The bulk of his two divisions, as a consequence, faced the 112th Infantry, albeit the corps zone overlapped somewhat the sectors of the 106th Infantry Division in the north and the 110th Infantry in the south. The division advance guard from the 15th Parachute Regiment (supposedly on its way to capture Sibret) somehow became confused, wandered away northward, and about 1500 struck the 687th Field Artillery Battalion, whose batteries had displaced to a road angling southeast from the town.20 Battery A met the tanks leading the German column with direct fire, disabled or destroyed them, and briefly slowed the advance toward Wiltz. Original WW2 US Army 112th Infantry Regiment DUI Crest Pinback. Bad tank
The German infantry on the north side of town aligned for the assault about 1400. Two hours later the enemy struck at Company A, apparently an attempt to clear the north-south Skyline Drive, but artillery fire beat him off. This is the order of battle of German and Allied forces during the Battle of the Bulge. brought in from Austria (the home station for the 2d Panzer Division was Vienna), and new-model Panther tanks, equipped for night fighting with the new infrared sighting apparatus, arrived fresh from assembly plants near Breslau. Completely surrounded by the enemy, it had hoped to join the withdrawal of the line companies. J. H. Burns, who had taken over when the company commander was wounded. On the right its 1st Battalion marched on Hosingen, bringing flame throwers and self-propelled guns to blast the Americans from the village; the 2d Battalion moved straight for the Clerf River, aiming at control of the crossings and road net at Wilwerwiltz. Intelligence reports indicated that the elements of the US 28th Infantry
In 1914 the 2d Squadron was assigned to the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry and Company L, 12th Pennsylvania Infantry was redesignated Troop L, 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry. But first, they had to win the Battle of the Bulge. The lay of the ground and defenses in the area north of Ltzkampen were such that Waldenburg's right regiment had to move northwestward at an oblique to the axis of his left wing advance. The 106th Infantry Division took over position for position. Hills intersected by wooded draws marked the terrain in this sector. Ouren. Company C had been driven off the road, and the tanks, missing the infantry entirely, rolled into Marnach. corps zone of attack were narrow, twisting, and certain to be muddy;
Company B and a platoon of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion were well entrenched there and gave the Germans a warm reception, although themselves under fire from batteries east of the Our. The total impact of the severe German blows dealt the 110th Infantry in the late afternoon and evening of 17 December was not felt at the division and corps headquarters for several hours. On the left the 26th Volks Grenadier Division finally achieved contact with the 5th Parachute Division, which had been advancing cautiously along the boundary between the 109th and 110th Infantry and had done nothing to help Kokott's southern regiment, the 39th. then, as seen by Manteuffel and Luettwitz, was not how to achieve the
This move was made early in the morning with disastrous results recorded earlier. the 447th Antiaircraft Battalion, and light armored cars of the 28th
Kokott's reserve regiment, the 78th, crossed the Our at dusk and moved forward. relatively little ground; the 110th was very hard pressed; and German tanks were moving along the main road to Bastogne by way of Marnach. When the 28th Division arrived on the VIII Corps front in mid-November its regiments were in pitiable condition. Colonel Nelson at this moment had two contradictory orders and would have to risk his regiment if he carried out either. . He continued to fight with Cannon Company until the 423rd Regiment surrendered Dec. 19, 1944, near Schnberg, Belgium. In 2006, the battalion reorganized again with Headquarters and Headquarters Company in Lewistown, Company A (less detachment) in Huntingdon; Detachment 1, Company A in Everett; Company B in Altoona, and Company C (led detachment) in Bellefonte with Detachment 1, Company C in Tyrone. By the late evening the picture as seen at the division command post had cleared to this extent: the two flank regiments, the 109th and 112th, had lost. The Americans lined up in German formation and, while an officer shouted commands in German, marched boldly across the bridge. Lauchert arrived too late to meet all of his regimental commanders, but the 2d Panzer, like the rest of the corps, was already in position to move the moment darkness came. 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. As American riflemen and machine gunners cut down the German assault teams, they saw their own ranks thinning. 4th Infantry Division Campaigns during World War II. The regimental command post staff left Ouren even while the enemy was filtering into the village and moved to Weiswampach. Unit decoration: Presidential Unit Citation, 1623 Dec 1944 112th Infantry, Civil War silver bands: The fall of Wiltz ended the 28th Division's delaying action before Bastogne. 