112th infantry regiment battle of the bulge112th infantry regiment battle of the bulge

By 0630 the grenadiers were behind the command post of the 1st Battalion (Lt. Col. William H. Allen) in Harspelt; the first sign of their presence was a kitchen truck ambushed while journeying to the rear. 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. In the meantime the Company C advance north toward Marnach also ran into trouble: persistent small arms fire forced the infantry to leave the road and move slowly across country. Sufficient trucks were available to motorize most of the division, but there was a shortage of tracked cross-country vehicles. The regiment reached France in May 1918 as part of the American Expeditionary Force. For nearly two hours enemy flares methodically picked out targets for mortar and bullet fire, while the Americans were so closely beset that the Bofors and murderous quad mounts could not retaliate without cutting down their own people. 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. A sharp attack drove a provisional platoon, made up from the 28th Division band, off the high ground to the northwest, thus exposing the engineer line. Colonel Fuller had ordered a platoon of the 2d Battalion to swing south and bar the road, but it was already dominated by the German armor. In the West, American, British and . the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 116th Panzer Division Meanwhile, General Middleton, the VIII Corps commander, issued a holdfast order to all his troops. Even on the first day of the offensive one of Heilmann's regiments had been lost for several hours. The regiment was awarded battle streamers marked Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland, and Central Europe for its service in World War II. The 902d, advancing by way of Munshausen, now cleared of Americans, followed. But . Historians, movie-moguls, and audiences love the exploits of the 101st Airborne, dramatized as it was in the Band of Brothers. The 3d Battalion positions on the German bank were built around captured pillboxes, for here earlier American advances had pierced the first line of the German West Wall. The tankers had been told that there were no friendly troops on the road and just Outside Holzthum knocked out an antitank gun placed there by Company I. Battalion. 28th Reconnaissance Troop (Mech.) Farther to the south the 687th Field Artillery Battalion was surrounded at a crossroad about seven miles from Wiltz. Most of the positions occupied lay on the east. on the operations of the two armored corps, the Fifth Panzer Army had been given a small infantry corps of two divisions to flesh out its right shoulder. As the column turned northwest on the main Bastogne highway enemy fire increased; some in the column turned back from the gantlet in hopes of finding another escape route by retracing their steps through Wiltz. The 560th, activated from inexperienced garrison units in Norway and Denmark, had been tagged for the Russian front. On 18 December what was left of the 110th Infantry was wiped out or withdrew to the west.11 Survivors in the north headed toward Donnange and, with Company G, joined elements of the 9th Armored Division to make a stand. The capitulation of the gallant garrison at Hosingen, during the morning, removed this threat to the 902d supply road. 107th Field Artillery Battalion (105 Howitzer) . The 560th Volks Grenadier Division (Generalmajor Rudolf Langhaeuser) was assigned two specific bridges as targets, one just north of Ouren, the other a stone arch a little to the south of the village. about six hundred men (it had been operating sawmills and rock crushers, Losses in equipment had been particularly heavy. 126th Infantry Regiment. patrol at the stone bridge had evaporated under machine gun fire-and On the left of the regimental zone, the 1st Battalion (Lt. Col. Donald Paul) held the intersection of the Skyline Drive and the Dasburg-Bastogne main highway at Marnach, employing Company B and a platoon from the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion. 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. Prior to the attack, 83,000 Americans in four divisions (the 28th, 4th, 106th, and 99th) held an 80-mile, thinly stretched line that crossed through . The company leading the left battalion surprised a platoon of Company L at breakfast, overran the company kitchen (which was only 800 to goo yards behind the rifle line) and killed the platoon commander. artillery by this time had displaced to the west and was out of range. This threat north of the Marnach road seems to have caused the German commander some concern. Formed in 1917, the division deployed to France as a part of the . Anything even remotely resembling a continuous line across the 9- to 10-mile regimental front was beyond the strength of the 1st and 3d Battalions. Some artillery support was still available from a battery of the 687th Field Artillery Battalion, whose shells swept the open fields between the two villages. 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. New York: Orion Books, 1989. He was an instructor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School (1938-1940). At 2013 General Cota phoned the VIII Corps commander to say that the situation was critical, that routes were open for the German tanks to come through, and that "there is some question in regard to the 110th Infantry CP." The 112th Infantry Regiment returned home in April 1919 and was mustered out of federal service on 6 May 1919 at Camp Dix, New Jersey. Bofors of the protecting antiaircraft company with saving his howitzers. Five hundred yards from the Germans, on the far side of a draw, the. The 28ID is the oldest continuously serving division in the United States Army. 123th Infantry Regiment. 