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Pages of History
Lauren D. Johnson spent Christmas 1944 fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. He told me about it in a May 2004 interview.
“There must’ve been 8-10 inches of snow and the ground was frozen so hard we couldn’t dig a foxhole,“ said Johnson. “Fortunately, one of the men spotted an abandoned château, surrounded by trees. We set up camp inside.“ “We were short of rations at that time. There was nothing in our trucks but hard tack and a few C-rations. Then one day a package arrived. My great aunt sent me a fruit cake for Christmas. When something like that came, the boys would usually share it. But when I opened the package, the cake was covered with mold and we couldn’t eat it. Funny how you remember things like that.”
Lauren remembered a lot of things about the time he spent in the service during World War II. He was a member of the 531st Anti- Aircraft and Automatic Weapons Battalion — another component of the 30th Infantry Division to which Dale Iler belonged. In fact, he and Iler met by chance shortly after the D-Day landing in June 1944.
Lauren landed on Omaha Beach a few days after D-Day and participated in the hedgerow fighting around the French city of St. Lo. After the fall of St. Lo, the 30th Infantry took on some of Germany‘s toughest units — including the battle-hardened 1st SS Panzer Division — in a big tank battle near Mortain. (Incidentally, this writer also interviewed a soldier who was in that Panzer Division and fought in the Battle of the Bulge on the German side. I did not write about it because he had no connection to Laurel.)
The 30th Infantry fought its way through northern France, Belgium and Holland. By the 1st of October, units of the 30th had penetrated the Siegfried Line and moved into Germany as far as Altdorf. “There were cement barriers called dragons’ teeth, all along the Siegfried Line,” said Johnson. “These were supposed to stop our tanks but we knocked them down and went right through.”
After some tough fighting, the 30th was pulled back to a rest area near Aachen. On December 16, 1944, Major General Leland Hobbs was informed that a major German attack was underway 40 miles to the south. This was the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. “We were sitting around thinking the war was about over,“ remembered Johnson. “Then in the middle of the night we got orders to go. Nobody, including our captain, knew where we were going.
“Hitler’s plan called for Sepp Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army to drive through a weak point in the U.S. Lines and capture the Belgium city of Antwerp in order to cut off Allied supplies coming in through that port. But the German spearhead was blunted by stubborn resistance from the U.S. 5th Army at Eisenborn Ridge. Meanwhile, General Hobbs rushed the 30th to the Malmedy-Stavelot-Stoumont area of Belgium where it stopped the northern expansion of the Bulge. In the Stavelot area alone, the 30th’s artillery killed 2000 enemy soldiers and destroyed 200 German vehicles. After several days of hard fighting, it was evident that the German Panzer Army would be unable to break through. And when Patton reached Bastogne on Dec. 26, it was clear that the German offensive had failed.
“Due to bad weather, there weren’t many Luftwaffe planes in the air during the initial stages of the battle,” said Johnson, “so we tried to set up our guns for anti-tank warfare. Our anti-aircraft guns couldn’t be lowered enough to fire at the tanks, but the 50-caliber machine guns mounted on our half tracks could do a lot of damage.“ On Jan. 1, 1945, German fighter planes struck Allied airfields throughout northern France, Holland, and Belgium. During this attack, one of Hitler’s secret weapons – the jet fighter – was unveiled for the first time. Although the Germans’ jets were 100 mph faster than the fastest American planes, they were not as invulnerable as Hitler promised. “The jets were hard to hit because they were so fast,” recalled Johnson. “You really had to be on the ball. Our battery got one that I know of because we watched it go down. Other batteries downed one or two.“ Jet aircraft could not save the day, however. On Jan. 8, 1945, the Germans began pulling back from the tip of the Bulge. On Jan. 13, the 30th Infantry began attacking the Germans near St. Vith. The city was liberated on Jan. 23 and the Germans were driven back across the border. On Jan. 28, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge was over. The cost was enormous on both sides. Out of an estimated 600,000 Americans involved in the Battle of the Bulge, 19,000 were killed, more than 47,000 were wounded, and about 15,000 were taken prisoner. German casualties were thought to be about 100,000 killed, wounded, or captured.
A few days after the end of the battle, Johnson entered Germany for the second time. “When we reached the Rhine, the Germans had blown all the bridges except Remagen,” he said. “It collapsed later, though, so my outfit crossed on a pontoon bridge.”
Under the terms of an agreement between Roosevelt and Stalin, U.S. forces were halted at Magdeburg, so the Red Army could capture Berlin. The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945. On that day, Johnson was in a hospital recovering from a shrapnel wound he received in the closing days of the war. He returned home on the hospital ship Larkspur.
Major General Leland Hobbs said in the army newspaper Stars & Stripes: “We can well be proud of all the accomplishments and join with the reader in a salute to the fighting soldiers of the 30th Infantry.” Army historian S.L.A. Marshall called the 30th “The finest infantry division in the European theater.“ And after tangling with the 30th, the Germans themselves paid tribute by calling it “Roosevelt’s SS.”
Lauren D. “Shorty” Johnson died in 2019 at the age of 100.
I am glad he shared his memories with me while he was still in good health.