17 But the situation east of Bastogne was growing more precarious and the division commander decided to bring the 112th back to join in the defense of Bastogne. Rocco Moretto fought from Normandy to VE-Day. Radio communication, which was functioning fairly well, showed that the division center was most endangered. To some extent, then, Kokott's decision in favor of premature assembly west of the Our had gained ground for the 26th. A Time For Trumpets (MacDonald, 1984) can provide you good background on the fight that the 110th IR put up at Clerveaux. howitzers with one- and two-second fuzes. The Lewistown unit was redesignated as Machine Gun Troop, 104th Cavalry, 22nd Cavalry Division. The units from Lewistown, Tyrone, Huntingdon, Everett, and Altoona were all mustered into federal service for duty on the Mexican border in July 1916. By the middle of the morning it was apparent that the VIII Corps was under attack all along the front and that the 28th Division would have to make out with what it had. He was a prisoner of war at Stalag IV-B in the town of Mhlberg an der Elbe for six months. At one point, after the fight for Kommerscheidt, the regiment was reduced to 300 men. The XLVII Panzer Corps, if all went well, would cross the Our and Clerf Rivers, make a dash "over Bastogne" to the Meuse, seize the Meuse River crossings near Namur by surprise, and drive on through Brussels to Antwerp. by HistoryNet Staff 6/12/2006. the 156th Regiment. The 109th and 112th were in like status. Our expert research specialists are on site at U.S. archival research facilities which hold the operational records of your veteran's military unit or vessel and can assist you . By nightfall the American perimeter had been pierced at many points and the defenders pushed back into the center of Wiltz. Lamoine Olsen, known to his friends as Frank Olsen, joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 1941 prior to America's entry into World War II. 5 During the division attack of 2-1 November in the Schmidt-Vossenack sector the 28th had taken 6,184 casualties. In any case the defenders made radio contact (their last) with the 28th Division as late as 0528 on the morning of 18 December. By nightfall the 3d Battalion line on the Sevenig ridge had been
The seven tanks counted here strangely enough made no effort to attack (perhaps the rough terrain and dragon's teeth along the American bunker line did not appear too promising) . Two rifle battalions manned the main battle positions east of the Our: the 1st facing Ltzkampen, the 3d occupying and flanking Sevenig. east. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. There was no hint from any source that the enemy was about to strike squarely into the center of the 8th Division and in overwhelming array. He was born Dec. 12, 1922, in Litchville, N.D., to Ole and Inga (Olson) Fostervold. paymasters who composed the defense. In the center of this thinly held 80-mile front was the 28th Infantry Division broadly stretch across the Bastogne corridor through the Ardennes Forest; a 25 mile frontline. both the 26th Volks Grenadier Division and the 2d Panzer Division had crossed the river and taken some part in the fight. Krueger and Luettwitz were old hands at mechanized warfare, had learned their business as commanders of the 1st and 2d Panzer Divisions, respectively, and had fought side by side in Lorraine. By the second day it was apparent that the combination of stubborn resistance and poor approach roads would delay the projected crossing at Ouren. had no cohesive line of defense, General Kokott had ordered the 77th Regiment to circle north of Hosingen and head straight for the Clerf bridges at Drauffelt, while the 39th cut cross-country, avoiding the villages on the western side of the ridge line, and seized the road junction and bridges at Wilwerwiltz on the Clerf. Replacements, generally better than the average, were. Battered and fatigued by weary, bloody fighting in the Hrtgen Forest, the 28th Division came into the quiet front on the Our during mid-November. A few hundred yards had been traversed when, at the first crossroad, the leading half-track ran into a patch of mines laid in front of a German roadblock and exploded. United States Army, Historical and Pictorial Review of the 28th Infantry Division in World War II, 1946, page 16, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Distinguished Unit Citation with oak leaf, "112th Infantry Regiment (Sixteenth Pennsylvania)", United States Army Center of Military History, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=112th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)&oldid=1107738250, Infantry regiments of the United States Army National Guard, Military units and formations in Pennsylvania, United States Army units and formations in the Korean War, Infantry regiments of the United States Army, Military units and formations established in 1878, Articles needing additional references from September 2009, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. The 112th Infantry Regiment of the US Army dates back to the American Civil war and has since participated in several conflicts, including WWI and WWII. 116th Infantry Regiment. World War II: Another great uncle, 2LT Elton Barry Arnett, was an infantry platoon leader with Co. C, 1/112th Infantry, 28th Infantry Division. Two hours later tanks and self-propelled guns struck the 44th Engineers, which was outposting the little hamlets northeast of Wiltz. Early morning reports of considerable German penetration and the threat
