Posted on 12/25/2019 3:07:56 PM PST by DFG
snip
The Battle of the Bulge has a special resonance for me, because my father almost died in it. He was a college student when World War II broke out. He graduated, then enlisted in the Army. He was sent to one of the big Army bases in the South for basic training. In those days, they gave every enlistee an IQ test; maybe they still do. My father’s performance on the test was good enough that he was pulled out of the ranks and sent to graduate school to become an engineer. (Drill Sergeant, with privates lined up: “Hinderaker! Who’s Hinderaker?” My father, wondering what he could have done to get in trouble already, stepping forward: “I’m Private Hinderaker.” Drill Sergeant: “Congratulations, Private Hinderaker. You just got the highest score on the IQ test of anyone who has ever gone through this base.” That is how my mother told the story, 40 years ago.)
Many, if not most, of those who qualified for the engineering program were Jews, and my father, who came from a town of 200 in South Dakota, became a lifelong philo-Semite. All proceeded according to plan until June 1944 and the D-Day invasion. The Army concluded that the war wouldn’t last long enough to need another class of engineers, so they terminated the program and sent its participants to the front.
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My Father’s battalion was cutting timber in the Ardennes when the battle started. They were sent to a position to block the Germans but ended up seeing almost no action in that battle.
They later saw plenty.
Mel Brooks was there as was my cousin who almost lost his feet.
“In those days, they gave every enlistee an IQ test, maybe they still do.”
When I enlisted in ‘60 the tests had been expanded to include science, math, English, secretarial apptitude, electricity, electronics, memory and other subjects which I have since forgotten.
The results of the tests steered you to where you should be, more or less.
Two of my uncles were on the ground in the Battle of the Bulge. One of them, I learned to never ask him about it again after asking the first time. Dad was in the Pacific at Okinawa. He did not detail any battles. That stuff was really nasty and war IS hell.
I got the idea to research this aspect of the battle when I saw Band of Brothers. At this one point they were attacked by the Germans with tanks and immediately the show cut away from what happened next. Easy company would be wiped out if they didn’t have their own heavy artillery or tanks. Something was missing here. The below letter fills in the blank.
Seventy-five years ago, on December 16, the Germans launched the Ardennes Offensive, which proved the bloodiest American battle of WW II with 89,000 casualties including 19,000 dead. At the center of the offensive beleaguered Bastogne featured the 101th Airborne withstanding a German siege.
However, these 10,000 paratroopers did not alone forge the severe impediment presented to 500,000 Germans troops attacking with tanks. Contributions from the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions, and the 28th Division’s 109th and 687th Field Artillery Battalions provided needed firepower. Remnants of the 9th Armored CCR including the 73rd Armored Field Artillery retreated into the town. The CCB of the 10th Armored was detached and ordered to occupy Bastogne ahead of the Nazi’s. It took heavy casualties along the way but arrived with 30 tanks and the 420th Armored Field Artillery Battalion. The 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion was ordered forward and arrived with 36 powerful 76mm long cannon.
Overall General Anthony McAuliffe, as former division artillery commander for the division, directed eleven artillery battalions and tanks from two armored divisions as well as his paratroopers. The paratroopers alone would probably have been annihilated and not have withstood the siege. The tanks and artillery alone could not have prevailed against the combined arms of the German assault without this airborne infantry support.
No wonder at the Battle of the Bulge McAuliffe could say “nuts” when the Germans demanded his surrender.
Partial Bibliography:
A Time for Trumpets by Charles B. MacDonald
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in WW II by Belton Y. Cooper WWII Armored Division http://xbradtc.com/2008/10/24/wwii-armored-division/
10th Armored Division (United States) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._10th_Armored_Division http://www.combatreels.com/10th_Armored_Division.cfm
9th Armored Division (United States) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._9th_Armored_Division
Battle of the Bulge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
Siege of Bastogne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bastogne
705th Tank Destroyer Battalion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/705th_Tank_Destroyer_Battalion
My good friend just finished an OLLI class on the 77th ID which served in ww1 and ww2. His dad was 1st Sgt of a medical clearing unit so was close to the front. He served in the Pacific Leyte and Luzon before Okinawa. (Hacksaw Ridge). We spent 25 % if the class on Okinawa. Brutal. Eastern Front brutal.
