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

74 BASTOGNE
selves a small task force operating in support of the battalion.
At 0200 the 2d Platoon of Company B, 705th Tank Destroyer
Battalion arrived with four tank destroyers and took position on
the south edge of Bizory.8
These reinforcements got there in the nick of time. At 0530,
December 20, while the 50lst Parachute Infantry was patrolling
toward its front, the 2d Battalion got an attack over the same big
hill to the east of Bizory where they had been stopped by the
German reconnaissance force the day before. At a range of 3,000
yards, the tank destroyer men saw six enemy tanks rolling toward
them from the southeast. Sergeant Floyd A. Johnson led his
section to the hill north of Bizory and put the two tank destroyers
on either side of the road. First Lieutenant Frederic Mallon led
the second section to the higher ground southeast of town and
waited for the German tanks in an open field.'
The firing opened at 0730, the tank destroyers withholding
their fire from the enemy infantry so as not to compromise an
engagement with the enemy armor, which by this time comprised
one Mark IV, one Mark V and two 75mm. self-propelled guns. 5
These were following the infantry line by 400 yards-it was a full
battalion of infantry, the 2d of the 76th RegimeI\t, 26th Volksgrenadier
Division. 6 In the first long-range exchange of fire, one
tank destroyer was disabled and its loader killed by a direct hit on
the turret; it limped away to the rear. The second tank destroyer
in this section, after knocking out the Mark IV tanks, pulled back
into Bizory where, in taking up another position, it damaged the
tube. of its gun by running against a building and became incapacitated.
The other tank destroyer section opened fire at 600
yards on the Mark IV tank and one self-propelled gun, destroying
both.'
This was the crux of the engagement: most of the in-fighting
of that morning of December 20 was done by the heavy guns. 8
Major Homan's machine guns had opened up on the German
infantry while the tanks were coming on and by so doing had
kept them at a distance. Within a few minutes of this first body
check to the German battalion, all the artillery that General Mc­
Auliffe could tum eastward from Bastogne blasted them (Plate