Settlement was scant, with small towns dotting a largely vacant landscape of trackless woods, rolling hills, and steep ravines and ridges. The Ardennes was old-growth forest, in places still primeval. Jones, told his superiors at VIII Corps headquarters he was hearing armor, he got a rocket back: “Don’t be so jumpy, general.” The order of the day seemed to be, “I won’t shoot if you won’t shoot.” When the 106th’s commander, Major General Alan W. Occasionally German vehicles could be heard, the distant clatter muffled by snow. A brief artillery barrage, random machine-gun bursts, an occasional German combat patrol-“social calls,” the GIs termed them-were the extent of the action, even though the Schnee Eifel was German soil jutting into the Siegfried Line’s barbed wire, tank traps, and interlocking fire zones. The nearest German unit, the 18th Volksgrenadier Division, seemed to be doing as the 106th was: getting situated. Given the difficult terrain and inclement weather, the forest seemed perfect for acclimating a green outfit like the 106th to life in the field and frontline duty. In 1944, the vast Ardennes, which reaches into Belgium, Germany, France, and Luxembourg, lay roughly at the center of the Allied front. Poor hygiene and lax march discipline had already laid up 70 soldiers with trench foot now they made a racket, accidentally torching a regimental command post and a battalion motor pool.Ĭommand expected the setting to be forgiving. Only days before, the 106th Infantry Division had arrived on the high ground, whose name in German means “snowy Eifel ridge,” to relieve the 2nd Infantry in a sector so uneventful GIs had nicknamed the area the “Ghost Front.” With fresh snow dusting the tall pines, the Schnee Eifel was a beautiful place, low on enemy activity-a good thing, because as the 106th entered the line, rookie soldiers committed snafus born of inexperience.
At 5:30 on the wintry morning of Saturday, December 16, 1944, the American troops atop the Schnee Eifel in the Ardennes Forest weren’t expecting action. Before the Allies won the Battle of the Bulge, the German spearpoint ripped an American division apart
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