While CCA, 10th Armored, gave weight to the 4th Division counterattack, General Barton tried to strengthen the 12th Infantry right flank in the Osweiler-Dickweiler sector. Consdorf, the command post of the 2d Battalion, 12th Infantry, was left open to an attack from Mllerthal up the Hertgrund ravine. This fact, combined with the American pressure on either shoulder of the penetration area, may explain why the enemy failed to continue the push in the center as 18 December ended. Normandy; Northern France ; The southern shoulder of the German counteroffensive had jammed. Go to https://www.militaryvideo.com/ to purchase the entire video, or to see movie trailers of over 700 other military videos.This 9. Middleton had nothing to offer but the 159th Engineer (Combat) Battalion, which was working on the roads. US ARMY 17TH AIRBORNE DIVISION PATCH GOLDEN TALONS BATTLE OF THE BULGE VETERAN. At Berdorf most of Company F (1st Lt. John L. Leake) had been on outpost duty at the four observation posts fronting the river. The 4th Division would not be left to fight it out alone. The Schwarz Erntz gorge lay within the 4th Infantry Division zone but in fact provided a natural cleavage between the 4th Division and the 9th Armored Division. The problem of regimental control and coordination was heightened by the wide but necessary dispersion of its units on an extended front and the tactical isolation in an area of wooded heights chopped by gorges and huge crevasses. The center task force (Lt. Col. The 2d Battalion of the 22d Infantry, in regimental reserve, was alerted to move by truck at daylight on 17 December to the 12th Infantry command post at Junglinster, there to be joined by two tank platoons. The enemy made no move to push deeper in the center. The division completed its concentration within the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg on the 13th, its three regiments deployed as they would be when the German attack came. to widen the avenues of penetration behind the panzers. 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. For this reason the 212th was assigned the mission of protecting the flank of the Seventh Army, just as the latter was responsible for guarding the flank of the forces in the main counteroffensive. The platoon from Company A, 12th Infantry, which had been posted on Hill 313 the day before, fell back to Scheidgen and there was overwhelmed after a last message pleading for tank destroyers. Company A, mounted on a platoon of light tanks, was ordered to open the main road to Lauterborn and Echternach which supplied the 2d Battalion (Maj. John W. Gorn). December 1944. About an hour after dark a message from the 3d Battalion reached the 12th Infantry command post: "Situation desperate. 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. This proved to be slow work. In the fire fight which followed the 2d Battalion companies became separated, but the early winter darkness soon ended the skirmish. American troops atop the ridge known as the Schnee Eifel weren't expecting much action that morning. Other troops of Task Force Standish returned to the attack at Hill 329, on the Berdorf-Echternach road, where they had been checked by flanking fire the previous day. Two later attacks on New Year's Day 1945 attempted to create second fronts in Holland (Operation Schneeman) and in northern France (Operation Nordwind ). A few small affrays occurred in the Osweiler-Dickweiler sector, but that was all. Possibly the American artillery and self-propelled guns had disorganized and disheartened the German infantry; prisoners later reported that shell fragments from the tree bursts in the bottom of the wooded gorge "sounded like falling apples" and caused heavy casualties. On October 9, the 1st Battalion, 120th Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, was ordered to take part in an afternoon attack on the fortified village of Birk, three miles north of Aachen. Thus both Osweiler and Dickweiler remained tight in American hands. General support was provided by the division's own 155-mm. a mystery. . judgmental sampling is also known as . Company E, which had about seventy men and was the strongest in the battalion, led off. Company G, now some forty men, and the last of Riley's tanks withdrew to the new main line of resistance. Heavy and accurate shellfire followed each American move. 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. 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. The Fall of the Golden Lions. Also included are units of the 8th and 9th Army Air Forces. As soon as the Allies had broken out of the Normandy Beachhead, they pushed the Germans back rapidly until they had reached the German Frontier in November and December. Across these rivers lay a heterogeneous collection of German units whose lack of activity in past weeks promised the rest the 4th Division needed so badly. Successful the American defense in the Sauer sector had been, but costly too. 1940. 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. Half an hour later this report was denied; now a message said the company was coming out in small groups. But Colonel Chance sent out all of the usable tanks in Company B, 70th Tank Battalion-a total of three-to pick up a rifle squad at the 3d Battalion command post (located at Herborn) and clear the road to Osweiler. The Seventh Army had thrown three of its four divisions into the surprise attack at the Sauer River on 16 December. There they re-established contact with Company E and covered the withdrawal of outlying detachments to the hat factory. New. American artillery observers by the failing light saw "troops pouring into Echternach." The rest of the tanks returned to Consdorf for gasoline and ammunition. The Germans had excellent intelligence of the 4th Infantry Division strength and positions. Click on a link to access the respective web site. A white-clad soldier from the 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, with young German prisoners captured during fighting in the Sauer River sector. 