General Omar Bradley, commander of the American Twelfth Army Group, leaned forward as the big staff car squealed to a halt. "Not again!" he protested. "Fraid so, General!" his driver answered.
An MP tapped on the window. Bradley rolled it down and started to speak. "I'm General Bradley, and I'm getting tired of these roadblocks every half mile. At the last one they wanted me to give the position of a guard in football; at the one before that they wanted to know the capital of Illinois. What do YOU want?"
The guard was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, but these hills are crawling with Nazis dressed up like generals. Some of them are out to kill Eisenhower. They got women who seduce GIs and then knife 'em in the back. They already massacred an entire division up north that surrendered. We can't take no chances, General."
"OK, OK, so what's your question, soldier?"
"Who's Betty Grable's husband?"
Bradley hesitated. He hadn't been watching many movies in the last few months, nor did he read the papers for that kind of thing. Commanding a million soldiers didn't leave much time for keeping up with Hollywood. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "To be honest, soldier, I don't rightly know."
His driver covered his face with his hand. Now they were in trouble.
"Ha! It's Harry James!" announced the MP. Then he stepped back and waved them on.

In the tiny village of Krinkelt, northwest of St. Vith, Lieutenant Jesse Morrow of the 2nd Infantry Division was trying to cope with an impossible situation. All night long the advance guards of the 277th Volksgrenadier Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division had been driving through the fragmentary American lines into the village, where the fighting had been wild and fierce. Now it was morning, and German tanks kept appearing out of nowhere.
A Tiger with a dozen infantrymen riding came straight at Morrow's position. Morrow cleared off the infantry with a submachine gun, then fired a rifle grenade, which bounced harmlessly off the Tiger's thick armor. The tank roared past Morrow, who gave chase, firing a second rifle grenade. The Tiger crashed into a ditch and tried to back out. Morrow fired a third rifle grenade and got lucky; the tank burst into flames.
A few hours later, Morrow was in a house when another Tiger rumbled through the street in front. Morrow grabbed a bazooka and fired it into the rear of the Tiger. It crashed into a house, immobilized but still capable of using its weapons. The tank commander popped his head out the turret and Morrow tried to shoot him with his pistol, but missed. Morrow then ducked behind a corner, where he spied a jeep carrying a bazooka. Hoisting it to his shoulder, he readied himself and then jumped out from behind the corner.
He found himself staring down the muzzle of the Tiger's 88mm cannon. The enemy tank commander, anticipating Morrow's move, was ready for him. Morrow remembered seeing a flash, and then everything went black. Amazingly, he survived. The Tiger missed -- but the shock wave from the passing 88mm round tore open Morrow's neck.

At dawn on the morning of December 17th, Colonel Friedrich A. Freiherr von der Heydte surveyed the pitiful shards of Operation Hohes Venn. This paratroop drop had been scheduled for December 16th, but postponed when gasoline for the trucks to carry the paratroopers to the airfields was stolen by another division.
The drop had gone ahead 24 hours later, but everything went wrong. Heavy antiaircraft fire had broken up the formations of transport planes, scattering them all over the Ardennes. German paratroopers came down just about everywhere. High winds added to the confusion and caused many landing injuries. Colonel von der Heydte was one of the few members of the attack force to actually land on the objective. For the next few hours, his men combed the area, bringing in stragglers. By dawn, he had collected about 300 men out of the 1250 that had taken off from Germany 4 hours earlier.
He had no working radios -- they had all been broken in the airdrop. His request for carrier pigeons had been contemptuously dismissed by Sepp Dietrich. Now he was completely out of touch.
Then they heard the sound of approaching vehicles. It was a column from the American First Infantry Division -- the Big Red One, one of the toughest divisions in the American Army. The German paratroops hid in the woods and watched helplessly as the reinforcements they were supposed to delay rolled by. Operation Hohes Venn had failed in its primary mission.

