The Bulge Grows

Dinant, Belgium Today

bigpigeon.us webpage WWII Germany > The ETO > Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Grows, © 2023 by Robert A. Christiansen, updated by RAC 27 Oct 2022.
Incomplete.

December 21-25 1944
Summarizing the second five days of the Ardennes Counteroffensive.

In the north, the Sixth Panzer army remained stymied.
In the middle, US forces holding the St. Vith salient were forced to begin a series of retreats.
In the south, the Fifth Panzer Army continued to advance, completing the encirclement of Bastogne and nearly reaching the Meuse River at Dinant

In the South - The Siege of Bastogne

In the south, US opposition to the Wehrmacht attack was centered on the road junction of Bastogne, which the 5th Panzer Army encircled on 21 December.

The accompanying map shows units, mostly from the 101st Airborne Division, defending the Bastogne perimeter. Regimental numbers like 5xx denote parachute infantry regiments, 3xx are glider infantry regiments.
Other army units participated in the defense of Bastogne.
The siege of Bastogne was broken late on 26 December by Third Army units attacking from the south.
On 27 December supplies and additional medical care began arriving by land.
In early January, the 5th Panzer Army made two additional attempts to take Bastogne.

The Bastogne Area

In the South - The Wehrmacht's Second Attempt to Reach the Meuse River

Background: The Meuse River rises in the Vosges mountains in northeastern France, enters Belgium from the south and flows through Dinant, Namur, Huy and Liege before entering the Netherlands, where it is known as the Maas.

Hitler hoped that the momentum generated by massive Wehrmacht units suddenly attacking through the Ardennes would quickly carry his offensive across the Meuse. Continuing onward, they would capture adequate supplies of gasoline to support an advance through central Belgium to Antwerp. This would leave the Allied 21st Army Group in the north cut off from resupply and reinforcement.

The early attempt by 6th Panzer Army's Kampfgruppe Pieper to seize a Meuse River bridge at Foy failed when Peiper was isolated along the Ambleve River. (See Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Begins).

Belgium Today

Scalable Version

About the second Wehrmacht drive to the Meuse:

By 24 December:

5th Panzer Army's 2nd Panzer Division had advanced to a few miles from the Meuse bridges at Dinant, where they ran low on gasoline and stopped in the Celles area for resupply.
The British XXX Corps was now defending the Meuse bridges and had small armored units east of the river in the Dinant area.

Arguably the nearest German approach to the Meuse came on the night of December 23/24 when three German soldiers in a captured jeep were killed by alert British sentries two miles south of the bridge shown on the accompanying map.

Refugees at the Dinant Bridge over the Meuse River.

♥ A personal note: As German forces approached the Meuse in the Dinant area, many refuges headed west. Among them was an eight year old German Jewish girl, being sheltered by a Belgium Catholic family east of Dinant. This Belgian family fled with her for safety west of the Meuse River, but took shelter before reaching the bridge shown above.

By 24 December, the US 2nd Armored Division was located near Ciney ten miles northeast of Dinant.

On 24 December, British units struck advance Wehrmacht positions around Foy-Notre Dame east of Dinant. Its thought that the nearest a German Panzer (tank) got to the Meuse was the churchyard at Foy-Notre Dame.
On 25 December, combined attacks by the 2nd Armored Division and US fighter bombers destroyed the combat effectiveness of the Wehrmacht forces stalled near Celles.

The Dinant Area Today

♥ My personal note continued: The Belgian family and their little Jewish charge survived. Many years later, the little girl became the grandmother of two of my beloved grandchildren.

Sources for Big Pigeon's The ETO > Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Grows webpage:
General sources for the Ardennes/The Bulge webpages: (C/O = courtesy of)

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Ardennes/index.html - The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (from the United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations series, by Hugh M. Cole).
https://history.army.mil/catalog/pubs/72/72-26.html - Ardennes-Alsace (brochure from Campaigns of World War II: A World War II Commemorative Series, by Roger Cirillo).
Ardennes-Alsace Brochure - This is Big Pigeon's copy of the above, provided for faster loading.
Printable Timeline with Situation Maps, https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-ii-maps-military-situation-maps-from-1944-to-1945/articles-and-essays/the-battle-of-the-bulge/printable-timeline/ - C/O Library of Congress, loc.gov. This timeline depicts the key events of "The Battle of the Bulge" which took place in northern France over the course of December 16, 1944 to January 18, 1945 as told through the daily situation maps made for the US Military VIII Corps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge - long article with a few good maps.
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_bulge.html - good overview but a number of minor errors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge_order_of_battle - detailed order of battle for an unspecified date late in the battle.
Bastogne, the Story of the First Eight Days (from the US Army in Action Series, S. L. A. Marshall, 1946) - https://history.army.mil/html/books/022/22-2-1/CMH_Pub_22-2-1.pdf. Note: Many historians now feel that Colonel Marshall, the ETO Theater Historian, was more a storyteller rather than a historian. As such, his works may contain factual errors.
Battle of St. Vith, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Vith.

Sources for the above webpage images: (C/O = courtesy of)

Dinant, Belgium Today, webpage header image, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jiuguangw/9316877516/.
Belgium Today, map, http://www.vidiani.com/maps/maps_of_europe/maps_of_belgium/road_and_physical_map_of_belgium.jpg - C/O http://www.vidiani.com, "Maps of the World".
The Dinant Area Today, map, https://www.viamichelin.com/web/Maps/Map-Dinant-5500-Namur-Belgium - C/O https://www.viamichelin.com.

Pottawattamie Area WWII Dead - The ETO > Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Grows:

Taken from the bigpigeon.us WWII Dead module.

03-06 - The ETO > Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Grows (one dead, updated 21 Dec 2022)
† Luchsinger, Stanley Dean, SN 37-455-354, US Army, Pott. Co.

Co. C, 33rd Armored Inf. Regt., 3rd Armored Div., VII Corps, First Army; KIA 23 Dec 1944 Hotton, 30 miles NW of Bastogne, Belgium; The ETO > Ardennes/The Bulge > The Bulge Grows.