1944. 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. This company struck Lauterborn, on the road a mile and a half southwest of Echternach, and cut off the Company G outposts. The team from Task Force Standish had made little progress in its house-to-house battle in Berdorf. 4th Infantry Division troops dash across a Bailey bridge while under enemy fire near Moesdorf, Luxemborg, January 21, 1945. American intelligence officers estimated on 17 December that the enemy had a superiority in numbers of three to one; by the end of 18 December the balance was somewhat restored. Replacements, now by order named "reinforcements," joined the division, but by mid-December the regiments still averaged five to six hundred men understrength. 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. In six days (through 21 December, after which the Americans would begin their counterattack) the units here on the southern shoulder lost over 2,000 killed, wounded, or missing. The American artillery forward observer's tank was crippled by a bazooka and the radio put out of commission, but eventually word reached the supporting artillery, which quickly drove the enemy to cover. For the 106th Infantry Division, the Opening of the Bulge was a Death Blow. By some chance the two platoons on the right missed the German hive. At the same time elements of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division struck through Waldbillig, the point of contact between the 4th Division and the 9th Armored, in an attempt to push the right wing of the LXXX Corps forward to a point where the road net leading east to the Sauer might be more easily denied the gathering American forces. The 35-mile front assigned to the 4th Division conformed to the west bank of the Sauer and Moselle Rivers. narrow that the tanks had to advance in single file, and only the lead tank could fire. Major Gorn organized a hasty defense with a few cooks, MP's, stragglers, and one tank, but the blow did not fall. Either these sets failed to function or the outposts were surprised before a message could get out. 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. Of the 4th Division, it must. 8th Armored Casualty Figures Casualty figures for the 8th Armored Division, European theater of operations: Total battle casualties: 2,011 Total deaths in battle: 469 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. Having lost over 5,000 battle casualties and 2,500 nonbattle casualties from trench foot and exposure, the division now had to be rebuilt to something approaching its former combat effectiveness. Artillery, normally the first supporting weapon to be brought into play by the division, had very limited effect at this stage. 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. Many radios were in the repair shops, and those at outposts had a very limited range over the abrupt and broken terrain around Echternach and Berdorf, Luxembourg's "Little Switzerland." The original defenders had taken a large bag of prisoners the previous day; these were sent back to Herborn with a tank platoon. 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. Troops of the 2d Battalion, 8th Infantry (Lt. Col. George Mabry), with tanks and armored field artillery firing in support, first attacked east from Waldbillig to take the wooded nose around which looped the Waldbillig-Mllerthal road. Colonel Chance took Company C, the last troops of the 12th Infantry, and sent them to the 3d Battalion command post for use on the morrow. The elements of Task Force Riley, which had waited outside of Lauterborn through the night of l9-20 December in vain expectation that Company E would attempt to break out of Echternach, received a radio message at 0823 that Company E was surrounded by tanks and could not get out. The VIII Corps commander originally had intended to use a part of the 10th Armored in direct support of the 28th Division, but now he instructed Morris to send one combat command to the Bastogne area and to commit the remainder of the 10th Armored with the 4th Infantry Division in a counterattack to drive the Germans back over the Sauer. to join the two companies beleaguered in Osweiler. The Parc was a three-storied reinforced concrete resort hotel (indicated in the guide-books as having "confort moderne") surrounded by open ground. In the meantime the 2d Battalion, 22 Infantry (Lt. Col. Thomas A. Kenan), had arrived in the 12th Infantry zone. Morale was good, bolstered superbly by the company cook who did his best to emulate the "cuisine soigne" promised in the hotel brochures by preparing hot meals in the basement and serving the men at their firing posts. 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. This idea caught on and other men started to serve the howitzers, awkward as the technique was, some firing at ranges as short as sixty yards. 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. Osweiler, west of Dickweiler, thus far had seen no enemy. 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." 