THE ARDENNES: "IT HAS BEEN VERY QUIET UP HERE…"

THE U.S. ARMY'S “Guide to the Cities of Belgium” assured soldiers that the Ardennes was a fine place “to practice your favorite winter sport.” The region was said to have become a “quiet paradise for weary troops.”

Of the 341,000 soldiers in the U.S. First Army, 68,822 were in VIII Corps, anchoring the army’s right flank with three divisions in the line. They held an eighty-five-mile front—three times the length advised for a force of such strength under army tactical doctrine—that snaked down the Belgian border through Luxembourg to Patton’s Third Army’s sector. At two spots, the line crossed the border into Germany’s Schnee Eifel, a snowy ridge that was a topographical extension of the Belgian Ardennes. Intelligence officers calculated that 24,000 enemy soldiers currently faced VIII Corps, so few that the First Army had recently ordered a deception program to feign an American buildup in the Ardennes; the intent was to lure more Germans, weakening Rundstedt’s lines to the north and south. Some VIII Corps troops wore phony shoulder flashes, drove trucks with bogus unit markings, broadcast counterfeit radio traffic, and played recordings of congregating tanks—all to suggest an amassing of strength that was not taking place. In reality, some infantry regiments that typically should have held a 3,500-yard (two-mile) front in such broken country now were required to hold frontages of six miles or more.

Troops of the U.S. 17th Airborne Division move toward the front near Houffalize, Belgium, in January, 1945.

For much of the fall, four veteran U.S. divisions had occupied the Ardennes, mastering the terrain and rehearsing both withdrawal and counterattack plans. But in recent weeks, they had been replaced by two bloodied divisions from the battle of Hürtgen Forest—those weary troops seeking a quiet paradise—and the newly arrived 106th Infantry Division, which was not only the greenest army unit in Europe but also the youngest. This was the first division into combat with substantial numbers of eighteen-year-old draftees. As with so many newer divisions, the 106th had trained diligently for months at home. After arriving at Le Havre, France, on December 6, the 106th had been trucked across France to reach the Ardennes front at seven P.M. on December 11, “numb, soaked, and frozen,” as a military historian later wrote. Man for man, foxhole for foxhole, across a twenty-eight-mile sector, they replaced troops of the 2nd Infantry Division, who bolted west for showers and hot food in the rear.

American infantrymen line up for chow in Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, January 2, 1945.

Few soldiers of the 106th had ever heard a shot fired in anger, and some failed to adjust their rifles to ensure accurate marksmanship, something that should have been done daily. Radio silence precluded the testing and calibration of new communication sets. Battalions reported shortages of winter clothing, maps, machine-gun tripods, and mortar, antitank, and bazooka ammunition. The dreaded disease trench foot soon spiked when green troops neglected to dry their socks properly. Despite orders to mount an “aggressive defense,” few patrols ventured forward, and German war dogs terrorized those who did.

“The woods are of tall pines, dark and gloomy inside. After a snow it is all in black and white,” an artilleryman wrote his wife from an outpost near the Losheim Gap. A departing 2nd Division colonel told his 106th replacement, “It has been very quiet up here and your men will learn the easy way.”