CHAPTER XXV
Epilogue
The Weather
There is an axiom that weather on the battlefield is divided equally between the combatants-but its impact on military operations is not equal in amount or direction. The German selection of a target date for the commencement of the Ardennes offensive turned on the prediction of poor flying weather. This type of weather had a useful side effect during the rupture of the American lines since it veiled the attacker with fog and mist, a very important feature of the initial German successes just as it had been in the great offensives of 1918. The high pressure system which came in from the Atlantic on 18 December, however, worked momentarily against the attacker. A thaw set in which slowed his tanks and the erstwhile heavy ground fog began to show sudden openings, such as those which exposed the German tanks and infantry during the fight at Noville. On the 20th and 21st the higher ground began to freeze in patches, leaving stretches of the Ardennes roads slippery and muddy. By the 22d competing weather systems from Russia and the Atlantic had brought on a hodgepodge of snow, blizzards, fog, and rain. In the north the Sixth Panzer Army was bogged by rain and mud, in the south the Fifth Panzer Army was hampered in its swing around Bastogne by fog and snow, and along the German supply roads back over the Eifel snow fell continuously.
The dramatic change of the 23d, brought by cold, dry winds from the east, stripped the German armies of their immunity to air attack. But this was not the whole story. Snow began to drift in the Eifel hills, bringing traffic on the main supply roads west of the Rhine almost to a standstill. Horse-drawn snowplows were few and ineffective, hastily erected snow fences were torn down by troops scrounging for firewood, there was no gravel available, and a large number of the engineer construction battalions had been taken west for employment as infantry. By the time power snowplows reached the Eifel the American fighter-bombers were strafing and bombing every large vehicle that moved. Engineers were brought into the Eifel, but their very efforts delayed the German truck columns so urgently needed farther west.1
For five days the weather favored the Americans, in the air and on the ground. Superior numerically in tanks, the Americans benefited more than the Germans from the sure footing the big freeze provided for armor. Then, on 28
[649]
December, came clouds and overcast followed, a day later, by arctic air from Scandinavia, heavy snows, blizzards, and greatly reduced visibility at ground level. Vehicular movement was slow, the riflemen exhausted themselves wading through the drifts, and the wounded-those in a state of shock-died if left in the snow for more than half an hour or more. This was the state of the weather when, on 3 January, the Allies began their final counterattack.
The Opposing Troop Strengths
On the morning of 16 December the American forces in the path of the German counteroffensive comprised four and two-thirds divisions with an effective strength of about 83,000 men. The heavy weapons then available numbered 242 Sherman tanks, 182 tank destroyers, and 394 pieces of corps and divisional artillery. These troops and weapons were deployed on a meandering front of 104 miles.
The enemy assault divisions posed to the east had concentrated behind some ninety miles of the front manned by Army Group B, and during the night of 16 December over 200,000 combat troops gathered in the forward assembly area, about three miles in depth. The German attack, as it developed during the course of 16 December, was made on an assault front of sixty miles and included 5 armored divisions, 12 2/3 infantry divisions, and about 500 medium tanks, the whole supported by the fire of 1,900 guns and Wefers.
Although it is impossible to measure the exact number of rifle battalions and tank battalions committed by the Germans during the initial breakthrough attack, it is probable that the over-all ratio of German infantry to American was three to one, with a ratio of six to one at points of concentration. German armored superiority was somewhat less pronounced during the first-day assault, only about two to one in medium tanks. If the self-propelled guns employed in a tank role are considered, the superiority enjoyed by the attacker was about four to one.