Ardennes-Alsace : The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II: 2002 by U.S. Department of Defense

Author:U.S. Department of Defense
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Published: 2014-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

7th Armored Division tanks near St. Vith. (National Archives)

First Army Battles, 20–27 December

Eisenhower and Montgomery agreed that the First Army would establish a cohesive defensive line, yielding terrain if necessary. Montgomery also intended to create a corps-sized reserve for a counterattack, which he sought to keep from being committed during the defensive battle. The First Army’s hasty defense had been one of holeplugging, last stands, and counterattacks to buy time. Although suc

cessful, these tactics had created organizational havoc within Hodges’ forces as divisional units had been committed piecemeal and badly jumbled. Complicating the situation even further was the fact that the First Army still held the north-south front, north of Monschau to Elsenborn, while fighting Dietrich’s panzers along a nearly east-west axis in the Ardennes.

Blessed with excellent defensive ground and a limited lateral roadnet in front of V Corps positions, Gerow had been able to roll with the German punch and Hodges to feed in reserves to extend the First Army line westward. Much of the Sixth Panzer Army ’s strength was thus tied up in road jams of long columns of vehicles. But American success was still far from certain. The V Corps was holding four panzer divisions along the northern shoulder, an elbow-shaped 25-mile line, with only parts of four U.S. divisions.

To the west of the V Corps the 30th Infantry Division, now under Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps, marched south to block Kampfgruppe Peiper at Malmedy and, along the Ambleve River, at Stavelot, Stoumont, and La Gleize. To the south of Peiper the XVIII’s other units, the 82d Airborne and 3d Armored Divisions, moved forward to the area between the Salm and Ourthe Rivers, northwest of St. Vith, which was still in danger of being isolated. By 20 December the Peiper force was almost out of fuel and surrounded. During the night of the twenty-third Peiper and his men destroyed their equipment, abandoned their vehicles, and walked out to escape capture. Dietrich’s spearhead was broken.

North of St. Vith the I SS Panzer Corps pushed west. Part of the LVIII Panzer Corps had already bypassed the defenders’ southern flank. Standing in the way of Dietrich’s panzers was a 6-mile line along the Salm River, manned by the 82d Airborne Division. Throughout the twenty-first German armor attacked St. Vith’s northwestern perimeter and infantry hit the entire eastern circumference of the line. Although the afternoon assault was beaten back, the fighting was renewed after dark. To prevent being trapped from the rear, the 7th Armored Division began pulling out of its advanced positions around 2130. The other American units around the town conformed, folding into a tighter perimeter west of the town.

Ridgway wanted St. Vith’s defenders to stay east of the Salm, but Montgomery ruled otherwise. The 7th Armored Division, its ammunition and fuel in short supply and perhaps two-thirds of its tanks destroyed, and the battered elements of the 9th Armored, 106th, and 28th Divisions could not hold the extended perimeter in the rolling and wooded terrain.

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