Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General (17 page)

This is when the machine gunners of the Ninety-Ninth take aim. It is now their turn to inflict death.

And they do.

For the first time all morning, the Americans poke their heads up above the rims of their foxholes and fire back. Machine gunners on the front of the slope make use of their unobstructed fields of fire, each man slowly pivoting his gun barrel from left to right, and then back again, fingers firmly squeezing triggers. The hillside is pocked with craters where German shells have fallen short, but otherwise there is no place for the Krauts to hide on this vast expanse of white.

The American-made automatic weapons fire at a slower clip than the German models. But the Browning water-cooled .30-caliber machine gun more than gets the job done, firing off seven two-inch-long bullets every second. It is especially lethal in a setting such as Elsenborn Ridge, which has the wide-open feel of a shooting range. In fact, finding targets to kill is not a problem for the machine gunners of the Ninety-Ninth. The real trick in aiming downhill is not firing too high, lest the bullets whiz above the enemy’s head.

So as the foot soldiers of the Third Panzergrenadier Division lumber up the long and empty half mile between their lines and those of the dug-in Ninety-Ninth, they are, in reality, sealing their own doom.

Some Germans wear winter white. Others are clad in Nazi battle gray. But the color red soon carpets the snow as American bullets mercilessly mow them down.

The soldiers of the Ninety-Ninth cannot remember a moment in their lives when they have felt so wretched. Their units are broken from the relentless bombardment. They are beyond exhausted. Many are battling pneumonia and dysentery. Some are not even riflemen, but rear echelon cooks and clerks who have never learned simple infantry tactics.

But that does not stop them from fighting. And with every German who falls dead in the snow, they feel just that much more hopeful that they will live to see another sunrise.

The clatter of rifle shots and automatic weapons from the Ninety-Ninth continues, and thick swarms of Germans crumple atop one another. Soon the Germans have no choice but to retreat.

Two hours later, they attack again.

Once again, they fail.

Finally, as night falls, the German soldiers of the Third Panzergrenadier attempt one more assault of Elsenborn Ridge.
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But the Ninety-Ninth Division repels them a third time. As the Americans hunker down in their foxholes for their fifth straight subzero and sleepless night, they hear the moans of the dying German troops who now litter the snowy slopes below the ridge fill the air. They are crying out for relief. But none will be forthcoming.

The Ninety-Ninth has held the line for five consecutive days. Even as Americans almost everywhere else are retreating en masse, they are holding. But for how long? They continue to take enormous casualties, and are still outnumbered five to one. A fifteen-mile-long caravan of Panzer tanks and halftracks is backed up in the valley below, waiting with growing impatience for the Ninety-Ninth to be killed to the last man so that they might obtain those vital roads through the Ardennes.

Should the Ninety-Ninth fail to hold their lines, the Germans will be able to quickly redirect their attack toward the Meuse and toward Bastogne. If this should happen, George Patton’s hopes of relieving Bastogne will not come to pass.

So the question remains: How much longer can the Ninety-Ninth hang on?

*   *   *

“Ike and Bull are getting jittery about my attacking too soon,” Patton writes in his diary, referring to Eisenhower’s G-3, Maj. Gen. Harold Bull. His army is racing to Bastogne, encountering stiff German resistance along the way. “I have all I can get. If I wait, I will lose surprise.

“The First Army could, in my opinion, attack on the 22nd if they wanted (or if they were pushed), but they seem to have no ambition in that line.

“I had all my staffs, except for VIII Corps, in for a conference. As usual on the verge of an attack, they were full of doubt. I seemed always to be the ray of sunshine, and by God, I always am. We can and will win, God helping.”

*   *   *

The Germans also inch toward the city, unaware that they are racing Patton and the Third Army for control of this vital crossroads. Now, five miles from the center of Bastogne, the Nazis are trying to overrun a town called Noville.

Blocking the way is a tall and determined young major named William Desobry and his ridiculously small band of soldiers and tanks known as Team Desobry.

They make their headquarters in the village schoolhouse. The village church is across the street. When the battle is over, the SS will enter the same church and shoot the village priest for offering comfort to the Americans. For good measure, they will also shoot six other residents of this otherwise sleepy town.

But that is all to come.

Desobry is twenty-six and has been in the army just four years. Though he chose to attend Georgetown University instead of West Point, his quick thinking and sound judgment have already seen him promoted over men a dozen years his senior. With that kind of talent come great expectations. The scarecrow-thin Desobry has been ordered to place his small team of defenders between the German advance and the heart of Bastogne. For while a quick map study shows Desobry that Noville is utterly indefensible, the town is also tactically vital—of the three roads leading out of Noville, one aims straight into downtown Bastogne. The road is paved and wide, the closest thing the Ardennes has to a superhighway leading directly to Bastogne.

“If this situation gets to the point where I think it necessary to withdraw,” Desobry nervously asked his commanding officer when first given the order to defend Noville, “can I do that on my own, or do I need permission from you, sir?”

Desobry’s superior, and commander of CCB of the Tenth Armored Division, is Col. William Roberts. The two are so close that Desobry considers Roberts to be his second father. He listens intently to the colonel’s response, determined to follow it to the letter, for fear of letting the older man down.

Roberts is kind—yet direct. “You will probably get nervous tomorrow morning and want to withdraw, so you had better wait for any withdrawal order from me.”