The made it over to LeHavre, France - then were put in a “quiet” section of the Ardennes forest. That area became known in history as the Battle of the Bulge. His Sergeant was killed in action, so my uncle was field-promoted to Sergeant.
He survived the Bulge and continued to fight across Belgium. His Division was the first to cross the Rhine into Germany “en masse” at the Remagen bridge. He was shot and killed in action two days later.
Dave Brubeck was a grunt destined for D Day but at last minute he was plucked from ranks because his musical talents were needed elsewhere.
I had a cousin who was a butcher and cook for troops not far behind the lines. When the Battle of the Bulge began, he suddenly became an infantryman! (Survived.) So did a lot of the black Red Ball Express guys.
That was my father’s story. He was a tech sergeant, trained as an artilleryman, assigned to Division because he could type. The artillery unit lost its guns, he retreated with division hqtrs ahead of the thrust though Belgium.
They trained an uncle of mine to be a radioman, only to make him second scout in a rifle squad. As the Germans began the Ardennes offensive, his unit was hustled from NW of Düren to near Kalterherberg on N shoulder of the "Bulge," so his participation in the "BotB" was basically a stationary defense, repelling a few smaller attacks and - IIRC - rounding up the stray Germans who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
His previous three months on the edges of the Hürtgenwald were, by contrast, intense and horrific.
Daddy’s battalion only saw heavy combat three times. First was St. Lo, then the assault crossing of the Roer River then the Rhine which they bridged after the first battalion failed.
They did have a lot of interesting times tho. Once they shot down an FW-190 which was strafing them in a quarry. Another time they pulled 18 mines out of a six yard square piece of ground.
I have their over 400 page history.
One of my uncles by marriage was a motor vehicle maintenance officer in a QM truck company. They were occasionally on both the Red and White routes, having been in France and Belgium since August of 1944. They routed trucks full of supplies to the units fighting in the Bulge, but they were unloaded and turned around fast, the drivers going like hell (more so than normal) back and forth. My uncle remembered the trucks going back all covered in frost and such, and pretty much beat to hell by the constant pounding they were taking.
I don't think any of his drivers were converted to infantrymen, but some of them did come back without trucks.
Dad's brother was in the 9th ID, which had already been in Africa and Sicily before he joinded them in England before D+4 (which was when they were tasked with cutting the Cotentin Peninsula and taking Cherbourg). Like your dad's battalion, 2/47 had interesting times and kept pretty busy from then until they linked up with the Soviets at the Mulde, but you never hear much about them.
Here is the map from the official US Army volume on the Ardennes Campaign that shows the north shoulder of the Bulge and the planned attack on 16 Dec. Holding the shoulder was key to delaying the German northern attack and forcing it to go further south than planned.
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/notes/MapII.jpg
The 9th Inf Div and the 78th Inf Div were in the northern part of the shoulder. My late father-in-law was in an artillery battalion of the 78th Inf Div. And he too became a battery clerk because he could type, instead of being on a forward observation team, as he was trained for.
My oldest brother was in a engineering battalion that put the first Bailey bridge across the Rhine and then defended it against the Germans sending boatloads of explosives down river. They set up machine gun positions to stop the boats until a ricochet killed a American Col on the opposite shore. My bother in law was in a 9th air force engineering battalion building airfields for P47s & P51s and was commanded to take a truck load of 5 gallon “Jerry cans” of gasoline to Patton in the Battle of the Bulge because he had out run fuel supplies. He was ordered to leave his truck and report back to his unit and asked how and was told to take a Jeep from the motor pool only to find out he had taken one of Patton’s personal Jeeps. I just read the book “First Across the Rhine”
My other brother was a POW of the Germans after his B17 was shot down over Wiesbaden Germany on Aug 15th 1944 and it was General George Patton that liberated that camp. I am now reading “The 303 Bomb Group The Hells Angels”
I am 86 and I still get emotional thinking about it all...
Nice!
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