The Day of Capture
December 21, 1944 may never be recorded in American military history as an important day in the “Battle of the Bulge” and the war in Europe during World War II. But, in my mind, it was. It was an important day in the history of the Bulge Battle and the history of the American 106th Infantry Division, 422nd Infantry Regiment. The 422nd Regiment was the most forward American fighting unit that still existed in the Battle of the Bulge in a near frontline position nearly a week after the beginning of the German offensive. It was surrounded during the first day of battle. It had become an island of infantrymen engulfed by a flowing ebb of German advances around and behind it.
Was it abandoned? From then, December 16th… to now, December 21st?
After five days of being annihilated and surrounded, without food… possessing little or no ammunition, no medical supplies, no artillery or air support…lost communications, no reserves and with no help on the way, and most important of all, no planned escape route or orders for retreat… this regiment of men had to capitulate. By vote of the officers, late in the afternoon of December 20th, it was cast that we were to surrender to the Germans the next morning, December 21st, 1944 at 8:00 a.m. This date marked the end of the United States Army's most advanced positioned unit, which held the middle sector of the line in this great battle. This day should be remembered as the day America lost a valiant regiment of men, though it probably will never be recalled in the annals of the war history of the Battle of the Bulge. To do so would exemplify an infamous decision, or the inability of the United States Army Command to aid and support one of its parts. Thus, this date marked the tragic end of the young sons and men of America that filled this newly arrived "let stand" regiment. The end of an American regiment occurred this day, December 21, 1944.
On the morning of December 21, 1944, at 8:00 a.m., dogged soldiers stood up from the shallow holes they had recently dug in this long, sloping, wooded hillside, yet they remained hidden among the trees in this snow covered forest. For a moment, their eyes searched through the misty-foggy haze that surrounded them and rose up to a cold, gray-blackened sky. They were looking for no particular thing. Just looking out of habit. God knows it was cold! Below freezing. We, though, hadn't had time to think about it. We knew, be we hungry with frostbitten feet or battle weary, we could still continue the fight, but without effect. Here, where we were, we were not going to win this battle. Death was in this hillside among us... waiting. Now, we were ready to leave him there. We had risen, dark figures, and stood there still as tree trucks. It felt good to stand tall, head up, and square shouldered. For days now, we had squeezed our body into as small a space as was possible when we were walking, crawling, or in a fighting hole to help hide us from the dangers of the enemy. As we stood, our very bones and muscles felt relief. It felt good being stretched out. Then we moved... and started walking downhill to the agreed surrender area, cutting through the pale quietness of this once meant to be hillside battle area, and leaving an ugly situation behind. Silently and singularly, we were leaving our foxholes and our disassembled weapons, with their parts buried and thrown away, and walking through the trees, going downhill and onto a grassy, open valley. There, waiting for us in the opening, was a squad-size force of Germans. They wore their green-colored combat uniforms, covered over by a multi-colored camouflaged cloth-piece, and stood steady and gripped their burp guns in readiness. Only thirty minutes earlier, I sat on the edge of my foxhole thinking that I had been on the front lines for only little more than a week, and had come to this end. I wasn't thinking about breakfast or the cold snow I was sitting on. I was thinking I would soon be a prisoner. I couldn't understand it. I still wore my helmet, for I believed I could come under German artillery fire. The Germans told us the day before that our position would receive artillery fire if we did not surrender. At last, it was 8:00 o'clock. I removed my helmet, laid it aside, stood up, and started walking down the hill.
I was among the first group of American soldiers to file into the opening. My defensive position was only a short distance from the bottom of the gently sloping hill that leveled into a narrow, grassy valley. It was only natural that I would be among the first group of Americans to meet the Germans. As we came out of the forest into the opening, we formed a line, and we walked in column along side the waiting Germans. We stopped, not directly facing them. I could feel their presence off my right shoulder, and with a glance to the right, I could see them staring at us. It was now that we became prisoners. We were theirs and we knew it.