Late on the night of December 23rd, Sergeant John Banister of the 14th Cavalry Group found himself meandering through the village of Provedroux, southwest of Vielsalm. He'd been separated from his unit during the wild retreat of the first days and joined up with Task Force Jones, defending the southern side of the Fortified Goose Egg. Now they were in retreat again. The Germans were closing in on the village from three sides. American vehicles were pulling out, and Banister was once again separated from his new unit, with no ride out.
A tank destroyer rolled by; somebody waved him aboard and Banister eagerly climbed on. They roared out of the burning town. Somebody told Banister that he was riding with Lieutenant Bill Rogers. "Who's he?" Banister wanted to know. "Will Rogers' son," came the answer. It was a hell of a way to meet a celebrity.
An hour later they reached the main highway running west from Vielsalm. There they found a lone soldier digging a foxhole. Armed with bazooka and rifle, unshaven and filthy, he went about his business with a stoic nonchalance. They pulled up to him and stopped. He didn't seem to care about the refugees. "If yer lookin for a safe place," he said, "just pull that vehicle behind me. I'm the 82nd Airborne. This is as far as the bastards are going."
The men on the tank destroyer hesitated. After the constant retreats of the last week, they didn't have much fight left in them. But the paratrooper's determination was infectious. "You heard the man," declared Rogers. "Let's set up for business!" Twenty minutes later, two truckloads of GIs joined their little roadblock. All through the night, men trickled in, and their defenses grew stronger.
Around that single paratrooper was formed the nucleus of a major strongpoint.

At 3:26 PM on December 23rd, the "American Luftwaffe" carried out another bombing run. Six B-26s from the 322nd Bombardment Group, a unit of the Ninth Air Force, were nearing their secondary target. Despite the crystalline clarity of the day, the flight leader had somehow failed to locate their primary target, the town of Zulpich, Germany. After consulting his maps, though, he decided that he was close to Lammersum, another German town that was also a legitimate target. He decided to proceed with the bomb run on Lammersum.
From 12,000 feet, the six bombers dropped a total of 98 250-pound bombs, using their top-secret Norden bombsights for precise targeting. Twelve tons of high explosives whistled down and pulverized the small town. Another successful mission accomplished, the B-26s banked and returned to their base in England. Below, in Malmedy, Belgium, the survivors of their attack, Belgian civilians and GIs from the 30th Infantry Division, screamed futile imprecations at the departing bombers. 37 Americans and scores of Belgians died in the attack.
General Hobbs, commanding the 30th Infantry Division, telephoned an Air Force general to berate him for yet another fatal screwup. This was not the first time that the Ninth Air Force had bombed American ground forces. It wasn't even the first time that they'd bombed the 30th Infantry Division. The Air Force general apologized and promised that it wouldn't happen again. But his superiors later denied that any error had occurred. And over the next five days, there were four more mistaken bombings.

Friedrich Holme could barely contain his excitement. So this was battle at last! Everything in his short life seemed to point to this grand culminating moment. He had joined the Hitler Youth when he was ten; at 16 he heeded the call of duty and enlisted in the SS. Now he was a bow gunner in the 12th SS Panzer, the elite "Hitler Jugend" Division, and he was proud.
The great offensive that would win the war had started four days earlier, and they had done nothing but sit in traffic jams. The roads had been churned into liquid by the passage of thousands of vehicles. Three times in four days they'd become mired, and Friedrich had sunk thigh-deep working to free the tank.
But now their tank company was lined up in the woods with infantry milling about. They were about to attack! Mueller, the 19-year-old driver, threw the tank into gear and they lurched forward into the open, charging down on the Americans. Friedrich's heart was pounding. His job was to shoot the bow machine gun, but he couldn't see anything to shoot at through the tiny viewing port. He could hear their 20-year-old commander giving directions to the driver over the headset. There were explosions: the American artillery. He heard shrapnel bouncing off the Panther's armor, and the ricochet of bullets. Wenkel's voice was tense, frantic. The tank's engine screamed as they maneuvered wildly across the battlefield. They stopped; the main gun fired. Suddenly Friedrich was thrown out of his seat; a tremendous sound paralyzed him. When he opened his eyes, Mueller was dead and he was choking on thick smoke. He tumbled out of the escape hatch; an American pointed a pistol at him. Friedrich Holme, 16, was a prisoner of war.

