Blunted Spear

The battlefield east of Celles was a white silence, darkly blotched with corpses and wreckage. At Celles, three miles short of the Meuse River, the German spearhead which had reached 50 miles into Belgium was blunted and turned back.

When Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's advanced forces reached Celles they were jumped by First Army tanks, artillery and infantry, aided by U.S. and British planes. The enemy lost 63 tanks, 49 guns, 177 vehicles, 1,200 prisoners, uncounted dead. Then, in a wild two-day battle the German remnants were driven back to Rochefort.

Rocks in the Stream. The German drive had already been slowed down by the heroic stand of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne (see below), which confined Rundstedt's columns to secondary roads north and south of the town. The 82nd Airborne had put up a fierce defense around Stavelot, the 7th Armored between Saint-Vith and Vielsalm, the 1st Infantry at the north shoulder of the salient below Monschau, and the 4th Infantry at the south shoulder, around Echternach. The two infantry outfits had prevented Rundstedt from widening the salient's base. They were pegs that did not pull out.

In the path of the Germans, U.S. troops died with knives clenched in their fists, having run out of ammunition. Others, bypassed and trapped, lived for days on raw potatoes. The situation looked bad when the two German prongs merged in one bulge. It seemed the enemy might reach the great sweep of the Meuse from Liege to Sedan, dig in behind the river.

In the early days of the attack, General Eisenhower had hustled to a headquarters at Verdun, conferred with his top generals. In 15 minutes he had appraised the scope and probable aims of the push, taken his decisions, issued his orders. First Army reserves bore down from the north, compressed the salient's right flank, recaptured Grandmenil and Manhay. On the south, General Patton's armor blasted a corridor to Bastogne, pushed on to the north and then west to encircle the German tip south of Saint-Hubert. Patton also broadened his attacking front all the way east to Echternach.

Shrinking Salient. Last week Patton's wedge was only 13 miles from the First Army dents in the north. The German position was something like that in the Falaise-Argentan pincers of last summer. Could the Germans get out? It was well to remember that last summer, when the Wehrmacht was less ably commanded than it is now, the Germans who had seemed hopelessly bottled in the Falaise trap were able to extricate five divisions of armor almost intact. If Rundstedt was content with the delay and damage already wrought against his foes in the west, he might be able to pull back to the West Wall without serious loss.

Up to this week, however, he gave no sign of preparing such a move. His salient was contracting, but it was shrinking around a hard armored shell--in which he might be regrouping for another thrust at Liege, main Allied rear base for the Aachen-Cologne sector. The first heavy German blow in four days was an assault by three divisions on the Bastogne corridor.

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