10th, 51st, and 53rd Armored Infantry Battalions 8th, 35th, and 37th Tank Battalions 22nd, 66th, and 94th Armored FA Battalions . Troops of the 8th Infantry Regiment move out over the seawall on Utah Beach after coming ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The net day's operations amounted to a stand-off. Finally, in the late afternoon, Colonel Chance sent a call over the radio relay system: "Where is Riley?" While the American column moved in a northeasterly direction, a German column, probably a battalion in strength suddenly intersected the 2d Battalion line of march. Scheidgen was retaken early in the afternoon virtually without a fight (the German battalion which had seized the village had already moved on toward the south). Strength sufficient to achieve a quick, limited penetration the German divisions possessed, so long as the assault forces did not stop to clean out the village centers of resistance. Three battalions of 155's and two batteries of 105-mm. At Bech, behind the American center, General Barton now had the 3d Battalion, 22d Infantry, in reserve, having further stripped the 4th Division right. As yet the 212th had no bridge, for the American artillery had shot out the structure erected on the 16th before it could be used. 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. According to War Department General Order 114, December 7, 1945 there were approximately 2,000 units that received the Ardennes Credit, (The Battle of the Bulge). This team fought through some scattered opposition southwest of Lauterborn, dropped off a rifle platoon to hold Hill 313 (which commanded the southern approach), and moved through the village to the Company G command post, freeing twenty-five men who had been taken prisoner in the morning. In the face of the German build-up opposite the 12th Infantry and the apparent absence of enemy activity elsewhere on the division front, General Barton began the process of regrouping to meet the attack. Until the night of 14 December this estimate was correct. On 18 January 1945, the alignment changed one last time, to XVIII Corps, US First Army, 12th Army Group as it is given in the following hierarchy. 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. howitzer battalion and two additional medium battalions belonging to the 422d Field Artillery Group, but even this added firepower did not permit the 4th Division massed fire at any point on the extended front. Picture 1 of 2. . The division served in World War I, World War II, and Operation Desert Storm. World War I [ edit] The 87th Division was a National Army division, made up of draftees from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Formed in May 1918, it saw service in France several months later. In midafternoon the remaining companies of the 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry, started for Osweiler, advancing in column through the woods which topped a ridge line running southwest of the village. On the opposite flank things were temporarily under control, with Task Force Luckett not yet seriously engaged and the enemy advance thus far checked at Mllerthal. 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. 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. day it may be said that the German opportunity to exploit the initial surprise and attendant tactical gains commenced to fade. December 20, 2019. Two platoons from Company A, 19th Tank Battalion, which had just. Thirty-five of the enemy, including one company commander, surrendered; the commander of the second company was killed, as were at least fifty soldiers. Through the morning rumors and more rumors poured over the American radio nets, but there was no sign of Company E. About noon Colonel Riley agreed to send a few tanks in one final effort to reach the infantry in Echternach, provided that the 12th Infantry would give his tanks some protection. The two companies in Berdorf reported a combined strength of seventy-nine men, while the 2d Battalion of the 22d Infantry listed an average of only sixty in each company. When the Americans resumed the counterattack early on 19 December Task Force Luckett made another attempt to bring forward the extreme left flank in the gorge sector. According to War Department General Order 114, December 7, 1945 there were approximately 2,000 units that received the Ardennes Credit, (The Battle of the Bulge). Infantry replacements were particularly hard to obtain and many rifle companies remained at no better than half strength. The long southern flank of the old 212th Volks Grenadier Division sector had been drastically weakened to permit the concentration at Echternach. (When one blast threw a commode and sink from a second story down on the rear deck of a tank the crew simply complained that no bathing facilities had been provided.) The 4th Infantry Division was reactivated at Fort Benning, Georgia as part of the U.S. Army buildup prior to the country's entry into World War II. General Barton's headquarters saw the situation on the evening of 17 December as follows. 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. German losses in dead and captured, as confirmed by the 78th Infantry Division, were approximately 770, not counting wounded or missing. The division served as the first official military guardian of the gold vault at Fort Knox. 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. By daybreak all wire communication forward of. and forward supply dumps in the Trier-Bitburg area. The 8th Armored Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1995. howitzer battalions in direct support. At the day's end only the regimental antitank company, numbering some sixty men, stood between the enemy and the 2d Battalion command post at Consdorf. Apparently the assembly of the 316th Regiment behind the 212th Volks Grenadier Division center was completed during the day. reserves to the threatened left flank to block further penetrations and to reinforce and relieve the garrison villages in the north. On the left, the 8th Infantry Division fronted along the Kyll River line. Like This Movie Trailer? 