1st Chronicles Of V Panzer Army DAR

[Cole]

I have finished reading The Longest Winter and I have to say I'm glad I ordered the book. Alex Kershaw writes in the Stephen Ambrose style, meaning that the book concentrates on personal narratives.

I had always assumed that Allied prisoners of war (U.S and British) were treated relatively well and I'm afraid to say that assumption was somewhat based on shows such as Hogan's Heroes and movies where a multi-racial and multi-cultural group of Allied prisoners band together to beat the Germans in a soccer match. This outlook might of been relevant in the early years of the war but towards the end with the ongoing bombing campaign transport to the camps took forever, food on the way was non-existent, and there was a chance dying under Allied air attack or at the hands of highly agitated guards that had lost loved ones in the bombing raids. Once at the camps the prisoner's diet and medical care was inadequate at best.

While reading up on The Battle of Bulge I was unaware of the total collapse and surrender of the 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments. If you open another tab in your browser and go back to the first entry of this DAR their positions are to the east of the yellow objective markers from the woods south of Schlaunbach to Roth. General Manteuffel convinced Hitler that instead of a sustained artillery bombardment infiltration of the American positions followed by a short and sharp bombardment would be preferable. There was some hard fighting the first day but both regiments were soon caught between two pincers passing through Andler and Radschied and soon surrendered. The book explains how the prisoners from these two regiments were demoralized due to this surrender and especially the lack of control from the American leadership in the camp.

From a footnote quoting an unpublished manuscript by Albert Berndt: "In particular, the onus of surrender lay heavily upon the shoulders of Colonel Charles Cavender,........,the senior American officer present in the camp. Throughout his stay in the camp Cavender was distraught and tense. He could think only of the fact that he had capitulated with an intact regiment. .... He lacked firm control over the Americans and his relations with the German Commanding General were not of the Best"

In my game these two regiments put up a good fight and in Schlausenbach inflicted heavy casualties on my Volksgrenadiers and withdrew west in good order.

Von Earl this might be an area to tweak in the scenario. No Campaign Series commander will surrender his units especially as the way things stand now it is probably impossible to quickly surround these regiments. Maybe they start the scenario fixed and with very low morale or even start disrupted? The Germans would be able to surround these units that by being disrupted and fixed simulate them being cut of from communications (when comms where reestablished were told to hold their positions).

I do think the book has an agenda in comparing the long neglected exploits of the I&R Platoon and now they held up the German advance for almost 24 hours versus the surrender of two regiments. The I&R only surrendered once the German paratroopers finally flanked them and used a "close assault".

Some other interesting items from the book was the presence of a Serbian prisoner of war camp next to the American camp. It seems that the Serbians lived under better conditions and it was illegal for the American prisoners to communicate with the Serbs. Some managed to interact with the Serbs and one Serbo-Croatian speaking POW even got some extra food that the Serbs would scrounge out in town while out on assigned jobs and work details.

There was some communications after the war between a veteran of the I&R Platoon and Lt. Col Peiper. The night of 16 December Pieper entered a cafe in Lanzerath and scolded the Colonel CO of the paratroopers about the halt in advance. Peiper was especially frustrated in seeing many officers sleeping and finding out that from the CO down not one commander personally verified the "strong American forces" that were supposedly holding up the advance. The cafe was a mix of German HQ, rest area, and POW station and some of the I&R prisoners witnessed Peipers arrival and outburst.

Pieper was sentenced to death after the war, especially for the Malmedy Massacre but after a few interesting developments (it came out that American Jewish guards would torment Peiper and hold mock executions and then Senator McCarthy "accused Peiper's prosecutors of a witch-hunt". Interesting stuff. His death sentence was commuted to life but with the Cold War heating up many prisoners were released and Peiper left jail in 1956. Peiper's position was that he never ordered prisoners shot but that in the heat of battle, POW's safety could not be guaranteed. Based on his experience with Peiper and his troops in that cafe the I&R Lieutenant believed Peiper and told him so in a letter. The engineers that encountered Peiper's troops over the next couple of days probably would not be so forgiving...

Waiting on Steve's turn. He's advertising that he has some strong forces on the way. My hope is that Kampfgruppe Telkamp has taken him by surprise and that some of the 7th AD that he has been rushing to St. Vith and Schoenburg now how to turn back.