Chill revives memories of bitter battle

The Battle of the Bulge cost many lives but not General George S Patton, who died some time after from injuries received in a traffic accident. Photo / Supplied

Winter in Belgium's Ardennes will forever be linked with Nazi Germany's last great offensive of World War II.

Snow fell in the Ardennes this week.

It came at the dead of night, first in little flurries, then in a blur of white that blanketed the countryside. The temperature sank to -3C, a biting cold made worse by an evil wind.

They knew these conditions well. Here, in this muddy little trench close by the forest, they had dug in, huddling pathetically against the sides to gain whatever shelter might be offered from a cold that gnawed at them like hungry vermin.

Deeper in the forest, not far from the German border, they thought they'd heard German voices, machines being tested. But when the wind blew, it briefly carried away the sound all northern Europe dreaded. The Germans were coming back.

It was here, at the top of the hill outside the village of Malmedy, close by the crossroads on the road to Ligneuville, that it happened. About 120 American prisoners of war were shepherded into a snow-covered field, watched intently by their German guards. They stood around, stamping their feet to try to keep warm. But not for long.

Suddenly, the silence of the cold air was shattered by machine-gun fire. Those not killed instantly who tried to crawl away were finished off with another burst. Yet a few did survive to tell the tale. In all, 84 were killed.

Some time later, the guards by then gone and with the white snow stained by the blood of massacred men, a handful of injured survivors crawled to the cover of the forest. Eventually, they made their way back to the American lines so that, forever more, the name Malmedy would be associated with the massacre.

Just down the road from the massacre site stands the Hotel du Moulin. In 1944, just as the American generals were enjoying a good lunch, a scout rushed in to warn them the Germans were coming down the road. The Americans left and within minutes, Nazi generals entered the hotel.

One drew his pistol, held it to the head of the owner and ordered him down to the cellar.

"Bring out your best wine or you will be killed," he was told. The Germans completed the Americans' meal, washed down with the finest French wines and cognac.

Sixty-six years ago, at daybreak on Saturday, December 16, just as Christmas 1944 approached, all was chaos in the Belgian Ardennes. The American troops holding the 136km-long line thought they had been given a quiet front to rest up, somewhere that had escaped enemy activity. It had, until then.

But suddenly, hell broke loose. The Americans were almost as surprised as at Pearl Harbour.

With D-Day six months in the past and units of American General George S Patton's 3rd Army thrusting aggressively towards Germany, Adolf Hitler played his final card. He argued that if his forces could catch the Allies by surprise, with a sudden attack through the woods and forests of the Ardennes, they could cross the mighty Meuse river and drive on to Antwerp, the great Belgian port.

If they did that, they would split the Allied forces and could prolong the war long enough for the V-2 rockets, pilotless parcels of flying explosive, to rain down on London and cause havoc.

Not for the first time, Hitler was gambling and he was doing so with the lives of the young men of Germany.

None of this, of course, was known as Christmas 1944 approached. It was thought the Germans were in full retreat. Memories of their five-year occupation of Belgium were all too recent. Few expected their return.

That theory was demolished at 0700 on December 16, as a prolonged burst of artillery fire lit up the dark sky from the German border. Tiger and Panther tanks, grenade launchers and other panoply of war opened up on the sleepy American lines. Initially, it was a rout.

But what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge" was no quick firefight. It saw some of the fiercest fighting witnessed in the European theatre in all World War II. It engulfed not just some of the bravest, youngest men of the German Reich but Allied soldiers from as far away as California and New Mexico.

It was a ghastly, gruesome battle and today it remains easy to plot its path. As ever, with any battle, it had its heroes and villains. But quintessentially, it had victims: tens of thousands of them.

Hitler set his tank commanders a daunting task: reach the bridges over the Meuse within 50 hours of crossing the German border, or before the Allies could destroy them, thereby blocking the route to Antwerp. In the way were Belgian towns such as St Vith, Arlon, Neufchateau, Stavelot, Trois Ponts and Bastogne. Of them all, Bastogne was the heart of Hitler's last offensive battle of World War II.

