapons support even while American reinforcements were steadily reducing the numerical edge possessed by the attacker. US ARMY 17TH AIRBORNE DIVISION PATCH GOLDEN TALONS BATTLE OF THE BULGE VETERAN. The 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry, which had met the German column in the woods west of Osweiler the day before, headed for the village on the morning of 18 December. While General Morris made plans to hold the ground needed as a springboard for the projected counterattack, General Beyer, commanding the German LXXX Corps, prepared to meet an American riposte. The Germans had excellent intelligence of the 4th Infantry Division strength and positions. Replacements, now by order named "reinforcements," joined the division, but by mid-December the regiments still averaged five to six hundred men understrength. were many seventeen-year-olds. The Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944 - January 18, 1945) . Yankee Division Patch.svg 26th . The first appearance of any enemy force deep in the center occurred near Maisons Lelligen, a collection of two or three houses on the edge of a large wood northwest of Herborn. These units vary in size from a small number of people up to and including an Army Group. The division served as the first official military guardian of the gold vault at Fort Knox. Whatever the reason, this enemy penetration went no further than Mllerthal. Troops from the 320th Regiment and fusilier battalion circled around Echternach and Lauterborn meanwhile in an attempt to cut the main road at Scheidgen. Colonel Luckett deployed his troops along the ridge southwest of the Mllerthal-Waldbillig road, and a log abatis wired with mines and covered by machine guns was erected to block the valley road south of Mllerthal. Only two Festung battalions were left to cover the twelve miles south to the boundary between the Seventh and First Armies, but in this denuded sector the Sauer and Moselle Rivers afforded a considerable natural defense. Like This Movie Trailer? Morris, now charged with unifying defensive measures while the Third Army counterattack forces gathered behind this cover, alerted CCA, 10th Armored Division, early on the morning of 20 December, for employment as a mobile reserve. At the opposite end of the line enemy guns and mortars worked feverishly to bring down Dickweiler around the ears of the defenders, but the Americans could not be shelled out. December 20, 2019. judgmental sampling is also known as . The first German assault here did not strike until about 1100, although Echternach lay on low ground directly at the edge of the river. With the close of the second. The center task force (Lt. Col. At daylight on 20 December the 1st Battalion, 423d Regiment, which had been brought in from the Lauterborn area, initiated a counterattack against the team from Task Force Standish at the edge of Berdorf and recovered all the ground lost during the previous two days. When the fire lifted the attack was resumed, but the enemy fought stubbornly for each house. The supply situation was poor and could become critical, in part because of the Allied air attacks at the Rhine crossings, in part because of the Allied success-even during poor flying weather-in knocking out transportation. Troops of the Third Army were already on the move north, there to form the cutting edge of a powerful thrust into the southern flank of the German advance. The Americans dug in for the night, and the Germans passed on toward Scheidgen. At the same time he gave Colonel Chance eight medium tanks and ten light tanks, leaving the 70th Tank Battalion (Lt. Col. Henry E. Davidson, Jr.) with only three mediums and a platoon of light tanks in running order. Covered by this counterattack the battalion headquarters withdrew to Herborn. General Morris left Bastogne and met the 4th Infantry Division commander in Luxembourg. The 8th U.S. Infantry reactivated in 1947, assigned to Ft. Ord, California, remaining assigned to the 4th Infantry Division. Two volunteers were dispatched in a jeep to make a run for Lauterborn, carrying word that enemy tanks were moving into the city and asking for "help and armor." Tanks pumped seven hundred rounds into the woods to shake the Germans there, but little time was left in the short winter day and the foot soldiers only got across the Mllerthal-Waldbillig road. Equipment, which had been in use since the Normandy landings, was in poor condition. Accordingly, the 316th Infantry began to cross the Sauer, moving up behind the center of the parent division. 1944. Outpost 2 at Birkelt Farm, a mile and a half east of Berdorf, somehow escaped surprise. The 4th Division switched all local. A large-scale American counterattack against the LXXX Corps could be predicted, but lacking aerial reconnaissance German intelligence could not expect to determine the time or strength of such an attack with any accuracy. This proved to be slow work. General Sensfuss had determined to erase the stubborn garrison and led the 212th Fusilier Battalion and some assault guns (or tanks) in person to blast the Americans loose. This made the 8th the only division in US Army history to be designated Infantry Division (Mechanized) (Airborne). Unit commanders and noncommissioned officers were good and experienced; morale was high. With wire shot out, radios failing, and outposts overrun, only a confused and fragmentary picture of the scope and intent of the attack was available in the 4th Infantry Division headquarters. . Casualties among the officers left a lieutenant who had