CLUMSY SKIRMISHES and pitched battles flared along the front, without deference to the holiday season. Peiper’s retreat and the Sixth Panzer Army’s shortcomings had extinguished hopes for a German breakthrough; 237,000 American mines, 370 roadblocks, and 70 blown bridges further impeded the north shoulder. In the far south, faltering progress by the Seventh Army had exposed Manteuffel’s left flank even as the Fifth Panzer Army tried to capture Bastogne. So desperate were shortages of spare parts and gasoline that new panzers in the Rhine Valley were being cannibalized to avoid burning fuel by sending them intact into battle.
But west of St.-Vith, in the German center, grenadiers vaulted the Salm and Our Rivers, and by December 23, panzer spearheads approached Marche, more than twenty miles beyond Vielsalm and a short bound from Dinant, on the Meuse. Model had shoehorned a dozen divisions along a twenty-five-mile battlefront. Although plagued with fuel and ammunition shortages, they remained a potent killing force on the march.
A photograph captured from the Germans shows soldiers posing on a tank.