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[Heron TSG]

So the Germans are doing better than in reality, then? It seems like you still have the tactical advantage here, but it'll be interesting to see how this changes matters.

[Fishbreath]

I would say that they had a tactical advantage around Bastogne, but they sacrificed the strategic advantage of holding off the 4th Armored for an extra two days, and they incurred heavy losses from both defensive fire and defensive bombardments.

[Fishbreath]

25 December 1944

What's Merry about all this, you ask? We're fighting - it's cold - we aren't home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades of the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division. These units, spearheading the last desperate German lunge, were headed straight west for key points when the Eagle Division was hurriedly ordered to stem the advance. How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Division's glorious history but in World history. The Germans actually did surround us. Their radios blared our doom. Their Commander demanded our surrender in the following impudent arrogance.

    December 22nd 1944
    To the U. S. A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

    The fortune of war is changing. This time the U. S. A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hombres Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

    There is only one possibility to save the encircled U. S. A. Troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

    If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U. S. A. Troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.

    All the serious civilian losses caused by this Artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.

    The German Commander

The German Commander received the following reply:

    22 December 1944
    To the German Commander:

    NUTS!

    The American Commander

Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: Well Done!

We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.

A. C. McAuliffe

McAuliffe's memorable Christmas message to the troops defending Bastogne arrived just before the bombing on the night of the 24th. It likely provided some measure of encouragement to the defenders, who came under attack at about 3:00 a.m. on Christmas Day. A regiment of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division, two battalions of self-propelled artillery, about a company's worth of tanks, a regiment of Volksgrenadiers, and much of the 26th Volksgrenadier Division's artillery. It landed against the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, at Champs, south of the highway out of Bastogne to the northwest, and along the highway itself. Volksgrenadiers and Panzergrenadiers, wearing white camouflage capes and supported by white-painted tanks, quickly got into Champs, where they engaged the Americans in fierce house-to-house fighting. Reinforcement arrived, but remained outside the town; the confusion was too great to send them in, and until daylight they would secure the heights southeast of Champs, providing a point upon which the defenders of the town could retire.

North of Champs, between the village and the highway, Panzergrenadiers and the eighteen tanks broke through the 327th Glider Infantry's lines, and quickly moved on Hemroulle, inside the American perimeter.

Just outside Hemroulle, seven of the tanks, Panzergrenadiers [riding] aboard, swung west in an attempt to cut into the rear of the American lines. They were soon approaching the command post of the commander of the glider infantry, Colonel Allen. The commander of Company C, Capt. Preston E. Towns, telephoned Allen to warn that the tanks were approaching.

"Where?" Allen asked.

"If you look out your window now," said Towns, "you'll be looking right down the muzzle of an eighty-eight."

Allen and his staff escaped, and the German tanks carried on to the command post of the 502nd Parachute Infantry. There, heavy fire from tank destroyers and bazookas destroyed all but one, and the remaining eleven tanks at Hemroulle had faced a similar fate. Their failure marked the failure of the attack as a whole. Though the Germans had once again come within a mile of Bastogne, their effort had ultimately faltered.

Christmas Day also marked the start of the 4th Armored's CCR's involvement in the effort to relieve Bastogne. Most American divisions ignored the 'R' (for Reserve, if you've understandably forgotten) in 'CCR', but the 4th Armored used it in roughly that role. Under its headquarters were whichever battalions needed rest or replacements the most desperately, this time the 37th Tank Battalion (commanded by yes-that-one Lt. Colonel Creighton W. Abrams) and the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion. They were understrength, but the majority of the Germans south of Bastogne were already engaged in holding off CCA and CCB, and by the end of the 25th, they had reached Vaux-les-Rosieres, five miles southwest of Clochimont.

---

My first picture on my simulated Christmas Day comes from 9:42 a.m., because my save-images-on-clipboard app wasn't running for the previous hour or so of gameplay. I'll explain what's happened as concisely as I can, with the aid of numbers on the map.



1) 2nd Battalion of the 318th Infantry pushed into Bastogne under cover of darkness. It, along with Team Cherry, is engaged in clearing the woods between 1) and 2).

2) At Villeroux, CCA has encountered heavy resistance, but is inflicting heavy casualties and has neatly severed the main body of the attack on Bastogne from Villeroux.

3) At Sibret, the 51st Armored Infantry Battalion and supporting elements from CCB headquarters are clearing the town. Opposition includes the headquarters of the 26th Volksgrenadiers, a company of half-tracks, and a Nebelwerfer battalion, plus some companies of infantry coming in from the northwest.

4) At Clochimont, the well-supplied 22nd Field Artillery Battalion provides fire support to Bastogne and the 4th Armored. 1st Battalion, 318th Infantry Regiment, has reached Clochimont, and is breaking up a company of German paratroopers that was threatening the artillery. Company C of the 1/318 is holding Chaumont.

5) CCB headquarters ran into the highest German headquarters on the map at Remichampagne.

6) Reconnaissance elements from CCR note some depleted German paratrooper units behind my main forces. They haven't been a problem yet, though.

7) CCR has arrived.

Noon arrives, with American troops in control of the village of Sibret but not yet of the objective, and CCR running into opposition west of Remichampagne. They have orders to attack to clear a way through, and then to drive like the wind for Assenois, whose victory points could well put me into decisive victory range. By this time, fatigue is becoming a serious problem; CCA and CCB have been going for too long, and will need some time resting before they can be used offensively again. Unfortunately, I don't have any time for them to rest.



