Peiper trapped in Stoumont december 1944: info required !!!!

[Koen]

For my next CMAK project I can use ALL info concerning the entrapment of KampfGruppe Peiper in Stoumont

Allied & German forces, pictures and maps, everything's welcome!

thx in advance

Koen:whis:

[Koen]

this is what I have found until now:

Peiper entered Stavelot on 18 December but encountered fierce resistance by the American defenders.
Unable to defeat the American force in the area, he left a smaller support force in town and headed for the bridge at Trois-Ponts with the bulk of his forces, but by the time he reached it, the retreating U.S. engineers had already destroyed it.
Peiper pulled off and headed for the village of La Gleize and from there on to Stoumont. There, as Peiper approached, the American engineers blew up the bridge, and the American troops were entrenched and ready to fight a bitter battle.
His troops were cut off from the main German force and supplies when the Americans recaptured the poorly defended Stavelot on 19 December. As their situation in Stoumont was becoming hopeless, Peiper decided to pull back to La Gleize where he set up his defenses waiting for the German relief force.
Since no relief force was able to penetrate the Allied line, on 23 December Peiper decided to break through back to the German lines. The men of the Kampfgruppe were forced to abandon their vehicles and heavy equipment, although most of the unit was able to escape.

The 119th left General Hobbs and traveled south to Remouchamps. At this point it divided, one detachment made up of the 2d Battalion and the cannon company heading for Werbomont, the second and stronger column winding along the road that descended into the Amblève valley.
The 2d Battalion reached Lienne Creek after dark and threw up hasty defenses on the hills about three miles east of Werbomont.
The Germans under Peiper had been stopped at the creek earlier, it will be recalled, but the battalion was in time to ambush and destroy the separate scouting force in the late evening.
The 3d Battalion, leading the truck column carrying the bulk of the combat team, reached Stoumont after dark and hurried to form a perimeter defense. Patrols pushing out from the village had no difficulty in discovering the enemy, whose pickets were smoking and talking not more than 2,000 yards away.
At least forty German tanks were reported in bivouac east of the village. Under cover of darkness the remainder of the American force assembled some three miles northwest of Stoumont, while the 400th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, picked up during the march, moved its batteries forward in the dark.
Both Americans and Germans, then, were ready with the coming of day to do battle for Stoumont.

While the 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry, was busily severing the lifeline to Kampfgruppe Peiper on 19 December, Peiper was engaged with the bulk of his troops in an attempt to blast a path through Stoumont, the barrier to the last possible exit west, that is, the valley of the Amblève.
Battle long since had been joined at Stoumont when scouts finally reached Peiper with the story of what had happened to his line of communications.

The kampfgruppe, whose major part was now assembled in the vicinity of La Gleize and Stoumont, consisted of
a mixed battalion of Mark IV tanks and Panthers from the 1st SS Panzer Regiment,
a battalion of armored infantry from the 2d SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment,
a flak battalion,
a battalion of Tiger tanks (which had joined Peiper at Stavelot),
a battery of 105-mm. self-propelled guns,
and a company from the 3d Parachute Division which had ridden on the tanks from Honsfeld.
The force had suffered some losses in its breakthrough to the west, but these were not severe.
By now the critical consideration was gasoline. A few more miles on the road or a few hours of combat maneuvering and Peiper's fuel tanks would be bone dry.

The march echelons of the 1st SS Panzer Division en route to relieve Peiper were slow in assembling and their concentration area, southeast of Stavelot, was under constant interdiction by artillery fire.
The 1st SS Panzer troops trapped to the west were closely engaged, and as yet Peiper had no orders which would permit a retrograde movement.

The general plan was a continuation of the one set in operation the day before:
the 119th Infantry (reinforced), now organized under the assistant division commander, General Harrison, as Task Force Harrison, to capture Stoumont and continue its eastward drive as far as La Gleize;
the 3d Battalion of the 117th Infantry (reinforced) and the two 3d Armored task forces to carry through the concentric attack to seize La Gleize.

