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

70 BASTOGNE
denly realizing that it was his for the taking. 16 He sent a .staff
officer to bring the battalion back and within a few minutes the
battalion commander reported at his command post. Roberts
told him to put the battalion in position with the 420th Armored
Field Artillery Battalion. The commander returned to his battalion
but found that there was insufficient fuel for his vehicles
and could not make the return trip.17 The 58th Armored Field
Artillery Battalion was stopped and put into position with the
420th,' where its twelve guns fired during the next day. Just before
the Germans closed the roads to the southward, this unit
heard that it had been cut off from Bastogne so it moved to the
west. 18 The 771st Field Artillery Battalion-a Negro unit-was
commandeered on December 21 and their 155mm.howitzers
gave body to the artillery throughout the siege. 19 Colonel Roberts
also found in Bastogne eight new undelivered tanks, complete
with their Ordnance crews, and he inducted them forthwith into
his organization. 2o
Colonel Roberts had worried a lot about the security of the
town itself for he had only part of his Engineer battalion and
the Antiaircraft Artillery battalion as reserve. 21 General Mc­
Auliffe wanted to keep his own reserve as mobile as possible and
couldn't see assigning one of his battalions to garrison the town. 211
A task force from Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division,
entered Bastogne to learn the situation but was ordered by higher
authority to withdraw to Leglise, six miles southeast of NeufcMteau.
2B A request to 10th Armored for the use of the Reserve
Command was turned down. 24 So finally Colonel Roberts committed
Team Snafu, under command of Captain Charles Brown
of llOth Infantry, to the close-in defense of Bastogne. 2G Team
Snafu's complexion was somewhat changed on the following
morning, December 20, when Brigadier General George A. Davis
of the 28th Division arrived in Bastogne with a request that Combat
Command B attack toward Wiltz. It couldn't be done, for
by that hour all of Colonel Roberts' forces were fully committed.
Not long after General Davis departed, Combat Command B
was ordered by Corps to release all 28th Division stragglers ·to
their own command. 28