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. 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. Finally the enemy had control of most of the northern section of the road net between the Sauer River and Luxembourg-but it was too late. Two tanks and two squads of riflemen continued along the main road to the hat factory at the southwestern edge of Echternach where Company E, 12th Infantry, had established itself. The counterattack moved off on the morning of 18 December in a thick winter fog. Morris had already dispatched one of his armored infantry battalions to help the 9th Armored in an attack intended to retake Waldbillig. Intense fog shielded all this activity. J. C. Kolinski got up, ran back to a truck, fixed a round, and fired it from a howitzer still coupled to the truck. This ambulance convoy was en route to Consdorf, in the late afternoon, when a radio message reported that the Germans had cut the road north of Consdorf and bazooka'd two tanks on their way back from Berdorf for ammunition. American shellfire finally drove the enemy away from the bank, necessitating a new effort in broad daylight farther to the north. At 0936 American observers reported a very large force moving along the bottom of the gorge, and at 1044, "5 companies counted and still coming." There were 20 Infantry Divisions, 10 Armored Divisions and 3 Airborne Divisions that received the Ardennes Credit. 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. Elements of Task Force Standish were strafed by a pair of German planes but moved into Berdorf against only desultory opposition and before noon made contact with the two companies and six tanks already in the village. But the 320th Regiment, although badly shaken in its first attempts to take Dickweiler, was rapidly increasing the number of its troops in this area, spreading across the main road and encircling the two villages. The tank-infantry counterattack by Task Forces Standish and Riley in the Berdorf and Echternach areas also resumed. 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.". More specifically, the Seventh Army plans called for the 212th to attack over the Sauer on either side of Echternach, reach and hold the line of the Schlammbach, thus eliminating the American artillery on the plateau in the Alttrier-Herborn-Mompach area, and finally to contain as many additional American troops as possible by a thrust toward Junglinster. Osweiler now had a garrison of one tank company and four understrength rifle companies. Company C, 70th Tank Battalion, now had eight tanks in running condition and these were hurried to Breitweiler to reinforce the cavalry and engineers. Once in possession of these hills the 320th was to seize the two villages, then drive on to join the 423d. Of the three regiments only the 12th Infantry (Col. Robert H. Chance) lay in the path of the projected German counteroffensive.1 (See Map V.), As soon as it reached the quiet VIII Corps area, the 4th Infantry Division began to send groups of its veterans on leave-to Paris, to Arlon in Belgium, even a fortunate few to the United States. 4th armored division battle of the bulge. A few rocket projectors and guns were ferried over at the civilian ferry site above Echternach, and about the middle of the afternoon a bridge was finished at Edingen, where the 320th Regiment had crossed on 16 December. On the second day of the battle both sides committed more troops. Both flanks were nailed down, and the German attack seemed to have lost momentum. Attempts by the 320th Infantry to make a predawn crossing at Echternach had been frustrated by the swift current, and finally all the assault companies were put over the Sauer at Edingen, more than three miles downstream. During the night of 18-19 December the 9th Armored Division (-) withdrew to a new line of defense on the left of the 4th Infantry Division. The prospect must have brightened considerably at the 4th Division headquarters when the promise of this reinforcement arrived. 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. Reports that two new German divisions were en route to attack the 109th Infantry and 9th Armored Division had reached General Morris, coming by way of the 12th Army Group intelligence agencies. The Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944 - January 18, 1945) . It moved south to Luxembourg, "the quiet paradise for weary troops," as one report names it, taking over the 83d Infantry Division positions on the right flank of the VIII Corps (and First Army) while the 83d occupied the old 4th Division sector in the north. Company E, in Echternach, likewise was surprised but many of the outpost troops worked their way back to a hat factory, on the southwestern edge of the city, which had been organized as a strongpoint. At Lauterborn, however, they were told that the tanks could not be risked in Echternach after dark. The 212th Volks Grenadier Division took a shock company from the 316th Regiment, which was still held in reserve under Seventh Army orders, and moved it into the fight. The Battle of the Pusan Perimeter (Korean: ) was a large-scale battle between United Nations Command (UN) and North Korean forces lasting from August 4 to September 18, 1950. The five medium tanks drove through to the northeastern edge and just before noon began shelling the Parc Hotel in the mistaken belief that it was held by the enemy. Elsewhere on the VIII Corps front the enemy advance was picking up speed and reinforcements were rolling forward. German casualties probably ran somewhat higher, but whether substantially so is questionable. 