just joined the company in command. Both sides were forced to rely largely upon radio communication, but it would appear that the Germans had particular difficulty: prisoners reported that "nobody seems to know where anybody else is.". Task Force Riley sent tanks carrying infantry into the edge of Echternach on the morning of 19 December. . The Schwarz Erntz, taking its name from the rushing stream twisting along its bottom, is a depression lying from three to five hundred feet below the surrounding tableland. Half an hour later this report was denied; now a message said the company was coming out in small groups. Barton's troops and Morris' tanks had brought the 212th and the 276th Volks Grenadier Division to a halt, had then withdrawn most of their advance detachments successfully, and now held a stronger position on a shortened line. Miles L. Standish), which had been assigned to help the 2d Battalion, 12th Infantry, clear the enemy from Berdorf, had little better success. By nightfall the Germans had been driven back some distance from Lauterborn (they showed no wish to close with the tanks), but the decision was made to dig in for the night alongside Company G rather than risk a drive toward Echternach in the dark. The action lasted for over three hours At last two howitzers were manhandled into a position from which they could cover the company; guns and vehicles were laboriously turned around in the mud, and the company withdrew. At several points canyonlike cliffs rise sheer for a hundred feet. Barton) left the VII Corps after a month of bloody operations in the Hrtgen Forest. They went overseas on 5 December 1943 where they trained in Ireland for the Invasion of Europe. The Division arrived on the European Continent on 4 Jul 44 and elements began their World War II combat on 6 July with the entire division engaged on 8 July 1944. The Battle of the Bulge began with the German attack (Operation Wacht am Rhein and the Herbstnebel plan) on the morning of December 16, 1944. Most important, just before midnight the corps commander telephoned General Barton that a part of the 10th Armored Division would leave Thionville, in the Third Army area, at daybreak on 17 December. 2nd Infantry Division, BOBA veterans to attend 8ARMDD Monument Dedication in Carlisle, PA. It is likely that the enemy had spotted all the American outpost and artillery positions; it is certain he knew that the 212th Volks Grenadier Division would be opposed only by the 12th Infantry during the first assault phase. Paul H. Dupuis, the senior officer in Echternach, refused on the ground that General Barton's "no retrograde movement" order of 16 December was still in effect.3 As darkness settled in, the small relief force turned back to the mill north of Lauterborn, promising to return on the morrow with more troops. While part of Task Force Standish was engaged in Berdorf, another team attacked through heavy underbrush toward Hill 329, east of Berdorf, which overlooked the road to Echternach. The 12th Infantry had rigidly obeyed the division commander's order that there should be "no retrograde movement," despite the fact that nine days earlier it had been rated "a badly decimated and weary regiment" and that on 16 December its rifle companies still were much understrength. It was his father's 47th birthdaya veteran who had served in France in the first War. The right wing was held by the 99th Infantry Division, whose positions reached from Monschau to the V-VIII Corps boundary in the Buchholz Forest northwest of the Losheim Gap. Captain Murray S. Pulver, commander of Company B, 120th Infantry Regiment, was in his usual placethe thick of the fighting. Orders were radioed to Company E (a fresh battery for its radio had been brought in by the tanks) to fight its way out during the night. After two hours, and some casualties, a patrol bearing a white flag worked its way in close enough for recognition. The enemy here was in considerable strength and had established observation posts on the ridges ringing Lauterborn and bordering the road. In accordance with the division orders to hold back maximum reserves, the 12th Infantry had only five companies in the line, located in villages athwart the main and secondary roads leading southwest from the Sauer River crossings to the interior of the Grand Duchy. The wounded were left in Berdorf and the task force tanks, hampered by milling civilian refugees, began a night-long fire fight with the 2d Battalion, 423d Regiment, which had concentrated to capture Consdorf. Elsewhere on the VIII Corps front the enemy advance was picking up speed and reinforcements were rolling forward. The 8th Infantry Division, (" Pathfinder " [1]) was an infantry division of the United States Army during the 20th century. The Seventh Army had thrown three of its four divisions into the surprise attack at the Sauer River on 16 December. Higher German headquarters had anticipated the appearance of some American reinforcements opposite the LXXX Corps as early as the third day of the operation. As the American reinforcements stiffened the right flank and the armored task forces grappled to wrest the initiative from the enemy on the left, German troops widened and deepened the dent in the 12th Infantry center, shouldering their way southward between Scheidgen and Osweiler. At Lauterborn, however, they were told that the tanks could not be risked in Echternach after dark. Battle Casualties: 13,458 : Non-Battle Casualties: 7,598 : Total Casualties: 21,056 : Percent of T/O Strength: 149.4 : Campaigns. Thus both