Bastogne: The Story of the First Eight Days - US Army Center Of ...

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Lesniak, a tank commander, had heard the German armor roaring
along. He dismounted from his tank, walked up the main
street for a look, then went back and swung his gun in the right
direction and moved to the center of the street. He fired before
the enemy realized that he had gone into action and his first
round finished the German tank. A third German tank that
stayed just north along the road but out of sight in the fog threw
a few loose shells into the town and one of them hit Sergeant
Lesniak's tank, damaging the turret. 8
That was the beginning. Almost nothing that followed could
be seen as clearly. During the next two hours the defensive
perimeter was under constant attack from the German armor
and infantry. But the enemy pressure developed quite unevenly
as if their forces, too, were groping or were keeping active simply
to conceal some larger design. It was battle with the bewildering
shifts of a montage; there were momentary exposures and quick
shiftings of scene. The enemy came on in groups of a few ta':lks
supported by small parties of infantry and were held off by the
armored infantry and paratroopers with their own weapons just
long enough to let a friendly tank or tank destroyer get into firing
position. Fog mixed with smoke from the burning buildings
again mantled the country between the village and the ridges,
diffusing the efforts of both forces. It was all but impossible for
anyone to get any impression of how the tide was moving; the
combatants could tell only what went on right before their eyes. T
Curiously enough the tank destroyer men of 2.d Platoon, Company
C, 705th TD Battalion, who had taken position in the south
of Noville, had the impression that in these early morning hours
the infantry was standing off a full-fledged attack.s They could see
only a hundred yards beyond their own guns and they could hear
large numbers of enemy tracked vehicles moving toward them
through the fog. Their .imaginings were further stimulated by a
direct hit on one tank destroyer at the outset which killed the
gunner, Corporal Stephen Cook, and wounded several of the
crew.' For two hours they fired in the general direction of where
they thought the German armor was massing; they could see no
targets but they thought their unobserved fire might have some