A Time for Trumpets by Charles B. MacDonald

Author:Charles B. MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-07-20T23:00:00+00:00

Book Four – The Shoulders

Chapter Seventeen – In Front of Luxembourg City

On the southern shoulder of the German offensive, amid the frontier villages, woods, and steeply rolling hills between the southern reaches of the Skyline Drive and the Our River, and below the confluence of the Our and the Sûre on either side of the Ernz Noire (“Little Switzerland”), the American troops at the start of the second day were having their difficulties. Yet they were considerably better off than many of their colleagues elsewhere, primarily because they were facing no German armor but only a parachute and three Volksgrenadier divisions of General Brandenberger’s Seventh Army. Those German divisions were in fact having problems throwing bridges across the Our and the Sûre in order to bring forward such fire support as they did possess: horse-drawn divisional artillery and the equivalent of an understrength battalion of self-propelled assault guns.

There, too, even though Brandenberger had assumed at the end of the first day that his adversary had committed all his local reserves, there were actually reserves still to make their presence felt. Although the 109th Infantry’s Colonel Rudder had committed his reserve infantry battalion, primarily in an effort to rescue Company E, surrounded in Fouhren, he still had a company of medium tanks of the 707th Tank Battalion to add weight to a renewal of that effort. During the night, the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion, in the line to gain battlefield experience, had reverted to control of its parent command, the 9th Armored Division’s CCA, and the bulk of that combat command’s tanks and self-propelled tank destroyers were still to enter the fight.

On the high plateau east of the Ernz Noire, generally astride the highway linking Echternach and Luxembourg City, the 12th Infantry’s Colonel Chance had committed the last of his reserve battalion; but the commander of the 4th Division, Tubby Barton, had arranged to borrow a company of medium tanks from the 9th Armored Division’s CCA. Taking a chance that the German offensive would not expand to the south, Barton was bringing forward the reserve battalion of his southernmost regiment, the 22d Infantry. He also still had in reserve his organic reconnaissance troop and engineer combat battalion.

More important still was another reserve whose early commitment Brandenberger could in no way have anticipated. That was the 10th Armored Division’s CCA, which at daybreak on December 17 began moving to Luxembourg from the sector of the Third Army in northeastern France. The combat command was to be available at the start of the third day, December 18.

American commanders intended on the second day, December 17, to use their local reserves to rescue surrounded units, strengthen threatened units, and block exits from the gorge of the Ernz Noire leading into the rear of the units on either side. Rudder of the 109th Infantry was to rescue Company E in Fouhren; Collins of the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion was to block roads leading into his rear from the Ernz Noire and maintain contact with his

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