After Action Report / document 1/ 003
                                                                      WACHT AM RHEIN

Precisely at 0530 hours on Saturday 18 January 1944, the still of the snow covered and wooded hills of the Ardennes region was shattered by the boom of a synchronized artillery bombardment.
The front, stretching some one-hundred kilometers, from Monschau in the North, to Echternach to the South. A total of twenty-five divisions stood poised to crash their way through a weak American defensive screen.
The objective was to repeat the victories of 1940, when armoured formations advanced with stunning success through exactly this same area. The aims now as then, to cross the Meuse River, sweep through to the coast and divide the Allied armies in two, thus causing their collapse.
The Anglo-American cooperation was little more than a veneer, the Allied reaction to an attack would be slow and disjointed; the Allied center was thinly held, with little hope of replacements to staunch the wound.
Our placement, in the northern assault area - around Monschau - was composed almost entirely of infantry, with the task of pressing forward to protect the main assault from a flank attack and securing the dam in order to get our Armour across, this maneuver coupled with support from armoured half-track threw the Allies off balance from the very beginning.
Being one of the many NCO's leading men of the LAH to takeout the forward American positions, securing the sector to allow the armor to exploit lines of least resistance, by-passing defensive locations and leaving them to be mopped up by the infantry.  At all times the aim was Antwerp, with no deviations whatsoever.
The winter conditions were atrocious, the temperature, minus four centigrade, didn't hamper the determination of the soldaten of the LAH or other units of the Fatherland, they bore this weight like Atlas.
Second Gruppe, seemed to be in the thick of the fighting all morning, not until word came to hold position, ostensibly  for rest and reorganization.  In reality, however they were to constitute the backbone of a newly conceived assault at a key crossroads, to be won at any cost!
First Gruppe, led by SS-Rottenführer Dalman and Wehrmacht elements passed through the Second Gruppe offensive line, to begin a spearhead of their own, this put pressure on the ever retreating enemy. Thus allowing supplies to be brought up, hamhock and bean stew were given out to renew vigor among the soldat.  
The fight for the crossroads was furious, our machine gun's were in the rear, we could not wait for them, we had a timetable to keep.  Though the hail of gunfire and the harsh blowing of snow, SS-Unterscharführer Schnabel,
SS-Unterscharführer Bauman, SS-Sturmann Calico and men of the LAH would lead all others and wrench control of the vital road junction. With well placed smoke grenades followed by a better placed fragmentation sleeved grenade, from SS-Sturmann Calico, a hole opened so others could pour through to obtain control of the surrounding fortifications and take it from the now cold dead hands of a combined American and British army sent to defend.
  The men, my men, were cold, wet and hungry, but all were fortified with the knowledge that the objectives put to them were completed and surpassed.  Even the newly arrived replacements, that saw no action before this day, could now be considered veterans!

T. Bauman
SS-Unterscharführer
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