Reinforced Winter 1: All Americans in the Battle of the Bulge

What the 82nd Airborne tells about dispersion and the future of landpower

Welcome to Ridgway’s Notebook, your home for airborne PME. We offer penetrating essays on military history. Through the World War II experiences of General Matthew Ridgway and the 82nd Airborne Division, we illustrate some of the similarities between the questions asked by officers of the 82nd yesterday and today—and dissect how they came to be.

They were colonels and generals, senators of martial purpose. Their recent victory over the Nazis was total, unconditional. The laurels bestowed on their legions were their laurels. These senators were cast in lurid light, many held in renown in every county and town. At the crest of a personal and professional wave, these senators convened to decide the Army’s future. Yet in the marks of the majority, there was little evidence of a changing face in war. They recommended mere renewal of old. But Major General James Gavin led a minority report. In the face of atomic weapons and new rockets, he saw an Army in need of shucking several things that had just won it total victory. Paradoxically, Gavin formed his opinion in the late war where he too courted fame. While everyone made changes fettered to old concepts, Gavin overthrew them totally.¹

Although dispersion disrupts enemy targeting efforts, it increases the difficulty of both C2 and sustainment for friendly forces. Success demands agile units that are able to adjust dispositions rapidly, assume risk, and exploit opportunities when they are available.

— FM 3-0

December 22, 1944 — Belgium

It began with a lone man secreted by a road. He counted columns, tanks, and trucks, and turned his backpack radio to send reports before shutting it off. Receiving a transmission would unmask him, so close was he. He could discern the patches on German uniforms. Corporal Mangers had been so concealed since his patrol jeep stuck in the mud as a German armor column approached.

The morning of December 22 he ticked off 125 vehicles as they passed. From concealment, he zeroed in the artillery which laid waste to the column as they bunched. But a report he gave that afternoon unmasked more menace than a column of tanks. The Germans were repairing the bridges on the Joubieval Road. It could only mean one thing — the Germans wanted to pin the All Americans against the Salm River, that gorgeous brook which formed the eastern front of the division.² It was a country of emerald ridges, replete with brooks like the Salm, and dotted with low mountains. Some, like the Their du Mont, were more distinguished than others. Abutting the river, when mounted, the Their du Mont became a natural citadel. But in the low folds of the coniferous hills and ridges, the Germans were concentrating. The bridges on the Joubieval Road would shoot them like an arrow into their rear, uncovering their natural citadel. But they could also hear and see the Germans making for the west. What brought the most acute anxiety was not an attempt at uncovering the citadel, but an uncovering of the entire division by these westward Germans. General Gavin was soon to find himself in a cauldron. He was now fighting in four directions.

While the 504th Parachute Infantry was mopping up the northern shoulder, hemming in the remains of Joachim Peiper’s infamous column, the 325th Glider Infantry was on the southern extreme. They were holding the very floor of the division. It was thick as paper. Keeping the Germans from marauding throughout the division’s rear was Colonel Charles Billingslea. He was not only facing a concentrated enemy thrust, but found himself “singing the blues about my right flank where the 3rd Armored was supposed to be in strength.”³ The division reserve battalion had been thrown in with the early mist that rose with the 22nd. He - and General Gavin - were at risk of being encircled as the Germans careened into the Fraiture Crossroads. Gavin was “perturbed” by evening.⁴ The enemy was at the gate. Their vulnerability lay open for all to see.

Gavin was familiar with the dilemma. His last crisis, on September 20 in Holland, had developed similarly. He was attacking north while being attacked in the east and south. The attack facing him to the south was the critical one. Just like on December 22, in Holland the Germans at Mook threatened the division’s jugular, its only interior road. The great equalizer between September and December was that in December Gavin had four regiments — not three. The non-arrival of the 325th for that critical September day, in Gavin’s private words, “may have well caused the defeat of the entire force.”⁵ As the Germans penetrated Mook, he had no reserves left. Not so in December. Buttressed with four regiments, Gavin had freedom — freedom of options, freedom to fight in any direction, freedom to defend.

Like a fire brigade, the 2nd Battalion, 504th motored across the division area on the Rue de Lienne. Following the lazy trout stream, it traversed south through the gently rolling countryside. Typically, only one battalion could be trucked at a time. It was good in this case. The entire division was using this jugular in some way, the only road that gave them interior communication. Too much traffic with industrial vehicles may prove paralyzing. And by design, the airborne, and Gavin, had an aversion to being chained to roads with too many heavy trucks in the inventory.

