In this Jan. 6, 1945 file photo, American tanks wait on the snowy slopes in Bastogne, Belgium.
AP Photo
80 years ago today, Pennsylvania’s 28th Division stood in the way as the Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge
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Tim Lambert/WITF
AP Photo
In this Jan. 6, 1945 file photo, American tanks wait on the snowy slopes in Bastogne, Belgium.
Eighty years ago today, the German army launched its last major offensive on the Western Front during World War II. It centered on the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Standing in the way that day was a Pennsylvania National Guard division, the 28th, which is known as the Bloody Bucket.
To shed some light on the 28th’s heroic stand, WITF’s Tim Lambert reached out to Walter Zapotoczny. He’s a former member of the 28th Infantry Division, the incoming president of the Divisions Association, and the author of 13 military history books, including his latest that is set to be released next year, “The 28th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge.”
Below is a transcript of the conversation between the two. It has been edited for clarity:
Geert Vanden Wijngaert / AP Photo
A man walks between the graves at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial during the annual memorial day ceremony, in Plombieres, Belgium on Saturday May. 27, 2017.
LAMBERT: Walter, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.
ZAPOTOCZNY: Well, thank you very much, Tim. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and, and chat with you about this storied division.
LAMBERT: Why don’t we start with who made up the 28th Division, when it landed in France in July of 1944?
ZAPOTOCZNY: They were federalized for service in February of 1941.
So, at that point, the core of it was comprised of folks from Pennsylvania, but they started to bring in people from all over the United States to fill the ranks. It was quite a diverse group that landed in England — Wales to be exact — and trained prior to them landing in Normandy.
LAMBERT: Now let’s fast forward a little bit. Can you set the scene for us on December 16th, 1944, in terms of why the 28th found itself in the Bastogne Corridor?
ZAPOTOCZNY: Well, first of all, they had fought their way across France. Tey had marched in the Paris Liberation Parade, and then they went up against the Siegfried Line or the German West Wall.
After meeting heavy resistance, they fell back a little bit, and then they received orders to the First Army attack to seize the Rohr River dams on their way to Cologne, which is the heart of German heavy industry, of course. So they entered an area. called the Hürtgen Forest. But while fighting in Normandy was intense, nothing prepared these men for the Hürtgen Forest.
The Germans had constructed pillboxes with interlocking fire. The men were under constant artillery and mortar fire. German shells would burst into trees, sending shrapnel and splinters down. The bottom line was that they were spent. They had over 6,100 casualties, and 600-plus killed. So, they were relieved and sent into Luxembourg, which the Allies thought was a quiet sector.
Who would, in their right mind, try to attack through the very thick Ardennes Forest, especially with armor? They were given a front of, approximately 25 miles along the Ore River to defend. At that time, a division sector was generally planned to be about 8 miles. They knew they couldn’t man this whole sector continuously, so they set up what they called strong points at road junctions, street intersections, church steeples, and other locations, and along a road running from St. Vith to Dykirch that the soldiers called Skyline Drive. Kind of after the road through the mountains of Virginia back home. So there they are, on the 15th, evening of the 15th, morning of the 16th of December, thinking about Christmas, thinking about going home, because their leaders had told them, you know, “The war’s pretty much over, the Germans are defeated It’s gonna be the last push. We’re almost done.” And of course they were surprised that morning of the 16th.
Peter Carroll / AP Photo
A soldier runs past a burning German half-track in the recaptured town of La Glieze, Belgium, in 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
LAMBERT: So, what did unfold in those early morning hours as nine German divisions moved to smash through that weak point in the Allied line?
ZAPOTOCZNY: A little after five o’clock in the morning, the Germans start firing artillery and mortars all along the front. The Americans and the Germans had exchanged artillery fire before. So, initially the 28th Division men thought, it was just another artillery barrage, until they start seeing soldiers coming across the Ore River in rafts, and then of course artillery fire was even more intense.
Division soldiers realized at that point this was not just a casual exchange of artillery fire. Something was going on here. But even at that point, on the 16th, it took a while for the Allied command to realize this was a major offensive. The 112th Infantry Regiment was in the north, bordered by the U. S. 106th Division. 110th Regiment of the 28th was in the center, and 109th was in the south, and they were bordered by the U. S. 9th Armored Division. So while the 28th Division took the brunt, basically, of that movement, there were other U. S. divisions, units that also faced the Germans. But the main thrust, of course, came in the center by the 5th Panzer Army through the 110th’s sector — with the idea of smashing through the line, capturing the road network in and around Bastogne, and then driving on to Antwerp, which was the only deepwater port along the coast at that time.
LAMBERT: And of course, that port would be very important to resupplying Allied soldiers.
ZAPOTOCZNY: Well, yeah, absolutely. Everybody’s probably seen pictures of those temporary harbors that they built along the Normandy coast to offload troops and equipment, but they were nowhere equal to what Antwerp already had — huge crane networks and things that one would envision of a deep water port being big cargo vessel unloading and that kind of stuff. So the Allies needed that port. Hitler thought that by capturing it, he’d drive a wedge through the British in the North and the U. S. Armies in the South.
