8th infantry division battle of the bulge

The 109th Infantry, the 9th Armored Division, the 4th Infantry Division, and CCA, 10th Armored Division, had to win both the time and the space required for the assembly of the American counterattack forces. And in and around Eisenborn, CCA, 10th Armored Division, was assembling to counter any German attack. In Echternach Company E, 12th Infantry, had occupied a two-block strongpoint from which it harassed the German troops trying to move through the town. Battle Casualties: 13,458 : Non-Battle Casualties: 7,598 : Total Casualties: 21,056 : Percent of T/O Strength: 149.4 : Campaigns. Finally, the Americans halted near the T in the gorge road just south of Mllerthal. Captain Murray S. Pulver, commander of Company B, 120th Infantry Regiment, was in his usual placethe thick of the fighting. An hour earlier the tank destroyer reconnaissance company had begun a long-range fire fight but the German advance guard, despite heavy shelling from three field artillery battalions and every self-propelled piece which could be brought to bear, drove straight on to Mllerthal. antitank gun which had been placed here to block the gorge road. What had been seen were troops of the 987th Regiment, the reserve regiment of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division, then attacking in the 9th Armored Division sector. 3D Armored Division "Battle of the Bulge" memorial, Houffalize, Belgium; 3D Armored Division monument, Fort Indiantown Gap . The German attack through the 9th Armored sector beyond Waldbillig had been checked. It was imperative that the line be held. The supply situation was poor and could become critical, in part because of the Allied air attacks at the Rhine crossings, in part because of the Allied success-even during poor flying weather-in knocking out transportation. The tank commander offered to cover the withdrawal of Company E from the city, but Capt. December 1944, was a month that would be forever seared into John Schaffner's memory. The commander of the 212th Volks Grenadier Division received a slight wound but had the satisfaction of taking the surrender of the troublesome Americans, about 111 officers and men from Company E, plus 21 men belonging to Company H. On this same day the Company F outpost which had held out at Birkelt Farm since 16 December capitulated. The American makeweight would have to be its armor. The American counterattack on the 19th, then, first would be opposed by infantry and infantry weapons, but would meet heavier metal and some armor as the day ended. Morris, now charged with unifying defensive measures while the Third Army counterattack forces gathered behind this cover, alerted CCA, 10th Armored Division, early on the morning of 20 December, for employment as a mobile reserve. The three tanks which had come up the evening before, and very effective fire by American batteries, put an end to these German efforts. Elsewhere on the VIII Corps front the enemy advance was picking up speed and reinforcements were rolling forward. Although the 212th was at full strength it shared the endemic weaknesses of the volks grenadier division: insufficient communications and fewer assault guns than provided by regulation (only four were with the division on 16 December). General Middleton regarded the German advance against the southern shoulder of his corps as potentially dangerous, both to the corps and to the command and communications center at Luxembourg City. In late 1944, during the wake of the Allied forces' successful D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, it seemed as if the Second World War was all but over. His father was a truck driver with a balloon observation company. Picture Information. Then the advance had to be halted short of the objective in order to free the tanks and half-tracks for use in evacuating the large number of wounded. The problem of regimental control and coordination was heightened by the wide but necessary dispersion of its units on an extended front and the tactical isolation in an area of wooded heights chopped by gorges and huge crevasses. Unit commanders and noncommissioned officers were good and experienced; morale was high. eleven tanks and six half-tracks and made their way past burning buildings to the new 4th Division line north and east of Consdorf. The Americans had met this onslaught with two infantry regiments (the 12th and 109th), an armored infantry battalion (the 60th), and an understrength tank battalion (the 70th), these units and others attached making the total approximately division strength. The field artillery battalions were widely dispersed behind the various sections of the long 4th Division front; only fifteen pieces from the 42d Field Artillery Battalion and the regimental cannon company were in range to help the 12th