Whilst the Battle of the Bulge is overwhelmingly an American endeavour, it is certainly worth examining the British and Commonwealth contribution to the defeat of the Ardennes offensive.
In the Aftermath of Market Garden
By December 1944, 21st Army Group was fully established in the northern half of Belgium and the southern half of The Netherlands, holding the front line from just north of Maastricht to Nijmegen then to the coast.
Commanded by Field Marshal Montgomery, the 21st Army Group consisted of two armies – Dempsey’s 2nd British in the south and Crerar’s 1st Canadian in the north. The 21st was a fairly balanced formation commanding a large number of armoured divisions, but by late 1944 can be considered to lacking infantry, and famously a rather large amount of artillery.
The main and pretty fundamental issue with 21st Army Group’s ability to deal with the German offensive was that it tied up holding the line to the north of the Ardennes. It simply was not their sector. However, the events to the south would require the direct involvement of Montgomery’s command.
21st Army Group Responds
The German attack had split General Bradley’s 12th Army Group down the centre. The armies north of the Bulge (Hodges’ 1st and Simpson’s 9th) had their lines of communication to the rest of 12th Army Group severed. This prompted Eisenhower to transfer command of all forces north of the German penetration to Montgomery. 21st Army Group had doubled the number of armies it commanded.
This order was given on 19 December 1944 and came in action the following day. On 20 December, Montgomery met with the two US commanders already with a plan of action. As summed up with a communication to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Monty described it as such: “My policy in the north is to get this show tidied up and to ensure absolute security before passing over to offensive action”.
By this time, the American forces, had pretty much defeated 6th Panzer Army’s main drive towards to Meuse, and at the very least had delayed the German offensive. Montgomery’s plan consisted of rapidly deploying elements of XXX Corps to the tip of the ‘Bulge’, whilst shuffling the US forces – mainly the more mobile armoured divisions – around to allow them to better resist any further attacks.
XXX Corps and 29th Armoured Brigade
One of the most famous formations of the Northwest Europe Campaign, XXX Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Horrocks, was in the thick of the fighting for most of the period leading up to December 1944. It is best known for being the ‘Garden’ part of Operation Market Garden. However, by the end of the year, Horrocks’ units were in a period of rest and refitting in Holland and certainly did not command a force of the strength that had crossed the bridge at Nijmegen.
Yet, there was one formation that was ready to go – 29th Armoured Brigade. This was deployed as a blocking formation on the right-hand flank of the US 1st Army. They created a defensive position around Dinat on the eastern side of the Meuse River – the first German objective. If the worst were to happen and the German spearhead broke through in force, the only unit available and capable of stopping them crossing the Meuse would be the 29th.
29th Armoured Brigade constituted three armoured regiments: 23rd Hussars, 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, and 3rd Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment (3RTR). With infantry support being given by 8th Battalion, Rifle Brigade. The brigade was in the midst of re-equipping from the Sherman (both 75mm and 17pdr variants) to arguably the best British tank of the war: the Comet. However, this conversion was not complete on 16 December, so they hastily – and probably rather reluctantly – handed back their new tanks and were re-issued with their former mounts.
Whilst a massive German breakthrough did not happen, on Christmas Eve 1944 elements of 2nd Panzer Division’s reconnaissance formation – Kampf Gruppe Böhm – did reach locations near Dinat. They were successfully engaged and pushed back by the Shermans of 3RTR with them knocking out a Panzer IV. The rest of the panzers of the Kampf Gruppe were mopped up over the next two days with several Panthers being lost to both action and running out of fuel.
The Counter-attack
The initial plan was for Montgomery to launch the counterstroke on 28 December 1944, but this was delayed until 3 January 1945 due to 21st Army Group forces just not being in the optimum position or in enough strength for the attack. This of course did not go down well with General Bradley, but Eisenhower agreed with Monty and allotted 17,000 infantry replacements to strengthen formations.
When the counter-attack did kick off, XXX Corps was at full strength with three divisions: 51st (Highland) Infantry Division, 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division and 6th Airborne Division. 33rd Armoured Brigade and 34th Tank Brigade joined 29th Armoured Brigade to form the armoured formations of the Corps.
The 6th Airborne Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (AARR) were also deployed with the airborne division. Famous for landing in gliders in Tetrarch light tanks, they ditched those rather sub-par vehicles in September 1944 and had re-equipped with Locusts for airborne operations. When they were to be deployed on the ground, Cromwells were to be the vehicle of choice, with 6th AARR deploying 16 of the type into the ‘Bulge’.
The tanks of XXX Corps were in the thick of the fighting when the attack was launched by two divisions (6th Airborne would join later) and three AGRAs (Army Group Royal Artillery – effectively artillery brigades held at the corps level). The sector assaulted by the Corps was right at the tip of the Bulge between Givet and Marche with the objective to push German forces back – namely 2nd Panzer Division. This was achieved all the way to Laroche, where the right flank of the formation met up with US VIII Corps attacking from the south.
On 17 January, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force – the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in northwest Europe, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower) ordered Hodges’ 1st Army back under the command of Bradley while XXX Corps rejoined 1st Canadian Army in the north.
The British contribution to the battle was certainly not non-existent, but it is clear that the US forces did by far the heaviest lifting, deploying the largest number of troops and suffering far more casualties in return. The US took 75,482 casualties with 8,497 killed, meanwhile the British numbers were 1,406 and 200 respectively.
That Press Conference
Even today, one piece – albeit one very good piece – of German propaganda still dominates the discussion around Field Marshal Montgomery’s participation in the Battle of the Bulge.
On 7 January 1944, Montgomery holds a press conference in which he goes into rough detail about the northern flank of the ‘Bulge’. The story goes that Monty delivered an arrogant, self-absorbed and factually incorrect statement bigging up his and the British contribution and basically ignoring the US commitment to the campaign.
As alluded to, this primarily came from German propaganda. They highjacked the frequency that the BBC transmitted on and delivered a fake press release. While the quotations were correct, they were taken out of context and formatted in such a way to stoke tensions between the Allies. The final line really sums up the intent of the propaganda: “The Battle of the Ardennes can now be written off, thanks to Field-Marshal Montgomery”
This was taken at face value by pretty much everyone and quite understandably infuriated the Americans. The backlash resulted in the famous statement by Prime Minister Churchill in the Commons:
“I have seen it suggested that the terrific battle which has been proceeding since 16th December on the American front is an Anglo-American battle. In fact, however, the United States troops have done almost all the fighting and have suffered almost all the losses. They have suffered losses almost equal to those on both sides in the battle of Gettysburg. Only one British Army Corps has been engaged in this action. All the rest of the 30 or more divisions, which have been fighting continuously for the last month, are United States troops. The Americans have engaged 30 or 40 men for every one we have engaged, and they have lost 60 to 80 men for every one of ours. That is a point I wish to make. Care must be taken in telling our proud tale not to claim for the British Army an undue share of what is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever famous American victory,”
Yet it was probably never in Monty’s intentions to be so divisive. The notes he made for the statement are published in his memoir and show a much more tactful response to the situation. While he does emphasise the British contribution to the campaign, it focused on it being a unified Allied effort – messaging that was commonplace in a lot of high-level statements – and for most of the conference he is just talking about his admiration for the American solider. But it is fair to say, considering the overwhelming level of American participation in the Battle of the Bulge, this might not have been the best time to mention the “Allied team”.
