Read Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble for Free Online

better off than he was.’ Even with the sacks and bags from the airdrop, frostbite and trench foot affected nearly all soldiers. And Louis Simpson with the 327th Glider Infantry observed, ‘in this cold the life in the wounded is likely to go out like a match’ .
    Facing the attack around Flamierge, Simpson wrote: ‘I peer down the slope , trying to see and still keep my head down. Bullets are whining over. To my right, rifles are going off. They must see more than I do. The snow seems to have come alive and to be moving, detaching itself from the trees at the foot of the slope. The movement increases. And now it is a line of men, most of them covered in white – white cloaks and hoods. Here and there men stand out in the gray-green German overcoats. They walk, run and flop down on the snow. They rise and come towards us again.’
    Bastogne had naturally been a priority for American air support, and so were the hard-pressed 82nd Airborne and the 30th Division on the northern flank. But the top priority that day, with half of all Allied fighter-bomber units allocated, had been to stop the German panzer divisions from reaching the Meuse.
    From the moment the weather improved and the Allied air forces were out in strength, incidents of friendly fire, both from the air and from the ground, increased dramatically. Anti-aircraft gunners and almost anyone with a machine gun seemed almost physically incapable of stopping themselves from shooting at any aircraft. ‘Rules for Firing’ and instructions on ‘Air-Ground Recognition’ were forgotten. Soldiers had to be reminded that they were not to fire back at Allied aircraft who might be shooting them up by mistake. All they could do was to keep throwing out yellow or orange smoke grenades to make them stop, or firing an Amber Star parachute flare. The self-control of the 30th Infantry Division was the most sorely taxed. These soldiers had suffered attacks by their own aircraft in Normandy, and now in the Ardennes they were to suffer even more.
    Bolling’s 84th Infantry Division and parts of the 3rd Armored Division continued, with great difficulty, to hold a line south of the Hotton–Marche road against both the 116th Panzer-Division and the 2nd SS
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. Combat Command A of the 3rd Armored was pushed further round to the west, as a screen for the assembly of Collins’s VII Corps. The 2nd Armored Division, Patton’s former command known as ‘Hell on Wheels’, was arriving by forced march in great secrecy for a counter-attack planned for 24 December. The advance of the 2nd Panzer-Division was faster than expected. But Collins had been greatly relieved to hear from Montgomery, ‘chipper and confident as usual’ , that the bridges over the Meuse at Namur, Dinant and Givet were now securely defended by the British 29th Armoured Brigade. It was that night that the 8th Rifle Brigade killed two Skorzeny commandos in a Jeep. The main problem at the bridges was the flood of refugees fleeing across the Meuse to escape. ‘The German push has unsettled the whole population,’ wrote an officer with civil affairs, ‘and they seem to fear the worst. Already the refugees are moving along the roads and we are out to stop them causing trouble to traffic.’ Blocked at the bridges, Belgians resorted to boats to cross the Meuse.

     
    Montgomery also assured Collins that the brigade would advance to link up with Collins’s right flank on the next day, 23 December, but A Squadron of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment commanded by Major Watts was already at Sorinnes, six kilometres east of Dinant. Watts had no idea where either the Americans or the Germans were, so he spread his eighteen tanks out to cover every route into Dinant, using them more like an armoured reconnaissance regiment. For the three armoured regiments in the brigade, the great frustration was to be going into battle with their ‘battle-weary Shermans’ , rather than their new Comet tanks.
    The British also started to