Ardennes: The Secret War by Whiting Charles

Author:Whiting, Charles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2025-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

TWO: THE BIG FLAP

I

By the morning of Monday, 18 December, there were more than fifty German armoured columns probing into the Ardennes. Some, in the north, had gone a mere mile. To the south of the Bulge, however, most had penetrated 10 to 12 miles, while one of von Manteuffel’s Fifth Army divisions had raced 30 miles, deep into the heart of the American rear.

Of Dietrich’s SS formations, the armoured column commanded by Obersturmbannführer Jochen Peiper of the 1st SS, the ‘Leibstandarte’[54], had been the most successful. He had bullied, pleaded, cajoled and battled his 5,000-strong force deep behind US lines and was now preparing to assault the river town of Stavelot. By nightfall Peiper had successfully accomplished that mission, and was pushing on out of the Ardennes, heading for the Meuse, coming ever closer to the headquarters of no less a person than the commander of the First US Army, General Courtney Hodges.

Now Spa, the little Belgian town which housed the Army HQ, was in complete uproar. Everywhere the side roads leading on to the broad boulevard westwards were clogged with jeeps, trucks, staff cars, half-tracks — anything on wheels — as the panic-stricken staff officers ‘bugged out’. Inside the town hall, the mayor ordered that all Allied flags should be removed before the Germans arrived and nineteen Belgians imprisoned on collaboration charges should be released immediately; the frightened Belgian did not want to end up in those same cells himself once the Gestapo was back.

Richard Hottelet of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio recorded observing one ‘weary staff officer, putting down one receiver and lifting another’ and mumbling to him, ‘It sounds like the Stock Market crash in 1929.’ Another, James Cassidy of NBC (National Broadcasting Company) radio recorded:

I will never forget the experience of conquest in reverse. The wild cheers of welcome accorded the American liberators three months ago had turned to ashes. Most civilians stood around in silent groups in the streets watching the mud-splattered army trucks moving. American flags were being removed from some of the shop windows and so were forbidden Belgian banners. As I left I wondered how long it would be until Nazi banners once again adorned those windows which for three months had displayed the Stars and Stripes.

As Captain Merriam of Ninth Army, attached to the 7th Armoured Division, summed it up, as he joined ‘the great bug-out’ for the new First Army HQ at Chaudfontaine near Liège (from which it would flee once more, ever westwards, within three days); ‘It’s no fun to be on the losing team, especially when a pale, wan, dazed civilian says, “And what is to become of us?”’

Now General Hodges was virtually alone in the big, echoing Hôtel Britannique, its windows flung open through which his officers had tossed their kit to the waiting vehicles below, the lights blazing in spite of blackout regulations. We do not know his thoughts. We do know, however, that the tall, courteous former infantryman realised he had suffered a major defeat in the Ardennes.

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