The Bulge

This is not intended to be a comprehensive historical account of what happened in the Ardennes Forrest in the winter of '44 & '45. Competent historians and journalists have written volumes about the "Battered Bastards of Bastogne", the "Malmadey Massacre" and other aspects of what came to be known as the "Battle of the Bulge."

This is merely a cannoneer's eye view of a small segment of the fighting that involved the men of my outfit the 275th AFA Bn. These were not career soldiers trying to make a name for themselves but drafted G. I.s, who only wanted to get it over with and get back home to the farm, the factory, and even more the family. My source is mainly my little diary and memory. The diary is sketchy and the memory is worse. The story may not be entirely accurate but it is honest.

This is what my diary says for Dec. 16. "630 Fire Missions -Buzz Bombs - sounded like BATTLE. The krauts broke the line and the 106th pulled out. We fired 140 rounds and slaughtered them but they kept coming. We march ordered and pulled out after dark. Lost a half track with all but fire control. Maintenance & Hoffman lost."

Remember that we had been in the front lines since Oct. 23rd and we had fired thousands of rounds. Our forward observers knew exactly what deflection and elevation was needed to hit any spot they could see in their field glasses. When the enemy advanced, fire was called for that location. The effect was devastating. We were told that the Germans were wearing white ski suits which would be hard to see on the snowy hillsides. It was said that the white suits turned red when our fire hit them.

My diary said that we fired 140 rounds that first day. Since there were 18 howitzers in the battalion we probably fired about 2500 rounds the first day of the Bulge. If this had happened on the entire front there might not have been any Battle of the Bulge.

It wasn't the fault of the 106th Infantry Division that they were so green in combat, but we felt sure that the 2nd Division would not have been so entirely routed. An infantry division had about 15000 men and the 106th had about 9000 casualties in the first few days of the Bulge. We found out later that most of them had been captured so it wasn't as bad as we heard at first.

We were no doubt slowing the enemy down in front of us but both to the south and the north they were streaming through. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard the command over the telephone "close station march order." We were pulling back. It was quite a job getting all of our things loaded and backing the M-7 up to hook on to the trailer. There was still fire in our stove in the dugout and we dumped it out on the wooden floor. I guess we didn't want the enemy to take possession of what had been our home since late October.

We pulled back three or four miles to the southwest and set up in a hex. At Medendorf the six howitzers had been in a straight line but it is normal for an armored artillery battery to be placed two in front, one on either side, and two behind with the executive officer and his aiming circle in the middle.

When morning came we pulled out of this hillside position and fell back again into a woods. We prepared anti-tank shells and antipersonnel time fire but apparently never used it. The enemy was reported to be about 300 yards in front of us. That is not normal for artillery units which are usually several miles from the front.

The next morning things looked better and we fired about 70 rounds and improved our position. I got some sleep in a pup tent. The Germans kept coming.

The morning of the 19th we fired some more and then march ordered. "As we came out we got M.G. (machine gun) and mortar fire." We went into a position in an open field position in front of a town. It wasn't much of a town, more of a village. It isn't on my Atlas but it's name was Hinderhousen.

We thought maybe there was a guy with a "burp gun" riding on the last vehicle of our convoy because every time we stopped and turned off our motors we could hear the distinctive sound of the German submachine gun. It fired rounds much faster than any of ours.

The next day we were told that we were attached to the 7th Armored Division. Somewhere along the way we picked up a couple of anti-aircraft crews that had gotten separated from their outfit. They had multiple .50 caliber machine guns, four to a mount. I forgot how they were pulled, probably a light vehicle like a jeep. I think there were two of them. They will be mentioned again later.

We were informed that all of the roads were in enemy hands so, although we were not surrounded, we were trapped. The plan was to try to hold out for three days "until help comes."