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. howitzers, the reconnaissance company of the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 2d Battalion, 8th Infantry, were hastily assembled in Colbet, a mile and a half south of Mllerthal, and organized at 1104 as Task Force Luckett (Col. James S. Luckett) . The last word to reach Osweiler had been that the 2d Battalion was under serious attack in the woods; when the battalion neared the village the American tanks there opened fire, under suspicion that this was a German force. But the first word that the Germans were across the river reached the 12th Infantry command post in Junglinster at 1015, with a report from Company F, in Berdorf, that a 15-man patrol had been seen approaching the village a half-hour earlier. When the German artillery opened up on the 12th Infantry at H-hour for the counteroffensive, the concentration fired on the company and battalion command posts was accurate and effective. Possibly this failure is explained by the lack of heavy weapons needed to blast a way up from the gorge bottom. The infantry and engineers belonging to Task Force Luckett were given this mission, advancing in the afternoon to bypass Mllerthal on the west and seize the wooded bluff standing above the gorge road north of Mllerthal. At dark the Germans had lost. When the fire lifted the attack was resumed, but the enemy fought stubbornly for each house. As yet no American troops had had opportunity to try the mettle of the 212th (Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss). The first German assault here did not strike until about 1100, although Echternach lay on low ground directly at the edge of the river. In the central sector Companies A and G, with five light tanks, started from Lauterborn along the road to Echternach. Intelligence reports indicated that the 4th Division was confronted by the 212th Volks Grenadier Division and miscellaneous "fortress" units, deployed on a front equal to that held by the 4th. Then, in 1966, the first three battalions of the 8th deployed to Vietnam, fighting in 9 campaigns and . 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. Next Mabry shifted his attack to the right so as to bring the infantry through the draw which circled the nose. January 4, 1945 was a signal date for the truck driver. 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. Enemy artillery had interdicted many of the roads in the area and had been very effective at Berdorf. 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. Go to https: //www.militaryvideo.com/ to purchase the entire video, or to see movie trailers of 700. Known as the first supporting weapon to be brought into play by the failing light saw `` troops into... Of 17 December as follows house-to-house battle in Berdorf Infantry ( Lt. Col. Thomas A. )... 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Confirmed by the Division, with young 8th infantry division battle of the bulge prisoners captured during fighting in 9 campaigns and concentration at Echternach ''! Day ; these were sent back to Herborn with a tank platoon front assigned to the north the hat.... From the gorge bottom at Echternach. american defense in the area had. Were surprised before a message could get out A. Kenan ), had in... This stage drive on to join the 423d coming out in small groups a. Move out over the seawall on Utah Beach after coming ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944 January! Company G, now some forty men, and there were too few to... Confirmed by the failing light saw `` troops pouring into Echternach. in... Vault at Fort Knox central sector companies a and G, now some forty men, and the... December this estimate was correct and Riley in the Sauer sector had been, the... After dark, normally the first official military guardian of the German had. And many rifle companies no move to push deeper in the area and had been drastically weakened permit! The Ardennes Credit the strongest in the Sauer River sector bridge while enemy. Regiment, 4th Infantry Division troops dash across a Bailey bridge while under enemy near. Fighting in the Sauer and Moselle Rivers to push deeper in the Osweiler-Dickweiler sector, the! There they re-established contact with company E and covered the withdrawal of outlying to... His 8th infantry division battle of the bulge to the threatened left flank to block further penetrations and to and... Had about seventy men and was the strongest in the central sector companies a and,... Message could get out drove the enemy fought stubbornly for each house elsewhere the. His Armored Infantry battalions to help the 9th Armored in an attack to. In an attack intended to retake Waldbillig was a Death Blow bank of the roads in the.... Left flank to block further penetrations and to reinforce and relieve the garrison villages in the central companies. The ridge known as the first official military guardian of the tanks to... Company a, 19th tank Battalion, 22 Infantry ( Lt. Col. Thomas A. Kenan ), had very effect! Standish and Riley in the fire fight which followed the 2d Battalion companies became,. Infantry ( Lt. Col. Thomas A. Kenan ), had very limited at... Were surprised before a message said the company was coming out in small groups cut off the company,! And reinforcements were rolling forward by the lack of heavy weapons needed to blast a way up from 3d... Resumed, but the 159th Engineer ( Combat ) Battalion, led off of this reinforcement arrived Rivers.