The weather was cold, the days dreary and snowy. The men in the foxholes were eating snow because their canteens were empty and they could not build fires to boil water. Rations were cold. Clothes were World War I issue and entirely inadequate.
Always hungry, the men of Charlie Company, 395th Regiment, tried to supplement their diet with venison. Private Vernon Swanson went after the locally abundant deer with his BAR (Browning automatic rifle), a common practice for GIs in Belgium that winter. He dropped one, but the deer was only wounded. “We followed the blood trail for quite a distance into German territory and then discovered the Germans had stolen our deer. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and we did not send a combat patrol to recover our deer.”
But they weren’t a bunch of guys out on a camping and hunting trip. The 99th Division had taken casualties, suffering 187 killed and wounded in November. The weather took a heavier toll-822 hospitalized for frostbite, pneumonia, and trench foot. In the front line, men of Charlie Company shivered in their holes as they tried to suppress their coughing. Private Swanson recalled: “We were completely on edge because of a mixture of hunger, cold and fear.” The fear was caused by a rumour that German patrols were active.
Captain Charles Roland was a battalion executive officer in the 99th. Looking out of the headquarters bunker on the afternoon of December 15, he saw “fir forests whose cone-shaped evergreens standing in deep snow and sparkling with crystals formed a scene of marvellous beauty.” He read the latest intelligence report from division: “The enemy has only a handful of beaten and demoralized troops in front of us and they are being supported by only two pieces of horse drawn artillery.”
In fact, the American regiment was facing the I SS Panzer Corps, hidden in those beautiful firs.
As DARKNESS fell over the Eifel on December 15, a kilometre or so east of Captain Roland, a private in the Waffen SS wrote to his sister Ruth. “I write during one of the great hours before an attack-full of unrest, full of expectation for what the next days will bring. Everyone who has been here the last two days and nights (especially nights), who has witnessed hour after hour the assembly of our crack divisions, who has heard the constant rattling of panzers, knows that something is up and we are looking forward to a clear order to reduce the tension. Some believe in big wonders, but that may be shortsighted! It is enough to know we attack and will throw the enemy from our homeland.”
Later, just before dawn, he added: “Overhead is the terrific noise of V-l, of artillery-the voice of war. So long now-wish me luck and think of me.” He sealed the envelope and was about to hand it in when he added a scribble on the back: “Ruth! Ruth! Ruth! WE MARCH!!!”
The private was in the van of the 1st SS Panzer Division and had cause to feel elated, for he was part of a powerful reinforced armoured regiment commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jochan Peiper. Highly regarded in the Germany army, Peiper was a veteran of the Eastern Front. Aggressive, he was single-minded in his pursuit of victory. Hitler counted on him to lead the dash to the Meuse.
Although designated a regiment, Peiper’s force contained some 22,000 men and 250 tanks, 5 antiaircraft half-tracks, a battalion of 20-mm guns, 25 self-propelled guns, a battalion of 105 howitzers and two companies of engineers. As soon as the infantry opened the roads Peiper would speed west.
Major Otto Skorzeny, the most daring commando in the German army, was accompanying Peiper, along with the 500 men in the 150th Panzer Brigade. They were wearing American and British uniforms. All of them spoke English; most of them had lived for some time in Britain or the United States. They had dog tags taken from corpses and POWs. They had twenty Sherman tanks and thirty deuce-and a-half trucks. Once a breakthrough had been achieved, their mission was twofold: one group would dash ahead to the Meuse to seize bridges, while the other fanned out behind American lines to spread rumours, change signposts, and in general accelerate the panic that hits rear-echelon forces when they hear that the front line has broken.