Shortly before noon German pressure noticeably relaxed. The remaining roads, through the 110th sector normally were poor but were made worse by the rains prior to 16 December; the 26th Volks Grenadier Division intended to enter the two southernmost roads by throwing a bridge across at Gemnd.6. Battalion. The task of rebuilding the rifle companies, repairing battle damage, and training replacements was of necessity a slow one. It is southeast of Aachen, Germany.D-Day for the Battle of Hurtgen Forest was November 2, 1944, H-hour was 0900. on the left flank of the US Ninth Army. The Huntingdon unit went through several redesignations including a quartermaster company and finally Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment of the 154th Transportation Truck Battalion. Around them Clerf was crawling with tanks, for most of the Mark IV Battalion of the 3d Panzer Regiment had assembled in the town during the night. Early on 19 December the 112th Infantry and 229th Field Artillery Battalion moved under cover of a heavy fog and assembled without hindrance around Huldange, the defensive front now facing south. The 2nd Battalion, 112th Infantry was formed from units of the 104th Armored Cavalry on 01 April 1975. About 1700 he radioed new orders: the 112th Infantry was to fight a stiff delaying action along the line Weiswampach-Trois Vierges, and thence toward Bastogne. The 26th Volks Grenadier Division was across the Our River in force but had failed to gain its first-day objective, control of the Clerf River crossings. This was the Mark V Battalion of the 116th Panzer Division assembling to lead the attack toward the Ouren bridges. The Fifth Panzer Army Attacks the 28th Infantry Division. After a long wait the battalion commanding officer, Major Milton, went back into Wiltz to get further orders; when he returned most of his battalion had disappeared. His appeal for a mechanized division to be given the neighboring Seventh the Fuehrer personally denied.2, The 110th Infantry Sector west of the German jump-off positions on the Our River and the final Small detachments with burp guns now crept down through the dark and engaged the troops in and around the chteau. Its pillboxes and supporting positions were occupied in greater strength as the LVIII Panzer Corps (Krueger) moved in. Since most of these works were "blind" the final protective line turned on foxholes and extensive patches of barbed wire which the battalion itself had constructed. artillery by this time had displaced to the west and was out of range. on the Marnach road, but more tanks and infantry were arriving hourly Perhaps they did not care to risk bazooka fire in the dark. The Lewistown unit was redesignated as Machine Gun Troop, 104th Cavalry, 22nd Cavalry Division. thing was agreed upon: Bastogne had to be taken before the bulk of the They sailed to Puerto Rico on 5 July 1898 and served with the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Army Corps throughout the campaign. Designated as the 16th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the unit was mobilized on 28 April 1898 and activated into federal service for the SpanishAmerican War on 10 May 1898 at their mobilization site, Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania. The German attack to penetrate the front lines of the 28th Division succeeded on the first day of the offensive in splitting the 112th Infantry from the rest of the division. Unhappy about this thorn in his side, Manteuffel won the assignment of the Schnee Eifel heights to his army and personally developed a scheme to mop up resistance in this sector at the earliest possible moment. 30th Infantry Division 59th Inf Bde . At the same time the light tank company in the 112th area was alerted by division headquarters for an attack south along the Skyline Drive, also directed toward Marnach, as soon as daylight came. Radio communication, which was functioning fairly well, showed that the division center was most endangered. By 1315 the howitzers around Welchenhausen again were firing at their minimum range. the German engineers moved in. The sequence of events in this story of difficulties in command and communication is none too clear, but the VIII Corps commander approved the attachment. Eighteen men put up devastating fire against the first attack of over 500 German paratroopers. This company was also in Altoona. Albright, Barry E. CPT, "Operations of the 2nd Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, in the Invasion of Normandy, 5-13 June 1944" (Normandy Campaign Alford, Truman MAJ , "Operations of the 6th Tank Destroyer Group, as part of Taks Force "A", in the march through Brittany Peninsula to Brest, France, 