Thursday, December 21, 1944 brought the 275th the most severe fighting of our combat career. The "Jerries" (as they were called in World War I) were getting closer in front of us. We had tremendous admiration for the tankers of the 7th Armored Division. They only had a few tanks in our area and they looked like they were pretty well battered. They would drive Up one road and take a few shots and then come clanking back and go up another road for a few more shots and then do it all over again.

They may have been trying to fool the enemy into thinking there were more of them than there were. If an M-4 (Sherman) tank would go one on one with a Tiger tank the Tiger would probably win because of thicker armor and the German 88MM had much more penetration than the M-4s 75MM. But the M-4 was more maneuvable and we had so many more of them. Their factories and railroads were being bombed day and night and ours were running day and night unmolested. Still on this particular day the Tigers were moving forward.

In the midst of all this I got some mail and a package from home. Even in war the mail must go through.

Some time in the afternoon all hell broke loose" in back of us. It seems they had dropped some 55 paratroopers in back of us. Bullets were flying everywhere. This is where the anti-aircraft multiple .50 caliber machine-guns came in handy. They proved to be very effective against ground troops too. Only about every third shell is a tracer bullet but the tracers were thicker than the fourth of July. That meant that about three times that many shells were being fired. My diary says "C Btry lost another." I guess that means they lost an M-7. I remember distinctly that Headquarters lost a tank and some men. If my memory is accurate we wiped out the entire force of about 180 men.

Darkness fell and we still held our position. In other sectors the Germans had pushed far to the west of where we were. Dec 22 "Up most all night. Started snowing early in morning. Enemy infantry closing in. Thought our time had come."

It was one long night. I think I slept a little in a fox hole. I remember waking up one of the men in our section saying "We have shrapnel and eggs for breakfast." It sounds corny now but I thought this would be our last day. I wasn't afraid to die. I had absolute trust in God and had no doubt that I would be on my way to heaven if I was killed.

My feeling was more of regret. Regret that I would never again put my feet under the dining room table back home. Regret that I would never take my girl in my arms again. It was more sadness than fear.

It continued to snow and it was getting deeper. Visibility wasn't much over 100 yards. We could hear motors in front of us which we thought were Tiger Tanks. Burp guns were heard periodically.

Finally there was a march order. Our aiming stakes were 50 and 100 yards out in front of us and we were supposed to take them with us. As gunner corporal I could have ordered one of the cannoneers to go get them but I couldn't, I went myself. Burt Reynolds may have run "the longest yard" but maybe I ran the longest 200. Wearing combat boots with four buckle arctics on top of them and a tank suit and steel helmet it wasn't going to be any olympic record. The snow made running difficult but, thank God, visibility was poor also. I passed the first aiming post and let it go. "I'll get it on the way back, if I make it back." Maybe they couldn't see although I was almost on the sky line. I didn't look for them. I reached the farther post, pulled it from the ground, and started back. I can't remember about the wires. Aiming posts had little lights on them so that you could fire at night. I'm sure I didn't wind the wires up in a neat package. Nobody shot at me and when I got back to the M-7 it was almost like being home.

A word about bravery. I make a clear distinction between a brave person and a fearless person. We had a man named Vaughn, who apparently knew no fear. He could climb a tree and attach telephone wire with bullets knocking the bark off all around him (so the story goes) and then climb down the tree and laugh about it. He was fearless. Most of us were afraid at least part of the time, if not most of the time, but we did our jobs. This I call bravery.

It took a number of days but troops had cut a new road through the woods to get us out. The snow covered our escape so the enemy could not see us. Surely they were close enough to at least fire at us if they could have seen us. I felt then and still feel now that God sent the snow in answer to many prayers to spare our lives.

I suppose we could have escaped on foot several days earlier but we would have had to abandon our equipment. We could probably have destroyed it since we had gasoline but not much ammunition as well as I can recall. However, what good is an artillery outfit without howitzers?

Years later (1974) we were told at our first re-union that General Bruce Clarke was our savior at St Vith. We were defending St. Vith but we didn't know it at the time. In fact most of us never had an overview of the whole battle until it was explained to us in Knoxville, TN. thirty years later. No one is taking away from Gen. Clarke's organizing of the troops at St. Vith but he didn't send the snow that covered our retreat. In addition, I reserve the name Savior for someone else.

