On Dec. 16 1944, German artillery opened fireplace on an inexperienced American division that had been on the entrance for lower than per week. Inside 72 hours, two complete regiments of the 106th Infantry Division ceased to exist. Roughly 7,000 American troopers grew to become prisoners of struggle in one of many largest mass surrenders in U.S. navy historical past.
The Golden Lions suffered one of many worst disasters of any American division in World Warfare II, leaving the division successfully destroyed. Their historical past stays overshadowed by Bastogne’s dramatic siege the place the a hundred and first Airborne managed to outlive in opposition to all odds. But German commanders later acknowledged what Allied histories usually overlook. The 106th’s sacrifice disrupted Hitler’s timetable and helped save the Allied place within the Ardennes.
The 106th Enters the European Battle
Maj. Gen. Alan W. Jones commanded the 106th Infantry Division from its activation in March 1943. The 50-year-old West Level graduate had by no means led troops in fight. Neither had many of the leaders below him. His males had been utterly inexperienced and averaged simply 21 years outdated.
The division educated at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, however all of the sudden misplaced over 5,000 troopers to alternative swimming pools in 1944 as casualties mounted. Contemporary troops crammed the ranks, together with former ASTP college students and aviation cadets reassigned to the infantry. They quickly adopted the motto “To Make Historical past is Our Goal.”
Jones oversaw the division’s deployment to Europe in November 1944. By that point, it appeared like Hitler’s forces had been all however defeated. On Dec. 11, the 106th relieved the 2nd Infantry Division within the Schnee Eifel sector. Army doctrine on the time dictated that one division ought to defend not more than 5 miles of frontline. The 106th discovered itself guarding 21 miles of tough terrain.
“We had been assigned to 3 totally different corps in as many separate areas” throughout the touchdown interval, Jones later recalled. Maps had been scarce. The division arrived in mud and freezing rain. Artillery battalions had no ammunition till the 2nd Division shared its shares with the newly arrived troops.
The division’s first fight casualty got here shortly after the troops occupied the trenches. Non-public First Class John Koukol of Firm B, 422nd Infantry Regiment, suffered a shrapnel wound in his leg whereas on sentry responsibility on Dec. 12, 1944—4 days earlier than the huge German offensive.
Among the many different troops going through the German line within the area was Capt. Alan W. Jones Jr., the final’s son, serving with the 423rd Infantry Regiment. The world was thought of quiet, the boys referred to as it the Ghost Entrance. Just like the French 4 years earlier, American commanders assumed German tanks had been unable or unwilling to launch an assault via the realm.
The Ardennes Offensive
Non-public Peter Iosso of Firm E, 422nd Regiment, stood guard responsibility on the night time of Dec. 15-16. “I had been out within the snow from about 6 p.m. on December 15 till about 6 a.m. the following morning,” he recalled. “My gear and clothes had been nonetheless moist, freezing at night time and thawing within the daytime.”
Underneath the quilt of cloudy climate and forested terrain, Hitler managed to mass 30 divisions, together with 1000’s of tanks and autos within the sector going through the 106th and twenty eighth Infantry Divisions. Their mission was to pierce via the American traces, break up the Allied Armies, seize Antwerp, and hopefully drive the Western Allies to sue for peace.
At 5:30 a.m. the next morning, German artillery all of the sudden erupted throughout an 80-mile entrance. Iosso and the boys of his regiment had been shocked by the sudden assault. The extreme bombardment lasted 90 minutes, inflicting mass casualties and confusion among the many American troops. Three complete German armies with 290,000 males then charged the 80,000 People holding the road. Hitler had gambled all the things on one last offensive to in opposition to the Allied forces.
Basic Hasso von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army struck the positions held by the 106th. German infiltrators had lower phone traces. Radio jamming disrupted wi-fi communications. Jones discovered himself commanding blind.
The 18th Volksgrenadier Division executed a double envelopment across the Schnee Eifel. By dusk on Dec. 17, the 422nd and 423rd Regiments had been utterly trapped behind German traces with roughly 7,000 males. A lot of them had been initially unaware of their predicament and tried to battle again.
