At 0315 hours, as an armoured German vehicle rounded a curve on the road and wound its way down to the river, a bazooka team bush-whacked it. After the German crew fled, the paratroopers placed a minefield on the far side of the burning hulk. At 0400 a second armoured vehicle blew itself up on the mines.
At first light on December 21, Peiper attacked E Company with infantry and five tanks. Bazookas and the antitank gun knocked out the armour. Men in the foxholes drove back the infantry with great loss. From the west bank the Americans could see Peiper’s tanks, artillery, and mobile flak batteries massing for another attack.
Vandervoort sent F Company across the river to support E Company with a flank attack, but it had little effect. Vandervoort later remarked that “disaster seemed imminent, but not one man of E company left his fighting position.” He jumped into a jeep and had his driver take him over the bridge and to the bluff above the east bank. He arrived at the CP just as the first wave of German infantry attacked, supported by tanks firing their cannon and machine guns spraying the American positions.
Vandervoort jumped out of his jeep and ran to the CO, Lieutenant William Meddaugh. “Pull out,” he ordered, “and do it now!”
As Meddaugh passed on the word, Vandervoort began driving down the bluff to the riverbank, “urged on by swarms of nine-millimetre rounds from Schmeisser machine pistols.” On the bluff, Meddaugh’s men withdrew, using lessons from close quarter fighting in Holland. In Vandervoort’s words, they “intuitively improvised walking fire in reverse. Moving backward and using the trees for cover, they simply out-shot any pursuer who crowded them too closely.”
When the GIs reached the edge of the bluff, they had to jump down a sheer cliff, pick themselves up (there were a number of broken bones and sprained ankles), run a 100-metre gauntlet across a road, cross over a railroad track, and wade the icy river. GIs in the town along the west bank fired at any German who showed on the opposite bluff. E Company made it to the town with 33 per cent casualties, all of whom were carried to the battalion aid station. When every man was accounted for, engineers blew the bridge.
Vandervoort described the E Company survivors as they came into Trois-Ponts: “They were a tired, ragged, rugged looking bunch. But what I saw was beautiful. About one hundred troopers, with weapons and ammunition, still ready to fight.”
Then, as Vandervoort recalled, “A Tiger tank appeared on the edge of the bluff road. The menacing white skull-and-crossbones of the SS insignia, and the black and-white battle cross painted on its armour were clearly visible. It depressed its long-barrelled, bulbous muzzle and began firing point-blank down into our houses.”
A couple of bazooka rounds hit the Tiger but only bounced off. Vandervoort called for the mortar platoon to go after the tank. The men selected white phosphorus to reduce German visibility. “The first round hit the Tiger right in front of the turret. Searing phosphorous globules arched in all directions. Enemy infantry soldiers near the tank scattered like quail. The driver slapped the now-not-so-menacing monster into reverse and accelerated back into the concealment of the woods,” Vandervoort said.
Now the division artillery observer called in fire that forced the enemy to take to the wood, there to spend the remainder of the day. After dark German infantry tried to ford the Salm, but were beaten back. Peiper went north to find a bridge, but never found one he could take. Trois-Ponts turned out to be his high-water mark.
IF HITLER made his biggest investment in Peiper, he made his best in Otto Skorzeny’s battalion, which had spread out in Peiper’s wake. Throughout the Bulge those 500 or so volunteers in American uniforms were having an impact beyond their numbers. They turned signposts, causing great confusion. They spread panic. Once it was known that the Skorzeny battalion was behind the lines, the word went out with amazing speed:
trust no one. The GIs, especially MPs, questioned everyone, right up to Bradley: Who plays centre field for the Yankees? Who is Mickey Mouse’s wife? What is the capital of Illinois? General Bradley was detained for answering Springfield to the last question; the MP insisted it was Chicago. One general was arrested and held for a few hours because he put the Chicago Cubs in the American League.