After a few minutes of this exchange Sgt. During the seven days of fighting for the village between 13 and 19 December, the 78th Infantry Division lost approximately 1,515 dead, wounded, missing and injured, according to the division's records. 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. During these operations in France, while light and medium bombers and fighter-bomber aircraft of Ninth Air Force had been engaged in close support and interdictory operations, Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces had continued their strategic bombing. Later Barton phoned the corps commander to ask for reinforcements. The VIII Corps . In late 1944, during the wake of the Allied forces' successful D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, it seemed as if the Second World War was all but over. Until the night of 14 December this estimate was correct. Further, the German inability to meet the American tanks with tanks or heavy antimechanized means gave the American rifleman an appreciable moral superiority (particularly toward the end of the battle) over his German counterpart. In time of peace the gorge of the Schwarz Erntz offered a picturesque "promenade" for holiday visitors in the resort hotels at Berdorf and Beaufort, with "bancs de repos" at convenient intervals. Troops of the 8th Infantry Regiment move out over the seawall on Utah Beach after coming ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944. 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.". The original defenders had taken a large bag of prisoners the previous day; these were sent back to Herborn with a tank platoon. . The force available was insufficient to continue the attack. In the fire fight which followed the 2d Battalion companies became separated, but the early winter darkness soon ended the skirmish. 1 Jun-. Task Force Riley sent tanks carrying infantry into the edge of Echternach on the morning of 19 December. Normandy; Northern France ; Covered by this counterattack the battalion headquarters withdrew to Herborn. 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 accompanying infantry were under constant bullet fire; and when the lead tank was immobilized by an antitank projectile some time was required to maneuver the rest of the column around it. This house-to-house assault gained only seventy-five yards before darkness intervened. 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 Fall of the Golden Lions. $20.00 + $3.90 shipping. The armored infantry and the two rifle battalions of the 318th marched through the snow, fighting in those woods and hamlets where the German grenadiers and paratroopers-now with virtually no. Both flanks were nailed down, and the German attack seemed to have lost momentum. General Barton, it may be added, had refused absolutely to permit the artillery to move rearward. The burden of this advance was carried by battalions of the 320th Regiment (which explains the relaxing of pressure in the Osweiler-Dickweiler area), and the advance guard of the 316th Regiment which General Sensfuss had pried from the Seventh Army reserve by reporting the arrival of the 10th Armored Division. 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. They went overseas on 5 December 1943 where they trained in Ireland for the Invasion of Europe. Southern France 15 August - 14 September 1944 Osweiler now had a garrison of one tank company and four understrength rifle companies. The net day's operations amounted to a stand-off. 4th armored division battle of the bulge. General Barton had warned his regiments at 0929 to be on the alert because of activity reported to the north in the 28th Division area, intelligence confirmed by a phone call from General Middleton. The enemy here was in considerable strength and had established observation posts on the ridges ringing Lauterborn and bordering the road. Across the river at the headquarters of the 212th Volks Grenadier Division there was little realization of the extent to which the American center had been dented. 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 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. Each regiment, by standard practice on such a wide front, had one of the division's 105-mm. 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. 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. judgmental sampling is also known as . It was too late. Thus both Osweiler and Dickweiler remained tight in American hands. By noon, however, with Berdorf and Echternach known to be under attack, Dickweiler hit in force, and Lauterborn reported to be surrounded, it was clear that the Germans at the very least were engaged in an extensive "reconnaissance in force," thus far confined to the 12th Infantry sector. 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. Captain Murray S. Pulver, commander of Company B, 120th Infantry Regiment, was in his usual placethe thick of the fighting. These units vary in size from a small number of people up to and including an Army Group. There were 20 Infantry Divisions, 10 Armored Divisions and 3 Airborne Divisions that received the Ardennes Credit. 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. 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. Mobile support was provided by those tanks of the 70th Tank Battalion which were operational, the self-propelled tank destroyers of the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the towed tank destroyers of the 802d. 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. As yet no American troops had had opportunity to try the mettle of the 212th (Generalmajor Franz Sensfuss). His father was a truck driver with a balloon observation company. 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. Thirty-five of the enemy, including one company commander, surrendered; the commander of the second company was killed, as were at least fifty soldiers. Of the 4th Division, it must. 