Posted on 04/02/2003 11:29:40 AM PST by Salvation
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:36:02 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
U.S. forces advanced even closer to Baghdad Wednesday, wiping out one Republican Guard division and nearly destroying another as they geared up for an all-out assault on the Iraqi capital.
Some American units are reportedly within 19 miles of Baghdad, while others are within 30.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The bridge, taken with little or no resistance from Iraqi forces, had been rigged with explosives, but engineers defused them.
Anybody here who's read Janice Giles' "The Damned Engineers"?
It's about the 291st Engineer Bn, who were resting up, operating a couple of sawmills just outside Malmedy.
There's an interesting little bit where a sergeant, seeing a handful of tanks coming over the hill, decided on his own initiative to blow the bridges, that his commanders, being out of contact with higher, had decided on their own initiative to have rigged for demolition.
The Germans, of course, had left their bridging equipment behind so they could move faster, and were relying on speed and shock to enable them to capture the bridges intact.
Nobody realized until after the war that Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper had been in one of those few tanks, or how many german tanks were coming up the other side of the hill.
If those tanks had made it across the bridges at Trois Ponts, the battle would have been far different.
And they didn't cross the bridges because a small group of lower-ranked officers and NCOs took the initiative to do what they knew needed to be done, instead of waiting for orders.
It's clear that this is not the case in Iraq, even among the elite Republican Guard.
While the engagement in Stavelot was still in progress, Peiper turned some of his tanks toward Trois Ponts, the important bridgehead at the confluence of the Salm and the Ambleve. As Peiper puts it: "We proceeded at top speed towards Trois Ponts in an effort to seize the bridge there.... If we had captured the bridge at Trois Ponts intact and had had enough fuel, it would have been a simple matter to drive through to the Meuse River early that day." One company of Mark IV tanks tried to reach Trois Ponts by following a narrow side road on the near bank of the Ambleve. The road was almost impassable, and when the column came under American fire this approach was abandoned. The main part of the kampfgruppe swung through Stavelot and advanced on Trois Ponts by the highway which followed the north bank of the river. Things were looking up and it seemed that the only cause for worry was the lowering level in the panzer fuel tanks. Missing in Peiper's calculations was an American gun, the puny 57-mm. antitank weapon which had proven such an impuissant answer to German tanks.
Trois Ponts gains its name from three highway bridges, two over the Salm and one across the Ambleve. The road from Stavelot passes under railroad tracks as it nears Trois Ponts, then veers sharply to the south, crosses the Ambleve, continues through the narrow valley for a few hundred yards, and finally turns west at right angles to cross the Salm and enter the main section of the small village. A number of roads find their way through the deep recesses of the Salm and Ambleve valleys to reach Trois Ponts, hidden among the cliffs and hills. Most, however, wind for some distance through the gorges and along the tortuous valley floors. One road, a continuation of the paved highway from Stavelot, leads immediately from Trois Ponts and the valley to the west. This road, via Werbomont, was Peiper's objective.
Company C, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion, occupied Trois Ponts, so important in the itinerary of the kampfgruppe. Quite unaware of the importance of its mission, the company had been ordered out of the sawmills it had been operating as part of the First Army's Winterization and Bridge Timber Cutting Program, and dispatched to Trois Ponts where it detrucked about midnight on 17 December. Numbering around 140 men, the company was armed with eight bazookas and ten machine guns. Maj. Robert B. Yates, commanding the force, knew only that the 1111th Engineer Group was preparing a barrier line along the Salm River from Trois Ponts south to Bovigny and that he was to construct roadblocks at the approaches to Trois Ponts according to the group plans. During the night Yates deployed the company at roadblocks covering the bridge across the Ambleve and at the vulnerable highway underpass at the railroad tracks north of the river. On the morning of 18 December a part of the artillery column of the 7th Armored Division passed through Trois Ponts, after a detour to avoid the German armor south of Malmedy; then appeared one 57-mm. antitank gun and crew which had become lost during the move of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion. Yates commandeered the crew and placed the gun on the Stavelot road to the east of the first underpass where a daisy chain of mines had been laid.
A quarter of an hour before noon the advance guard of Peiper's main column, nineteen or twenty tanks, came rolling along the road. A shot from the lone antitank gun crippled or in somewise stopped the foremost German tank, but after a brief skirmish the enemy knocked out the gun, killed four of the crew, and drove back the engineers. The hit on the lead tank checked the German column just long enough to give warning to the bridge guards, only a few score yards farther on. They blew the Ambleve bridge, then the Salm bridge, and fell back to the houses in the main part of town. In the meantime one of the engineer platoons had discouraged the German tank company from further advance along the side road and it had turned back to Stavelot.
Frustrated by a battalion antitank gun and a handful of engineers, Kampfgruppe Peiper now had no quick exit from the valley of the Ambleve. With but one avenue remaining the column turned northward toward La Gleize, moving through the canyons of the Ambleve on the east side of the river. At La Gleize there was a western exit from the valley, although by a mediocre, twisting road. Nearby, at the hamlet of Cheneux, the Germans found a bridge intact over the Ambleve. This stroke of good luck was countered by bad when the weather cleared and American fighterbombers knocked out two or three tanks and seven half-tracks, blocking the narrow road for a considerable period. When night came the armored point was within some three miles of Werbomont, an important road center on the main highway linking Liege and Bastogne.
Then, as the Germans neared a creek (the Lienne) a squad of Company A, 291st Engineer Combat Battalion, blew up the only bridge. Reconnaissance north and south discovered other bridges, but all were too fragile to support the Tiger tanks which had come forward with the advance guard. During the evening one detachment with half-tracks and assault guns did cross on a bridge to the north and swung southwest toward Werbomont. Near Chevron this force ran into an ambush, set by a battalion of the 30th Division which had been sent to head off Peiper, and was cut to pieces. Few of the Germans escaped. Since there was nothing left but to double back on his tracks, Peiper left a guard on the bridge at Cheneux and moved his advance guard through the dark toward the town of Stoumont, situated on the Ambleve River road from which the abortive detour had been made during the afternoon. Scouts brought in word that Stoumont was strongly held and that more American troops were moving in from Spa. There was nothing left but to fight for the town.
All through the afternoon of the 18th, liaison planes from the First Army airstrip at Spa had been skidding under the clouds to take a look at Peiper's tanks and half-tracks. One of these light planes picked up the advance at Cheneux and called the Ninth Air Force in to work over this force. By the evening of 18 December Peiper's entire column, now spread over many miles of road, had been located and the word flashed back to First Army headquarters. The element of surprise, vital to the German plan of a coup de main at the Meuse, was gone. American forces from the 30th Infantry Division were racing in on Peiper from the north, and the 82d Airborne Division was moving with all possible speed to the threatened area.
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