On the morning of December 18th, the full weight of the Sixth Panzer Army came down on the defenders of the little village of Rocherath, northeast of St. Vith. Standing directly across the path of the German steamroller was the 1st Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment. In heavy fog, German tanks bore down on the foxhole line and broke right through. Company A was overrun by German infantry; Lt. Stephen Truppner called for artillery fire on his own position. For half an hour an entire artillery battalion shelled Truppner's position. Twelve men from Company A escaped. Company K was similarly overwhelmed; its commander, Captain Jack Garvey, radioed from his cellar command post that he would not retreat without bringing his men. Only eleven men from Company K escaped.
Companies B and C managed to hold on. They let the German tanks roll past them, then turned to fight the oncoming German infantry with grenades and bayonets. When the enemy infantry had been driven off, bazooka teams went out into the fog to stalk the German tanks. Lieutenant. R. A. Parker knocked out six enemy tanks in this manner.
Colonel McKinley, the battalion commander, knew that he could not retreat while his battalion was under direct fire from German tanks. Miraculously, a platoon of Shermans appeared shortly thereafter. They counterattacked towards the Company A and K positions, but nobody was left alive there. Then, under the covering fire of the Shermans, the shattered remains of 1st Battalion withdrew. Only 240 men out of nearly 1,000 were still alive.

"Clang!" The impact of the high-velocity armor-piercing shell shook the King Tiger and hurled Rheinhold Minke, its commander, against the cupola. He straightened up and realized that he, his crew, and his tank, were unhurt. They had taken a direct hit at pointblank range from a Sherman and were unscathed. The terror brought on by the impact gave way to a sense of invulnerability and then, blood lust. "Get 'em, Kurt!" he shouted to his gunner.
Kurt stomped on the treadle plate that rotated the turret. Slowly the huge gun came to bear on the Sherman not 200 meters away. An evil grin spread across Minke's face as he imagined what was going on inside that Sherman right now. "Nothing can save you now!" he muttered triumphantly. The huge gun belched fire, and the Sherman's turret was half torn-off by the impact. The driver's hatch popped open and the driver climbed out, his clothing smoking. "Mow him down!" Minke shouted, but Kurt was already firing the machine gun. The American got ten yards and then his body flopped into the snow like a broken doll.
Another round hit the turret; Minke's nose was broken when his face hit the cupola. Kurt's arm was cut by a metal flake that had spalled off the inside of the turret at the impact point. The spot was still glowing a dull red. Again the huge turret traversed, again the mighty gun roared, and another Sherman disintegrated.
More rounds hit, clawing deep gouges in the Tiger's armor, but never penetrating it. Minke's crew was battered and cut, but not incapacitated. Working methodically, they destroyed two more of their attackers. Then the Americans fled. Rheinhold Minke, king of the battlefield, nursing two cracked ribs and bleeding from the nose, let them go.

It was late afternoon on the 26th of December. Corporal Gerd Schenklauer was marching down a road with about 150 other men of the 277th Volksgrenadier Division. They'd been at the rear when the offensive started and had spent days struggling through the icy mud, manhandling wagons, guns, and trucks down the winding roads. Now at last they were approaching the front.
The company commander seemed confused. He was just a lieutenant; the captain had been killed by a mine four days ago and his replacement had not yet arrived. The lieutenant stopped the company while he consulted his map. Several others argued with him but he folded up the map and made his decision.
They had gone only a kilometer further when they saw a halftrack on the road. Once again the company halted. Corporal Schenklauer eyed the halftrack suspiciously; it didn't look right that it was standing there on the road, doing nothing. The lieutenant called out to the halftrack commander, who called back and waved at them. They couldn't make out what he was saying but he seemed happy to see them. The lieutenant waved the company forward.
When they were only 20 yards from the halftrack, its 50-caliber machine gun opened up, pouring fire into the men. Schenklauer was in the ditch in an instant; a cascade of bodies rolled over him. He struggled to free himself and bring his rifle to bear. But then, realizing that the firing had stopped, he paused and listened. There wasn't a sound coming from the German side save the groans of the dying. Nobody else was shooting back. He was the only survivor.
He lay there for an hour, by which time it was dark enough for him to creep away undetected. That was the Battle of the Bulge for him: ten days of marching, followed by three seconds of action.