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. were many seventeen-year-olds. For the 106th Infantry Division, the Opening of the Bulge was a Death Blow. The Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944 - January 18, 1945) . Task Force Chamberlain, whose tanks had given fire support to Task Force Luckett, moved during the afternoon to a backstop position near Consdorf. The 12th Infantry cannon company was just moving up to a new position when fire opened from the wood. Direct assault failed to dislodge these Americans, and the attempt was abandoned pending the arrival of heavy weapons from across the river. The 8th Infantry Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988. 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. Other elements of Task Force Riley meanwhile had advanced to the mill beyond Lauterborn where the command post of Company G was located. Immediately after the Battle of the Bulge, the tag "a calculated risk" would be applied to . The two were of one mind on the need for counterattack tactics and arranged that CCA (Brig. Also included are units of the 8th and 9th Army Air Forces. The 109th Infantry, the 9th Armored Division, the 4th Infantry Division, and CCA, 10th Armored Division, had to win both the time and the space required for the assembly of the American counterattack forces. The morning situation in the sector held by the 3d Battalion (Maj. Herman R. Rice, Jr.) had not seemed too pressing. 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. The 423d Regiment made a forced march from the sector southwest of Trier and by daylight had bivouacked on the right wing of the 212th. 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. The enemy made no move to push deeper in the center. In the early days of the Battle of the Bulge John would find himself fa. 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. J. C. Kolinski got up, ran back to a truck, fixed a round, and fired it from a howitzer still coupled to the truck. By nightfall the situation seemed much improved-despite the increased pressure on the 4th Division companies closely invested in the north. 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. 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. 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). By now the German artillery was ranged inaccurately. Elsewhere neither side clearly held the field. 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. 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. Leake's force had only one .50-caliber machine gun and a BAR to reinforce the rifles in the hands of the defenders, but the Germans were so discouraged by the reception given their initial sorties that their succeeding attempts to take the building were markedly halfhearted. 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. 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. Company G, now some forty men, and the last of Riley's tanks withdrew to the new main line of resistance. 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. The problem of dealing with the 987th Regiment and clearing the enemy out of the Schwarz Erntz gorge, or containing him there, was left to the 4th Division and CCA, 10th Armored. Although the evacuation of Berdorf was part of the 4th Division plan for redressing its line, the actual withdrawal was none too easy. 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. 8th Infantry Division "Pathfinder Division" "Arrow Division" Its nickname is represented by the golden arrow piercing the white "8" on a blue shield. The drivers and gunners dived for cover and returned fire. Here the 2d Platoon (with twenty-one men and two artillery observers) held out in the stone farm buildings for four days and from this position harassed the Germans moving up the ravine road to Berdorf. Go to https://www.militaryvideo.com/ to purchase the entire video, or to see movie trailers of over 700 other military videos.This 9. When the 4th Division reserves arrived in Breitweiler on the morning of 17 December the threat of a flanking move through the gorge was very real but the Americans had time to dig in. In Dickweiler the troops of the 3d Battalion, 12th Infantry, had been harassed by small forays from the woods above the village. This turned out to be only a patrol action and the enemy was quickly beaten off. 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. Elsewhere on the VIII Corps front the enemy advance was picking up speed and reinforcements were rolling forward. 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. Research | Military Units | Newsletter Archives | Soldiers Registry | Veterans Assistance | WWII Memorial Registry | Books| DVDs | Film & Video. The 3d Battalion and its reinforcements had "a semblance of a line" to meet further penetration in the vicinity of Osweiler and Dickweiler. 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. 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. About an hour after dark a message from the 3d Battalion reached the 12th Infantry command post: "Situation desperate. Finally, a little after dark, Companies B and F (12th Infantry), ten engineers, and four squads of armored infantry loaded onto. 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. The cemeteries are in Belgium and Luxembourg. Toward the close of day Company C of the 12th Infantry took position on some high ground between and slightly south of the two villages, thus extending the line here on the right. Picture 1 of 2. . Since most of Task Force Riley by this time had reverted to the reserve, Lauterborn, the base for operations against Echternach, was abandoned. 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. 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