The drive to pinch out the western contents of the Peiper pocket at Stoumont got off to a late start on the 21st.
General Harrison's original plan called for a coordinated attack in the early morning.
The 1st Battalion, 119th Infantry, was to continue the drive to enter the town from the west (after recapturing the sanatorium and the high ground flanking the entrance).
The 2d Battalion would swing wide through the woods north of the town, block the escape route to La Gleize, and then attack from the east.
Task Force Jordan and the reorganized 3d Battalion (which earlier had been thrown out of Stoumont) would attack from the north as soon as the sanatorium, which overlooked the northern entrance to the town as well as the western, was wrested from enemy hands.
The sanatorium, then, and the rise on which it stood held the final control of Stoumont.
Peiper did not wait for the counterattack which might lose him the sanatorium. Sometime before 0500 the lull which had succeeded the night of fierce fighting was broken by a German assault against the 1st Battalion positions on the roadway west of the town.
The road itself was blocked by a tank platoon from the 740th Tank Battalion, the infantry dug in behind. The first tank facing the enemy fell to an antitank gun; in the darkness three more were set aflame by Panzerfausts in the hands of the infiltrating enemy infantry.
The Germans were finally thrown back but they had succeeded in disorganizing the 1st Battalion to the point where General Harrison felt that his own attack would have to be postponed. The division commander agreed to Harrison's proposal that the attack be launched at 1245 instead of 0730 as planned.
In the meantime the regimental cannon company and the 197th Field Artillery Battalion set to work softening up the Germans.
At the new hour the 1st and 2d Battalions jumped off. The 1st Battalion assault drove the enemy infantry out of some of the sanatorium rooms, but when a heavy German tank moved in on the north side (where it was screened from the Americans) and started blasting through the windows the Americans withdrew under smoke cover laid down by friendly mortars.
Although the 2d Battalion made some progress in its advance through the woods the battalion commander,
Major McCown, was captured while making a personal reconnaissance, and his troops fell back to their original position. The American tanks, unable to advance along the narrow sunken road under the guns of the Panthers and Tigers, remained north of the town.
A call from the division commander in late afternoon for "the real picture down there" elicited a frankly pessimistic answer from General Harrison. Two battalions, the 1st and 3d, had been cut down and demoralized by earlier enemy counterattacks; they were "in pretty bad shape."
As to the armored detachment: "The trouble is the only places where tanks of any kind can operate are on two sunken roads. The Germans have big tanks, so tanks have been of no help to us." Further, Harrison told Hobbs, he would advise against continuing the attack on the morrow: "That place [Stoumont] is very strong. I don't think those troops we have now, without some improvement, can take the thing.
That is my honest opinion. They are way down in strength. The trouble is that we can only get light artillery fire on the town, and the Germans can shoot at us with tank guns and we can't get tanks to shoot back unless they come out and get hit." 15 To this forthright opinion there was little to add.
General Hobbs cautioned Harrison to be on the lookout for a German attempt to break out during the night and head west, and told him that an attempt would be made to work out a scheme with General Ridgway for an attack by the 82d Airborne Division against the southern side of the Stoumont-La Gleize pocket.

Although there was little direct help that the 82d Airborne Division could give the 30th Division while the Germans still held Stoumont, it had aided the attack north of the Amblève on December by soldering the southern link in the bank around Kampfgruppe Peiper and by beating off the relief detachments of the 1st SS Panzer Division who were trying to lever an opening in this ring. The two companies of the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, that fought their way into Cheneux on the 20th, had endangered Peiper's only remaining foothold on the south bank of the Amblève. Since the companies B and C, had suffered very severe losses from the waist-high fire of the German .20-mm. self-propelled flak pieces while making the assault across the open ground around the village, Colonel Tucker ordered in G Company and in the hours after midnight effected some reorganization. Fighting continued inside the village all through the night, for the most part a hunt with knife and grenade to destroy the crews of the anti-aircraft half-tracks (the flak wagons) which had punished the paratroopers so badly.

[Huib Versloot]

Books you may need are The Devil's Adjutant (forgot the author) but I have it on the shelf. And a very recent Book from Hans Wijers called "Seize the Bridges" which I have as well. I also have all the topo maps you would need. Do you live in Holland as your name sounds Dutch or Belgian? A visit to the Museum in LaGleize will also help you a great deal. They sell books about the battle there as well.

Huib

http://home.planet.nl/~wijer037/Bulge/Forms/Books.htm#

[Koen]

Books you may need are The Devil's Adjutant (forgot the author) but I have it on the shelf. And a very recent Book from Hans Wijers called "Seize the Bridges" which I have as well. I also have all the topo maps you would need. Do you live in Holland as your name sounds Dutch or Belgian? A visit to the Museum in LaGleize will also help you a great deal. They sell books about the battle there as well.

Huib

http://home.planet.nl/~wijer037/Bulge/Forms/Books.htm#

yes, I'm Belgian [omgeving Diest, Vlaams-Brabant]

I'm curious on the amount of equipment, names of tankcommanders, platoonleaders, pictures/maps to make my map etc etc...[I'm a MAPFREAK!]

[Huib Versloot]

The Belgian Topo service has a very decent collection of 1:25.000 maps. http://www.ign.be/
The books I mentioned contain detailed info on the oob and in the museum they sell Gregoire's book with some detail about the individual vehicles and where they were left behind. (See boutique section of the museum. http://www.december44.com/

Will see if I can find more when I get home from work.

Huib

[FM WarB]

In regards to a quote above, my sources (Jung, Parker, Nafzigaer) agree that Peiper had no SP 105s.

[Koen]

In regards to a quote above, my sources (Jung, Parker, Nafzigaer) agree that Peiper had no SP 105s.

noted, thx!
K:whis:

[Huib Versloot]

Send you an email with map scans.

Good luck!

[Andre]

look at my mail and happy download :)

Andre

[Koen]

thx Huib & Andre

K:whis: