S/Sgt Richard H. Byers (1922-2001)
Battery C, 371st Field Artillery Battalion
Battery C of the 371st FA Bn was deployed to cover the 3rd Battalion of the 394th Infantry and their forward observation details were rotating on the front lines to provide accurate support to the infantry. S/Sgt Byers was one of the battery’s forward observers.
“… After dark on the evening of December 16, 1944, I was part of the Forward Observation Party sent up to replace the group captured in Lanzerath and support what was left of the 3rd Battalion/394th troops around Buchholz Station. All but two platoons of K/394 had been withdrawn from Buchholz and sent north. line. There was now nothing between us and the shattering 106th Infantry Division except Kampfgruppe Peiper and the 1st SS Panzer Division. Wittingly or not, we were the sacrificial tripwire for the right flank of the 99th Infantry Division.
Lieutenant Harold Mayer, Sgt. Curtis Fletcher and I made up the new party. We pulled our jeep off the road and backed it into a barn attached to a farmhouse which is now the local forest ranger’s residence. It is across the road from Buchholz Station inside the bend in the Lanzerath-Honsfeld road. The barn is parallel to the section of the road running east and west while the house is parallel to the north-south section. Together, they form an L. Two other sides of the quadrangle are formed by stone sheds and walls with gates. These structures form an enclosed courtyard with a large gate opening to the west. Outside of the gate is a small wood growing along the road to the west. Some members of the 1st and 2nd Platoon of K Company were dug in on the side of the woods away from the road. From their holes they could see Buchholz Station and the road from Lanzerath. The rest of those few K Company men and their aid station was in the farmhouse basement where we joined them for the night.
A single Coleman lantern and individual flashlights lit the low vaulted basement. Fletcher and I split off from the Lieutenant and spread our bedrolls in another room. From midnight to one o’clock I stood guard with an infantryman on the porch of the house. We took turns ducking into the house to warm up with a cigarette. It was a quiet, cold night. We heard nothing from the station across the road and tracks but we could clearly hear the SS Panzer troops shouting back and forth, the racing of tank engines, the squeal of bogie wheels and the grinding of tank treads as they worked … their way on toward us. I commented to the infantryman that their undisciplined noise sounded like a bunch of Quartermaster troops on Louisiana maneuvers. I didn’t know at that time Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) Jochen Peiper was just down the road in Lanzerath.
They reached Buchholz Station about five o’clock on the morning of December 17. They passed the station and bore left at the farmhouse, coming between us and the rest of the 99th to the north.
Fletcher and I slept through the tense whispering, shuffling and clinking. On the way out one of them shook me and whispered, urgently, « Get up! There’s tanks outside! » I mumbled something, rolled over and went back to sleep. Fletcher never stirred. An injured infantryman lay near us. He had been badly shaken up by a near miss of an artillery shell and was in shock. He sensed everyone leaving and began calling out, « Wha’s goin’ on? Wha’s goin’ on? » . Lt. Mayer had been told that we were roused so he went upstairs into the courtyard looking for us. When the courtyard cleared and we weren’t there he went back down into the cellar. He found Fletcher and me still lying there, sound asleep. He really woke us up! We grabbed our coats and helmets, buckled on our pistol belts and headed for the stairs. Once outside in the pitch blackness of the courtyard we pulled on our galoshes and after a hasty conference we headed for the back door of the barn, thinking to use our radio in the jeep to call for artillery fire on the bend in the road where the tanks were slowing down. As we opened the back door of the barn we saw three German paratroopers coming up the driveway.
We could see them silhouetted against the white snow but they couldn’t see us with the black courtyard behind us. Since they appeared to be armed with Schmeissers and had the backing and support of an entire panzer battle group, we decided not to argue for the radio. We took off through the side gate into the patch of pine woods running parallel to the road.
In the woods things were noisy and confused. I only remember certain sights and sounds. Lt. Mayer had an SCR-536 handie-talkie which was picking up the Germans broadcasting in too perfect English, « Come in, come in, come in. Danger, danger, danger. We are launching a strong attack. Come in, come in, anyone on this channel? » No one responded, knowing they were using a captured radio in an attempt to locate us in the dark. This shouldn’t have been very hard because they were now around the house while we were only a few yards away in the still darker woods. Over the roar and smell of tank engines we could hear the shouts of the paratroopers as they guided the tank commanders around the bend…I had the feeling of exhilarating excitement. We could hear them, thus we knew who they were and where to go to avoid them. And we knew where they were to kill them if I had to. It’s funny, but the closer you get to the Krauts the less scared you get. But when you don’t know where they are and what they up to, you fear the unknown. Fletcher had not taken the time to buckle his galoshes before going out and they were clinking together. Without saying anything to us, he knelt down to buckle them as we moved on. He was captured before he finished the task. The paratroopers came through the gate took him from behind.
We wandered around in the woods, between the road and the infantry dugouts. Eventually, I decided this wasn’t getting us anywhere because we couldn’t function as artillerymen without our radio and we weren’t going to be much help as infantry against paratroopers and tanks armed only with .45 caliber pistols. Further, my pistol hand was paralyzed from gripping it so tightly that my fingerprints were permanently embossed on butt. I suggested to the Lieutenant that I knew the way to our gun position via trails and should try to get back there to get another jeep and radio to fight another day. He accepted my suggestion and followed as I headed north toward the road. There was still a stream of tanks, half-tracks and paratroopers on the road which was lined with big, low Iimbed pines. We ducked under a sagging pine into the roadside ditch and waited for a break in the convoy. Paratroopers trudged by just above our heads. When a break came we dashed across the road, dove into the ditch on the other side then crawled under the trees to the end of a field. Across the field we found the railroad track from Buchholz to Honsfeld. We followed it west a short distance then headed north to Hunningen..”
Sources: Dick Byers unpublished memoir.