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

36 BASTOGNE
own fight. He had already tasted the shell fire and he didn't want
to tempt it, unnecessarily. Back beyond the road's first turning,
about 100 yards from Bottomly's skirmish line, there was a pocket
in the hillside to left of the road where a stone house fitted snugly.
There Colonel Ewell set up his command post. 82
It soon became clear to him! that his 1st Battalion would not
be able to overcome the roadblock because of the German tanks.
The tanks were firing from a defilade close into the hillside where
the road runs down to Neffe from Bizory. Bottomly couldn't
bring the 57mms. to bear because the Neffe-Bastogne road ran
so straight for the last half mile. About 1000, convinced that his
1st Battalion was stopped, Ewell decided to bring the rest of his
regiment out of Bastogne. But this was easier said than done.
The VIII Corps was rushing the evacuation of its last units
and their troops were streaming through town across the line of
march the rest of the 501st Parachute Infantry would have to
take. The 2d Battalion fought its way through this traffic during
the next hour and Colonel Ewell ordered them on to an assembly
area on the reverse of the gently sloping ridge north of Major
Bottomly's position. He figured that he would put them out to
the left, closed up so that they could be deployed at the most advantageous
moment. ss
Lieutenant Colonel Nelson, commanding officer of the 907th
Glider Field Artillery Battalion, and Captain Gerald J. McGlone,
commanding officer of Battery B, 907th, had gone forward to
Colonel Ewell the minute the radio Hashed word that the 1st
Battalion of the 501st had met fire at Neffe. McGlone got his
battery into position 500 yards northeast of Bastogne on the left
of the Longvilly road, and opened fire as soon as he was in position,
which was only a few minutes after 1000, December 19.
The fog was still thick and the battery was working under several
other handicaps-its radios had never been tested and five of its
guns had never been fired. But they spoke now from a distance
of only 1,000 yards behind Bottomly's skirmish line. Having
weighed the risk that the enemy might How on around Ewell's
narrow front-and accepted it-Nelson decided that one battery
was enough in that particular position. He put Battery A, under