THREE

It had been a long night in the snowy woods above the small town of Wingen, now occupied by a handful of civilians and some three hundred Americans, including the command post of the Ist Battalion of the 45th Division’s 179th Regiment. The SS men, veterans that they were, used the tactics of tension and fear they had seen the Finns employ against the Russians in the wooded tundra of that remote northern country. All night long they had kept their opponents on edge, crying out commands in English, names, insults, yells for help.

Pfc Edson Larson of the 7oth Division recalled afterwards: ‘The woods were filled with calls from the Germans. A Company on your feet! Heil Hitler! Down with Roosevelt! Also much rattling of mess gear. I was with a fellow from Georgia and he said it sounded like a Republican convention!’¹ But this particular ‘convention’ was going to have a deadly outcome.

Patrolling in the woods that night, Sergeant Richard Struthers of the 70th Division’s 276th Infantry, one of the few veterans in the Division, now on his second tour of overseas duty, came across some holes which had been dug recently. Around them someone had placed rocks for further protection. Immediately he knew they were German. He told his company commander, Lieutenant Ivan Stone, but he dismissed the Sergeant’s fear. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said airily. ‘There are no Germans around here.’²

In fact there were nearly a thousand of them lurking in the woods, probing the defences around Wingen, which was to be one of the hot spots of the whole battle on the northern flank of the Seventh Army. Although they were out of touch with the headquarters of the 356th Volksgrenadier Division, to which they were attached, that didn’t worry the SS. They were used to acting independently and as SS-men they had great contempt for the infantry of the Wehrmacht. They would go it alone. They moved ever closer to the first positions of the unsuspecting men of the 276th Infantry Regiment.

Meanwhile the men of its sister regiment, the 278th, located a dozen or so miles away in the other key village of Philippsbourg, also enjoyed a false sense of security. Admittedly they could hear the soft boom of artillery to their front, but it was a long way away. As it grew lighter there was a deceptive calm about the place.

A medic, T/4 Nelson, recalled years later: ‘I visited the latrine and was observing a couple of other medics tinkering with a tire or something on one of the trucks. It seemed like a nice quiet morning when suddenly there were whines and explosions all around.’³

The German barrage had begun. Suddenly all was hectic activity. The two doctors took off to help the wounded outside the village. The jeep driver drove away furiously. Abruptly there was the angry chatter of machine guns at close range. Only one of the three medics would return; they had run straight into the attacking Germans.

By midday the village was surrounded and the first German tank was nosing its way cautiously by the little church. An American tank destroyer lumbered into the attack. At once it took up the challenge. Solid armour-piercing shot flashed back and forth. The Third Battalion aidmen fled in disorder. Even the chaplain forgot his customary dignity and made a run for it.

Now the aidmen of the 1st Battalion panicked. Sergeant Place, in charge, yelled, above the thump-thump of the barrage, ‘Come on, let’s get outa here!’

Nelson objected. ‘Where will you go?’ he cried. ‘We’re better off here than out in the woods! Besides, it’s against regulations to leave the wounded unattended.’ He indicated the half-dozen men moaning and tossing in their blood-stained bandages on the floor.⁴

But it was no use. Most of the medics abandoned the wounded, leaving Nelson, Pfc Piel and an unknown ambulance driver of the 45th Division to tend them.

From outside there came the hollow boom of metal striking metal. They ran to the shattered window. The tank destroyer had been hit. Now it was burning, the crew running for safety under German rifle fire. Suddenly one faltered, his arms flailing the air in his agony, as if he were climbing the rungs of an invisible ladder. Next instant he slipped to the ground. From a nearby house someone yelled urgently ‘Medic!’

Nelson hesitated. In the end he asked the 45th man to go along with him, mumbling fearfully that medics weren’t supposed to go ahead of the infantry. The 45th veteran rounded upon him hotly. ‘Those fellows are doing the fighting in this war,’ he snarled at the greenhorn. ‘The least we can do is to pick them up when they’re hurt!’⁵

The Germans were everywhere in Philippsbourg now. The American command lost control. The men were isolated in houses and cellars, fighting back as best they could in little groups.

‘Hell, it’s hotter here than in Anzio!’ an ambulance driver of the 45th Division yelled to Pfc Mulholland of the 70th.⁶

Private Herbert Thiesen ran out of his house to find ammunition; his hard-pressed little group were running low. He didn’t get far. German fire struck him almost at once and he hit the ground hard. A medic ran out to help. Moments later he scampered back gasping that Thiesen was dead. But the dead man wouldn’t lie down. To their surprise the men saw him stagger to his feet and struggle to the nearest house. The bullet which had felled him had penetrated his helmet, gone through his right temple and exited behind his right ear, without doing any serious damage!

