Battle of the Bulge: 424th Infantry Regiment

St. Vith Lion in the Way

This book contains the best maps on the fighting around St. Vith I have seen so far and also gives a good account of the 424th Infantry Regiment's battle, to include the counter attack, late war missions and post war duties.

If you search on Amazon for an e-book copy there is a version on sale for .99c but it does not contain photos or, more importantly, the maps. I purchased this version which contains the maps.

The overall index for this series continues to grow and is located here.

Retreat and Counterattack

The maps below highlight the 424th's area of operations around St. Vith.  After the surrender of the 422nd and 423rd regiments, the 424th was effectively the 106th Division until they were sent to the rear for replacements and reorganization.

The above screen shot's taken fom the Campaign Series West Front scenario V Panzer Army The Campaign at start in the northern sector. Ignore the German units highlighted in red on the east side of the map as prior posts have discussed the scenario's starting positions are different than the historical ones (e.g. the initial German assault was not just to the west of Prum but fell right on Bleialf, in the perfect place to split the 424th and 423rd). 

- The approximate positions of the 424th taken from Lion in the Way. 

- Rectangles are companies.

- Small ovals are platoons.  The book's map has a platoon at Eigelscheid and a divisional

- Reconnaissance Unit at Grosslangenfeld. 

- This post discusses the German attack on Bleialf. The Germans smashed through the almost open space between the two American regiments. Troops from the 423rd were deployed further east and if you look at the grey arrow their right flank / southernmost troops were positioned in a straight line from the heights overlooking Bleialf to Buchet and even further east. The morning assault began the process of cutting off the northern American regiments but did allow the 424th to pull back towards St. Vith. 

Defense on the Our River at Auel on the night of 17 - 18 December. 

The 424th is positioned on the Our River but is having trouble linking up with the CCB, 9th Armored, who were defending the roads to St. Vith (just north of the icon) and were beginning to feel pressure from the Germans to the southwest. 

By 21st December the 424th reported it was at 50% efficiency after fighting for 5 days. 

21 to 22 December the 424th withdrew to hold the line at Beho. 

Here is a  first hand account of the 424th's actions from 23 to 30 December as the 424th was ordered to withdraw to the north west with the enemy on their heels. 

During the general counter attack, the 424th was assigned the Losheim Gap, just north of the starting positions of the 424th ill fated sister regiments.

After the Bulge and War's End

After participating in the counterattack at the Losheim Gap, the last combat assignment for the 424th was supporting the assault on the Roer dams (what the Americans were preparing for before the German Ardennes Offensive).  Eighty-one days after the start of the Battle of the Bulge, the 424th completed their final combat mission seven miles to the north-east of the ill fated 422nd Regiment's starting positions 

The 106th Infantry Division was removed from the front lines on 14 March and sent to St. Quentin, then onward to Rennes, arriving around 7 April. The mission at Rennes was to reorganize, training and serve as a tactical reserve for the 66th Division, which was still fighting the German pockets at Lorient and St. Nazaire.  

It was at Rennes that both the 422nd and 423rd Regiments were officially returned to service and Col. Tom Riggs of the 81st Engineers returned to his unit. Lion in the Way has extensive coverage of the stalwart defense of the approaches to St. Vith by Riggs and the 81st  but only mentions in passing his adventures after being captured. The book mentions that he escaped and went on to "fight with Russians".  This obituary for Riggs adds more detail but I'm not sure he saw much, if any combat with the Red Army. Maybe initally, after being taken in by the Russian tank commander. Combat with Russians or not, his adventures and persistence were admirable. 

By searching for Col. Riggs I came across this web page dedicated to touring the St. Vith battlefield, which includes the Prumerberg heights, where Col. Riggs and the 81st Engineers made their stand. 

The 106th was ordered back east and was on the Rhine on 25 April. Here they received their final assignment, guarding all the prisoners taken by the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 9th armies.  The responsibility was to process and guard close to a million German prisoners up and down the West Front.  It quickly became apparent that this task was beyond the experience and numbers of personnel to properly tackle this mission and three Provisional Guard battalions were sent to augment the 106th.  

By the end of June the 106th was relieved of its guard role and were assigned regular occupation duties. Eventually, the 106th's turn came and they embarked for home in September.