Peiper was now loose behind American lines. The only Americans in the vicinity were service troops, drivers, medical personnel-nothing to stop an armoured column with such firepower.

By 0800 Peiper had gassed up his vehicles with captured fuel. Then he headed west towards Malmedy. Peiper was running parallel to Elsenborn Ridge, the dominant physical feature of that part of the Ardennes. The nature of his thrust, meanwhile, was pushing men of the 99th and 2nd divisions back towards the ridge. The ridge was unoccupied, undefended. Whoever got there first would have the high ground and thus the decisive advantage.

Peiper's breakthrough was one of many that morning. The sheer weight of German numbers could not be denied. Americans continued to fight, but without ammunition resupply they couldn't do much. Many surrendered. Two regiments of the 106th surrendered-7,500 men, the biggest mass surrender in the war against Germany. Everywhere Major Skorzeny's disguised, English-speaking units began to spread panic, issue false orders, switch road signs, and otherwise carry out their missions, but the units assigned to take the Meuse bridges failed in their task.

BRADLEY SPENT most of December 16 driving from Luxembourg city to Versailles, so he was out of touch. At the Trianon Palace Hotel, Eisen-hower's headquarters, he found his boss in a good mood. Eisenhower had just received word of his promotion to the rank of five-star general. At dusk an intelligence officer arrived with news. There had been an enemy attack that morning in the Ardennes. Bradley dismissed it as of little consequence, just a local spoiling attack. But an hour later another report came in-there were at least twelve German divisions involved.

Bradley still thought it an irritant, nothing major. Eisenhower disagreed. Studying the map, he ordered Bradley to send the 7th Armoured Division to St. Vith on the northern flank and the 12th Armoured to Echternach in the south. The 12th was scheduled to attack east of Metz, Bradley reminded Eisenhower, and Patton would be furious at having to call off his offensive. "Tell him," Eisenhower replied, "that Ike is running this damn war."

Hitler was certain it would take Eisenhower two or three days to recognize the extent of the threat and assumed that he would not be willing to call off his offensives north and south of the Ardennes until he had checked with Churchill and Roosevelt. Eisenhower proved him wrong on both points. He saw that not only was this a major offensive but that it was the best thing that could happen. The Germans were out of their fixed fortifications, out in the open where American artillery, tanks, infantry, and fighter-bombers would be capable of destroying them.

On the morning of December 17 Eisenhower ordered the 101st and 82nd Airborne, then refitting in Reims, into the battle. He sent the 101st to Bastogne, a crossroads town in the centre of the German thrust. He wanted it held at all costs and ordered a command team from the 10th Armoured Division to join the 101st there. He sent the 82nd to the northern flank, near Elsenborn.

Hitler had thought that it would take Eisenhower days to move reinforcements into the Ardennes. He was wrong about that one too. The airborne divisions could not go to their position by plane, as the weather continued to be foggy, snowy, cold. But Eisenhower had trucks. He ordered the drivers in the Red Ball Express to use all their resources as troop carriers. On December 17 alone, 11,000 trucks carried 60,000 men, plus ammunition, medical supplies, and other materiel into the Ardennes. In the first week of the battle Eisenhower was able to move 250,000 men into the fray. This was mobility unprecedented in the history of war. Not even in Vietnam, not even in Desert Storm, was the US Army capable of moving so many men and so much equipment so quickly.

Still, it took time to recover from the initial blow and regroup. Meanwhile, hundreds of German tanks were loose behind the front lines, free to move in almost any direction.

ON DECEMBER 17 the sky over Belgium was overcast, but the Luftwaffe pilots flew between 600 and 700 sorties in support of the ground forces. A thousand and more Allied pilots were there to meet them over St. Vith and began a daylong dogfight.

Captain Jack Barensfeld led a twelve-plane squadron of P-47s. When he arrived on the scene, he "saw two or three fighters on fire, spiralling towards the ground both sides. I saw a Thunderbolt going down in flames. Enemy aircraft all over the place. Our controller, 'Organ,' is calm and calling in a prime target-a pontoon bridge across the River Rur. Many enemy vehicles backed up behind it. A great amount of flak coming up. Three or four of our aircraft received battle damage but no one aborted. We used our bombs and rockets on the vehicles and the bridge, then set up several strafing passes. There were burning vehicles and some damage to the bridge when we left after about 20 minutes."

On the ground the Germans made their major breakthrough in the centre, in the direction of Bastogne, but had their own problems. Armoured units flowed to the west not in an even stream, but irregularly from traffic jam to traffic jam. The road net in the Ardennes was just as Eisenhower had said it would be, inadequate. Much of the German artillery was horse-drawn, which added greatly to the congestion.

All through December 17 Peiper continued to drive west, avoiding Elsenborn Ridge, looking for bridges, gasoline dumps, ammunition dumps, blasting pockets of resistance out of the way when necessary. By 1600 hours Peiper had reached the outskirts of Stavelot. The town was clogged with American vehicles. He subjected it to a bombardment from his tanks, then sent his armoured infantry to attack the town. As darkness fell, American small arms repulsed the enemy. Through the night Peiper watched as the Americans pulled out their trucks, heading west.

Peiper's success in breaking through was heady stuff to the Germans. Even if he was behind schedule, it had been a glorious couple of days. Corporal Bertenrath recalled: "We enjoyed those first days of success, moving forward, taking prisoners and, above all, capturing the wonderful provisions we found in Allied vehicles: chocolate, cigarettes, potatoes, vegetables, meat, and even something for dessert. I asked my squad, 'My God, how do they manage such things?'" But being behind American lines gave Bertenrath a sense of impending doom, because "on one road through the forest were stacks of shells that stretched for, I would guess, two kilometres both left and right-we drove through an alley of shells. I had never seen the like of it. I told my squad, 'My God, their supplies are unlimited!'"

At dawn, December 18, Peiper instructed two Panther commanders to charge Stavelot at maximum speed. They drove around the curve, firing rapidly, and penetrated the antitank obstacle at the curve. The Germans followed up with other vehicles, and the Americans evacuated the town. Not, however, before destroying the gasoline dump at Stavelot. Sergeant Jack Mocnik and two others of the 526th Armoured Infantry Battalion drove a jeep up the hill to the gasoline dump, accompanied by two halftracks. Mocnik's party began firing .30- and .50 calibre machine-gun bursts into jerry cans of gas, and finally they got one to catch fire. As they scrambled away, "the darndest fire you ever saw flared up," Mocnik recalled. "The cans would explode and fly through the air like rockets trailing fire and smoke."

Frustrated, Peiper drove at top speed to get to Trois-Ponts (Three Bridges). Once across the Ambleve and Salm rivers, which flowed together in the village, he would have an open road to the Meuse.