Infantry. Brandenberger rated the 212th as his best division. The division served as the first official military guardian of the gold vault at Fort Knox. Two tanks and two squads of riflemen continued along the main road to the hat factory at the southwestern edge of Echternach where Company E, 12th Infantry, had established itself. The enemy here was in considerable strength and had established observation posts on the ridges ringing Lauterborn and bordering the road. Picture 1 of 2. . Click on a link to access the respective web site. 4th Infantry Division troops dash across a Bailey bridge while under enemy fire near Moesdorf, Luxemborg, January 21, 1945. On the left, Task Force Chamberlain (Lt. Col. Thomas C. Chamberlain) dispatched a small tank-infantry team from Breitweiler into the gorge. Then, in 1966, the first three battalions of the 8th deployed to Vietnam, fighting in 9 campaigns and . This ambulance convoy was en route to Consdorf, in the late afternoon, when a radio message reported that the Germans had cut the road north of Consdorf and bazooka'd two tanks on their way back from Berdorf for ammunition. The 4th Division and 10th Armored sought to disengage their advance elements and regroup along a stronger main line of resistance, and the enemy fought to dislodge the American foothold in Berdorf and Echternach. After suffering more than 6,000 casualties in heavy fighting in the Hrtgen Forest during the autumn of 1944, Maj. Gen. Norman Cota's 28th "Keystone" Division was sent to an area that First Army thought would be a quiet sector to rest and replace their losses. Across these rivers lay a heterogeneous collection of German units whose lack of activity in past weeks promised the rest the 4th Division needed so badly. By some chance the two platoons on the right missed the German hive. US ARMY 1ST ID FIRST INFANTRY DIVISION PATCH BIG RED ONE 1 VETERAN FORT RILEY. The failure on the part of the 987th to push past Mllerthal on 17 December or to overflow from the gorge onto the flanks of the two American units remains. day it may be said that the German opportunity to exploit the initial surprise and attendant tactical gains commenced to fade. Small tank-infantry teams quickly formed and went forward to relieve or reinforce the hard-pressed companies. The 82nd Airborne Division began its illustrious military career as an infantry division during World War I. Each regiment, by standard practice on such a wide front, had one of the division's 105-mm. Thirty minutes later the answer came back from CCA: a section of tanks and some riflemen were fighting at the outskirts of Echternach. At dark the Germans had lost. It should be added that Seventh Army divisions suffered as the stepchild of the Ardennes offensive, not only when bridge trains failed to arrive or proved inadequate but also in the niggardly issue of heavy weapons and artillery ammunition, particularly chemical shells. 10th, 51st, and 53rd Armored Infantry Battalions 8th, 35th, and 37th Tank Battalions 22nd, 66th, and 94th Armored FA Battalions . The 8th Infantry Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988. The 12th Infantry was on the left (next to the 9th Armored Division) and fronting on the Sauer; the 8th Infantry was in the center, deployed on both the Sauer and Moselle; the 22d Infantry reached to the right along the Moselle until it touched the First and Third Army boundary just beyond the Luxembourg border. On the morning of 17 December the 10th Armored Division (General Morris) had moved out of Thionville for Luxembourg, the first step (although at the time not realized) which General Patton's Third Army would make to intervene in the battle of the Ardennes. In accordance with the division orders to hold back maximum reserves, the 12th Infantry had only five companies in the line, located in villages athwart the main and secondary roads leading southwest from the Sauer River crossings to the interior of the Grand Duchy. At Bech, behind the American center, General Barton now had the 3d Battalion, 22d Infantry, in reserve, having further stripped the 4th Division right. Death dates are between Dec. 16, 1944, and Jan. 25, 1945, the period of the giant battle. Thirty-five of the enemy, including one company commander, surrendered; the commander of the second company was killed, as were at least fifty soldiers. It was his father's 47th birthdaya veteran who had served in France in the first War. The Germans withdrew to some woods about 800 yards to the north, ending the action; apparently the 320th was more concerned with getting its incoming troops through Echternach. Troops of the 2d Battalion, 8th Infantry (Lt. Col. George Mabry), with tanks and armored field artillery firing in support, first attacked east from Waldbillig to take the wooded nose around which looped the