“All of us noticed that white flag and we thought they had been surrendering to us,” recalled Corporal Stanley Wojtusik of the 422nd. “Sadly that wasn’t the case.” The Germans approached below a flag of truce on Dec. 19 and urged the regiments to surrender.
The trapped People initially refused. Regardless of their dire state of affairs and the shortage of provides, the boys fought in opposition to quite a few German assaults whereas looking for a gap to the west.
The Division Falls Aside
In the meantime, Jones tried to arrange a hasty protection with what few forces he had left at his disposal. He lastly ordered the trapped regiments to assault west towards Schonberg on Dec. 19. With out armor, with dwindling artillery ammunition and no resupply of meals or water for 4 days, they nonetheless fought like hell and tried to interrupt out of the encirclement. Nonetheless, German antiaircraft items and panzers had blocked their escape.
The overall watched his division slowly disintegrate earlier than his eyes, a truth made worse by the conclusion that his son was one of many many 1000’s with no hope of rescue. At one level, Jones somberly noticed that he had set a document for “dropping a division faster than any commander within the US Army.”
By the afternoon of the Nineteenth, Colonel George L. Descheneaux Jr. of the 422nd and Colonel Charles C. Cavender of the 423rd had been pressured to order their males to give up. Descheneaux later defined they lacked ammunition, meals and water. Casualties had been so extreme that they crammed help stations and had no capability to evacuate any wounded.
Solely 9 officers and roughly 70 enlisted males from the 2 regiments managed to evade German patrols and attain American traces. Captain Jones Jr. grew to become a prisoner of struggle, together with almost 7,000 of his comrades. His father wouldn’t study his son’s destiny for weeks. Iosso and Wojtusik had been additionally captured.
Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, Jones’s superior as XVIII Airborne Corps commander, grew pissed off with the state of affairs. The legendary airborne basic wished Jones relieved of command. On Dec. 22 or 23, Jones suffered what was reported as a coronary heart assault. Whether or not the guts assault was real or a canopy for command failure stays debated by historians. Brigadier Basic Herbert T. Perrin assumed command of the few surviving males of the 106th.
Regardless of the catastrophe, Ridgway allowed Jones to proceed serving as his deputy commander. He was later wounded by German artillery in March 1945.
The Golden Lions That Held Their Floor
Whereas two complete regiments surrendered, the 424th Infantry Regiment below Colonel Alexander D. Reid fell again to St. Vith. The city managed 5 highways and three rail traces. Like Bastogne, St. Vith was one of many major targets of the German offensive. Manteuffel wanted it captured by 6 p.m. on Dec. 17 to take care of his offensive timetable.
Lt. Col. Thomas Riggs, the 28-year-old commander of the 81st Engineer Fight Battalion, organized the preliminary protection. His few hundred inexperienced engineers confronted 1000’s of veteran German troops. One of many few optimistic outcomes of the opposite regiments being surrounded, was the truth that it gave the survivors time to arrange the defenses within the metropolis.
The delay brought on by the encircled troops additionally allowed parts of the seventh Armored Division, ninth Armored Division and 112th Infantry Regiment to achieve the town on Dec. 18. By the point the majority of the German forces reached St. Vith, it was defended by a considerable variety of American forces.
Brigadier Basic Bruce C. Clarke of the seventh Armored Division arrived and assumed command from Jones. As he transferred protection of the town to Clarke, Jones advised him “I’ve thrown in my final chips.”
The People held St. Vith for 5 vital days. Tank destroyers and hid armor stopped a number of German assaults. Fierce infantry firefights drove again the Germans repeatedly. The protection was so efficient that Manteuffel later wrote to a 106th artillery officer in 1970 that the division “held up a whole Corps for 5 days, forcing lots of his troops to go north.”
In 1964, Manteuffel personally advised Clarke that his defensive ways made him consider “he confronted a corps as an alternative of a skinny drive of items.” The German basic later confirmed, “A complete Army Corps was delayed by your protection round St. Vith.”
Nonetheless, the People had been operating low on provides and had been in peril of being overrun or surrounded. German forces lastly captured St. Vith on the night time of Dec. 21.
