The feeling was universal. The new year had begun. Surely this had to be the last year of the war. The Allies had driven the Germans back. The troops had liberated France and Belgium. Supply lines from the United States and Great Britain were secure and stuffed with men and materiel being sent to the front.
A panoramic snapshot of ETO taken on January 1, 1945, would have shown tankers and freighters and transports unloading at Le Havre, Antwerp, Cherbourg; long lines of trucks carrying men and supplies forward; tent-city hospitals and army headquarters; supply dumps that held many square miles of food, ammunition, clothing, fuel, vehicles; some villages and cities destroyed, some intact; airfields scattered across France and Belgium, swarming with activity; a constant movement of tanks, cannon, jeeps, trucks; close to the German border the big cannon lined up;
and at the front itself American troops dug in-cold, hungry, exhausted but victorious.
A panoramic snapshot of Germany would have shown city after city in ruin, on fire; in rural areas little evidence of war; abandoned vehicles, some disabled by Jabos, some by mechanical problems; no artillery in sight because of camouflage; and at the front itself German troops dug in-cold, hungry, exhausted and just defeated in their great offensive gamble.
As to the cold, all suffered equally. How cold was it? So cold that if a man didn’t do his business in a hurry, he risked a frostbitten penis. Private Don Schoo, an AA (antiaircraft) gunner attached to the 4th Armoured Division, recalled, “I went out to my half-track to relieve the man on guard. He couldn’t get out of the gun turret. His overcoat was wet when he got in and it froze so he couldn’t get out.” It was so cold the oil in the engines froze. Weapons froze.
Nights ranged from zero Fahrenheit to minus ten and lower. Men without shelter other than a foxhole-or heat stayed awake, stomping their feet through the fourteen-hour night. Major Harrison had as one of his most vivid memories the sight of GIs pressed against the hot stones of the walls of burning houses, as flames came out of the roof and windows. They were not hiding from Germans: they were trying to get warm for a minute or two.
The conditions in Northwest Europe in January 1945 were as brutal as any in history, including Napoleon’s and the German retreats from Moscow in midwinter 1812 and 1941. But in this battle the Germans were not retreating. They fought back against the American advance, which could barely move forward anyway in the ice and snow, forcing the Americans to pay the highest price for taking back the territory lost in the Bulge. Eisenhower had under his command seventy-three divisions. Of the total, forty-nine were American, twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish and eight French. He had forty-nine infantry, twenty armoured and four airborne divisions. As against this, the Germans had seventy six divisions.
Given the near equality in firepower and the brutality of conditions, a winter offensive had little appeal. Nevertheless, Eisenhower decided to launch attacks north and south of the Bulge to trap the Germans at its western tip and regain the lost ground. He felt he had no option. The Allies could not shut down offensive operations while V-ls and V-2s continued to bombard Antwerp, London, and other cities.
The initial January offensive by the Allies was directed against the German salient. It was agreed that First and Third armies would meet at Houffalize, a village five miles north of Bastogne. When the linkup took place, the Bulge would be cut in half. Eisenhower insisted that there would be a broad-front advance into Germany once the Bulge was eliminated. He emphasized, “We must regain the initiative, and speed and energy are essential.”
For the frontline infantry, armour, and artillery of First and Third armies, the battle that raged through January was among the worst of the war-if possible, even more miserable than Hiirtgen. It was fought in conditions so terrible that they can only be marvelled at, not really imagined. Only those who were there can know.
The combat soldiers of ETO at this time numbered about 300,000. In the junior officer ranks the turnover had been almost three quarters. Still there was a core of veterans in most divisions, including junior officers who had won battlefield promotions-the highest honour a soldier can receive-and sergeants, most of whom had been the privates of Normandy, St. Lo, Falaise, Holland, and the Bulge; survivors who had moved up when NCOs were killed or wounded. These newly made lieutenants and sergeants, some of them teenage boys, provided the leadership that got the US Army through that terrible January.