ONE MAN'S DECISION: WHY SHAEF FAILED TO HALT THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE
Jay von Werlhof 114th Signal Radio Intelligence Company U.S. Army
It was 5:30 in the morning of 16 December 1944 when the distant crash of artillery and the rumble of tanks ended the military stalemate along the northwestern front. The Battle of the Bulge was on. The Germans began this last and most brutal attack in World War II against a divided and weak allied line. The sudden offense over ran the front line sending our Allied troops into bold retreat and the surprised Supreme Headquarters of Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) command into hastily drawn but ineffective defenses. The Germans rolled west unopposed except in the Elsenborn sector.
Since the St. Malo breakthrough in July, SHAEF headquarters and tactical field commanders had relied heavily on air reconnaissance and G2 (Intelligence) ground units for detecting enemy troop movements. But in early December, bad weather swept in from the North Sea grounding our air force and shielding German movements from other visible pries. For the first time, the Allied commanders were forced to depend almost entirely on the G2 reports of the Signal Radio Intelligence (SRI) Companies for tactical information along the Western front. Sporadic data from prisoners and espionage resources continued to filter through the line, but for continuity and reliability the G2 daily reports from the SRI Companies operating near the front became the eyes of SHAEF. By the end of 1944, there were eight SRI Companies operating along the West Wall, including the 113th, 114th, 116th, 117th, 118th, 129th, 135th, and 137th. In addition, there was the 113th SRI Battalion attached to Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group.
If the Allies immediately and obviously responded to intercepted information that the Germans were planing a particular move, the enemy would have suspected correctly [that] the Allies were on to their communications system. Even so, the Germans had to assume that a certain proportion of their messages were being intercepted, and they devised various means to at least slow down the process by which Allies received these communications.
Following the Avranches breakthrough, the Germans revised the rather cumbersome way in which call signs and frequencies were changed. They published a book that showed for each day what call signs and radio frequencies were to be used over a six month period.
The changes were to take place as each day's operations began. The books were distributed to all German division headquarters allowing a more rapid and smoother transition in message exchanges as a new day opened. Unknown to the Germans, however, at least two of the books fell into the hands of the advancing First Army who turned one over to the 114th SRI Company, and perhaps later, the Third Army's 118th SRI Company received the other. We nicknamed our book "The Mike Book," since the German label for the book was prefixed with a capital M. Our TA Section never told the Intercept Platoon how we knew what the changes were. That was one of our own top secrets.
Sometime after we bypassed Paris and were around Soisson or into Luxembourg, one of the American crews at army headquarters "lost" an Ultra decoding machine. Despite General Eisenhower's direct orders to "find that truck" containing the machine, it was never located. Probably, it had fallen into German hands during some military move, for soon after that all intercepted messages appeared from random call signs and radio frequencies rather than the orderly changes the Mike Book had provided. The only clue our intercept operators now had was from their familiarity with the "fist" of a particular sender, that is, his style of sending. The Intercept Operator immediately alerted his Trick Chief who passed this important point along to the TA Section which then urged the operator to stay on the frequency and listen for additional clues or messages. Even that continuity with the past was lost as new replacement operators entered the field. The continuity we still had going, however, was the map that our Order of Battle Section kept on the wall of its hutch. The DF Platoon gave us a five-point fix on the location of any sender who stayed on the air long enough for the crews to "shoot it" in. Though a frequency and call sign changed, the position of the sender might remain fixed over a few days. In itself this would have been a valuable piece of information on the static condition of the front, and possibly clues for the change in transmission modes.
Linguists in the TA unit could handle any written European language or dialect. Sgt. "Jeeter" McPheeter, for example, had a Ph.D. in European languages, and taught Romance languages at University of North Carolina. Joseph B. Rounds, who occupied the 2nd half of my pup tent, had set up a library for the League of Nations, was on leave as Head Librarian of Grovsner Library in Buffalo, and spoke fluent French and German. Others in the unit covered the Slavonic languages. One of the members of our T A Platoon was a personal friend of Walt Disney who agreed to design the logo for our reorganized company. The original is in the National Archives.