The keystone to the division area was the terminus of the road and the fire brigade — Lierneux. Gavin could see the situation clearly, and he made the command decision to let Peiper’s remnants escape and break contact in the north. The risk was greater in the south. The clouds of confrontation were forming.

The fire was white hot when the brigade arrived. While the Germans held a knife to Lierneux, through the Joubieval-Sart corridor where the intrepid Mangers had secreted himself, the Fraiture crossroads had fallen. Billingslea’s legion was at capacity. Everyone was engaged save a reserve company. Now the flank of the division invited encirclement. To stymie this fate, Gavin ordered the fire brigade to attack and restore the crossroad. The battalion of the 325th defending the area was in a delicate situation in the hills and gullies about Fraiture. Their major’s encouragement to the fire brigade’s commander was: “I would not attack the damned place with a regiment, not to mind a battalion.”⁶

The fog descended upon the countryside as the fire brigade rose from the earth and formed on the road. The fog fell stronger upon the command group when the artillery observer reported. Division artillery could offer no fires. All told, the division line was 30 miles. In the 505 sector, the cooks and clerks were cleared out of the rear and put on the line. At the hinge of the “L” which was the division line, the Germans were assaulting. Fencing the Germans in both sectors was eating guns. But none of this mattered to the fire brigade’s commander. He only knew he was staring down Fraiture with no artillery.

And the only staring was done at a map before the fire brigade marched. It was the march of the condemned — one captain noted the silence. A bloodletting was averted when Gavin realized the German hold on the crossroad was total.⁷ He could not fritter away another battalion; two had been ground in four days.⁸ Reserves were committed to restore the next juncture, Règné, where German tanks nipped.

The division was preparing for its Cannae. The fire brigade was patrolling a 1,000 yard gap between battalions of the 325th; the right battalion was fracturing as the momentum built from Fraiture. Over the Rue de Lienne, another battalion of the 504th responded to the scene. Upon arrival, one company stood above Fraiture until the right battalion could recast; the other company wheeled right to picket the flank. Everything was being thrown to prevent encirclement.

The command decision to shift south was a precious foresight, a gift given by four elements. The picket company soon became embroiled. General Ridgway saw the situation in stark contrast to Gavin and Billingslea. In reflection, Billingslea thought holding like the legion at Cannae would have cost them. Montgomery saw it too. Early Christmas Eve, he pitched Ridgway the idea of abandoning the line to consolidate in the north; Ridgway came to total agreement. That evening, the controversial withdrawal commenced.

Gavin believed the battle foreshadowed what was to dawn with the rockets and atoms. Defenses would be fluid, dispersion would be king, and attack in the rear was as likely as attack in the front. In the Bulge, Gavin found himself in a caldron — one he felt would perpetuate in coming years. Dispersion would make the defensive lines of the future elongated and supple, like dough rolled under a pin, just like the floor which Billingslea defended. A division of four elements allowed for interior-reinforcement (like the fire brigade) or all-around defense (like Bastogne). To Gavin, a fourth regiment represented balance and ease — a freedom to dictate back terms in the defense.

Officers of the US Army — in 1946 and 2026 — see the defensive as lower-prestige than the offensive. In the next installment, we will dissect the tactics of the All American’s four-regiments in the attack of the Bulge — January 1945.

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1. Minutes of the Infantry Conference, Committee on Organization, 1946.

2. “German Breakthrough,” combat interview of J.W. Medusky (S-3, 508th PIR).

3. Combat interview of Charles Billingslea (CO, 325th GIR)

4. Fox, T.S. Battle Surgeons: Care Under Fire in the 504th Parachute Infantry. Kindle Direct Publishing (2023). P. 159

5. Gavin, J.M. “Lessons of Operation MARKET,” Headquarters, 82d Airborne Division, 3 December 1944.

6. Billingslea, combat interview.

7. Campana, Victor W. The Operations of the 2^nd Battalion, 504^th Parachute Infantry (82^nd A/B DIV) in the German Counter-Offensive, 18 December 1944 – 10 January 1945 (Ardennes Campaign) (Personal Experiences of a Battalion S-3). The Infantry School, General Section, Military History Committee, Fort Benning, GA.

8. 2/325th at Fraiture; 1/504 at Cheneux.