Stephen E. Ambrose the Men of War E-book Box Set by Stephen E. Ambrose

Author:Stephen E. Ambrose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Southwest of Elsenborn, the 82nd Airborne Division was arriving to bolster the northern shoulder and stop Peiper’s rush westward. On December 20, Col. Ben Vandervoort’s 2nd Battalion, 505th PIR, arrived at Trois-Ponts, where the Salm and Amblève Rivers flowed together. Vandervoort put Company E on the east side of the Salm, while the remainder of the battalion established an MLR among and in the houses along the river on the west bank. Behind the MLR a sheer bluff rose. E Company, on the opposite bluff, had a 57mm gun set up on a shoulder of the road, twenty meters behind the dug-in infantry, who were on the edge of a wood. Lt. William Meddaugh, the CO, put his bazooka teams just ahead and to the left of the infantry. By 0300 hours they were in position to ambush any German force coming from the east. There they waited, no fires, no lights, no smoking, all wide-awake.

German armor—Peiper’s—was coming on, accompanied by infantry. Peiper had a twenty-to-one manpower advantage over Vandervoort, and a colossal firepower superiority. The American paratroopers had no tanks, no tank destroyers, no heavy artillery, only that little 57mm antitank gun, six bazookas, and the ultra-light airborne 75mm pack howitzer for artillery support. The 505th PIR was an elite outfit, to be sure, but not all that elite, because after Normandy and Holland it had more replacements who had only just arrived in Europe than it did veterans. But the replacements were volunteers who had qualified with five jumps and had some additional training after joining the 505th.

The 505th had learned new skills and techniques during its time in Holland. It applied one lesson learned even before daylight. At 0315 hours, an armored German vehicle approached E Company’s position. As it rounded a curve on the road as it wound its way down to the river, a bazooka team bushwhacked it. After the German crew fled, the paratroopers moved their minefield to the far side of the burning hulk. At 0400 a second armored vehicle blew itself up on the mines.

At first light, 0800 hours on December 21, Peiper attacked E Company with infantry and five tanks. The bazookas and the antitank gun knocked out the armor; the men in the foxholes drove back the infantry (a few of whom fell into E Company foxholes) with great loss.I From an OP on the high ground on the west bank, the Americans could see Peiper’s tanks, self-propelled artillery, and mobile flak batteries maneuvering for another attack.

Vandervoort sent F Company across the river, to support E Company with a flank attack, but it had little effect on Peiper’s men and tanks, who were massing for a decisive attack. Vandervoort later remarked that with what amounted to an armored division about to attack an infantry company, “disaster seemed imminent, but not one man of E company left his fighting position.” Vandervoort jumped into a jeep and had his driver take him over the bridge and climb to the bluff above the east bank.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.