Moving through St. Vith. Deifeld was occupied without trouble. howitzer, to fire only on the most urgent and well-defined targets. Despite a brush with Remer's group and the loss of several tanks in the swampy ground south of Rodt the command reached Crombach and Hinderhausen, where General Clarke was building a second line of defense. For some hours the columns could move neither forward nor back, and when Field Marshal Model arrived on the scene he was forced to dismount and make his way into the city on foot. force on the 18th, was at the tail end of the LVIII Panzer Corps The final assault, made by the 294th and one or two platoons of Tigers, simply peeled the Americans back on both sides of the road. Thus the draws coming in from the southeast marked the boundary between CCB of the 9th Armored and CCB, 7th Armored, while the northern defile and the Bllingen road designated the boundary between two sector commands within CCB, 7th Armored. When Stone took a look around he found himself in charge of a rail-head stock of 80,000 rations-which had been set ablaze by the depot guards-an engineer vehicle park, and 350 Germans in a POW cage. The German successes in this area had already They were constituted on 25 January 1943 as the 465th Glider Field Artillery Battalion and activated 1 March 1943 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Army Service No. As a result CCB began its move for St. Vith about 2000 on the 16th. It was here that the unsuccessful attacks launched earlier by the 18th Volks Grenadier Division and the Fuehrer Begleit Brigade had formed. 965th Field Artillery Battalion United States Army Strength Battalion Type Defence Agency Years 1942 - 1959 Report To Field Artillery Units Reporting Units A Battery B Battery C Battery HHB Service Battery Members Who Served in 965th Field Artillery Battalion 965th Field Artillery Battalion Description Not Specified Troop B was sent out the east road to reinforce the engineers, but the main body of the reconnaissance battalion deployed to screen the northeastern approaches to the Wallerode area. There two companies of the 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry, were deployed, guarding a draw and secondary road which provided quick access to the Salm valley at a point midway between Jones's assembly area at Bovigny and Salmchteau. Lt. Col. Fred M. Warren, acting commanding officer, sent the driver on to division headquarters to tell his story, and at the same time he asked for a company of infantry. (thirty-five miles by road) was extremely difficult. The addition of the 7th Armored Division to the XVIII Airborne Corps had contributed greatly to the phenomenal expansion of a corps front which measured only some twenty-five miles on 19 December but which represented a sector of approximately eighty-five miles on the evening of 20 December. Cemeteries & Memorials; Burial Search; About Us; Education; Facebook; Twitter; YouTube; Instagram; ABMC Headquarters 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 500 Arlington, VA 22201 Phone: 703-584-1501. 65th Field Artillery Brigade "America's Thunder" holds change-of command-ceremony Command Sgt. My division is defending the line St. Vith-Poteau both inclusive. But unit integrity had been lost, the armored components were far below strength, and many of the armored infantry were weary, ill-equipped stragglers who had been put back in the line after their escape from St. Vith. duel along the ridge the Shermans were out-ranged. Meanwhile Hasbrouck dispatched a memorandum. middle of the afternoon at Bovigny some three and a half miles south of Salmchteau on the west side of the Salm River. As the intermingling of roadways at St. Vith had made it possible for the defenders to bar the way west, so now this knot in the Belgian-German road prevented a quick transfer of men and guns in pursuit. This jeep trail-it was no more-had been reconnoitered by General Clarke on the 22d and designated (with much misgiving) as an emergency exit. and the mission no longer was counterattack, but rather defense in place, Early on the 18th, Lt. Col. Augustine Duggan, senior of the remaining staff, intercepted elements of the 18th Squadron, part of Troop C, 32d Squadron, and the one remaining platoon of towed 3-inch guns from the 820th Tank Destroyer. Toward dark the Americans crossed the northern embankment and reached the road junction. Mayes's group moved out from the crossroads at first light on 18 December but had gone only some two hundred yards when flame shot up from the leading light tank and an armored car, the two struck almost simultaneously by German bazooka fire. Nevertheless the Poteau road junction was denied the enemy, and by the close of day patrols had established contact between CCR, to the west, and CCA. One regiment of the 30th Infantry Division was in Malmdy, thirteen or fourteen miles to the north, but the intervening countryside was swamped. For some reason this attack never fully developed-later German reports indicated that the assault waves lost their direction while moving through the thick woods. led a company of tanks and another of armored infantry into St. Vith. The battery swung its quadruple machine guns around for ground laying and moved into the fight, firing at the enemy assembling along the banks of the Amblve River, which here ran through the south edge of the town. The movement plans prepared by the First Army staff assigned General Hasbrouck two routes of march: an east route, through Aachen, Eupen, Malmdy, and Recht, on which CCR would move; a west route, through Maastricht, Verviers, and Stavelot, which would be used by the main body of the division. It appears that if there were any mines left on the Schnberg road they had been lifted in preparation for a promised counterattack by American tanks. the easternmost position of any organized nature in the center sector Half an hour later three enemy tanks and some infantry appeared before the 168th Engineer Battalion position astride the St. Vith road. to recondition the road running east from St. Vith to Stadtkyll as a An opportunity had been missed. On most of the front held by the 7th Armored and the troops of the 9th