The Battle of the Bulge by Stephen W. Sears

Author:Stephen W. Sears [Stephen W. Sears]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: ibooks, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

V

CLIMAX AT THE MEUSE

British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was a small and rather bird-like man of careful habits, who liked his battles to be as precise and tidy as he was himself. The battle he inherited in the northern half of the Ardennes on December 20, however, was as untidy as a battle could possibly be.

All along the northern rim of the German breakthrough First Army GI's under Courtney Hodges were struggling desperately to contain the enemy's thrusts. Means of communication, chains of command, and lines of supply were broken and tangled; the defenses-in-depth and tactical reserves so dear to military textbook writers hardly existed. The single common element was a sullen, stubborn determination to make the Nazis pay in blood for every foot of ground they gained.

In Bernard Montgomery's view, the way to tidy up this northern battlefield was to hold at all costs the shoulder of the Bulge at Elsenborn Ridge so that the Germans could not widen the breach; to straighten Hodges' patchwork line by “voluntary withdrawals”; to let the Germans spend themselves driving westward with ever-lengthening supply lines; and finally, with a carefully assembled reserve force, to smash the tip of the salient with a carefully timed assault. It was all very precise, very neat, very scientific.

As the Field Marshal soon discovered when he sought to withdraw the U.S. units defending St. Vith (see Chapter 3), his American allies did not entirely share his views. “Once they had recovered from the first shock, the American troops were out for vengeance,” wrote British historian Chester Wilmot. “Having suffered the ignominy of surprise and defeat, their instinctive reaction was to hold fast to whatever they were still holding and to strike back wherever they could as soon and as hard as possible.”

The overriding strategic philosophy of the United States Army was aggressive attack. American officers had been trained under that old military maxim, “The best defense is a good offense.” General Omar Bradley, for example, never had fought a defensive action before the Battle of the Bulge—and never had to fight one afterward. What Montgomery had on his hands, then, was a group of very aggressive-minded American generals whose ideas often were very different from his own.

Nevertheless, Montgomery moved energetically to flesh out his plan and bring order to the tangled battlefield. He hurried light British forces to the west bank of the Meuse to guard the all-important bridges spanning the river. British armor and infantry were ordered into position northwest of the Meuse to strike any German columns that might cross the river and threaten Brussels and Antwerp. Most important, he began putting together a reserve force for a counterattack.

To lead this reserve, Montgomery chose Major General J. Lawton “Lightning Joe” Collins, the fast-moving commander of Hodges' VII Corps. Since most of Collins' troops already were committed to the battle, the Allied high command had to reach far and wide to create a reserve: the 3rd Armored Division from his old command, the 2nd Armored and 84th Infantry divisions from the U.

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