Bastogne held the fate of Hitler's gamble in its hands. Situated on a decisive crossroads with major roads spinning off right across Belgium, it quickly became crucial.

The Germans' advance had its frustrations but they had made enough solid progress to reach the very edge of Bastogne within days.

Units of the American 101st Airborne Division, under the command of Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, lay trapped within the town by three Panzer armies, having retreated from the surrounding fields and woods.

On the morning of December 22, a German jeep approached the town, a large white flag flying. They came with a demand for the surrender of the American defenders and "to spare the Belgian civilians further death and injury".

McAuliffe's reply went down in history. "NUTS" he wrote on the piece of paper brought with the surrender notice.

But it unleashed a fearsome barrage from the Germans. They pounded the town, wrecking houses, shops and factories. Men, women, children and American soldiers died or were injured in the ruins.

John Peirson was just one of the American soldiers suddenly rushed into the fray. He and thousands like him found the Germans pouring armaments into the besieged town.

The story of Peirson, who was born in September 1912, has great poignancy. He was killed on Christmas Day 1944. He was 32.

Today, you can walk the American cemeteries filled with their war dead, some 19,000.

In Hamm cemetery in the suburbs of Luxembourg, Patton lies buried with his men. His grave stands alone, at the top of the slope, a vast number of white crosses facing his in the huge graveyard.

Ironically, Patton, who always said the only real death for a fighting general was to take the last bullet of a war right between the eyes, died after the war was over.

He had gone out on a pheasant shoot but was fatally injured in a car accident, long after the cessation of hostilities.

He was paralysed from the neck down in the accident but lingered until December 21, 1945, when he died of a pulmonary embolism in hospital near Mannheim, Germany.

The Battle of the Bulge was fought out over some of the harshest terrain imaginable. The bitter cold and snow made it a terrible endurance exercise, intensified by the bombardment initially from the Germans but then, once the skies had cleared, by Allied aircraft.

All over Belgium, in almost all the small towns and villages, there are vivid reminders of those times.

A huge American tank adorns the town square at Bastogne; a war memorial notes the site where the Americans were massacred on the hill above Malmedy.

Malmedy saw a lot of action. Colonel Otto Skorzeny's Panther Brigade, part of the 1st SS Panzer Division, attacked the town before dawn on December 21. But he lacked heavy artillery and was forced to rely on what he hoped would be a surprise attack by his infantry.

Alas for the Germans, what they thought was a lightly defended town turned out to have been reinforced by the Americans and the attackers suffered many casualties.

The bad weather meant low-level flying was impossible for days. And even when the planes could take off, there were disastrous errors. The Americans defending Malmedy were horrified to see their own planes coming over and dropping bombs on the town. So-called "friendly fire" cost several American lives.

But ultimately, it was the terrain that destroyed Hitler's dream. The narrow, twisting roads of the Ardennes meant bridges could be blown in advance and blockades thrown up by the defenders. In a battle where time was of the essence, the Germans could not advance fast enough to catch the Americans by surprise and prevent bridges over the Meuse being blown up.

Supplying the troops with food and ammunition was also a nightmare, especially when the planes could not fly and snow blocked so many of the roads.

Gradually, order was reinstated among the American defenders and the units sent to reinforce them. The destruction of intended fuel dumps also stemmed the advance by German tanks, which meant the entire attack ultimately ground to a halt.

When Patton drove north from Luxembourg, through Arlon to Neufchateau and on to Bastogne, arriving the day after Christmas, Nazi Germany's last great offensive of the war was near the end.

Mopping-up operations, which meant either killing or capturing the many pockets of Germans still left in the Ardennes, took until well into the new year. And those operations cost the lives of thousands of young American soldiers, as cemeteries like the one at Luxembourg remind us.

Today, the Belgian Ardennes in the days before Christmas is again a cold, dank place. It is largely silent now, the roaring of the two armies' guns long gone, of course. But the memories and the memorials to the dead remain vividly in the minds of those civilians who are still alive and can recall those times. Somehow, the deep forests seem still to carry the whispers of the dead and dying.

For the Ardennes in winter will forever be associated with the last great offensive of Nazi Germany in World War II.