Max Pabel eased the Me109G up to 1,000 feet, then leveled off, heading west for Bastogne. The rest of his squadron was all around him; Pabel felt a sense of security that he knew to be illusory. Within minutes the Allied fighters were on them. P47s and P51s dove down, machine guns hammering, and the German fighters jettisoned their bomb loads and scrambled about to dogfight the Americans. But Pabel had flown into a cloud just as the Americans jumped them; when he emerged, he was all alone. The radio was alive with the sounds of combat, the warning calls and commands, but he could see nothing. But then he remembered his squadron leader's insistence that morning that they had to get to the front, they were desperately needed. Pabel hesitated only a second; then he set his heading back to 270 degrees, due west, towards Bastogne.
"This is crazy" he told himself. "You don't stand a chance alone up here." But four times they had set out for Bastogne to support the ground troops, and four times they'd been intercepted east of the Rhine. If Fate had smiled on him and given him a golden opportunity to sneak to the battlefield, who was he to spurn her?
At 350 mph, the lone 109 covered ground fast. Already he was over the Schnee Eifel; Bastogne was only four minutes away. With so many familiar landmarks, navigation was easy. There was the Our River; that collection of villages must be Clervaux. Soon he was passing the hilltop town of Wiltz with its picturesque castle.
Suddenly the 109 shook as 50-caliber bullets ripped through its frame. Pabel felt their impact on the armor plating behind the seat. He'd been caught napping by a passing fighter-bomber. Engine oil splattered over the canopy. He yanked the stick but the controls were shot. He threw the canopy release, unbuckled his seat belt -- and the plane smashed into the ground.

"Back up!" screamed Heinz, the tank commander. "Schnell! Schnell!" The driver threw the tank into reverse, and with a great grinding of gears and treads, 50 tons of Panther lurched backward with a start. An instant later, Gunther Bermann, the gunner, heard the whoosh of an antitank shot passing just inches in front of the turret. There was no time to contemplate the whims of fate; already the turret was turning towards the ambusher who had nearly killed them all. Gunther hunched over his gunsight waiting for the turret to stop. "There -- you see? To the left of the fencepost!" Heinz shouted. Gunther already had it in sight, an American tank destroyer that had lain in wait for them coming down this road. They weren't backing away, either, so they were reloading for another shot. But this time Gunther had the initiative. He lined up the shot carefully; an old pro at 22, it took him less than two seconds to register the crosshairs. Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger. The kick of the mighty gun rocked their big tank. Before the tank had stopped rocking, before Heinz had whooped triumphantly, Gunther had verified the kill.
Already he was traversing the turret further. American TDs didn't travel alone; there were more out there. Sure enough, he spotted a towed antitank gun, probably one of those weakling 57mm guns. "HE!" he called out without looking up. The gunloader had already popped out the shell casing; he grabbed a high-explosive shell instead of the armor-piercing shells they used for antitank fighting. By the time he rammed the breech closed, Gunther was ready. A second later, the big gun roared again, and Gunther noted with satisfaction fragments of gun and bodies leaping away from the explosion.

On the morning of December 22nd, Major Don Boyer of the 7th Armored Division was leading four other Americans out from behind German lines. After participating in the desperate defense of St. Vith, his last hundred men had been cut off by the German offensive. He had ordered them to break up into five-man groups and fan out, looking for a way back to American lines. Traveling at night, avoiding roads, they had made a few miles' progress. But now their path was blocked by a main road. They would have to wait until dark to cross. Boyer's men hid behind a stone wall.
One of the men accidentally dislodged a rock; it tumbled down to the road. There were excited shouts in German from below. Then one of the Germans shouted out in English: "Surrender!"
Boyer realized that the Germans were in just as bad a position as he was. Boyer's hillside location gave him a commanding view of all approaches, and the stone wall gave them protection against small arms fire. The Germans would need a tank or artillery to flush out his men. Maybe he could stand them off until nightfall with just a few rifles.
"If you don't surrender immediately, I will shell you with a mortar!"
"Damn!" thought Boyer. They would have a mortar. He reviewed his options, and the tactical possibilities. There weren't any. Boyer stood up and raised his arms.

