Free Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble by Antony Beevor Page A

Patton would be attending communion that night. The church was packed, but McDonald had no trouble recognizing ‘this General of stern expression’ standing alone and erect at the back. He went to welcome him and mentioned that, in the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II had come to services in this church. McDonald, no doubt aware of this general’s desire to commune with history, asked: ‘Would you, sir, like to sit in the Kaiser’s pew?’ Patton smiled. ‘Lead me to it,’ he said.



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1. US Infantry advancing through a hole blasted in the Siegfried Line, or Westwall, in October 1944.

2. Fallschirmjäger mortar crew in the Hürtgen Forest. Mortars accounted for the highest number of casualties on both sides.

3. 1st Infantry Division in the Hürtgen Forest.

4. Medics with wounded soldier.

5. French troops in the Vosges. The North African soldiers in the First French Army attacking the Colmar Gap south-west of Strasbourg suffered terribly from the cold.

6. 7 December 1944, Maastricht meeting with (
l
to
r
) Bradley, Tedder, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Simpson.

7. German prisoners captured in early December in the Hürtgen Forest near Düren.

8. Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model, commander-in-chief Army Group B.

9. Field Marshal Montgomery appears to be lecturing an increasingly exasperated Eisenhower once again.

10. General der Panzertruppe Hasso-Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel of the Fifth Panzer Army.

11. Oberstgruppenführer-SS Sepp Dietrich of the Sixth Panzer Army wearing his Knight’s Cross with oak leaves.

12. Oberst then Generalmajor Heinz Kokott, the rather more enlightened commander of the 26th Volksgrenadier-Division at Bastogne.

13. Oberstleutnant Friedrich Freiherr von der Heydte, the law professor turned paratroop commander.

14. The briefing of panzer commanders in a snow flurry just before the Ardennes offensive on 16 December 1944.

15. Two SS panzergrenadiers enjoying captured American cigarettes.

16. 16 December. A Königstiger tank of the Sixth Panzer Army carrying soldiers of the 3rd Fallschirmjäger-Division on the first day of the advance.

17. German infantry in a Volksgrenadier division advance loaded down with machine-gun belts and panzerfaust anti-tank grenade launchers.

18. The first killing of American prisoners by SS panzergrenadiers from the Kampfgruppe Peiper in Honsfeld who then proceeded to loot the bodies. The boots have been removed from the victim on the left.

19. SS panzergrenadiers from the Kampfgruppe Hansen pass a burning convoy of American vehicles near Poteau.

20. American prisoners taken by the 1st SS Panzer-Division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.

21. 17 December. Part of the 26th Infantry Regiment (1st Infantry Division) arrives just in time to defend Bütgenbach at the base of the Elsenborn ridge.

22. Members of the same regiment manoeuvring an anti-tank gun in the mud as the Germans approach.

23. Belgian refugees leaving Langlir (south-west of Vielsalm) as the Fifth Panzer Army advances. Most wanted to cross the Meuse to escape the fighting and German reprisals for Resistance activities earlier in the year.

24. As the Germans advanced on the town of St Vith following the encirclement of the 106th Infantry Division, the people of Schönberg fled the fighting to shelter in caves.

25. American medics turned skis into improvised toboggans to drag the wounded on stretchers back to a point where they could be loaded on to Jeeps.

26. With a comrade already dead in the foreground, American troops dig in hastily on the forward edge of a wood to avoid the effect of tree bursts.

27. As the Germans advance on Bastogne and the first members of the 101st Airborne arrive to defend it, townsfolk start to flee in farm carts.

28. A platoon of M-36 tank destroyers emerge from the mist near Werbomont in support of the 82nd Airborne Division also rushed in by huge convoys of trucks.

29. German