Our southernmost DF unit was at the edge of the Ardennes, and our northernmost unit was near Eupen, giving us more than a twenty mile coverage of the northwestern front. With this placement we were west of the central sector of V Corps. The 9th Infantry Division was to our north, the 2nd and 99th Infantry Divisions were to our east, and the 106th Infantry Division to our southeast. The V and VII corps were fighting to the northeast of Eupen towards Aachen and the Roer River dams as the main elements of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's code-named Operation Queen. They were still within our sector but extended our range to forty miles. All of this was soon to change.
Gasoline and ammunition were always in short supply. To prevent one fuel dump from German capture, the Americans poured 125,000 gallons into a ditch and torched it. At the time near Metz, when General Patton was complaining about gasoline shortages for his tanks, the 114th SRI Company intercepted a clear-text message from a panicky soldier that he and two others were guarding a 50,000 gallon gasoline dump and needed help. We contacted headquarters who saw to it that several airplanes supplied the help until a patrol could seize the site from the hapless defenders.
By the 1st of December, the V and VII corps had fought beyond Aachen, the ancient capitol of Charlemagne, and were along the Roer River facing the 272nd Volksgrenadier Division. This drive under Operation Queen, aimed to prevent Germans from opening the Roer dams and flooding the Lower Roer Valley which would have stopped General Hodge's drive towards Cologne. Successes at the Roer River brought General Gerow's V Corps back to Monschau for regrouping and rest. This was just prior to the German counter-offense.
As early as October, Hitler began pulling his best divisions from the West Front for refitting in Eastern Germany. His favorite, the Sixth SS Panzer Army, was brought up to full strength while the Fifth SS Panzer Army and the Seventh Army remained under staffed.
Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow's V Corps was holding the north pocket of the Ardennes front. Within it, the 2nd Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Walter M. Robertson held the right flank while Maj. Gen. Walter Lauer's 99th Infantry Division commanded the left. Adjoining the right flank of the V Corps was Maj. Gen. Troy H. Middleton's VIII Corps composed of a cavalry regiment, three infantry divisions, and one armored division, all stretched out over a sixty five mile course, with but 500 men per mile.
Even considering the activity along the Roer River, a military slowdown had been gradually evolving along the West Wall. As mid-December approached the front was relatively quiet. In the north, General Hodges was anxious to continue Operation Queen to Duren on the east bank of the Roer River while in the south General George S. Patton was in the final stage of preparing his Third Army for the planned 19 December all-out offense into Saarland, southwestern Germany. In between these separated salients American troops were at rest or refitting while unknown to their Higher Command the Germans were amassing for a major assault through this quiet sector of the Ardennes. Hitler's plan, that he dubbed Wacht Am Rhein, would supposedly propel three armies of the Aryan super-race to Brussels and Antwerp and, in some mystic way, bring a quick end to the war. Readied, on 15 December they commanded 250,000 troops - 3,100 men per mile.
General der Panzertruppen Hasso-Ecard von Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army struck at the north edge of VIII Corps, and Seventh Army General Panzertruppen Erich von Brandenberger attacked to the southwest to stop General Patton's advance. With the Sixth SS Panzer Army were other units that recently arrived from the East, notably the 12th Volksgrenadier Division, the 2nd SS Panzer Division, and the 246th Volksgrenadier Division. In the Fifth SS Panzer Army was the Panzer Lehr Division which recently had arrived by rail from Bulgaria. Also from the Eastern Front were the 26th Volksgrenadier Division and the 62nd Volksgrenadier Division. From the Italian front was the tough 15th Panzer Grenadier Division. Specially trained were the new 560th Volksgrenadier Division and the 18th Volksgrenadier Division, both ready to be battle tempered.