He was one of the fortunate ones. Casualties were mounting rapidly in the 1st Battalion Aid Post where Nelson was in charge. The 45th driver volunteered to run the gauntlet of German fire to evacuate the wounded, although his ambulance was already riddled with bullet holes.

Now Nelson was faced with a new trial. The ambulance only held four wounded. Who should go? All around him the men on the floor begged to be taken as the Germans crept ever nearer. Nelson remained calm. He made his first choice – a boy who had been blinded. Gently he guided him outside towards the ambulance.

Fortunately, at this time Captain Ferree, one of the missing doctors, struggled in. He pitched in immediately, beginning operating straight away with the assistance of one of the medics who had been wounded and had risen from his own stretcher to help.

A sergeant was brought in, one leg practically blown off. Ferree did the preliminary cutting and one of the medics completed the operation by severing the leg with bandage scissors. Another popular NCO, Sergeant Smith, was brought in, badly injured in leg and shoulders. Ferree decided to amputate to save Smith’s life. Hastily the leg was removed. Long afterwards Nelson remembered: ‘The amputated leg with the combat boot still on it was deposited next to the door, where it made a gruesome sight when the door was shut. We left the door open as much as possible.’⁷

As Wingen also came under attack from the SS, the threat to the 44th Division on the Seventh Army’s front in the Bitche area became acute. To bolster up the sagging line General Patch ordered up the US 255th Infantry and, perhaps the most controversial outfit in his whole command, General Leclerc’s famed 2nd French Armored Division.

Back in 1940 Captain Vicomte Philippe de Hautecloque, a wounded and hunted man, had sworn he would not surrender like most of his comrades in the beaten French Army. He had smuggled himself out of France to join de Gaulle in England. Within weeks he was fighting again in Africa, where he achieved the first victory of Free French arms at the remote oasis of Kufra in Central Africa. There, after the Italian garrison had surrendered to him and he had begun his long march to join Montgomery’s British in Egypt, he had written to de Gaulle: ‘We will not rest until the flag of France also flies over Paris and Strasbourg.’

Montgomery had taken to him at once when he turned up in Egypt after an incredible march over hundreds of miles, looking ‘as you might say you had dropped over from the next village to tea,’ as Freddie de Guingand, Montgomery’s Chief-of-Staff, recorded. Montgomery shook the emaciated Frenchman’s hand and later told de Guingand, ‘I can make use of that chap.’⁸

The Americans had made use of him too. Under the pseudonym of Leclerc, (under his own name he had been sentenced to death by Pétain’s Vichy government as a traitor and he feared reprisals against his family who were still in France) he had captured Paris under Patton’s command and then, three months later, he had made an unorthodox and unauthorized dash through the Vosges to capture Strasbourg itself. He had kept the promise of what had become known as the ‘Oath of Kufra’. But in November, 1944, when he captured the Alsatian capital, he had told Devers ‘he would not go down to join the First French Army guarding the Colmar Pocket.’ He would not fight with Juin, de Lattre and the rest of those officers who had served Pétain loyally until the tide of the war had turned. As Devers recorded later: ‘I just couldn’t get Leclerc to join the French 1st Army . . . so I sent him back (to the Seventh).’⁹ To Wade Haislip, commander of the US XV Corps, whom Leclerc trusted and regarded as something of a father figure, Leclerc said: ‘I want you to tell General Devers something from me. It is that I, myself, and every man in my division are volunteers. We do not have to fight . . . but we do it for the liberation and honour of France. But if he ever attaches us to the divisions of de Lattre we will pack up and go home.’¹⁰

Now, just as Leclerc prepared to lead his men into the attack, he was handed an official-looking envelope. He read through its contents and then threw back his head ‘and laughed and laughed and laughed,’ as his aide, Colonel Chatel recalls.¹¹ But it was bitter cynical laughter. Without a word he handed the letter to the Colonel. It was from the French Supreme Court stating that General Leclerc d’Hautecloque had been reprieved; his death sentence had been rescinded. As Chatel said later, ‘Despite all the magnificent things Leclerc had done for France, despite all the honours he had won, the new régime in Paris had found it necessary to proceed through official channels and lift the death sentence. . . . This was the reason for the bitterness of the joke as he saw it.’¹²

This bitter division among the French people clearly decided de Gaulle to go to Versailles to press his case for the abandonment of the withdrawal in Alsace. Churchill arrived from London and the conference between him, de Gaulle and Eisenhower began.

