Built to carry 360 passengers, the Leopoldville held well over 2,000 troops when it sank in early winter, a time when the Channel is always rough and often stormy. The Allies were sending every available man across the Channel to the front on every available boat. To speed the process, ordinary precautions were neglected. There were insufficient life jackets, and no instructions on their use. With men packed into the very bowels of the ship, there were no lifeboat or abandon-ship drills. There were many other oversights, most caused by haste.

As a result, what should have been a minor loss was the equivalent of losing a full-strength rifle regiment, as the 1,400 or so survivors of the Leopoldville had to be sent to the hospital rather than the front line when they finally got to Cherbourg.

PATTON WOKE on Christmas morning, looked at the sky, and said to himself, "Lovely weather for killing Germans." But to his disappointment the spearhead for his thrust north to relieve Bastogne failed to break the siege that day.

The next morning the 4th Armoured moved out, with the 37th Tank Battalion (twenty Shermans strong), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, in the lead. Jabos preceded them, laying bombs into the German lines only a couple of hundred metres ahead of the advancing tanks. Keep moving, Abrams ordered. They did, and at 1650, December 26, Lieutenant Charles Boggess drove the first vehicle from 4th Armoured into the lines of the 101st Airborne. He was followed by Captain William Dwight. "How are you, General?" Dwight asked General McAuliffe, who had driven out to the perimeter to greet him.

"Gee, I am mighty glad to see you," McAuliffe replied. With the siege of Bastogne broken, with Peiper and the others in retreat, the week after Christmas was relatively quiet on the front. But to the rear American trucks were rushing reinforcements and supplies forward. The US Army in ETO had been pounded badly in the second half of December, but it had recovered, held, and now was preparing the final offensive.

Winter War: January 1945

ON NEW YEAR'S Eve, 1944, Lieutenant John Cobb (USMA, 1943) was in a convoy crossing the English Channel. A replacement officer for the 82nd Airborne, he was on his way to Elsenborn Ridge. "Notwithstanding blackout and security conditions," he wrote later, "every ship in the Channel sounded whistles or sirens or shot off flares at midnight on New

Year's Eve."

That same night Corporal Paul-Arthur Zeihe of the llth Panzer Division was on the front line near Trier. "Just before midnight the shooting stopped almost entirely," he remembered. "As the clock struck twelve, the Americans began with their fireworks, sending illuminated rockets into the air. Suddenly, by the light of their rockets, we saw the Americans getting out of their holes, clutching their rifles and pistols, jumping, skipping around, shooting their weapons and lighting up the whole valley. I can still see them before me today, caught against the light of their rockets, prancing around on a background of fresh snow. It did not take long before we were doing the same thing, firing off illuminated rockets, shooting our weapons. It lasted about five, maybe six minutes. It slowed, then stopped. We disappeared back into our holes, and so did they. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I had during my service. We had allowed our humanity to rise that once."

The feeling was universal. The new year had begun. Surely this had to be the last year of the war. The Allies had driven the Germans back. The troops had liberated France and Belgium. Supply lines from the United States and Great Britain were secure and stuffed with men and materiel being sent to the front.

A panoramic snapshot of ETO taken on January 1, 1945, would have shown tankers and freighters and transports unloading at Le Havre, Antwerp, Cherbourg; long lines of trucks carrying men and supplies forward; tent-city hospitals and army headquarters; supply dumps that held many square miles of food, ammunition, clothing, fuel, vehicles; some villages and cities destroyed, some intact; airfields scattered across France and Belgium, swarming with activity; a constant movement of tanks, cannon, jeeps, trucks; close to the German border the big cannon lined up;

and at the front itself American troops dug in-cold, hungry, exhausted but victorious.

A panoramic snapshot of Germany would have shown city after city in ruin, on fire; in rural areas little evidence of war; abandoned vehicles, some disabled by Jabos, some by mechanical problems; no artillery in sight because of camouflage; and at the front itself German troops dug in-cold, hungry, exhausted and just defeated in their great offensive gamble.

As to the cold, all suffered equally. How cold was it? So cold that if a man didn't do his business in a hurry, he risked a frostbitten penis. Private Don Schoo, an AA (antiaircraft) gunner attached to the 4th Armoured Division, recalled, "I went out to my half-track to relieve the man on guard. He couldn't get out of the gun turret. His overcoat was wet when he got in and it froze so he couldn't get out." It was so cold the oil in the engines froze. Weapons froze.

Nights ranged from zero Fahrenheit to minus ten and lower. Men without shelter other than a foxhole-or heat stayed awake, stomping their feet through the fourteen-hour night. Major Harrison had as one of his most vivid memories the sight of GIs pressed against the hot stones of the walls of burning houses, as flames came out of the roof and windows. They were not hiding from Germans: they were trying to get warm for a minute or two.

The conditions in Northwest Europe in January 1945 were as brutal as any in history, including Napoleon's and the German retreats from Moscow in midwinter 1812 and 1941. But in this battle the Germans were not retreating. They fought back against the American advance, which could barely move forward anyway in the ice and snow, forcing the Americans to pay the highest price for taking back the territory lost in the Bulge. Eisenhower had under his command seventy-three divisions. Of the total, forty-nine were American, twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish and eight French. He had forty-nine infantry, twenty armoured and four airborne divisions. As against this, the Germans had seventy six divisions.

Given the near equality in firepower and the brutality of conditions, a winter offensive had little appeal. Nevertheless, Eisenhower decided to launch attacks north and south of the Bulge to trap the Germans at its western tip and regain the lost ground. He felt he had no option. The Allies could not shut down offensive operations while V-ls and V-2s continued to bombard Antwerp, London, and other cities.

The initial January offensive by the Allies was directed against the German salient. It was agreed that First and Third armies would meet at Houffalize, a village five miles north of Bastogne. When the linkup took place, the Bulge would be cut in half. Eisenhower insisted that there would be a broad-front advance into Germany once the Bulge was eliminated. He emphasized, "We must regain the initiative, and speed and energy are essential."

For the frontline infantry, armour, and artillery of First and Third armies, the battle that raged through January was among the worst of the war-if possible, even more miserable than Hiirtgen. It was fought in conditions so terrible that they can only be marvelled at, not really imagined. Only those who were there can know.