General Patton is not known for graciousness, but it would be hard for any man to emulate his military penchant for daring and risk. However, he did appreciate meritoriousness in others and awarded the 118th SRI Company, attached to the Third Army, a special plaque for outstanding service as a front line unit. Military historians have highly complimented the 114th SRI Company for the "excellent" coverage we had of German units during Operation Queen. Of greater importance to us, however, was the Order of Battle that gradually emerged on our map of the Sixth SS Panzer Army. Even though Hitler had ordered strict radio silence of the three armies being stretched between Monschau and Eckternach, the Sixth SS Panzer Army seemed to have trouble getting its complex unit lined up in the few days before the attack. This army was the spearhead, and it was imperative that all units participating in the drive be fully organized. While the 114th SRI Company received such data from Sixth SS Panzer Army divisions, SRI Companies covering other German armies adhering to the blackout did not receive similar messages. The effective tracking zone of our 114th SRI Company was northeast of Eupen and southeast of St. Vith in General Hodges First Army sector. Our area overlapped V, VII and VIII Corps. Though messages were usually very short, they showed over a few days a growing pattern of amassed power.
Our DF Platoon and Cryptoanalysis Section detailed a concentration of armed might not known before, behind the West Wall. Some of the units could be identified, and our DF Platoon "shot in" many more. Operators recognizing "fists" of senders helped the Order of Battle Section to keep track of ground movements. Between 9-11 December, the 114th SRI Company constructed an impressive Order of Battle Map.
While the daily reports we sent to First Army Headquarters and SHAEF showed increased activity east of the front, the Lieutenant of our T A Platoon, 1st Lt. "D", refused to send our consolidated report and map of 11 December. He compared G2 records from First Army Headquarters with our data, and cited records that showed some of our identified units to be on the Eastern Front, destroyed, or in rest areas. Roy Duke, Technical Sergeant in charge of the operations of the TA Platoon, discussed with Lt. "D" the difference between other G2 data and ours, but to no avail. To us, these G2 data were obviously obsolete in a fast changing tactical situation. Capt. Alfred R. Braddock, 114th SRI Company Commander did not involve himself in intersectional matters which gave each senior platoon Lieutenant the final word. We immediately set to work re-doing our report from additional field data. By the 14th of December we had added several units to the Order of Battle Map, and incorporated these data in a new report. Again, our Lieutenant refused to except our report as credible military intelligence. Traffic all but ceased on the afternoon of the 15th, apparently as the Sixth SS Panzer Army under General Dietrich, and the Kampfgruppe Peiper Armored Regiment under SS Colonel Joachim Peiper had the main elements of their attack force in line and ready to move. They now waited for zero hour .
G2 at Army or SHAEF levels were very slow in sending their accumulated data to their field companies. Not all of their reported resources were reliable. Too, Intelligence officers were not above political squabbles, as the Intelligence head of First Army was not on good terms with the Intelligence head of General Bradley's 12th Army Group - the 113th SRI Battalion - resulting in poor exchanges of data. On 14 December Eisenhower's G2 officer's Order of Battle Map showed only four divisions facing the VIII Corps front line.
Up to the time of the attack at 5:30 [a.m.] on Saturday, 16 December, Eisenhower's ULTRA provided no real clues that anything unusual was happening on the German side of the West Wall. The 118th and 137th SRI Companies did not report the kind of activity in their sectors that the Sixth SS Panzer Army passed on to the 114th. The other resources that G2 Army and SHAEF Headquarters relied upon were not working due to bad weather, bad assumptions, and radio silence in all but the Sixth SS Army sector. While other reports were based on rumor or partial truths, it seems the 114th SRI was the only resource collecting hard data.
But it was one man's decision that kept the 114th SRI Company TA Section from sending the only reliable and current reports available to First Army and SHAEF Headquarters. In the ensuing battle, the American total casualties were 80,987; German totals were 81,834. That is 162,821 men killed, wounded and missing. Had First Army and SHAEF received and accepted the 114th report, there was time from the 11th to the 16th of December to blunt the attack. But one man's decision blocked that possibility.