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. This was the Mark V Battalion of the 116th Panzer Division assembling to lead the attack toward the Ouren bridges. With this team Manteuffel hoped to win a quick penetration and get rolling. Meanwhile the 39th Regiment, echeloned to the left going in the West Wall maze north of Ltzkampen and the initial A part of the German company, perhaps a platoon in strength, succeeded in reaching the stone bridge over the Our south of Ouren, but was dispersed. Two hours later the 112th Infantry acknowledged receipt of these instructions. on the Marnach road, but more tanks and infantry were arriving hourly The battle plans and tactics of the Fifth Panzer Army, more than those of any other German army that took part in the Ardennes counteroffensive, bore the very strong personal imprint of its commander, General Manteuffel. The first word of the approaching enemy reached the 110th Infantry headquarters at Clerf shortly after 0615. 127th Infantry Regiment. The 112th remained an organic unit of the 28th Infantry Division throughout World War II.[5]. The division's three regiments were in a line, with the 112th, 110th, and 109th Infantry Regiments aligned north to south. Abstract. The main paved road from Marnach approaches Clerf through a shallow draw, passing just to the south of the little village of Reuler, which perches on the high ground overlooking the river bend. (By this hour, of course, the story was quite different: the 1st Battalion was cut to pieces, most of the 2d Battalion was surrounded, and the 3d Battalion was holding at Consthum and Hosingen only by the skin of its teeth. This highway (known to the Americans as the Skyline Drive) and the garrison line paralleled the Our at a distance of one and a half to two and a half miles. Today marks the 76th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, in order to commemorate this anniversary we are releasing our first Then and Now video focusing . Early in the afternoon of 18 December a radio message finally arrived at the division command post asking that the regiment be given instructions. The defenders at Weiler would not be easily pushed aside. Manteuffel also held strongly for infiltration tactics by small detachments, such as were conventionally employed by both opponents on the Eastern Front. Eight tanks were knocked out by the enemy gunners and in the confusion three more fell prey to bazooka fire. The 5th Parachute Division commander had already experienced great difficulty in maintaining control of his units in action. But at dark he ordered his regimental commanders to hold their positions "at all costs" and began preparations to commit his remaining reserves to restore the situation in the Marnach sector and block the road to Clerf. The 112th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Sixteenth Pennsylvania,[2] is a unit in the Pennsylvania National Guard which can trace its lineage back to before the American Civil War. The Panzer Lehr Reconnaissance Battalion, earlier withdrawn from the fight at Holzthum, reverted to its parent command and crossed the river first. Colonel Nelson decided to pull back through Huldange since enemy tanks were known to be in Trois Vierges. . Company A, at Heinerscheid, was on the extreme left flank of the 110th and so lay outside the path of the XLVII Panzer Corps attack, as did Company D at Grindhausen. A sharp hairpin turn breaks the descent; then the road crosses the river into the northern edge of Clerf near the railroad station and enters the main highway. There the infantry driving toward the town of Clerf had been stopped short of their objective. $14.95 + $5.50 shipping. Those who could left the road, scattering in small parties into the dark. day-as usual a boundary line had proved a point of little resistance-and German shells. Company B of the 2d Tank Battalion, en route to set up a roadblock northeast of Clerf, was appropriated by General Cota and sent to support the 110th Infantry. continue the attack for the bridges at Ouren. was reached midway between Bastogne and the Meuse. General Waldenburg committed his infantry here, in the predawn hours, hoping that the 60th Regiment would break through on the right or that the 156th Regiment would reach the river on the left and so secure a bridgehead through which his tank regiment could be passed. To some extent, then, Kokott's decision in favor of premature assembly west of the Our had gained ground for the 26th. From mid-December 1944 through the end of January 1945, in the heavily forested Ardennes Mountains of Belgium, thousands of American, British, Canadian, Belgian and French forces struggled to turn back the final major German offensive of World War II. Leaderless, the platoon broke. of the 77th, under the cover provided by German artillery, drove This move was made early in the morning with disastrous results recorded earlier. Po Valley-Manassas-Antietam-Chancellorsville-Gettysburg-Atlanta-Fredericksburg-Vicksburg-Wilderness-Spotsylvania-Cold Harbor-Petersburg-Appomattox-Virginia 1861-South Carolina 1862-Mississippi 1863-Tennessee 1863. After some delay, while the tank platoon and the infantry identified themselves, the tanks rolled south to the 3d Battalion headquarters at Consthum. This German blow fell on either side of Sevenig, held by Company L. The American barbed wire line had not been completed across the draws to the north and south of the village; through these gaps the shock companies advanced. . The 3rd Battalion of the 395th Infantry Regiment (3/395), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel McClernand Butler, occupied the town of Hfen on the German border. The 112th was the first war-strength National Guard regiment in the United States. . 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