As we stood, stopped, within a couple of feet of the Germans, now exposed in the open terrain, one of the German soldiers suddenly lunged forward, grabbing one of the American's arms near his elbow, running both hands down to his wrist, stopping at his wrist watch. He found what he was looking for. He proceeded to remove the watch from the American's wrist. We were surprised and drew back a bit in a mild protest. I was watching this German soldier. He was a paunchy, round-faced man that, to me, didn't appear to be a veteran-hardened soldier. I resented his action. I detested this seemingly cowardly act toward the defenseless American prisoner.
And just as sudden, "Nicht, nicht!" rang out a nearby German's command. Hardly any sooner had the German taken the wrist watch from the American when a slender, much younger German soldier, who appeared to be in his early twenties and wore the insignia of a non-commissioned officer, commanded the older man to return the watch to the American and in German sternly forbid him to touch us again. The commanding, young German soldier seemed kind and sympathetic toward his new, captive American prisoners. He treated the American captives with respect. We felt at ease and protected with this authoritative young soldier in command.
As we stood, we knew. It had ended for us. The end came here. The seemingly unscathed action that we had gone through would not describe the true picture. We could recall the mortar fire back in the woods that had taken off the head of a soldier when he momentarily removed his heavy helmet. Or, we could recall the loss of life from a German tank sitting uphill firing point blank at us as we ran across a football-size-field-opening between the woods.
Bang! The tank’s eighty-eight shell was headed my way. With each sound of the eighty-eight shell being fired, I would hit the snow covered ground, trying to take cover in the not-so-deep track ruts of a German tank that had crossed this short-grass field earlier headed in the same direction that I was now taking. Immediately after the bang, I was up and out of the five-inch deep tank track rut and running again. Then another bang and then I hit the ground again. This tank firing and hitting the ground and up again repeated two or three more times before I made it to the far woods. Not hit. The German tanker could have blown me apart. I and another fellow were running together and we were only about a hundred yards from the firing sitting German tank. Other soldiers from my company were bunched-up running across the opening, up hill, closer to the tank, and they made better targets, I guess. Still, I thought they might be firing at me.
We could recall the Germans attacking with grenades and poled demolition charges in an attempt to overrun us.
And now, in this last foxhole, death was present and around us, and the threat of finality had become a reality. As I was thinking, the worst moment for me in this battle was the night before last, on the side of this forested hill. I realized then that this might be my last stand. It was then, for the first time, I spoke earnestly with God about my situation. It wasn't a prayer. I wanted him to know that I understood the critical situation that I had gotten myself into... and I feared I might need his help. It didn't look good... I realized that the Germans had found us. There was nowhere else to go. We were trapped. I knew I would expend all the ammunition I had, which wasn't much. I hoped that I could see them coming through the tall grass in the valley below me, to my front, to see them before they would reach the bottom of the steep ravine next to me, and there, climb up its steep slope to reach me. The hill was thick with trees to my right, to my left, and to my rear. Following German artillery bombardment, the yells for medics, for help of any kind, and for water, and afterwards, the moans of dying men on this hillside would further attest to the senselessness of the situation. What I feared the most would be seeing the bobbing of advancing helmets in and around the trees, outnumbering advancing Germans with automatic weapons, and hearing the deafening closeness of the rapid sound of the “tat-tat-tat” of their burp guns spitting out lead bullets of death, spraying areas in their advance. The sound of guns and bullets would become louder... now mixed in with equally loud sounds of utterances and crying of men. None of this could be stopped. The fight had to continue on until finished... when at last, only a lesser, quieter, sickening sound of men would be heard. As parts of the hill would be overrun, the moaning from those more distant areas would become more distinct and louder.
Only a smattering of shots would now be heard in those areas, here and there, and the cries would stop except for an occasional singular cry of a downed soldier who could consider himself fortunate if he where still alive.