Osweiler and Dickweiler remained tight in American hands. Even so General Barton made careful disposition of his understrength and weary division, even ordering the divisional rest camps, originally back as far as Arlon, to be moved to sites forward of the regimental command posts. Find 8th Infantry Division unit information, patches, operation history, veteran photos and more on TogetherWeServed.com. The 320th had not reached Osweiler and the first assault at Dickweiler had been repulsed handily. The 1st Battalion, 423d Regiment, overran three of the outpost positions, captured the company mortars, machine guns, and antitank guns sited in support of the forward detachments, and moved in on Berdorf. Early in the day Company B and ten tanks from the 70th Tank Battalion renewed the attack at Berdorf in an attempt to break through to Company F, still encircled at the opposite end of the village. This force arrived on the scene shortly after the enactment of the German ambush fought a short sharp engagement, rescued some of the prisoners from Company C, and pushed on into Osweiler. Later the 4th Infantry Division historian was able to write: "This German battalion is clearly traceable through the rest of the operation, a beaten and ineffective unit.". In December, 1944, the gorge represented a formidable military obstacle, difficult of traverse for both foot troops and vehicles, capable of defense by only a few. Neither the 83d Division, which the 4th had relieved, nor any higher headquarters considered the Germans in this sector to be capable of making more than local attacks or raids, and patrols from the 4th Division found nothing to change this estimate. Then, so the plan read, CCA would advance in three task forces: one through the Schwarz Erntz gorge; one on the Consdorf-Berdorf road; and the third through Scheidgen to Echternach. General Sensfuss told his superiors that the 212th had made little progress beyond completing the encirclement of Echternach. What had been seen were troops of the 987th Regiment, the reserve regiment of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division, then attacking in the 9th Armored Division sector. At dark the Americans drew back to the hotel, while the Germans plastered the area with rockets, artillery, and mortar shells, lobbed in from across the river.2. The 12th Infantry commander already had given permission for Company E to evacuate Echternach, but communications were poor-indeed word that the tanks had reached Company E did not arrive at the 12th Infantry command post until four hours after the event-and the relief force turned back to Lauterborn alone. Early in the afternoon Company B mounted five light and five medium tanks and set out to reach Company F. At the southern entrance to Berdorf, which is strung out along the plateau road for three-quarters of a mile, the relief force ran into a part of the 1st Battalion, 423d Regiment, which opened bazooka fire from the houses. In the meantime the 2d Battalion, 22 Infantry (Lt. Col. Thomas A. Kenan), had arrived in the 12th Infantry zone. CCA made good speed on the 75-mile run from Thionville, but the leading armor did not arrive in the 12th Infantry area until late in the afternoon of 17 December. There they re-established contact with Company E and covered the withdrawal of outlying detachments to the hat factory. Osweiler now had a garrison of one tank company and four understrength rifle companies. After a short melee in the darkness American hand grenades discouraged the assault at this breach and the enemy withdrew to a line of foxholes which had been dug during the night close to the hotel. The 12th Infantry was on the left (next to the 9th Armored Division) and fronting on the Sauer; the 8th Infantry was in the center, deployed on both the Sauer and Moselle; the 22d Infantry reached to the right along the Moselle until it touched the First and Third Army boundary just beyond the Luxembourg border. When darkness fell the Americans still were held in check, and the infantry drew back, with two tanks in support, and dug in for the night. This OOB specifically, at a point near the end of the battle, which lasted from 16 December 1944 until 25 January 1945. In the fire fight which followed the 2d Battalion companies became separated, but the early winter darkness soon ended the skirmish. German casualties probably ran somewhat higher, but whether substantially so is questionable. The tanks opened fire on the German flank and rear, while all the infantry weapons in the village blazed away. The third task force from CCA, 10th Armored (led by Lt. Col J. R. Riley), made good progress in its attack along the Scheidgen-Lauterborn axis. Since any static linear defense was out of the question because of the length of the front and the meandering course of the two rivers, Barton instructed his regimental commanders to maintain only small forces at the river outpost line, holding the main strength, generally separate companies, in the villages nearby. Finally, the Americans halted near the T in the gorge road just south of Mllerthal. The new American line, running from Dickweiler through Osweiler, Hill 313, Consdorf, to south of Mllerthal, was somewhat weak in the center but solidly anchored at the flanks. Company F was mounted on tanks from the 19th Tank Battalion, which had just come in from the 9th Armored Division and also set out for Osweiler. Immediately after the Battle of the Bulge, the tag "a calculated risk" would be applied to . 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