The Battle of St. Vith was a battle fought between the United States and the United States and Germany near the Belgian city of St. Vith during World War II. It is the war of the small men, the outpost commanders, the section commanders, the though the date for the operation had to be pushed to the end of the year in.
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Vith, had seen the enemy and tapped the signal wire to ask for artillery interdiction of the highway.
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The combat engineer battalion deployed about two miles east of St. Here forty men or so of the 81st Engineer Combat Battalion th Division joined the th. Vith en route to aid the th Infantry, and a platoon of Troop C, 89th Cavalry Squadron, was commandeered to reinforce the watch east of the town.
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When the counteroffensive began, the 7th Armored Division Brig. Robert W. The division, assembled about fifteen miles north of Aachen, had taken no part as a unit in the November drive toward the Roer, although companies and battalions on occasion had been attached to attacking infantry divisions. The period of rest and refitting, after heavy fighting at Metz and in Holland, had put the 7th Armored in good condition. When General Bradley and the 12th Army Group staff met in the afternoon of the 16th to make a tentative selection of divisions which could be taken from other fronts to reinforce the Ardennes sector, the choice in the north fell on Hasbrouck's command.
Actually there were armored divisions in the First Army closer to the scene, but they had been alerted for use in the first phases of the attacks planned to seize the Roer River dams a design not abandoned until 17 December and as yet little sense of urgency attached to reinforcements in the VIII Corps area. General Hasbrouck received a telephone call at alerting, his division for movement to the south it took five more hours for the 7th Armored G-2 to learn that "three or four German divisions were attacking".
Two hours later while the division assembled and made ready, an advance party left the division command post at Heerlen, Holland, for Bastogne where it was to receive instructions from the VIII Corps. Vielsalm, fourteen miles west of St. Vith by road, had already been designated as the new assembly area. At Bastogne General Middleton outlined the mission: one combat command would be prepared to assist the th Division, a second could be used if needed, but under no circumstances was the third to be committed.
The decision was left to General Hasbrouck, who first was to consult with the th Division as to how and when his leading combat command would be employed. Even at this hour the scope of the German counteroffensive was but dimly seen and the 7th Armored Division advance party was informed that it would not be necessary to have the artillery accompany the combat command columns-in other words this would not be a tactical march from Heerlen to Vielsalm.
The division artillery, which had been firing in support of the XIII Corps, was not to displace until the late morning of 17 December, when it would move on the eastern route. Shortly after midnight the Ninth Army was informed that the two columns would depart at and ; actually the western column moved out at The estimated time of arrival was , 17 December, and of closure , 18 December. A couple of hours earlier the First Army headquarters had told General Middleton that the west column would arrive at and close at on the 17th, and that the combat command on the east road would arrive at and close at It was on this estimate that General.
Middleton and the th Division commander based their plans for a counterattack by a combat command of the 7th Armored east of St. Vith early on 17 December. Although this failure to make an accurate estimate of the time of arrival in the battle area bore on the fate of the two regiments on the Schnee Eifel, it was merely a single event in the sequence leading to the final encirclement and lacked any decisive import. The business of computing the lateral movement of an armored division close to a front through which the enemy was breaking could hardly attain the exactness of a Leavenworth solution complete with march graphs and tables.
None of the charts on traffic density commonly used in general staff or armored school training could give a formula for establishing the coefficient of "friction" in war, in this case the mass of jeeps, prime movers, guns, and trucks which jammed the roads along which the 7th Armored columns had to move to St. Also, the transmittal of the 7th Armored Division's own estimate of its possible progress was subject to "friction.
Battle of St. Vith - Wikipedia
The advance party sent by General Hasbrouck reached St. Vith about on 17 December, reporting to General Jones, who expected to find the armored columns right behind. Bruce Clarke, in advance of CCB, agreed with Jones's recommendation that his combat command be organized upon arrival into two task forces and committed in an attack to clear the St.
If successful, the attack by the two combat commands would provide escape corridors for the beleaguered regiments of the th. CCB of the 7th Armored had meanwhile been making good progress and arrived at Vielsalm about , halting just to the east to gas up. Although Vielsalm was only fourteen miles by road from St.