Eisenhower was not in a particularly good mood that Wednesday lunchtime. The news from Alsace was bad and his offer of pardons to the many thousands of US soldiers in stockades through the ETO (European Theatre of Operations) if they would take up arms had been disappointing. Only a few score of the rapists, thieves and deserters had taken up his offer. He had a guilty conscience as well. He had not written to his wife, Mamie, since Christmas and every time he walked into his office he saw the photo of her and his son John on his desk. Soon he was to write to her: ‘From your papers you will understand that it is hard to sit down and compose thoughts applicable to a letter to one’s best only girl.’¹³ He hoped that the letter would soft-soap Mamie enough for her not to send him one of those griping letters which he feared and hated. Plagued by such professional and private worries, Eisenhower was not in a particularly good frame of mind to play the role on which he prided himself – that of mediator between warring factions within the great military alliance. In the event, it seems that the Great Old Man, sitting there like a pink Buddha, puffing away at his majestic cigar, did the mediating.

Eisenhower opened by explaining his poor situation in the Ardennes, the problem of the Colmar Pocket and his shortage of manpower. ‘That is why I have ordered the troops to establish another, shorter line further back.’

‘If we were at Kriegsspiel,’ retorted de Gaulle, ‘I would say you were right. But I must consider the matter from another point of view. Retreat in Alsace would yield French territory to the enemy. In the realm of strategy this would be only a manoeuvre. But for France it would be a national disaster. At the present moment we are concerned with Strasbourg. I have ordered the First French Army to defend the city. It will, therefore, do so in any case. But it would be deplorable if this entailed a dispersion of Allied forces, perhaps even a rupture in the system of command. That is why I urge you to reconsider your plan to order General Devers to hold fast in Alsace.’

Eisenhower frowned when he heard that delicately phrased ‘rupture in the system of command’ translated by the interpreter. He knew what de Gaulle was hinting at, namely that France and the French Army might go it alone. De Gaulle thought ‘the Supreme Commander seemed impressed’.

‘You give political reasons for me to change military orders,’ objected Eisenhower.

‘Armies,’ de Gaulle answered loftily, ‘are created to serve the policy of states. And no one knows better than you yourself that strategy should include not only the given circumstances of military technique, but also the moral elements. And for the French people and the French soldiers, the fate of Strasbourg is of extreme moral importance.’

Just as Eisenhower had lectured Bedell Smith a few days before, now he too was being lectured, and not only by de Gaulle, but also by Churchill, who said, ‘All my life I have remarked what significance Alsace has for the French. I agree with General de Gaulle that this fact must be taken into consideration.’

Still Eisenhower did not give in. He pointed out that if the French went it alone, he might cut off their fuel and ammunition supplies, but de Gaulle wasn’t impressed by this attempt at blackmail. He made Juin’s point once more that France would forbid the use of the French communication system by the American Army, adding, ‘Rather than contemplate the consequences of such possibilities I felt I should rely on General Eisenhower’s strategic talent and on his devotion to the service of the coalition of which France constituted a part.’

Eisenhower gave in. He telephoned Devers to cancel the retreat at once. The withdrawal of General Brooks’ VI Corps should be limited so that its right wing would go on holding on to Alsatian territory some distance north of the Alsatian capital. Strasbourg was saved.

That done, Eisenhower told de Gaulle he would send Bedell Smith to Devers the following day with these orders in writing, but de Gaulle was taking no chances. As he wrote later, ‘I agreed with Eisenhower that Juin should accompany Bedell Smith which would be an additional guarantee for me and for the executants, proof that agreement had been reached.’

Over the tea which followed, Eisenhower confessed to de Gaulle that he was having problems with his Allied subordinates. ‘At this very moment,’ he complained, ‘I am having a lot of trouble with Montgomery, a general of great ability, but a bitter critic and a mistrustful subordinate.’

‘Glory has its price,’ de Gaulle said airily, and then tried to sweeten the pill of defeat. ‘Now you are going to be a conqueror!’

Outside the Petit Trianon Juin said to de Gaulle that he felt Churchill deserved a word of thanks. After all, he had indicated as soon as they entered the conference room ‘that everything had been arranged’.¹⁴

‘Bah!’ was de Gaulle’s reply and as the car drew up and they entered, he slumped in the back seat in gloomy contemplation.