3-9 August 1944 . In the 1st Battalion sector, late in the afternoon, two tank platoons arrived in Munshausen to support Company C, already on its way north to relieve Company B in Marnach. Company A, 110th Infantry (Everett) and Company G, 110th Infantry (Altoona) unit were both mustered into federal service for World War II in February 1941. Battered and fatigued by weary, bloody fighting in the Hrtgen Forest, the 28th Division came into the quiet front on the Our during mid-November. The assault company from the 156th was initially more fortunate in its advance west of Ltzkampen. in Wiltz after a rear guard action in Wilwerwiltz. About 0300 engineers manning pneumatic rubber boats began ferrying the 80-man assault companies and heavy infantry weapons across the river. This sizable town lay in a bend of the Wiltz River valley, southwest of Clerf and some three miles away from the enemy-held crossings at Wilwerwiltz. 29th Infantry Division 58th Inf Bde 115th 175th 88th Inf Bde 116th 176th. The group never established contact, however, and most of its members were captured when they attempted to break away the following morning. then, as seen by Manteuffel and Luettwitz, was not how to achieve the Division. Even so, the unit accounted for six tanks on the 16th and broke up two panzer assaults of company size. The German infantry on the north side of town aligned for the assault about 1400. 125th Infantry Regiment. About 1000, therefore, General Cota ordered Companies A and B of the 707th Tank Battalion to reinforce the 110th Infantry, with the intention of clearing up the deepest enemy penetrations and sweeping the ridge road clear. Hitler himself seems to have favored this concept (it is found in the first Fuehrer operations order), but only in the Fifth Panzer attack would assault detachments be found inside the American positions when the initial barrage opened up. Completely surrounded by the enemy, it had hoped to join the withdrawal of the line companies. The 110th Antitank Company was in Hoscheid just to the west. The responsibility for command here was assumed directly by the VIII Corps. However, these unit designations were short-lived. Shortly before noon the advance guard of the 60th Panzer Regiment, rolling along the Ltzkampen-Leidenborn road, appeared on the knoll west of Ltzkampen. To the east, at Dasburg, the German engineers were straining to finish the tank bridge which would bring the German armor into play. guns and asked for American artillery fire on their own positions. A few light tanks and self-propelled guns got forward late in the evening, but the bulk of the Panzer Lehr reconnaissance battalion remained backed up at the bridge. Two hours later tanks and self-propelled guns struck the 44th Engineers, which was outposting the little hamlets northeast of Wiltz. Like all such units, however, the 26th was geared to foot power and horsepower; there were 5,000 horses in the division, including a few of the tough "winterized" Russian breed. THE ARDENNES CAMPAIGN: BATTLE OF THE BULGE Bull, Harold R.: Papers, 1943-1968 Box 1 Miscellaneous Military Letters, 1 June-20 December 1944 (1) Box 2 Additional Papers, 1944-1948 Collins, J. Lawton: Papers, 1896-1975 . 1941 to 1945 with the 112th Regiment of the 28th Infantry Division in France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany, including the Liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulg : 04/11/2008 Endicott : When orders finally arrived to hold in place, the 3d Battalion had reached a trident crossroad southwest of the town. If anyone has information about Fred or his division please contact me. There was no hint from any source that the enemy was about to strike squarely into the center of the 8th Division and in overwhelming array. 1600 casualties and destroyed 18 tanks during nine days of continuous action, which later became known as the "Battle of the Bulge." The Regiment was awarded . Two lieutenants from I Company examine German weapons abandoned at Schoppen. With surprise almost certainly assured and the knowledge that the Americans. The Battle of the Huertgen Forest: The Untold Story of a Disastrous Campaign. For this reason the fight put up by the 112th Infantry on the north flank of the division had little or no effect on the operations of its sister regiment east of Bastogne. 