Vith, it would be literally a matter of hours before even the lightly armored advance guard could reach St. The mass of artillery, cavalry, and supply vehicles moving painfully through St. Vith to the west-with and without orders-formed a current almost impossible to breast. Although the mounted military police platoon in St.
Vith had orders to sidetrack the withdrawing corps artillery when the armor appeared, the traffic jam had reached the point where the efforts of a few MP's were futile. At German vehicles were seen in Setz, four and a half miles from the eastern edge of St. Half an hour later three enemy tanks and some infantry appeared before the th Engineer Battalion position astride the St. Vith road. Carelessly dismounting, one tank crew was riddled by machine gun fire; a second tank received a direct and killing blast.
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Another small German detachment deployed in front of the engineers an hour later was engaged and was finally put to flight by American fighter planes in one of their few appearances over the battlefield on this day. About the same time the 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, temporarily under the command of Maj.
Charles A. Cannon, Jr. Vith, the first unit of the 7th Armored to reach the th Division. Troop B was sent out the east road to reinforce the engineers, but the main body of the reconnaissance battalion deployed to screen the northeastern approaches to the Wallerode area. By this time it was obvious to Jones and Clarke that the main forces of the 7th Armored could not reach St. Vith in time to make a daylight attack.
General Hasbrouck reached St. Vith at it had taken him all of five hours to thread his way through the traffic jam between Vielsalm and St. He found that General Jones already had turned the defense of St. Vith over to Clarke and the 7th Armored Division. After a. It was just turning dark when the assistant G-2 of the 7th Armored led a company of tanks and another of armored infantry into St. This detachment had literally forced its way, at pistol point and by threatening to run down the vehicles barring the road, from Vielsalm to St.
About this time the Germans made another attempt, covered by artillery fire, to thrust a few tanks along the east road. Three American tank destroyers which had been dug in at a bend in the road were abandoned-their crews shelled out by accurate enemy concentrations but the attack made no further headway and perhaps was intended only as a patrol action. The th Division now could report, "We have superior force in front of St. Vith on 17 December? By noon German infantry were in Setz, with at least five hours of daylight remaining and less than five miles to go, much of that distance being uncontested.
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By mid-afternoon the enemy had reached the th Engineer positions less than two miles from St. The stand made by Troop B, 32d Cavalry Squadron, near Heuem and the later fight by the engineers gave the German point an excuse to report-as it did-the presence of "stubborn resistance" east of St. Vith road during the daylight hours of 17 December.
The German corps commander, General Lucht, had ordered the Mobile Battalion of the 18th Volks Grenadier Division up from reserve during the previous night with orders to advance via Andler. It will be remembered that the 18th Volks Grenadier Division was charged with the encirclement and capture of St.
With the arrival of the assault guns some attempt was made to probe the American defenses east of St. This, however, was not the main mission assigned the advance guard of the 18th Volks Grenadier Division , for the original plan of advance had called on the Mobile Battalion to seize the high ground at Wallerode, northeast of St. The bulk of the German advance guard, as. An opportunity had been missed. Perhaps the German command did not realize the full extent of the gains won in the St.
Vith area and was wedded too closely to its prior plans.
In any case the German armored reserve was not available. Vith until too late for a successful coup de main. On the movement of the main body of the 7th Armored Division on 17 December hung the fate of St. Behind the reconnaissance and advance elements the bulk of the division moved slowly southward along the east and west lines of march, forty-seven and sixty-seven miles long, respectively.
The division staff knew little of the tactical situation and nothing of the extent to which the German armored columns had penetrated westward. It is probable that night-flying German planes spotted the American columns in the early hours of the 17th, but it is doubtful that the tank columns of the Sixth Panzer Army traveling west on roads cutting across the 7th Armored routes were aware of this American movement.
The western column made its march without coming in proximity to the west-moving German spearheads, its main problem being to negotiate roads jammed with west-bound traffic. The division artillery, finally released in the north, took the east route, its three battalions and the d Antiaircraft Battalion moving as a single column. The town square was a scene of utter confusion. Trucks loaded with soldiers and nurses from a nearby hospital, supply vehicles, and civilians of military age on bicycles eddied around the square in an attempt to get on the road leading out to the west; a battalion from a replacement depot threaded its way on foot between the vehicles, also en route to the west.
