War Stories III (38 page)

The German commanders
were
perplexed about the meaning of the strange American reply, but it became one of the most famous military communications of all time—and when it was reported to the press by Bradley's headquarters, it cheered the American people back home. But the battle was far from over and the SS would wreak more deadly havoc on both soldiers and civilians.

The next morning, 23 December, the weather cleared—allowing U.S. C-47 transport planes to drop supplies to the beleaguered American garrison in Bastogne. On Christmas Eve the vanguard of Patton's armor arrived on the outskirts of the city and the following morning, his U.S. 4th Armored began a limited counter-offensive—despite air attacks by the Luftwaffe against targets in and around Bastogne.

On 26 December, British Lancaster bombers attacked the Germans at St. Vith and that afternoon, the skies were still clear and calm enough to permit twenty-five Waco CG-4A gliders to land near Bastogne with essential supplies of ammunition, food, and medicine for the pinned-down GIs.

Over the next four days the British 30th Corps in the north and Patton's 7th Armored Corps from the south started pinching off the “bulge” that the Germans had made in the Allied lines. Though it was not yet evident to Hitler, the threat to Antwerp was over. On New Year's Day he launched the last massed attack made by the Luftwaffe in the war—sending more than 600 aircraft against Allied airfields and installations in Belgium. Although nearly 200 U.S. and British aircraft were destroyed—most of them on the ground and many of them shot down by German anti-aircraft batteries as the planes returned from their raids—it cost the Luftwaffe dearly, as they lost twice as many planes—nearly 400 aircraft.

By 8 January the Panzers were practically out of fuel and von Rundstedt appealed to Hitler to withdraw the remaining Panzers back to the frontier while they still had fuel and ammunition enough to make it. The Führer refused—but then, a few hours later, granted an identical request made by Sepp Dietrich. By 16 January, Patton and Montgomery had linked up at Houffalize and began “mopping up” German units scattered behind the new Allied front line. It was only then that senior U.S. commanders became aware of the atrocities perpetrated by the SS troops during the battle.

Early in the Ardennes offensive some German troops had donned American uniforms in order to penetrate American positions. Though this act was regarded to be “unlawful” it paled by comparison to the wholesale murders of U.S. prisoners of war who were captured by Dietrich's storm troopers in the initial stages of the battle. At Malmedy, St. Vith, and at several
smaller engagements, more than 350 Americans and nearly 100 Belgian civilians were machine-gunned to death in cold blood by their German captors—many of them on the order of SS
Standartenführer
Jochaom Peiper, one of Dietrich's most fanatical SS commanders. Staff Sergeant Bill Merriken of Bedford, Virginia, was wounded and then captured near Malmedy. He was one of the few survivors of an SS killing spree near the little village of Geromont.

It would take fifty years for Bill Merriken to find out what really happened to that note. Madame Blaise, wife of the farmer, was much too frightened to go through the American and German lines. Instead, she went to the house next door that belonged to the family of sixteen-year-old newspaper delivery boy Emile Jamar.