"Halt!" Major Erich Kleiner of the 2nd Panzer Division stood up in his halftrack and signaled the column behind him to stop. He surveyed the scene ahead. A burning American truck lay overturned on the narrow road just ahead, blocking passage. They could skirt it by going into the field, but it didn't look right to Kleiner. It looked contrived -- like an ambush. He looked around carefully, then told his driver to proceed alone. Better to lose one halftrack than a whole tank column.
Gingerly the driver picked his way around the wreck and back onto the road. They proceeded another hundred yards then stopped. Nothing happened. Kleiner turned and waved to the lead Panther. It started forward, moved off the road, turned -- and then an explosion ripped off its left track. Mines! The Panther behind it stopped, backed up -- and hit another mine, shattering an idler wheel. Kleiner grabbed his radio mike. "Achtung! Everybody be ready for an ambush! Be ready to pull out FAST!" Tank turrets swung left and right, infantry jumped off of tanks, and everybody waited. Nothing happened. After several tense minutes, Kleiner signaled, "Achtung, lead four tanks guard, everybody else up front to clear the mess."
He walked back to the two crippled Panthers. Two men were already setting up a mine detector. Several others were hauling some cable towards the burning truck; they would pull it out of the way. The crews of the crippled tanks were surveying the damage, discussing how to effect repairs. Kleiner smiled with pride at the cool efficiency of his little battalion.
One glance showed that the two tanks would take several hours to repair. He couldn't leave them unprotected, so he detached a platoon of infantry, two halftracks, and one good tank to remain with them. The rest would continue on as soon as the road was cleared.

Sometime on December 16th, seven jeeploads of soldiers raced westward from the Losheim gap northeast of St. Vith. Fanning out, they spread word of the huge German attack. Hundreds of tanks were coming, they screamed at terrified GIs. "Run for your lives," they shouted. At empty crossroads, they rearranged road signs, cut telephone wires, and redirected traffic in the wrong direction.
They were German commandos, fluent in English, using captured American uniforms and equipment. Their assignment was to sow chaos and confusion. This they did well for their tiny numbers, but their greatest impact came after three of them were captured the next day and revealed the plan for Operation Greif ("Greif" is the German word for terror.) When it was learned that their commander was the notorious Otto Skorzeny, American security officers panicked.
The word went out: the American rear areas were crawling with German agents who spoke perfect English. They were dressed just like Americans, driving regular American vehicles, and had American papers. They were, according to the rumors, up to all sorts of dastardly schemes, the most sensational of which was a plot to assassinate General Eisenhower. As a result, Ike was smothered with so much security that he could hardly function for two weeks.
Just one of the seven teams made it back to German lines after a week of wild adventures behind enemy lines; the others were all caught or killed. Three of the captured German commandos -- Officer Cadet Gunther Billing, Corporal Wilhelm Schmidt, and Private First Class Manfred Pernass -- were court martialed by the Americans for fighting out of uniform. They were shot as spies.

On the morning of December 19th, General Dwight D. Eisenhower met with the top commanders of the American army to assess the situation. There was no doubt now that this was a major offensive, that Hitler was staking everything on this battle. Despite the bad news coming in from the front, the meeting bristled with optimism. Eisenhower traced the basic plan: to hold the Germans east of the Meuse River, while General George Patton's Third Army delivered the counterstroke from the south.
"How long before you can attack, George?" Eisenhower asked.
"I can attack with three divisions on the 22nd; a full-blown attack with six divisions can start on the 25th," came the response.
Some of those present smiled, some exchanged worried glances. Patton was boasting. He was talking about two entire corps with 100,000 men and tens of thousands of vehicles. He was promising to disengage this huge force from the enemy, pivot it 90 degrees, and march it across a hundred miles of narrow and icy roads in the dead of winter. An operation that big would take days to plan, much less execute. It couldn't be done. Even Eisenhower was skeptical. "OK, George; just make sure that your attack starts by the 24th."
Patton strode up to the big wall map. "This time the German has stuck his head into a meatgrinder. And I've got my hand on the handle!" Everybody laughed.
As the meeting broke up, Patton grabbed a telephone and called his chief of staff back at Third Army headquarters. A single code word gave the go-ahead. Cagey Patton had been planning this move for two days.
The first attack started on the 22nd, as promised.