This, of course, was the panzer detachment of the 1st SS Panzer Division. The th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, unable to reverse itself, turned west to Stavelot and subsequently joined the western group on its way to Vielsalm. Alerted by radio from the th, Maj. Scott acting in the absence of the artillery commander who had gone ahead to report at the division headquarters turned the column around in the square and to avoid the narrow and congested road led it back toward Eupen, cutting in to the western divisional route at Verviers.
This roundabout move consumed the daylight hours and through the night the gun carriages streamed along the Verviers-Vielsalm road. The main artillery column again missed the 1st SS Panzer Division by only a hair's breadth. Battalion, at the tail of the column, rolled through Stavelot about on the morning of 18 December, it found itself in the middle of a fire fight between the advance guard of the 1st SS Panzer Division and a small American force of armored infantry, engineers, and tank destroyers.
After an hour or so the battery turned once again and, taking no chances, circled wide to the west. It finally arrived in the division assembly area east of Vielsalm late in the afternoon. The bulk of the artillery column closed at Vielsalm during the morning, although the last few miles had to be made against the flow of vehicles surging from the threatened area around St. While the 7th Armored Division artillery was working its way onto the west road during the evening of 17 December, most of the division assembled in the St. Vith area along positions roughly indicative of an unconsciously forming perimeter defense.
From Recht, five miles northwest of St. Vith, to Beho, seven miles to the southwest of the th Division headquarters, the clockwise disposition of the American units was as follows. The disorganized 14th Cavalry Group was dispersed through the area between Recht and Poteau. West of St. Vith, in position to give close support, were located the th Armored Field Artillery Battalion Lt. The th, reinforced by the 16th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, and three batteries of corps artillery, fired through the night to interdict the eastern approaches to St.
Vith; this was all the artillery support remaining to the American troops in this sector. The th Infantry, now beginning to fold back to the north as the center of the 28th Division gave way, was no longer in contact with the th Infantry, its erstwhile left flank neighbor, but the axis of withdrawal ultimately would bring the th Infantry to piece out the southern sector of the defense slowly forming around St.
While it is true that an outline or trace of the subsequent St. Vith perimeter was unraveling on the night of December, this was strictly fortuitous. Vith on the morning of the 18th. The strength of the German forces thrusting west was not yet fully appreciated. Information on the location of the enemy or the routes he was using was extremely vague and generally several hours out of date.
Communication between the higher American headquarters and their subordinate units was sporadic and, for long periods, nonexistent. Late in the evening of the 17th and during the morning of the 18th, however, the scope and direction of the German drive thrusting past St. Vith, had driven forward on two routes. It was the first group in this northern column which CCR had unwittingly eluded and from which the tail of the 7th Armored artillery column had glanced at Stavelot. The southern route, through Recht and Vielsalm, was assigned to a kampfgruppe of the 1st SS Panzer Division made up of a reinforced panzer grenadier regiment and a battalion of assault guns.
This group had been delayed by poor roads and American mine fields west of Manderfeld, and by the end of 17 December it was some hours behind the north column. At that time the combat command retained only the 17th Tank Battalion assembled to the southeast because its armored infantry battalion had been diverted to St. About CCR got its first word of the Germans it had so narrowly missed when the driver for the division chief of staff, Col.
Church M. Matthews, appeared at the command post with the report that during the afternoon he had run afoul of a large tank column near Pont and that the colonel was missing. Fred M. Warren, acting commanding officer, sent the driver on to division headquarters to tell his story, and at the same time he asked for a company of infantry. He then ordered the 17th Tank Battalion Lt. John P. Wemple to send a tank company into Recht.
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Warren and Wemple studied the road net as shown on the map and agreed to try to hold Recht through the night. Stragglers came pouring through Recht in the meantime with rumors and reports of the enemy just behind them. The headquarters and tank company had little time to get set, for about the advance guard of the southern German column hit the village from the east and northeast. Unwilling to risk his tanks without infantry protection in a night fight through narrow streets, and uncertain of the enemy strength, Warren ordered a withdrawal after a sharp minute engagement.
CCR headquarters started down. Made cautious by the collision at Recht, the German column moved slowly, putting out feelers to the southeast before the main force resumed the march southwest along the Vielsalm road.
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