We were glad to get away from Hinderhousen. We pulled back three or four more miles set up and fired some until about 1 A.M. Then we moved again in back of another town. We got a few shells and moved again. About this time the 82nd Airborne Division landed and checked the German drive. We pulled out again with the 7th Armored "and fired from between two German fingers."

We were firing one way in A Battery. Other batteries were firing in almost the opposite direction. There was no such thing as the front lines. In this position an ME109 (German pursuit plane) flew so low I could have seen whether the pilot had shaved that day if I hadn't been so busy hitting the ground. I think Nanny fired a few rounds at him from our .30 caliber machine gun but most of the crew was on the ground with me. He was gone as quickly as he came. It wasn't "Bed check Charlie."

I think the German ME109, the British spitfire and our own pursuit planes all flew about the same speed which was about 300 m.p.h. There were no jet planes. Other weapons on their side were fairly close to ours. They were ahead of us in rockets but back in the states at Argonne Laboratory we were getting the atomic bomb ready. Dr. Seuss wrote The Butter Battle Book about two enemy groups who kept developing more and more potent weapons only to have the other side build a more powerful one yet. I'm afraid there is more truth than poetry in Dr Seuss' story. We are told that SDI (star wars) will rid the world forever of the fear of nuclear attack. I'm not saying that we should not build Strategic Defense Initiative but it has never happened in history. One side develops a weapon and the other side develops one to counter it and so it goes.

On Christmas Eve we pulled out again to a position outside of the fingers but we had the wrong position and had to move again. It was "cold as hell" according to the diary. Our army engineers were in the area laying mines so they must have expected that the Germans might advance some more.

Hitler had boasted that he was going to let the allied forces advance so far and then he was going to push them back in the sea. For a while it looked like he might do it.

"Pretty tough Christmas Eve." For a short time during the "Bulge" if it had been within my power I would have killed every man, woman, and child in Germany. Thank God it was not within my power to do this and thank God the desire for revenge faded out. In fact, five years later I was a graduate student at Indiana University and just down the hall in my dorm was an exchange student from the University of Gottingen who had been an officer in the German army on the Russian front. We became friends and I figured he couldn't go home for Christmas so I invited him to my place. He slept in the same bed where my mother, five years earlier, had been praying for victory over his country.

Christmas "12:30 A.M. Cold but didn't seem much like Christmas. Fired a bunch of them. Had a good bed made from ammo boxes". Kestner later told how homesick he was on Christmas. He was rough and tough on the outside but he had his sensitive side too. The lights on the aiming stakes were red and green and it reminded "Sarge" of home. I seem to remember Irma Kestner carrying a babe in arms at Camp Campbell so this would have been little Joe's first Christmas.

Somewhere along here the weather cleared and we started getting a lot of air support. The air force couldn't help us much from the beginning of the Bulge, Dec. 16th, until about Dec. 22 because clouds and snow obscured the ground. When it cleared the Bulge was doomed.

Dec. 26 it warmed up some and I got to sleep in a house all night long. As I recall there were holes in the house and no heat but it was better than the ground. The next morning I went back to the section and we started organizing our position. Dec 28 "Looks as if we are staying". Dec 29 "things are quieting down" Hickerson and I started digging a dugout. I guess we were expecting a stationary front like we had at Medendorf when we first went into the front lines in October.

How cold was it during the Bulge? It seemed colder than Kansas but we didn't have a thermometer. No doubt there are records somewhere. I think I read that it was Belgium's coldest winter in many years (70?). I remember that sometimes our hands stuck to the 105 ammo like they do to an ice cube tray from the refrigerator. It was cold!