Private Sadi Schneid of the 2nd SS Panzer Division gripped his Mauser and clung to the back of the Panther tank. The German tank column was moving slowly down the road, straight toward the American positions in Manhay. In its lead was a captured American Sherman tank. Would the Americans be fooled? Or would they open fire on the Germans, sitting ducks bunched together on the road? The night was dark; perhaps the ruse would work.
The German column rolled straight into Manhay, unchallenged. Suddenly shots broke out. One of the German tanks opened fire. Panic broke out as Americans everywhere scattered and ran. A whistle blew. Schneid and his companions leapt off the tank and spread out, firing at fleeing Americans. The fight was short; the Americans were completely routed. They abandoned all their equipment, their trucks and guns and tanks. Schneid and his friends laughed; this was too easy.
"Back on the tanks! We've got to keep moving!" came the order, and once again they were rumbling down the road to another American defensive position. Speed was their greatest protector; if they reached the next roadblock ahead of the refugees from the first roadblock, the trick would work again. Once again they were right on top of the roadblock before the Americans recognized them; once again they routed the green troops and captured all their equipment.
But now a new order came: spread out in defensive positions. Schneid and other eager SS troopers gathered around a command tank, frustrated and angry. Why couldn't they push on now that they had the Americans on the run?
"Not enough gas," a sturmbahnfuhrer explained. "The rest of the division is stuck a few kilometers behind us. We've got to wait for them to get enough gas to catch up."

Colonel Alois Weber surveyed the wretched lines of men retreating down the little country road. What a sorry lot his division had become! He remembered when the 79th Infantry Division had been one of the top infantry divisions in the Wehrmacht. It had a long and proud history spanning the war in Europe: Poland 1939, France 1940, and Russia 1941. The Russian campaign had been a meatgrinder, culminating for the 79th Division in the disaster at Stalingrad, where the entire division had been lost. The command staff had been flown out and then broken up, reassigned to other divisions. But Hitler refused to accept the total destruction of any of his divisions, at least in name. So it was that, in August of 1944, Weber as the highest-ranking survivor of the original 79th had been assigned to rebuild the division using new recruits.
But the new 79th Volksgrenadier had gotten the dregs of everything. The recruits were all "stomach soldiers", older men who had been passed over in earlier drafts for physical ailments. There were no assault guns or self-propelled artillery. Even the horse-drawn artillery was old and worn-out.
On the morning of the 24th they had launched their first assault. The men showed surprising elan in this their first fight. But soon the Americans counterattacked with a tornado of artillery fire, and Weber's men had been slaughtered. Now they were retreating to regroup. Weber looked hard at the men shambling down the road. There was no fight left in these men. On paper, the 79th Volksgrenadier Division was strong and ready. In reality, it was a collection of tired and beaten refugees.

It was Christmas Eve in Bande, a little village northwest of Bastogne. The Abbe Jean-Baptiste Musty was celebrating Mass. The Germans had been in the town for two days now. During the German occupation, the Belgian resistance operated out of Bande, and there were reprisals, but the American army had arrived before the Germans could finish the job. Now soldiers from the SD, the security service of the SS, were here to even an old score. They quickly moved through town, arresting all the men. They even took four of the Abbe's young philosophy students. Seventy men, all the men from the village, were gathered in an old sawmill.
They freed one man and his son in return for some wine. Then they separated the older men from the younger men and marched this younger group down the road to some burned-out houses. They lined them up, 33 in all, in three rows of eleven, with their hands over their heads. Then they went through their pockets, taking everything of value. Six soldiers guarded them.
One of the soldiers put his hand on the shoulder of the last man in the last row. He led him to the burned-out house. The officer in charge was waiting at the doorway. He grabbed the man, shot him in the neck, and kicked him into the cellar of the burned-out house. The soldier came back and put his hand on the next man's shoulder. He too was led to the house; he too was shot.
One by one, the Belgians were led to the cellar and shot. They were too frightened to offer resistance. Leon Praille was the 21st. When he felt the hand on his shoulder, he walked partway to the house, then hit the escorting soldier with his fist and ran away. In the gathering darkness, he made his escape. Nobody else ran. 32 men were killed. When they were done, the SD officer emptied his machine pistol into the pile of bodies. Then the soldiers piled wood on top of the bodies and left.

