At dawn 60 years ago

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On Dec. 16, 1944, General Bradley came to my headquarters to discuss ways and means of overcoming our acute shortages in infantry replacements. Just as he entered my office, a staff officer came in to report slight penetrations of our lines in the front of General Middleton's VIII Corps and the right of General Gerow's V Corps in the Ardennes region.

Dwight Eisenhower, "Crusade in Europe"

It had started with the dawn: an unexpectedly heavy artillery barrage. How had the retreating Germans managed to mass so many guns? Was this just a local attack, or a feint to distract the attention from a major blow elsewhere?

Soon it became clear that the enemy had massed more than artillery. The 6th Panzer Army, a mobile reserve that had disappeared from the view of Allied intelligence, reappeared. When the barrage lifted, German armor came pouring out of the woods, headed for the seam between the British and U.S. armies.

Instead of sheltering behind the Siegfried Line, the "retreating" Germans were advancing through an only lightly defended 50-mile stretch of the Ardennes.

Allied intelligence had collected reports of a transfer of German troops from the Eastern to the Western front in the fall of 1944, and there was ample evidence that they were being reassembled in the Ardennes, but word never filtered up to headquarters. No one had connected the dots. (Sound familiar?)

The weather wasn't on our side, either. The coldest, snowiest winter in European memory made Allied air superiority irrelevant. The panzers sped on, opening a growing wedge. Allied headquarters was compelled to sacrifice unity of command as the German advance split the British and U.S. armies; Eisenhower had to designate separate commanders for each sector of a crumbling front.

In the heat of battle, confusion reigned. Disguised as American MPs, English-speaking, American-accented Germans were sending relief convoys down the wrong roads, or into murderous ambushes. Just liberated French cities were exposed again, and Paris was jittery. The British press demanded that Eisenhower turn command of the land forces over to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery -- or anyone else competent.

German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and his staff had taken everything into account except the sheer cussedness of the American resistance. The 7th Armored Division held onto the crossroads at St. Vith longer than anyone would have imagined possible. And at Bastogne, the key to the battle, the 101st Airborne Division refused to yield at all, and entered legend.