American troops lastly withdrew west throughout the Salm River on Dec. 23. The six-day delay in taking the town crippled Manteuffel’s unique timeline for the offensive. The delay proved so extreme that on Christmas Eve, Manteuffel beneficial to Hitler’s adjutant that Germany abandon the offensive altogether.
Just a few different remnants of the 106th additionally refused to give up. About 100 males of the 589th Area Artillery Battalion fought via Schonberg and reached the strategic crossroads at Baraque de Fraiture on Dec. 19. Main Arthur C. Parker III positioned three 105mm howitzers and scraped collectively fewer than 300 males from varied items which delayed Manteuffel’s assault.
For 4 days, this blended drive held in opposition to the 2nd SS Panzer Division in what grew to become often called the “Alamo Protection.” Parker was wounded on the third day however refused evacuation till he misplaced consciousness. The Germans overwhelmed the place on Dec. 23. Nearly half of the defenders grew to become casualties.
Horst Gresiak, a German battalion commander who fought at Parker’s Crossroads, later advised American interrogators that the battle there was “essentially the most violent and hardest battle” he witnessed all through the struggle.
The Worth Paid by the 106th
The 106th suffered 8,663 casualties throughout the Battle of the Bulge. Roughly 7,000 of which grew to become prisoners of struggle. The Germans gained extra captives in a single motion in opposition to the 106th than another American division misplaced all through your complete struggle.
The journey to captivity was brutal. The POWs had been packed into boxcars, 60 to 80 males per automobile, with a single bucket for a bathroom. Allied planes inadvertently strafed and bombed the unmarked trains quite a few occasions. On Dec. 23, RAF bombers hit rail yards at Limburg the place tons of of 106th POWs sat in boxcars, killing roughly 35 males. Some prisoners had been crushed to demise within the cramped vehicles throughout the 4 to 5 day journey to Stalag IX-B.
The camp, perched on a hill 30 miles east of Frankfurt, ranked as one of many worst ones in Germany. Prisoners lived on two bowls of skinny soup and two slices of bread each day. The lice-ridden barracks held 500 males every with insufficient warmth and no rest room services. Prisoners misplaced a median of 30 kilos.
In late January 1945, camp directors ordered 350 POWs to be chosen for a labor element. They focused roughly 80 Jewish-American prisoners plus 270 others with Jewish-sounding names or labeled troublemakers.
Grasp Sergeant Roddie Edmonds of the 106th, refused German calls for to determine any Jews among the many group. When the German commander put a gun to his head, Edmonds stood at consideration and declared “We’re all Jews right here.” When he reminded the German that he could be tried for struggle crimes quickly, the commander backed down.
Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial acknowledged Edmonds in 2015 as the primary American serviceman honored as Righteous Among the many Nations.
The 350 males in the end chosen had been despatched to Berga, a subcamp of Buchenwald Focus Camp not registered with the Worldwide Crimson Cross. Compelled to dig tunnels for an underground ammunition manufacturing unit, the prisoners had been systematically starved and denied medical care.
One other 106th soldier, Non-public First Class James Stuart Hamilton, would die of malnutrition on his twenty second birthday, April 4, 1945. Morton Goldstein of the 590th Area Artillery was executed on the focus camp for a minor infraction. The lads suffered terribly.
On April 3, the Germans pressured the survivors on a demise march. Seventy-three People died throughout the march—the very best variety of People who perished in any such march within the European theater.
Iosso was one of many males that survived the brutal ordeal, later noting “On the street we began dropping extra males, as much as six an evening. We’d fall asleep and 6 males wouldn’t get up.”
Of the 350 despatched to Berga, solely 140 to 160 survived. At the least 180 106th Division prisoners died in German captivity all through the struggle, lots of them in Berga or on the demise march.
Liberation for many of the males got here on Easter Sunday, March 30, 1945, when the sixth Armored Division reached Stalag IX-B and breached the entrance gate. As ex-POWs started their dawn worship service, an Army chaplain arrived with communion wafers.
Most of the males famous this was the second they realized they had been actually liberated. Capt. Jones and Cpl. Wojtusik had been a simply a few the 1000’s of males liberated after months of captivity and mistreatment.
Iosso and the few different Berga survivors had been lastly liberated by the eleventh Armored Division on April 23. He weighed solely 90 kilos on the time.