Late on Christmas eve, Lt. Colonel Walter Richardson was commanding a tank battalion at Manhay when the 2nd SS Panzer Division began its attack on the vital crossroads. The timing of that attack was perfect; another tank battalion from the 7th Armored Division was pulling out just as the attack began. In the confusion of the attack, the Germans got across the small bridge before it could be destroyed. Then two German tanks snuck into the retreating American armored column. A few minutes later they swung out into a field beside the road and began pouring fire into the defenseless American vehicles. The Americans scattered. Richardson jumped into an abandoned Sherman and took a shot at a Tiger, but the round bounced harmlessly off the huge German tank and its countershot destroyed Richardson's tank.
Richardson hopped into a jeep and bugged out, stopping a mile away in Grandmenil. There he found two American M10 tank destroyers. He positioned them to intercept any approaching German armor. Within a few minutes, two Panthers appeared, churning through a field in the blinding snowstorm. The first TD knocked one out with a shot into its side. But a third Panther blew up the American TD with a lucky hit on its ammunition rack. The second M10 now tried a frontal shot against a Panther. It bounced off, and the Panther returned the fire. The Panther's second shot knocked out the TD.
Realizing that he'd been beaten again, Richardson called down an artillery barrage on the little village and bugged out for the second time that night. In three days of continuous fighting his command had been reduced from 65 tanks to under a dozen.

Sergeant Wallace Hancock was the acting commander of a little group of five Sherman tanks stationed just east of St. Vith during the last day of the desperate American defense of that town. They had held their position but the fighting seemed to pass them by. So they sat in the dirt next to their tanks, waiting for orders or Germans. Neither came. Snow started to fall, blanketing them and their tanks, and they sat motionless under their blankets, trying to stay warm.
In the silence and darkness of the snowfall, soldiers quietly trudged by the silent, snow-blanketed tanks. Nobody spoke; all were too tired. But then a flare went off somewhere and in its harsh light Hancock saw that the soldiers marching by them weren't retreating Americans; they were advancing Germans. He very quietly climbed into his tank and radioed headquarters. They'd been forgotten in the chaos of the retreat from St. Vith. There was nothing to do but head west. They piled into their tanks, cranked them up, and headed for St. Vith.
All was chaos in the town. Germans were everywhere; American stragglers, overjoyed at the appearance of friendly tanks, emerged from their hiding places and climbed aboard. Hancock gunned the engine and the little convoy blasted its way through town, scattering Germans and destroying vehicles. Somehow they all made it through the mess. Outside of town and danger, the tanks settled down to a normal road speed. With snow still falling, the GIs on the back of Hancock's tank sang "Silent Night" over the roar of the diesel engines.

Captain Seymour Green of the 9th Armored Division was commanding a small supply unit that had spent the night of December 16th in Ligneuville, three miles south of Baugnez. It was a Sunday morning, and he was awaiting orders to move out when a bulldozer driver came roaring down the hill road from Baugnez, screaming that German tanks were right behind him. Green had good reason to think that perhaps the excited bulldozer operator was exaggerating. He decided to check things out for himself.
Grabbing a carbine, he ordered his men to get ready to move out and grabbed a jeep and driver. They proceeded up the road to a sharp bend; there Green told the driver to stay behind while he went ahead for a look. Creeping forward stealthily, he rounded the bend -- and came face to face with the lead tanks of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Green stopped dead in his tracks. So did the Germans. For a long moment, the most powerful thrust of the German offensive was stopped cold by one petrified American captain armed with a carbine. Then the Germans started laughing. They waved him aside and drove past, laughing. Green stood sheepishly by the side of the road. This incident would NOT go down in history books as "Green's Last Stand".