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

164 BASTOGNE
north and northwest. Upon setting up, the tank destroyer crews
manned four machine guns on the ground around their centrally
located guns. This position held when the German infantry
closed on Champs and the tank destroyer force even spared a few
of its men to go forward and help the paratroopers root the enemy
out of the houses. 38
Too, the heavy guns were used for close-up interdiction fire to
keep the enemy from moving any deeper into the village. In this
work, the 37mm. guns, firing canister, were especially effective.
Captain Swanson got one of the tank destroyers, under Sergeant
Lawrence Valletta, to go forward and blast a house where about
thirty Germans had taken cover. Sergeant Valletta moved right
in next to the building, trained his big gun on the doors and
windows and blew the place apart. He then shelled two more
houses and returned to his original position. Just about dawn, he
made a second sortie of the same kind. 84
To the southward of Champs where the crisis of the Christmas
action was swiftly maturing, the tank destroyers got away to a
bad start but then staged a swift recovery.85 Two of them from
Company B, 705th Battalion, had been in the 327th Glider Infantry
area and were out along the road which runs from Rolle
toward Grandes-Fanges, a mile to the southwest (this put them
to the southward of Company C, 502d Parachute Infantry), when
the German attack came over the hill.3e The crews had at first
put their tank destroyers into concealment behind a haystack and
from there had engaged the enemy armor at a distance, knocking
out two or three tanks. 37 Yet as the power of the German armor
became more obvious, they decided to withdraw. 8s That was how
it happened that they were moving back toward Rolle and were
directly in line with the German tank fire when Company C of
the 502d Parachute Infantry faced toward the enemy.BD
Both tank destroyers were knocked out almost instantly.40 The
men of Company C saw them reel and stop from the enemy fire
and realized that the loss of the tank destroyers had helped spare
them the worst part of the blow. U
The encounter had had one other powerful effect-two tank
destroyers from Company C, 705th, were waiting in the woods