The next day the whole section pitched in and we finished the dugout. It was good enough to sleep in but didn't have any heat. We used to boil coffee in a gallon tin can that I suppose we got from the kitchen truck. Kestner used to say that it was so dirty that we could have coffee for a week after we ran out. I thought he liked it that way until one day I caught him washing it.

My feet were beginning to bother me again. The diary doesn't say but I doubt that I had my shoes off from December 16 until I slept in the house on Dec. 26. Trench foot was coming back.

On New Years eve at midnight we fired two rounds. Jan. 1, I went to the aid station about my feet "no satisfaction".

We were given a few days rest at Aywaille about ten miles southeast of Liege. It is actually on my atlas. We were there from the 3rd to the 5th of January. While we were there Willie Hickerson received news that his baby had died back home.

Willie Hickerson was the quietest man in the section. He was small but very strong. He had an infectious grin and everybody liked him. Just think, if the baby had lived he would be twice as old as we were then.

On Jan 4th we had our first shower in a long time and we had three meals. We had been having only two meals per day I suppose to avoid so much movement and after dark activities. We supplemented with K rations and C rations and it wasn't that bad.

On the 5th we went back into the front lines beside some truck drawn 105's from some other outfit. The next day we did "plenty of firing." Long before this I had lost track of how many rounds we had fired in combat.

The winter continued. By the 8th the Germans were out of range for 105's but they were still able to reach us. A bunch of their shells came in on the 8th and 9th. On the 11th I got 34 letters. I slept half of the night in a house. It was better than none.

The next day we were moving and because of the snow we couldn't see a ditch and when we hit it one of our tracks came off. Some of the men jumped off thinking we were going to roll over.

While the track was being put back on the M7 a kind Belgian civilian let us come into his house and served us hot tea. Kestner got his name and address and wrote him later. This was in Verviers.

On the 14th of January we moved into a new position "in deep snow . How deep was it? There was a story that R. F. Jones jumped off his M-7 and completely disappeared. This was probably like Mark Twain's death, "greatly exaggerated." Anyway the story provided some welcome laughs. Victor Frankle a Jewish Psychiatrist in his book Men's Search For Meaning, told how humor helped prisoners to survive in the German concentration camps. It helps to laugh.

We moved forward on the 16th to a spot that had been taken at great cost. There were shell holes and bodies all over the place. There seemed to be about an equal number of American and German soldiers who had died and there were two civilians who were killed in an outhouse. We thought it was humorous at the time. There didn't seem to be any hurry to pick the bodies up as they were frozen.

Somewhere along here I had an experience which a theologian would call a theophany. I was on the M-7 by myself as it was my turn to listen for the phone. It was one of those bitter cold days and I was praying. I can't remember the content of my prayer but all of a sudden I began to feel gradually warmer. It was a wonderful feeling. When someone took my place at the phone I rejoined the section and I felt a love for the men I had never felt before. It was glorious. I don't know if the men could tell it or not but I felt like I had just got back from the Mount of Transfiguration. It lasted for days.

The next day some shells came close to us. We were not firing but we could hear heavy fighting just ahead. I had a fever and went to the aid station a couple of times. On the 20th I took a bath. I think there had only been one shower since the Bulge began over a month before.

The radio said that the Russians were really doing well. My diary said that we fired 140 rounds on Jan 22, 107 on Jan 23, and 72 on Jan 24. On the 23rd US troops re-entered St Vith from which we had been driven around Dec. 22. The Bulge was flattening fast.

On Jan. 29 we march ordered and drove 32 miles back through Verviers to the rear echelon. The next day we sent off our laundry. Some of it must have been pretty mellow.

We had expected winter would last a lot longer but around Feb. 1 it warmed up and a gentle rain melted the snow in just a day or two. On Feb. 2 we saw a USO show and the next day I "smoked a cigar." We got our clothing back and were ready to go again. The Bulge was over.

DeLoyd Cooper is the Historian for the 275th Armored Field Artillery Battalion Association.
Copyright © 1999 DeLoyd Cooper. All rights reserved.
Revised: February 22, 2000