3. Albert was an Army veteran of World War II, serving in the 28th Division during the Battle of the Bulge. The 902d, led in person by the division commander, continued toward the west, although briefly delayed in a fight with a few towed antitank guns and armored cars near Eschweiler.18. The stir and movement in the enemy lines during the two nights prior to 16 December was occasioned by troops moving in and troops moving out. Colonel Fuller's command post was in a hotel only a few yards from the north bridge. The final word on the defense of Clerf would come from the enemy. An unidentified crew of a 447th Antiaircraft Artillery half-track drove straight onto the mines, its .50-caliber fire searching out the enemy riflemen. The 2d Battalion, surrounded on the ridge east of Clerf, attempted to filter through the enemy lines in the early morning hours. By the second day it was apparent that the combination of stubborn resistance and poor approach roads would delay the projected crossing at Ouren. On the evening of the 18th Col. Ludwig Heilmann, commander of the 5th Parachute Division, knew that the divisions on his right and left were well ahead of his own. Nonetheless some part of the assault wave had broken through as far as the battery positions near Welchenhausen, where they were repelled by the .50-caliber quadruple mounts of the antiaircraft artillery. However, if it were not . To the south Company I held Weiler-les-Putscheid, a hamlet in a knot of trails and byroads on the forward slopes of the ridge line. The gunners and their attached antiaircraft artillery unit made a stand with their carbines, Colts, and a few .50-caliber machine guns. By February, they were back on the offensive. *AIR broken up into three separate armored Infantry battalions. About 1830 troops at the battalion observation post reported that enemy vehicles were attacking with multiple 20-mm. Company L, on the western side of the ridge at Holzthum, reported figures in the half-light but, peering through the ground fog, which clung all along the division front, could not be sure whether they were American troops passing through the area or the enemy. The bulk of the provisional battalion, inside Wiltz, started southwest an hour or so before midnight, some on foot, the rest riding on trucks, half-tracks, and tank destroyers. The 109th Infantry was losing ground on its north flank and soon would be forced back fanwise into the 9th Armored Division zone. Most members of the 1st Battalion, for example, eventually found their way back to the regiment. The sector held by the 112th Infantry was approximately six miles wide. It was the longest battle on German ground during World War II and is the . The Americans were not too worried by the flanking move because tanks of the 10th Armored Division were expected momentarily. These roads and bridges he intended to seize by surprise. At l825 Colonel Fuller phoned the 28th Division chief of staff that his command post was under fire and that enemy tanks occupied the town. The 112th was the first war-strength National Guard regiment in the United States. Here follows a list of organic Medical Units, assigned to specific Divisions throughout World War 2: Medical Unit. The 902d, advancing by way of Munshausen, now cleared of Americans, followed. One rifle regiment and part of the division engineers were still in Denmark. The 687th Field Artillery Battalion pulled out to the southwest and the 3d Battalion also started to move, under the impression that this was the plan. Shortly before dusk As the enemy gun layers dropped their range back to the river and then to the American positions, the searchlights blinked on, searching out pillboxes and bunkers. Nicknamed the 'Bloody Bucket,' the 28th Infantry Division held firm against German attacks during the Battle of the Bulge. Fred was part of "The Big Red" 1st Infantry Division. a blasted bridge three kilometers east of Heinerscheid and established 112th Infantry Regiment. Our expert research specialists are on site at U.S. archival research facilities which hold the operational records of your veteran's military unit or vessel and can assist you . The unit was transported to and garrisoned at El Paso, Texas for training, but was never utilized because hostilities ended. day-as usual a boundary line had proved a point of little resistance-and In the last analysis the losses inflicted on the enemy may have equaled those sustained by the Americans-certainly the Germans paid dearly for their hurried frontal attacks against stonewalled villages and towns-but the final measure of success and failure would be in terms of hours and minutes won by the Americans and lost to the enemy. Lauchert arrived too late to meet all of his regimental commanders, but the 2d Panzer, like the rest of the corps, was already in position to move the moment darkness came. At that crucial point the infantry had to take Bastogne as quickly as possible, with or without the help of the armored divisions. 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