Blocking Kampfgruppe Peiper: The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the Battle of the Bulge by Frank van Lunteren

Author:Frank van Lunteren [Lunteren, Frank van]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Second Lieutenant James Douglass’ 3rd Platoon was alerted when Breard’s platoon was first attacked. Private Bonning recalled: “I was on an outpost with Pfc. Donald Graham and a runner came down from the left, from the 1st Platoon, and said, ‘They have the Krauts surrounded,’ so I told Graham to stay there and I took the BAR and ran down to give the 1st Platoon some help. Right when I hit the opening of this wooded area, a machine gun opened up. I saw some K ration boxes, a BAR standing against a tree and a foxhole, and I hit the hole.

“I got pinned down and fired about 200 rounds of ammunition. [Corporals] Thomas Holliday [Jr.], Turk Nersesian and Hilton Holland went around to knock the machine gun out. Holland got hit in the stomach. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. It would get dark early in the Battle of the Bulge.

“Krauts came up from the machine gun firing at our hole and I would let a burst go of the BAR and get down in the hole. One time I stuck my head up and fired a burst, a Kraut threw a potato masher right at me and it hit a tree beside the hole. There was another BAR man in the hole. When the Kraut machine gun opened, he dove in his hole and left the BAR against the tree. But he had his ammo with him so I was using his ammo firing at the Krauts as they were attacking at the left side of the machine gun. I got a couple of Krauts right in front of the hole and I couldn’t go by them the next few days. It was something I felt real bad about, killing somebody or get killed. You just can’t walk by the bodies. I had to go around them.

“Holland got hit, Turk knocked the machine gun out and then we went down—it was starting to get dark—trying to find Holland. In the meantime he had crawled through the woods about 30 or 40 yards trying to get to our line and it got dark. We couldn’t call out his name. […]

“When Holland got hit there were other casualties too. [Cpl. Fred A.] Faidley heard about us having the Krauts surrounded, which really wasn’t true. […] Faidley came down the trail, the machine gun opened up on him, and he hit a slit trench on the right side of the hole. He didn’t make it to my hole where that other BAR man was. I never did find out his name. I met him on a truck sometime going to town in France or Belgium, and he asked me if I was the BAR man that landed in his hole.

“Faidley got machine-gunned in the legs. I was screaming at Faidley and he was only about three or four feet away from me but the machine-gun fire was so loud I couldn’t find out where he was hit. The machine gun subsided and I didn’t know if he was moving or what.

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