Non-public Kurt Vonnegut of the 422nd survived captivity and even witnessed the Dresden firebombing. He later wrote “Slaughterhouse-5” primarily based on his experiences.
Non-public First Class Donald Prell, who survived Allied bombings whereas trapped in a boxcar with 59 different POWs, later based Datamation, the primary laptop journal.
A Preventing Return
The 106th was successfully destroyed, nevertheless it served via the remainder of the struggle. Jones himself insisted in 1947 that “throughout the first 48 hours, the 106th Infantry Division, alone and unaided, solely by its refusal to present floor and open the best way to the West, determined the destiny of Hitler’s final bid for Europe.”
The surviving 424th Regiment went on to battle alongside the 82nd Airborne Division. In January 1945, the reconstituted 106th returned to fight with recent replacements and new regiments. The division fought via the rest of the Ardennes counteroffensive, then superior into the Siegfried Line in March.
The misplaced 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments had been reconstituted in France on April 10, 1945, crammed with alternative troops and anticipated to maneuver out quickly. They had been connected to the 66th Infantry Division in coaching standing. Each regiments had been nonetheless in coaching when Germany surrendered on Could 8, 1945. They by no means noticed fight once more.
After V-E Day, the Army assigned the 106th to protect German POW enclosures. No division had extra proper to that responsibility. The Golden Lions guarded 1000’s of prisoners via the summer time of 1945.
The Forgotten Legacy
The division was by no means formally added to the post-war troop checklist. When it was reorganized in Puerto Rico in 1948, the Warfare Division decided the 106th was not wanted. The division headquarters was inactivated in 1950, bringing the quick historical past of the 106th to an finish.
Widespread accounts of the Battle of the Bulge concentrate on Bastogne and the a hundred and first Airborne’s defiant stand. The 106th’s story grew to become one among failure that many within the Army had been desperate to neglect. Actually, the official U.S. Army historical past acknowledged the Schnee Eifel battle “represents essentially the most severe reverse suffered by American arms throughout the operations of 1944–45 within the European theater.”
No different American division was overrun and compelled to give up complete regiments in World Warfare II. The 106th stands alone within the scale of its loss from a single engagement.
Historian John S.D. Eisenhower, son of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, later famous that whereas Bastogne garnered consideration, different actions proved equally decisive. The stand at Elsenborn Ridge. The protection of St. Vith. These battles purchased time that allowed Patton’s Army and recent reinforcements to achieve the Ardennes in time to avoid wasting the Allies.
The 106th Infantry Division held up Manteuffel for 4 days earlier than dropping two complete regiments. The remnants of the division managed to carry St. Vith for a number of extra days. By the point the survivors fled west, Manteuffel already knew his offensive had failed.
The division earned 325 Bronze Stars, 64 Silver Stars and one Distinguished Service Cross throughout its transient fight service. Sixty-one troopers stay listed as lacking in motion.
Some veterans, together with Wojtusik later fashioned the 106th Infantry Division Affiliation in August 1945 in Karlsruhe, Germany. They held their first reunion in Indianapolis in July 1947. Gen. Jones himself attended the reunions and remained a member till his demise.
Capt. Jones went on to serve 30 years within the navy earlier than retiring as a Colonel. He was wounded at Kunu-ri in Korea whereas serving with the 2nd Infantry Division.
Monuments in Belgium, many created after efforts by Wojtusik and different veterans, honor the division’s stand. The village of Schonberg erected a memorial in 2019 devoted to all prisoners of struggle, noting how 7,000 troopers of the 106th had been captured after days of heavy combating.
This 12 months marks 81 years since these inexperienced troops heard German artillery open fireplace on the Ghost Entrance. They fought for 72 hours with out meals, water or ammunition. Two regiments surrendered. Hundreds grew to become prisoners. However their sacrifice delayed Hitler for days, permitting reinforcements to reach and crush the Germans.
The Golden Lions undoubtedly made historical past, although not as they imagined. Though they’re normally forgotten by up to date historical past, they paid the value that helped cease the final nice German offensive of the Western Entrance in World Warfare II.
Story Continues