And the Allies would say, “Oh, we’re tired of this. We’re going to give up. We’re going to sue for peace.” And of course, he was wrong.
LAMBERT: Now, because this offensive was such a surprise, the men of the 28th had to buy time for the allies. So they pretty much found themselves in a situation where they couldn’t retreat or simply surrender. Isn’t that right?
ZAPOTOCZNY: Yeah, you’re exactly right. And I had mentioned about those strong points before, and in some cases the Germans had surrounded them. Reading some of the German documents, you know, a lot of the German lower level leaders were told not to engage, just go around, but they engaged anyway, and the men of the 28th Division held the ground.
In many cases, (they) fought to the last bullet and fought to the last man. The Germans knew that once they could reach the cleft river, they had a shot at the open road network that went into Bastogne. They wanted to be in Bastogne the day of the 17th. The way the resistance of the 28th Division soldiers unfolded in such a manner that they delayed them, they held them up, they pushed them back as best as they could. And they basically delayed them for three days until finally the 101st Airborne was brought in, and other units were brought into the Bastogne area. And then the 106th Division in the north was brought over, and the German offensive was halted. But had it not been for the 28th Division soldiers dogged determination and resistance and fighting, there wouldn’t have been 101st Airborne in Bastogne, because the Germans would have been past it.
Now, there’s some argument to this day, or discussion, that the German logistics would not have held up to get them to Antwerp. Who knows? But the point is they were stopped and delayed and Hitler’s plan was spoiled.
File / AP Photo
In this Dec. 1944 file photo, German infantrymen pass by burning captured American vehicles during the drive into Allied lines on the Western Front during the Battle of the Bulge.
LAMBERT: Can you share some actions by individuals or individual units that have sort of gone under the radar in the larger story of the Bulge?
ZAPOTOCZNY: One good example is First Lieutenant Moe Katz. In fact, he won the Bronze Star for heroism. He stopped a large German column of regimental strength moving along the road, and he radioed back to his battalion and 110th regiment commander, and they set up a trap that they sprung on the unsuspecting Germans, who, by the way, were marching as if they were in a parade formation down the road. That’s how confident they were that they were going to blow right past the defending Americans. At a given signal then, all the American artillery in the sector fired at the same time, and they knocked out about 2, 000 Germans in the process.
Clairvaux was a scene of heavy fighting. Units of 110th Infantry dug in there against German Panzer Grenadiers of the Wehrmacht 2nd Armored Division. A group of cooks and clerks and some infantrymen, led by Captain John Aiken, continued to defend the castle there until the Germans finally attacked it with phosphorus grenades and caught the castle on fire. The American defenders were out of ammunition. There was nothing else they could do, so they had to surrender.
Cedric Foster was a top news analyst for Mutual Broadcasting System during the war. He broadcasted from his studios in Boston, WNAC in Boston, on January 19th, 1945. He said the 28th Division earned as much credit for stemming the German drive as the gallant 101st Airborne. And they should be given the same amount of credit.
Unfortunately, as historians have written the story and as Hollywood picked up on the story, oftentimes the efforts of the 28th Division and their men have been overlooked.
LAMBERT: Why do you think that is?
ZAPOTOCZNY: Well, I think it’s easier to portray an image when you have a unit defending a particular place. What the 28th soldiers were doing, they were in a lot of places.
And oftentimes it was just a squad of men in one place, and maybe a platoon in another, or half a platoon down the road, and they’re moving. And it doesn’t fit well into a Hollywood type script. It’s just an easier story to tell. Taking nothing away from what the 101st Airborne did there. What they did was tremendous.
I think any one of those(101st Division) soldiers would attribute the efforts of the 28th to them being able to do what they did. But for whatever reason, Hollywood, historians, others have just bypassed the stories of the 28th Division and really not told the story.
LAMBERT: Now, Walter, by the time this interview airs, you will be in Europe to mark the 80th anniversary of the battle. We mentioned you served in the 28th at one time. What will be going through your mind as you reflect on what the men accomplished in those early hours on December 16th and those early days of the fight?
ZAPOTOCZNY: Well, you know, this will be my fourth trip to Luxembourg. When I was still in uniform, the division commander sent me over there to do some research and that’s where I first got to know some of the folks there. And they have taken me to the places where, in the foxholes, where the American soldiers fought and died in some cases. And it’s very touching to walk those grounds and realize, especially when you’ve done enough research, that you know exactly what happened there. And you just sit there and look around and say, “Oh my goodness.” It’s truly something.
The Luxembourgers are extremely thankful and appreciative of what the American soldiers did there. And if I can tell, if I can do my little bit of a part to tell that story to new generations, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something.
LAMBERT: Walter Zapotoczny, thank you very much for your time. It’s been a real pleasure having you on today.
ZAPOTOCZNY: Thank you for having me on and I really appreciate it.
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