Robert E. Merriam - Dark December: The Full Account of the Battle of the Bulge [Illustrated Edition]

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Text originally published in 1947 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

Dark December The Full Account of the Battle of the Bulge

By

Robert E. Merriam

Contents

Leo Tolstoy, in the greatest piece of military history yet to be composed, War and Peace , ably sketches the confusion and uncertainties which have plagued every battlefield from time immemorial. He points up the inexorable forces at work which dwarf the decisions of men commanding at a time when life and death are at stake. Tolstoy ably sketched how legends grow up around certain men and incidents, and he noted how these legends are compounded as a battle sinks into obscurity. As one who recognizes the utter validity of these criticisms of battle reporting, I approach with great humility the task of outlining the greatest pitched battle on the Western Front in World War II. No book of some two hundred pages can adequately recreate the utter confusion and chaos which gripped the forces that were locked in a titanic struggle in the frozen forests of the Ardennes during the wintry weeks of December, 1944, and early January, 1945. I have humbly picked and pieced together isolated bits of information which, when fitted together, may offer some explanation of the cause and effect of that chaos, knowing that true comprehension of the myriad factors influencing such a gigantic struggle of over a million men can never be adequately transferred to the written word.

The origin of this book traces back to the early days of the war when a group of farsighted historians, recognizing the inevitable weaknesses of official military reports, convinced the Chief of Staff of our Army, General Marshall, that some attempt should be made to capture, for posterity, the accurate story of our then-pending military operations. Out of that meeting came a new historical section of the War Department, charged with the responsibility of recording, insofar as possible, the complete history of our military operations. Faced everywhere with suspicion and lack of understanding, the historians struggled against overwhelming odds to convince Army commanders, high and low, of the importance of their mission. The effort was most successful in Europe, where each field army had an historical team attached to it. I was a member of such a team in the Ninth Army, and in the course of my duties, I spent much of my time with the 7th Armored Division. Free to wander where I pleased, to sit in on such conferences as I could find out about, to interview whomever I desired, I was able to gather considerable material about this Divisions fights. Always viewed with suspicion by the soldiers who were being interviewed, I was faced with a constant fight to convince them they should tell the true story, to show them that I was preserving the facts for posterity, and not for the dreaded Inspector General. Those of us who were intrusted with this strange task soon discovered the inevitable tendency to cover up mistakes, to warp facts, to convey the impression that all went according to plan. But the historians found that, despite these obstacles, they could piece together adequate accounts of the operations if they persisted in their searching.

About six oclock on the evening of December 16, 1944, I was sitting in the office of the 7th Armored Divisions Intelligence Officer, speculating with some of his assistants about the meaning of a recent 12th Army Group Intelligence report which said that the crust of German defenses was thinner than ever before. As we were talking, the assistant operations officer dashed in to say that the division was alerted for immediate movement to First Army where they were to fight a small counterattack somewhere in Belgium. Inasmuch as the division was going to another army, I returned to Ninth Army headquarters for new orders, unaware of the harrowing week which lay ahead for the division. When I rejoined them six days later, the men of the division were many years older; they were just withdrawing from a pocket in which they almost had been caught by the Germans. Over half the equipment and nearly one-third of the men were missing, as units of the division straggled back through friendly lines. In the meantime, I had been wandering from army to corps headquarters, listening, noting, and talking with men who were attempting to stem this sudden German tide. This was the beginning of my book.

During the next thirty days I interviewed more than one hundred members of the 7th Armored Division, examined all battle records, went over the ground where the fighting had taken place, and finally pieced together the story of those six days. Later, I returned to Paris, where I became a member, and then Chief, of the Ardennes section of the Historical Division, European Theater of Operations, writing the official history of this great battle. We spent eight long months poring over the records from all units mixed up in the battle; we analyzed the reports of various historical officers; we interviewed again, in written or oral questioning, most of the Allied commanders; and several of us spent weeks going through Germany, interviewing German commanders who had led and planned this attack. Out of it all came five long, detailed volumes describing the Battle of the Bulge. From my notes, through access to these volumes which are available in the War Department, from other unclassified documents now available, and from papers which I had collected during this work, the factual basis of this story is gathered. My interviews with Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Hodges in the summer of 1946, when as a civilian I could more freely question them, rounded out the factual analysis. The interpretations are, of course, my own.

Like most returning soldiers I was thinking only of the future, of the comforts of civilian life, that bright, crisp December day in 1945 when our small ship at long last swung into New York harbor with whistles blowing. Farthest from my mind was the thought of writing a book about any of the activities I had participated in, or worked on, while in Europe. Most of us want to forget war and its horrors, but in our haste, we are prone to forget that something was accomplished by all the discomfort, killing, waste. Too often we Americans throw ourselves into various ventures where valuable lessons can be learned, only to discard the precious knowledge in our haste to return to normal. Too often we begin to carp about the mistakes of the other man, to blame our Allies for everything that went wrong, forgetting that we, too, were not perfect. These were the compulsions which led me to begin to recount the story of the Battle of the Bulge during the hot summer months of 1946, when many Americans were complaining about shortages, even though we Americans found ourselves in an oasis of plenty in the midst of a desert of starving nations. If there is a theme in this book, it is that we should benefit from the lessons of the past, as we strive for the more perfect future.