Tag Archives: Ardennes offensive

Blue Ridge Smoke Break

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77 Years Ago Today: Two riflemen from E Company, 1st Battalion, 317th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division, take a moment to roll their own cigarettes in Goesdorf (Luxembourg), 10 January 1945. Left is SSG Abraham Aranoff, Boston, Mass., right is Private Henry W. Beyer of Grand Rapids, Michigan. These men had been fighting for 27 days straight, most of it during the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes known today as the Battle of the Bulge. They’d just been pulled out of the lines for a short, well-deserved break.

…At least the Sarge put the safety on his carbine before pointing it at his buddy. Also note the bullet holes on the wall behind them. Signal Corps image via Mads Madsen, Colorized History.

Nicknamed the “Blue Ridge” division as, when it was originally formed in the Great War, a majority of its troops hailed from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia, the 80th Infantry Division was reactivated in 1942 and arrived in Europe, where it landed on Utah Beach on 3 August 1944. It would then spend the next nine months pushing from France to the Ardennes and on through to Bavaria and into Austria.

The 80th ID helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945 to provide relief to the 6th Armored Division, which had arrived the day before. Several weeks later, as the “Blue Ridge” Division pushed into Austria, it liberated Ebensee, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, and is recognized as a Liberating Unit by the US Army’s Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The 80th suffered 17,087 battle casualties in WWII– however, both of the above GIs made it back home and lived long lives.

As noted by WW II Uncovered: 

After the war, Abraham Aranoff returned to New York and he and his wife Bertha started a family. He retired in West Palm Beach Florida. Abraham passed away on August 15, 2008 at the age of 96.

Henry W. Beyer enlisted with the US Army on May 1, 1944 in Grand Rapids Michigan. He was 25 years old. Henry was discharged from the Army on January 14, 1946. Henry and his wife Frances relocated to Columbus Ohio where he worked in retail sales. Henry passed away on February 28, 1998 at the age of 79.

Bazooka Boy Scout

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In this 1960s Army recruiting poster, we see PFC Vernon K. Haught, of the 82nd ABN Divison’s 325th Glider Rgt, around the final act of the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, as he strolls in the snow-covered countryside near Ordimont, Belgium.

While the M1 2.36-inch Bazooka on his shoulder is likely his go-to should an errant Panzer poke its nose out of the woods, the thin-handled knife on the German army belt around his waist probably got a lot more daily use. The blade seems to be a Norwegian-style speiderkniv, or scout knife, of the kind commonly used by boy scouts in Western Europe at the time, differing from the beefier U.S.-style PAL or Western Cutlery-made fixed blade Boy Scout knives sold back home in the 1940s.

Also, note the M1 bayonet strapped to his leg.

After all, “Be Prepared.”

A break between Fallschirmjägers and destiny

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TEC5 Thomas “Red” O’Brien, C Company, 101st Infantry Regiment, 26th (Yankee) Division, getting a quick meal in while parked on a snowbank near Mecher, Luxembourg, 75 years ago yesterday.

Photo by TEC5 Arthur Hertz, 166th Signal Photo Company, for Stars and Stripes. Via LOC

O’Brien’s unit had been engaged with elements of the tough German 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division, fighting small unit actions in the snow for the past several days prior to this image being shot. Veterans of the 101st would refer to the Battle of the Bulge as “Our Valley Forge.”

Sadly, CPL. O’Brien was killed less than two weeks after this image was captured, on 25 January, by German sniper fire at a crossroad outside Clervaux, Luxembourg, aged 23. He was a native of Rhode Island but a Massachusetts resident when he volunteered in 1942 and is interred at the American Military Cemetery, Henri-Chapelle, Belgium.

The 101st, as was most of the 26th ID, hailed from New England, where they had previously served as a Massachusetts National Guard and state militia outfit dating back to the Civil War. While the regiment cased their colors in 1993, the 26th is still around as the 26th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade in the MARNG, headquartered at Natick.

Grouches in the Bulge

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Here we see one Major Eberhard Lemor, 39, commander of Sturmpanzer-Abteilung 217, during the Ardennes offensive, some 75 years ago this month. If his trousers look odd, it is because he is wearing a recently-applied plaster cast over his broken left leg, one that he would sport throughout the campaign.

Behind the good major in the snow is a Sturmpanzer IV (Sd.Kfz. 166) a vehicle that, in an army of panzers named after sleek big cats such as the Tiger and Panther, was dubbed the Brummbär (ironically enough by Allied intel analysts, not the Germans) a word which roughly translates to sorehead, grouch, or grumbly bear depending on who you are talking to.

Mating a Panzer IV hull/chassis, complete with a big V-12 Maybach diesel engine, with a big ole thumping Skoda 150mm StuH 43 L/12 howitzer behind a 100mm steel frontal plate, the assault gun was ideal for knocking out hardpoints or waiting in ambush for virtually any armored vehicle or train ever fielded world.

Grouch indeed. The Germans typically referred to these vehicles as “Stupa” an abbreviation of Sturmpanzer. 

Just over 300 Brummbären were fielded in four dedicated Sturmpanzer-Abteilung (Stu.Pz.Abt.. i.e. assault tank battalion), numbered 216 through 219, between 1943 and the end of the war.

After a baptism of fire at Kursk, they were mostly used in Italy and on the Eastern Front– with the exception of Lemor’s unit.

StuPzAbt 217 was only formed late in the war at Grafenwöhr, just weeks before the Overlord landings, from tankers and panzer grenadiers of Panzer-Kompanie 40 and Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 18. Fielded piecemeal in company strength into attempts to stop the Allied advance through Normandy and Belgium, the unit was only able to operate as a full battalion for the last big German push at the end of the year.

A cane, cast and a Brummbar in a snowy Belgian field are all you need for a stirring leadership snap from “somewhere in the Ardennes.”

Thrown into the Wacht am Rhein offensive in the Battle of the Bulge on 19 December 1944 with 31 vehicles, the six-month-old battalion only managed to advance to St. Vith before they were stopped cold, (pardon the pun) ultimately falling back in January 1945 and later being destroyed in the Ruhr pocket.

Lemor would survive the war, join the West German Bundeswehr when it was formed, and go on to reach the rank of Oberstleutnant (lt. col), retiring in the 1960s as a NATO staff officer stationed in Brussels, an assignment ironically just 170km from St. Vith– or about four hours drive in a Brummbär.