That order has not yet arrived.

Armed with just fifteen Sherman tanks and four M-18 Hellcat tank destroyers, Desobry holds Noville long enough for an element of the 101st Airborne to reinforce his small command. The battalion of paratroopers works with Team Desobry to thwart several German attempts to capture Noville. Panzers and Sherman tanks soon burn alongside the road. Wounded soldiers are trapped inside many of these. The heat from the flames is too intense for rescue, and so they roast to death in their steel coffins.

The town is burning as well. At times the smoke from burning buildings mixes with the thick fog to give Noville an otherworldly appearance. Men fire their guns into the morass, unsure of where they’re aiming or what they’ve hit. German shells from the ridgelines outside town fall on the Americans at the rate of two dozen every ten minutes. The schoolhouse is destroyed, and Major Desobry is forced to find a new command post. Not even night stops the German shelling.

As the evening descends, Desobry hunkers down with his airborne counterpart to discuss strategy. He has no problem ceding command of the situation to Lt. Col. James LaPrade, a Texan who graduated from West Point in 1939. LaPrade is the rare man who not only is Desobry’s superior officer and near equal in height, at just under six-four, but who has a career arc even more accelerated than Desobry’s. At the young age of thirty, LaPrade is just two promotions away from making general.

But unbeknownst to the two officers, one of Desobry’s men has just made a fatal mistake. With dusk not yet complete, an American maintenance officer parked his vehicle directly in front of the command post, rather than a few hundred yards down the road. A German tank crew on a distant ridgeline spotted the vehicle through binoculars. Now they waste no time zeroing in on this choice target. Within seconds of estimating distance and trajectory, their big 88 mm gun belches its trademark green fire, and a shell races toward Desobry and LaPrade.

The two men sit in the quiet of the command post. A clerk writes in his journal. The careless maintenance officer enters the cramped room, with its wall-to-wall collection of maps, chairs, and telephones, to report that he is back from towing broken tanks into Bastogne. An armoire has been pulled across one window as protection from snipers.

The 88 mm lets out its trademark scream before impact—an impact that absolutely no one in the command post is expecting.

The armoire explodes into a thousand splinters. The roof collapses, as do the stone walls. Desobry is buried under a pile of rubble, his body shot through with pine wood. His left eye is nearly ripped from its socket, and his head is slashed and punctured by metal, wood, stone, and glass.

But he is alive.

Lt. Col. James LaPrade lies beside Desobry, all but unrecognizable. Tony McAuliffe thinks he’s the best battalion commander in the 101st. His wife’s name is Marcy. His brother, Robert, a marine, won the Navy Cross and had a ship named after him for his heroism on Guadalcanal, where he was killed in action.

“LaPrade,” reads the name on the dead commander’s dog tags.

If not for that, his shattered body could belong to anyone, on either side of the war. Not even his wife would be able to recognize the man she loves.

A medic quickly attends to Desobry, and helps lift his stretcher into an ambulance. The driver guns the engine and races for the tents of the field hospital, on the outskirts of Bastogne. But a German patrol intercepts the ambulance. For some reason, they take pity on Desobry, perhaps thinking he will die soon anyway, and do not shoot him.

For Major Desobry, the war is over. He is taken to a German prisoner camp in the Fatherland.

But he has done his job in Noville. By delaying the Germans’ advance and resisting the urge to withdraw, he has given the 101st Airborne the precious time they need to form a tight perimeter around Bastogne.

*   *   *

Gen. Tony McAuliffe receives the bad news. The Americans have taken two hundred and seventy-five casualties in Noville. Team Desobry lost eleven of its fifteen Sherman tanks. Under cover of fog and darkness, the 101st Airborne and Tenth Armored, along with what is left of Team Desobry, fall back into Bastogne’s inner defenses, soon to make their last stand.

McAuliffe is exhausted. He barely slept last night because the German air force bombed Bastogne, with one bomb almost destroying his command post in the basement of the Hôtel de Commerce. He moves his headquarters to the basement of a Belgian army barracks. Just before noon he steals away to a small, quiet room, zips himself into his sleeping bag, and naps. His staff knows to wake him if anything of importance occurs.

Meanwhile, in the meadows and forests ringing Bastogne, the men of the 101st have managed to turn the problem of being surrounded into a tactically positive situation. They keep their perimeter tight, facing outward, waiting for the German attack. Despite the light snow that now falls on their positions, they even feel secure enough to climb out of their foxholes for a few minutes to shave and use the slit latrine.
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General Anthony McAuliffe (right) conferring with General George Patton (left)

With a break in the action, rumors and innuendo spread up and down the line, and the men are now hearing that George S. Patton is sending an armored division to bail them out. Maybe two. They can’t be sure of this—any more than they could believe the rumor that C-47s were going to airdrop precious supplies of food and bullets into Bastogne last night. That never came to pass. What confuses the men of the 101st is that the weather seems to be too rough for American planes to fly a vital aid mission, and yet the Luftwaffe has no problem dropping bombs on Bastogne.
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A depressing (and true) rumor also spreads that the Germans overran Bastogne’s field hospital last night. The wounded were taken prisoner, as were the doctors and surgical staff. All the medical supplies, including surgical instruments and doses of the antibiotic penicillin, were captured. This will become a life-or-death issue when the fighting resumes, because that penicillin is vital to the survival of the severely wounded.