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

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CHAPTER 10
THE REPULSE
WAS A NIGHT FOR DRIFTERS, the night of December
19-20. As the darkness grew, more men from the elements
which had been shattered to the east of Bastogne came
moving back through the regimental lines of the lOlst. Few of
them stayed. Colonel Ewell and his officers talked to these men.
They could tell very little of what had happened to them. Many
of them were inarticulate. Infantrymen from units of the 28th
Division still trickled into the area in groups of three or four.
They made no attempt to organize themselves and they did not
for the most part wish to be organized by anyone else. Some of
these straggling infantrymen would ask Ewell's men, 'What are
you doing?" Upon being told, 'We are fighting Germans," they
would look at the paratroopers as if they were stark mad.
But not all were like that. Some who seemed utterly wretched
and spent when they came to within the lines, upon being
handed a K ration, would eat it and look around and ask where
they could get a rifle. They were ready to fight again. But to
others food and companionship made no difference. They had
been shocked so badly that they wanted only to keep on drifting.
They were allowed to do so. This disorder had no ill effect on
the combat force. The demoralization did not seem to bother
the nerves of the men who were still fighting and they accepted
it as the natural product of battle it often is. 1
A battalion of Field Artillery, the lO9th of the 28th Division,
came through as a unit and attached itself to the 907th Glider
Field Artillery Battalion. Those groups from the 9th Armored
Division which had been compelled to withdraw from the advanced
ground along the Longvilly road were in good order and
high spirits when they reached the lines around Bastogne. One
platoon of armored infantry attached itself to Major Homan's
battalion (2d Battalion, 50lst Parachute Infantry) and helped
them carry the fight during the next several days.2 Seven tanks
arrived from the 9th Armored Division and constituted them-
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