Since the American troops east of the Our were deployed in the Ltzkampen-Sevenig area, Krueger determined that his main effort should be made there. The capitulation of the gallant garrison at Hosingen, during the morning, removed this threat to the 902d supply road. The 26th Volks Grenadier Division (Generalmajor Heinz Kokott) already was deployed in the Eifel sector of the West Wall adjacent to the Our where it covered not only the XLVII Panzer Corps zone but a wide frontage beyond. He then became the executive officer (XO) for the 16th Infantry Regiment at Fort Jay, Governors Island, New York. When the mortar crews and antitank platoon had used all their ammunition they joined the infantry in the center of the village and fought as riflemen. This time the bridge was blown. The 44th Combat Engineers, the rear guard unit at Wiltz, probably suffered most, the enemy accounting for 18 officers and 160 men during the final withdrawal. About 0930 the 2d Platoon of Company A, 707th Tank Battalion, climbed out of Clerf to meet the German Mark IV's. MacDonald, Charles B. Thus deployed on the right of the 424th Infantry, the 112th was another piece filling out the fast developing "island defense" of St. Vith. Norman G. Maurer, 3 of the 3d Battalion, leading a sortie of twenty men, surprised the enemy and drove him back with very heavy casualties. The units were located in Erie (Co A), Bradford (Co C), Oil City (Co D), Cooperstown (Co E), Franklin (Co F), Ridgeway, Pennsylvania (Co H), Warren (Co I), and Titusville (Co K). . they were particularly bad on the axis assigned to Luettwitz' southern
Marnach remained in American hands, even after the Dasburg bridge was completed and the leading tanks of the 3d Panzer Regiment entered the fight. 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. Interlocking machine gun and rifle fire blocked off the German reinforcements some sixty were captured and the rest dug in where they could. Even so, the unit accounted for six tanks on the 16th and broke up two panzer assaults of company size. of the 1st Battalion. On the morning of the 17th German tanks had set the town ablaze, but the few American Shermans had held them at bay. The unit was mustered into federal active service on 16 July 1917 for service in World War I, and Rickards remained its commander. The Lewistown company was consolidated with another company and became Headquarters and Headquarter Troop, 3rd Reconnaissance Squadron, 104th Armored Cavalry Regiment. As the enemy gun layers dropped their range back to the river and then to the American positions, the searchlights blinked on, searching out pillboxes and bunkers. From this point the American artillery
Six three-inch towed
The 2d Battalion's Civilian Military Operations unit (S-9) oversaw the distribution of roughly $20 million to the Iraqi people in efforts to stabilize the Iraqi economy and build public works projects including police stations, schools, hospitals, fire departments, youth centers, and water pumping stations. German tanks opened fire on them, but a direct hit stopped the leading Mark IV, for the moment effectively blocking the serpentine approach from Marnach. with an order to hold in essentially the positions which the regiment now occupied. The American strongpoints were therefore located with an eye to blocking these entry ways while at the same time defending the lateral ridge road which connected the 110th with its neighboring regiments and provided the main artery sustaining the entire division front. about six hundred men (it had been operating sawmills and rock crushers,
The 1st Platoon of Company I had
Krueger was the elder of the two and lacked something of Luettwitz' dash. effort to clear, and to Krueger's disappointment there was no assurance
Twice during the morning the attackers were allowed to send in aid men and remove their wounded. When orders finally arrived to hold in place, the 3d Battalion had reached a trident crossroad southwest of the town. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1985. Despite harassing fire from American guns and mortars the Germans moved swiftly. Colonel Nelson's antitank reserve, Company C, 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion, was deployed on the ridge west of the river, but these were towed guns, dug in and relatively immobile. The numerous pillboxes provided a substantial amount of cover; the 3d Battalion, for example, was not seriously endangered until the attacking tanks maneuvered close enough for direct fire. To the east, at Dasburg, the German engineers were straining to finish the tank bridge which would bring the German armor into play. Shortly before dusk
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