The lines remain frustratingly static all day; it isn't until about 8:30pm that CCR is able to advance past Remichampagne, and even then they're delayed by enemy fire along the road. Several units in Assenois have orders to rest, and I hope to employ them in some last offensives to hopefully gain the Assenois objective.

As night falls, German infiltrators sneak through the gaping hole left in my lines at Champs, where the Germans never attacked in force in my history. It's very alt- at this point.



Eight hours left in the scenario!

[Fishbreath]

December 26th, 1944

On December 26th, CCR of the 4th Armored Division pushed along the road toward Remichampagne, and by 3:00pm they had reached Clochimont. The plan at that point called for turning northwest on Sibret, but Creighton Abrams didn't get a tank named for him by blind adherence to his superiors' orders:

As Abrams and the infantry commander, Colonel Jaques, were standing at the road junction discussing their next move, they saw C-47 aircraft droppoing supplies at Bastogne. That so vividly underscored the plight of the men at bastogne that Abrams took an ever-present cigar from his lips and proposed that they say to hell with Sibret and barrel-ass through to Bastogne by the shortest route, a secondary road from Clochimont through Assenois. Jaques agreed, but as the two officers made their decision, they neglected to tell their commander.

C Company of the 37th Tank Battalion and C Company of the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion made the attack. Artillery firing in support of the drive put 420 shells into Assenois, and the two companies rolled into the town just as it ended at 4:20 p.m. A company of German paratroopers had taken to the cellars during the bombardment, and on account of their ambush, much of the column was delayed in clearing out the town. Some, however, surged past the town:

The advancing column consisted at that point of three medium tanks in the lead, the stray half-track, and two more Shermans bringing up the rear. As Lieutenant Boggess in the leading tank neared the woods beyond the town, where the trees were close to the road on both sides, his machine gunners maintained a steady fire to keep any Germans pinned to their holes. So fast were the tanks moving that the half-track and the other tanks following it soon fell behind. That afforded time for the Germans in the woods to put a few anti-tank mines on the road. The half-track hit one and exploded.

Riding with one of the tanks, Captain Dwight directed them onto the shoulders of the road, and while they pinned down the Germans in the woods with fire from their machine guns, surviving armored infantrymen removed the mines. Then with the infantrymen hanging on, the tanks raced ahead to catch up with the others.

Meanwhile, as Lieutenant Boggess emerged from the woods, just over a hundred yards ahead of him, at a point where a farm track crossed the road, he saw a small pillbox (an old Belgian fortification) and American troops nearby, seemingly getting ready to assault it. With a quick round from the tank's 75, Boggess's gunner knocked out the pillbox and sent the American troops diving for cover. Standing in his open turret, Boggess shouted: "Come here! This is the 4th Armored!"

As the men emerged, their commander, 2nd Lieutenant Duane J. Webster of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, came forward, and Boggess leaned down from his perch to shake his hand.

At 4:50 p.m. on December 26, Boggess and his men lifted the siege of Bastogne.

---

Very little of interest happened during my attenuated 26th of December. A task force engaged the infiltrators on the road from Champs and began to drive them back. CCR finally managed to push on through to Clochimont and, by 8:00 a.m., had fought its way to Assenois. Their added heft and an attack by the 37th Tank Battalion flipped the Assenois objective to me, which would have yielded a decisive victory, except:



As the scenario ended (therefore providing me with this map, a German engineer company, which had infiltrated through the gap in the lines at Champs, got inside the Bastogne objective, which flipped it to 'neutral' and robbed me of another 25 victory points. Oops. That'll teach me to leave holes overnight.

There was an additional problem developing as the scenario ended: at about 7:30, scouts spotted about a thousand German troops moving across the Neufchateau highway and toward Remichampagne, which would have cut my supply lines for those parts of CCA and CCB in Assenois. If I hadn't been playing for the decisive victory, I would have left CCR in defensive positions around Remichampagne, which would have held a supply line open. The 8th Tank Battalion and the 1st Battalion, 318th Infantry Regiment would have been more than capable of holding Assenois with sufficient security for supplies to pass through into the town.

To the east, you can see a large concentration of Germans southeast of bastogne. Looking closer, I think they're mostly support and headquarters units, which explains why that part of the line hasn't folded like a cheap suit. The attack from Neffe finally, finally tailed off early on the 26th, and by the end of the scenario, the only attack still in progress was the one from Marvie and kinda-sorta the one from Remoifosse. In casualties, at least, I think I won more decisively.



---

Lieutenant Boggess broke the siege of Bastogne at five o'clock on December 26th, but that success didn't end the story. Bastogne was no longer the hole in a doughnut, as it had been called by an officer of McAuliffe's staff, but it remained (per MacDonald) a balloon on the end of a very fragile string, and the stalwart 101st Airborne, the 4th Armored Division, and the two infantry divisions securing the eastern flank had little time to savor their victory before they were thrown once more into the breach.

That victory, however, does end this story. It's been educational and entertaining for me to write this account. I hope you were able to take something from it, too, whether entertainment or a greater appreciation for the heroism shown by the US Army one Christmas long ago.

[Fishbreath]

The astute reader will notice that the scenario ended before Bastogne was actually relieved historically, and that's because I made a mistake: I thought the scenario began just before midnight on the 21st, when it actually began just before midnight on the 22nd. That partially explains why I looked so good against General Gaffey on the first few days. Had I been correct about the date, I would have beaten history into Bastogne by about 12 hours instead of 36. Still, I call that a win.

[Heron TSG]

Good job! Shame about those infiltrators getting through at the last moment. I look forward to next year's Special. 

[Fishbreath]

Next year, I think I'm going to do...

We Fight and Die Here: A Command Ops Christmas Special

Just for the name.