A voice from the other end of the car responded, “He ain’t here. He got killed.”
So it went on the Western Front during the Christmas season, 1944.
OUT IN THE English Channel the transport Leopoldville, a converted luxury liner, was headed towards Le Havre, bringing 2,223 replacements for the Battle of the Bulge. The officers were from the Royal Navy, the crew was Belgian, the passengers were Americans-a fine show of Allied unity. Sergeant Franklin Anderson and 150 others went up to the deck just before midnight to sing Christmas carols. There was a boom. A torpedo from a U-boat had hit amidships.
The ship shivered, then began to sink. The officers and crew jumped into the lifeboats-there were only fourteen of them-and took off, leaving the US soldiers to fend for themselves. Anderson managed to jump from Leopoldville to the deck of a destroyer that came alongside. Others who tried the same missed and were crushed as big waves pushed the two ships into each other. Still others drowned or succumbed to hypothermia. Altogether 802 GIs died in the incident, but not one British officer or Belgian seaman died. Bad show for Allied unity. The incident therefore was covered up. There was no investigation, no court-martial.
Built to carry 360 passengers, the Leopoldville held well over 2,000 troops when it sank in early winter, a time when the Channel is always rough and often stormy. The Allies were sending every available man across the Channel to the front on every available boat. To speed the process, ordinary precautions were neglected. There were insufficient life jackets, and no instructions on their use. With men packed into the very bowels of the ship, there were no lifeboat or abandon-ship drills. There were many other oversights, most caused by haste.
As a result, what should have been a minor loss was the equivalent of losing a full-strength rifle regiment, as the 1,400 or so survivors of the Leopoldville had to be sent to the hospital rather than the front line when they finally got to Cherbourg.
PATTON WOKE on Christmas morning, looked at the sky, and said to himself, “Lovely weather for killing Germans.” But to his disappointment the spearhead for his thrust north to relieve Bastogne failed to break the siege that day.
The next morning the 4th Armoured moved out, with the 37th Tank Battalion (twenty Shermans strong), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, in the lead. Jabos preceded them, laying bombs into the German lines only a couple of hundred metres ahead of the advancing tanks. Keep moving, Abrams ordered. They did, and at 1650, December 26, Lieutenant Charles Boggess drove the first vehicle from 4th Armoured into the lines of the 101st Airborne. He was followed by Captain William Dwight. “How are you, General?” Dwight asked General McAuliffe, who had driven out to the perimeter to greet him.
“Gee, I am mighty glad to see you,” McAuliffe replied. With the siege of Bastogne broken, with Peiper and the others in retreat, the week after Christmas was relatively quiet on the front. But to the rear American trucks were rushing reinforcements and supplies forward. The US Army in ETO had been pounded badly in the second half of December, but it had recovered, held, and now was preparing the final offensive.
Chapter Nine
Winter War: January 1945
ON NEW YEAR’S Eve, 1944, Lieutenant John Cobb (USMA, 1943) was in a convoy crossing the English Channel. A replacement officer for the 82nd Airborne, he was on his way to Elsenborn Ridge. “Notwithstanding blackout and security conditions,” he wrote later, “every ship in the Channel sounded whistles or sirens or shot off flares at midnight on New
Year’s Eve.”
That same night Corporal Paul-Arthur Zeihe of the llth Panzer Division was on the front line near Trier. “Just before midnight the shooting stopped almost entirely,” he remembered. “As the clock struck twelve, the Americans began with their fireworks, sending illuminated rockets into the air. Suddenly, by the light of their rockets, we saw the Americans getting out of their holes, clutching their rifles and pistols, jumping, skipping around, shooting their weapons and lighting up the whole valley. I can still see them before me today, caught against the light of their rockets, prancing around on a background of fresh snow. It did not take long before we were doing the same thing, firing off illuminated rockets, shooting our weapons. It lasted about five, maybe six minutes. It slowed, then stopped. We disappeared back into our holes, and so did they. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I had during my service. We had allowed our humanity to rise that once.”