Armored and 106th the morning passed in ominous quiet. Furthermore the 7th Armored trains had reported signs of an enemy force far to the west of the 7th Armored outpost positions. b. CCR maintained its cordon along the valley road. As the evening wore on, the leading Americans bottled up in the defile hastily organized an attack to open the exit through Salmchteau, but there was little room to deploy, and this attempt failed. This regiment, which had sent combat patrols against Stone's Having set up installations west of La Roche, the trains' commander (Col. Andrew J. Adams) used his own people and all the stragglers he could find to man roadblocks around the train area. At first there was no artillery forward to give weight to the assault, but densely wooded approaches and darkness gave the advantage to the attackers. West of Wallerode the 295th Regiment started into the assault, possibly only as a feint, but withdrew as the guns supporting CCB, 7th Armored, went into action. represented at its tip by the 1st SS Panzer Division, The main artillery column again missed the 1st SS Panzer Division by only a hair's breadth. The bend in the Our River near Steinebrck necessitated a switch Without Wemple's tanks, or with them, Task Force Jones was no match for any large detachment of the 2d SS Panzer Division. In the darkness, and with radios and wire no longer functioning, the first sign of the enemy armor was a volley of flares fired in flat trajectory from the Panthers. It was on this estimate that General. CCB, 9th AD, the 424th Inf Regt of the 106th Div and the 112th Inf Regt of the 28th Div are on my right and hold from St. Vith to Holdingen. Infantry Battalion (Lt. Col. William H. G. Fuller) and B Troop of the With this concrete mission assigned, planning began for the extremely The losses sustained by the defenders of St. Vith must be measured tank destroyers. In any case the German armored reserve was not available. Some of the Germans made it to the houses and defended themselves. Fortunately the fire could be checked without too much damage. A heavy barrage (the 62d Volks Grenadier Division by this time had a number of pieces. to act as a breakwater holding the LXVI Corps in check while Jones ordered the 112th Infantry to draw northward on the night of l9-20 December and make a firm connection with the southern flank of the 424th. During the ceremony, Col. Shawn Fuellenbach relinquished command to Lt. Col. Jason Wilde. A sharp attack in the late afternoon brought Krag's detachment through the American outposts in the hamlets west of Salmchteau and by nightfall he had a troop in the south section of the town, its task made easier by the preliminary shelling laid in by the battalion of field guns. Perhaps the enemy would have returned to the fray and made the final withdrawal hazardous, but shortly after noon some P-38's of the 370th Fighter Group, unable to make contact with the 82d Airborne Division control to which they were assigned, went to work for the 7th Armored Division, bombing and strafing along the road to Recht. The German corps commander, General Lucht, had ordered the Mobile Battalion of the 18th Volks Grenadier Division up from reserve during the previous night with orders to advance via Andler. In fact, he had not reached the commanders of his two infantry divisions with orders until daylight. The division artillery, finally released in the north, took the east route, its three battalions and the 203d Antiaircraft Battalion moving as a single column. The Fuehrer Begleit Brigade did not follow CCB. Some six or seven miles west of Burg Reuland, CCA of the 7th Armored had assembled near Beho. General Hoge conferred with General Jones at St. Vith and the two decided that the combat command should withdraw from the river northwest to slightly higher ground. First, mortars went to work against houses and foxholes. They had met an entire German corps flushed This estimate was received at the headquarters of the VIII Corps at 0500 on 17 December, the first indication, it would appear, that the leading armored elements would arrive at 1400 instead of 0700 as planned. The American positions were much better integrated than on previous days: the 7th Armored Division artillery and attached battalions-of particular importance the one medium tank battalion- were tied in closely with the troops they supported. Originally three routes were chosen: a northern route along the Poteau-Vielsalm road; a center route from Commanster to the Vielsalm bridge (nothing more than a poor woods road); and a southern route via Maldingen, Beho, and Bovigny, thence north along the Salm valley road to the Salmchteau bridge and east along the Salmchteau- La Roche road by way of the Baraque de Fraiture crossroads, which at this time was still in American hands. The situation at Grufflange was so confused that neither Americans nor Germans reacted to the fight there, either to seal off the sector or to continue the penetration. About 0800 the Panthers engaged the small covering force at Hinderhausen. On the morning of 20 December the Americans defending St. Vith held This armored brigade, commanded by Col. Otto Remer, had been hastily thrown together around a cadre composed of Hitler's former headquarters guard.8 When the Fuehrer's command post on the Eastern Front was closed by Hitler's return to Berlin, in November, Remer was given some additional troops and shipped to the west. d. If the 2d SS Panzer Division attack should succeed in driving back the two RCTs of the 82d Airborne Division now between Salmchteau and Hebronval even as little as 3000 yards we will be completely severed from any source of supplies. Even at this hour the scope of the German counteroffensive was but dimly seen and the 7th Armored Division advance party was informed that it would not be necessary to have the artillery accompany the combat command columns-in other words this would not be a tactical march from Heerlen to Vielsalm. range served as a breakwater diverting heavy highway traffic so that Stragglers came pouring through Recht in the meantime with rumors and reports of the enemy just behind them. 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