That night Eisenhower wrote to his boss, Marshall, in Washington: ‘All my life I have known what significance Alsace had for the French. I agree with de Gaulle that this fact must be taken into consideration.’

Despite Eisenhower’s decision to stop the retreat, the Germans pressed home their advantage in a series of bitter clashes all along the front. At Philippsbourg on 3 January, Private George Turner of the 14th Armored Division, belonging to another of those scratch battalions thrown in by Frederick, was cut off from his artillery outfit. He joined a friendly infantry company withdrawing under heavy fire. Suddenly he spotted two German tanks followed by seventy-five German infantry men. Though not trained for this kind of combat, he grabbed a rocket launcher and went to meet the Germans. They spotted him and he came under immediate small arms and cannon fire. But he held his ground. Standing in the middle of the road, slugs cutting the air all around him, he aimed and fired. The first tank came to a halt, flames pouring from it. Turner fired again and the other halted, badly damaged. He wasn’t finished yet. He flung away the bazooka. Running to an abandoned half-track, he dismantled its machine gun and, standing there like John Wayne in a western shoot-out, he sprayed the Germans with half-inch bullets. The attack came to an abrupt halt and the Americans went over to the offensive. The Germans brought up 75mm anti-tank cannon. The American Shermans, supporting the infantry, came under fire. Two were hit and came to a halt. Again Turner went into action, while the crews of the tanks pelted for safety. One tanker couldn’t make it and was trapped. Suddenly the Sherman, known among the troops as ‘the Ronson lighter’ on account of the ease with which it caught fire, burst into flames. Turner didn’t hesitate. He dropped his machine gun and doubled towards the blazing tank. Desperately he tried to rescue the trapped tanker. There was a muffled roar as the Sherman’s ammunition locker exploded. Turner was thrown to the ground, painfully wounded. Still he refused to be evacuated. As his citation read: ‘He remained with the infantry until the following day, driving off an enemy patrol with serious casualties, assisting in capturing a hostile strongpoint and voluntarily and fearlessly driving a truck through heavy enemy fire to deliver wounded men to the rear aid station.’¹⁵

George Turner, the artilleryman turned infantryman, was later awarded his country’s highest honour, the Medal of Honor.

The future minister, Pfc Docken, who had spent the previous night sleeping with some cows in a stable near Philippsbourg, knew now that he had frostbite. But then ‘all of us had a little frostbite, but those fellows with feet that sweat easily had the most trouble’.¹⁶

But the greenhorns of the 70th Division were learning fast and were now keeping a spare pair of socks ‘in our bosom’ so they had dry warm socks to change into, pressing the wet pair taken off close to their body to dry out. They learned how to cut the tails off their heavy greatcoats which soon became soaked with the snow and froze. They learned how to urinate on their frozen weap0ns to de-freeze the mechanism. They learned how to interchange their sweat-soaked shirts, wearing them two at a time for extra warmth, the wet one closest to the body being replaced by the dry outer one.

It was little better for the attacking Germans. Young Lieutenant Zoepf of the 6th SS recalled later how, as it started to grow dark that night, ‘Our packtrain arrives with ammunition and rations – half a loaf of bread and some spreading for each man. Our men are told: “To get their next rations from the enemy; no further supply.”

‘Now they march again, slogging through the knee-deep snow. . . . We are exhausted from the lack of sleep. Every little stop on our march is immediately used for sleep, leaning on a tree, crouching or sitting. . . . The pace is killing.’¹⁷ But there was to be no respite for the exhausted underfed mountain men of the Sixth SS. On the morrow Wingen had to be taken, cost what it may.

The suffering went on and on. That month a reporter from the army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, recorded what it was like at a Seventh Army casualty clearing centre behind the front: ‘They chased some kids out of the narrow courtyard so that the ambulance could back up and unload. Two of the passengers were walking wounded. The third was a litter case, a young lieutenant all doped up with morphine.

‘“He thinks he’s still up front,” said the driver. “All the way he kept yelling something about a machine gun on a hill and kept repeating, ‘We’ve got to attack; we’ve got to attack!’” It was cold outside and the driver shivered a little. “The first guy we ever hauled from the front was like that,” said the driver. “He had his brains wrapped up in bandages and I expected him to start screaming at any minute because it was the roughest cross-country trip I ever made.” But the driver’s assistant, the aptly named Tristan Coffin of the 103rd Infantry Division, said quietly, “I don’t remember them any more. They’re all just faces to me . . . and some of them don’t even have faces.”’¹⁸