Waldbillig-Mllerthal road. The tanks opened fire on the German flank and rear, while all the infantry weapons in the village blazed away. When this little force reached Osweiler, word had just come in that Dickweiler was threatened by another assault. In February 1945, the division advanced into Germany, crossing the . First a ten-pound pole charge would be exploded against a wall or house; then a tank would clank up to the gap and blast away; finally the infantry would go to work with grenades and their shoulder weapons. When the 4th Division reserves arrived in Breitweiler on the morning of 17 December the threat of a flanking move through the gorge was very real but the Americans had time to dig in. If this additional weight should be thrown against the thin American line immediately to the north of the 4th Infantry Division, there was every likelihood that the line would break. The center task force (Lt. Col. A number of the divisional vehicles had broken down en route to Luxembourg; a part of the artillery was in divisional ordnance shops for repair. During these operations in France, while light and medium bombers and fighter-bomber aircraft of Ninth Air Force had been engaged in close support and interdictory operations, Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces had continued their strategic bombing. While part of Task Force Standish was engaged in Berdorf, another team attacked through heavy underbrush toward Hill 329, east of Berdorf, which overlooked the road to Echternach. This advance was made across open fields and was checked by extremely heavy shellfire. The Battle of the Bulge began with the German attack (Operation Wacht am Rhein and the Herbstnebel plan) on the morning of December 16, 1944. The 4th Division switched all local. and forward supply dumps in the Trier-Bitburg area. Caveat: This Battle lasted more than a month, with assignments in considerable flux. Higher German headquarters had anticipated the appearance of some American reinforcements opposite the LXXX Corps as early as the third day of the operation. Consdorf, the command post of the 2d Battalion, 12th Infantry, was left open to an attack from Mllerthal up the Hertgrund ravine. On 18 January 1945, the alignment changed one last time, to XVIII Corps, US First Army, 12th Army Group as it is given in the following hierarchy. Two platoons from Company A, 19th Tank Battalion, which had just. His outfit would launch a gas filled balloon tethered to a ground-based winch. Accordingly, the 316th Infantry began to cross the Sauer, moving up behind the center of the parent division. At the same time elements of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division struck through Waldbillig, the point of contact between the 4th Division and the 9th Armored, in an attempt to push the right wing of the LXXX Corps forward to a point where the road net leading east to the Sauer might be more easily denied the gathering American forces. The immediate objective of the northern regiment, the 423d, was the plateau on which stood the village of Berdorf; beyond this the regiment had orders to cut the road running west from Lauterborn and Echternach and link forces with the 320th Regiment. According to War Department General Order 114, December 7, 1945 there were approximately 2,000 units that received the Ardennes Credit, (The Battle of the Bulge). For the 106th Infantry Division, the Opening of the Bulge was a Death Blow. Also included are units of the 8th and 9th Army Air Forces. The professionalism and pride with which each unit preforms shows the true credentials of the 8th Infantry Division (M). The division completed its concentration within the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg on the 13th, its three regiments deployed as they would be when the German attack came. At several points canyonlike cliffs rise sheer for a hundred feet. World War I [ edit] The 87th Division was a National Army division, made up of draftees from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. In the early days of the Battle of the Bulge John would find himself fa. All that could be said of the 12th Infantry center was that the situation was fluid, for here the road junction at Scheidgen was in enemy hands and German detachments were on the loose. reserves to the threatened left flank to block further penetrations and to reinforce and relieve the garrison villages in the north. Middleton had nothing to offer but the 159th Engineer (Combat) Battalion, which was working on the roads. Rotation in the line allowed. Either these sets failed to function or the outposts were surprised before a message could get out. The 8th U.S. Infantry reactivated in 1947, assigned to Ft. Ord, California, remaining assigned to the 4th Infantry Division. 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