The Other Battle of the Bulge by Charles Whiting

Author:Charles Whiting
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750980142
Publisher: The History Press

FOUR

Dawn, Monday, 8 January, 1945.

It was cold and grey. An ominous calm lay over the Gambsheim bridgehead as the three American divisions, the 12th and 14th Armored, plus the men of the 79th Infantry Division, prepared to go over to the attack for the second time.

The 12th, the aptly named Task Force Rammer (after its commander), composed of the 56th Armored Infantry and the 714th Tank Battalion, would kick off the attack. At eleven o’clock that morning it started to assemble near the village of Rohrwiller. Almost immediately the Germans spotted the infantry and began to bring down well-aimed mortar fire on their positions. Confusion and casualties were the result. Finally, at two-thirty, the Task Force began its attack.

Meanwhile the infantry of the 79th Division were to attack south-east from Rohrwiller, with one regiment pushing towards the village of Hatten, supposedly still held in part by friendly troops. The men would be supported by an armoured battalion completely new to combat, the 827th Tank Battalion. But that wasn’t all. The tankers were black!

In the same area of Hatten and the village of Rittershoffen, the 14th Armored would also attack, across countryside as ‘smooth and as flat as a billiard table’, as the 14th’s Divisional History described it: ideal killing country for tanks on the attack.

This huge force moved forward against elements of four German divisions, the 21st Panzer, 25th Panzer Grenadier, the 47th Volks grenadier and the 7th Parachute Division. The men at the sharp end had no illusions about what was going to happen. The Germans were in ideal offensive positions on the flat Rhine plain, criss-crossed by canals and waterways, which made it tremendously difficult country for tanks. The infantry advanced in long lines, rifles at the high port, trudging miserably through the snow and mud. The tankers squatted in the turrets of their Shermans, their eyes glued to their telescopic sights, feet tensed over the firing trigger. They knew they would get only one chance against the lurking bazooka-men or German 57mm anti-tank gun. Look away from the front for one instant and that might well be it.

So they advanced on the timbered farm houses of the target villages, the heavy brooding atmosphere broken only by the sudden angry snarl of the 500hp tank engines as a driver shifted gear for a particularly bad stretch.

At first the green ‘Hellcats’ of the 12th Armored’s Task Force Rammer were lucky. Germans blundered right into the advancing infantry and were mown down mercilessly. A German tank scuttled across their front. It, too, was knocked out easily. Then things began to go wrong. The Task Force hit the first of the many waterways which criss-crossed the area. Enemy mortar fire started to descend upon them. Desperately they sought a bridge across. There was none. Tanks were ordered up to support an alternative plan. They would be used as mobile artillery for an assault crossing of the water. But the inexperienced ‘Hellcats’ had not made provision for this kind of an attack. Soon the tankers began to run out of shells.

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