From my right, from my front, from my left, or from my rear, where would the enemy come from? Now, I had planned my own retreat. Retreat here, where I was. When all of my ammunition was used up, I would remain in my hole and cover my hole with downed timber, or snow, or anything. I had no more ammunition. I had finished my fight. No doubt, as for me, I had done some killing. But for now, I was finished. From now on, only circumstances and timing would determine whether or not I was to live or die. Would a German hand grenade or a volley from a German burp gun aimed at my foxhole finish me off? Or would I arise as a prisoner? Timing of my actions to survive this battle would be very important if I were to survive.
It didn't happen this way. The next day, we were surrendered, as our position was too untenable.
Now, lined-up in the grassy valley, we were theirs as we stood still beside the Germans.
More and more Americans came down the hill and out into the open, and our line was pushed further downhill, deeper into the grassy clearing. There were many, many more Americans than I had imagined on this hillside. The number was in the hundreds.
The line of dark, olive-green clad Americans continued to grow longer and longer with disheartened, beaten, tired, hungry, worn-down soldiers, now prisoners, as more men continued to emerge out of the darkness of the snow covered evergreen trees that choked the hillside and walked slowly into the grassy clearing at the bottom of the long, gentle-sloping hill. They, too, had left their freshly dug fighting holes behind, along with their disassembled pieces of weaponry, mostly buried in the snowy, fir-forest silt, to join the now moving column of prisoners. Still, the numbers of men continued to swell coming out of the color mix of snow-white and wooded-green forest to join the moving, snaking line of men that now had crossed over the flat grassy valley and had twisted its way up the side of a far hill, now disappearing after making a right turn and going into a ravine that was barely visible behind thick fir trees. The plodding men looked alike: slow moving, seemingly heavy-footed, weighted down with olive drab colored overcoat, some with an olive drab blanket wrapped around them or over one shoulder. More likely than not, a corner of the blanket trailed through the snow behind them. The men's combat steel helmets had been left behind with their scattered weapons. The disillusioned look-a-likes now wore their olive colored wool knit caps on top their heads instead of the familiar steel combat helmets. They all wore the same tight-fitting leather combat boots that had been, at times, thoroughly cold-wet-soaked over the past few days. Still, today, it was cold enough for white snow flakes to remain on top and along the sides of the combat shoes as the men traversed the snowy field and filed up the far hillside where each man followed another in a line that crossed the ravine and went up a small embankment to an asphalt road where, at this juncture, the line of prisoners turned to the right and followed the road, passing over a stone bridge and going into the center of the small village of Schoenberg.
Yeah, I thought now, I remember the last communication that we received from our Division Headquarters back in St. Vith. It said we were to attack Schoenberg from the one side, while the American Seventh Armored Division would, at the same time, be attacking Schoenberg with tanks from the other side. And all those deep-throated sounding, grinding, moving tanks that we had heard yesterday, coming from the direction of Schoenberg, weren't American tanks at all, as we at first thought. We thought we were hearing American tanks. Later, we realized that it wasn't our tanks. What we had heard were German tanks that were moving through Schoenberg, going down this same road that we were now on, passing where we were now walking, going west, deeper into Belgium. A day earlier they had been on German soil. Then here. Now, on beyond us. Germany was only a mile from here, back across the woods, in the direction from which we had come. The tanks had rumbled. They were advancing to a now distant front. By now, the front was as far as twenty-five miles in places to our rear. Maybe further. We had been annihilated and circumstances made us capitulate. So, now, the Germans could freely advance to more distant battle areas.
Now, again, a rumble could be heard. Up ahead. Coming down the road was another new tank column, moving directly toward us. There they were, less than fifty yards in front of us, slowly grinding forward, moving in our direction. The German lead tank looked menacing with its extra long spout of an eighty-eight millimeter barrel carrying a built-up, heavy-looking muzzle on the end of it, all of which seemed to tilt the tank off balance, forward mounted as it was, on the front of this huge, square German tank that was leading the column and was slowly bearing down on us. It was the leader of a line of huge, square tanks mixed in with German half-tracks and troop carrying vehicles that were moving in column down the road, the Schoenberg-St. Vith road. They were on the road headed toward St. Vith, our division headquarters. Now the clanking of metal was real close.....