Trois Ponts
The morning of December 21 saw the bulk of 1.SS-Panzer-Division other than Kampfgruppe Peiper massed on the heights between Trois-Ponts and Wanne. Heavy equipment began to move down hill toward the Petit-Spei bridge, but the weight of the first heavy vehicle, a Jagdpanzer IV/70, brought down the flimsy structure with it. Infantry could still cross on the wreckage, but it was now impossible to move any equipment across the Ambléve. Divisional engineers set out to erect a new bridge just above the collapsed one, and had just got a girder in position across the strong current when intense artillery fire was laid on the bridging site, bringing the work to an end. Elements of SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 1 crossed over the wrecked bridge during the night and SS-Standartenführer Hansen set up his command post some 300 meters from it. Without their equipment which had been left-behind on the south bank of the Ambléve, the Grenadiers began to move north. From Stavelot - no more than a key objective -the few panzers supporting Knittel’s forces against the western edge of the town had been brought back to assist SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 1 which at least gave Hansen the support of armor.
East of the town Americans were holding on to a small bridgehead formed by E-Company of the 505th P.I.R. along the cliff on the German held bank of the Salm, and the Salm bridge (blown on December 18) had been made unusable to support it. Within this tohold, fleeing civilians stopped by American patrols had indicated that panzers and grenadiers were assembling in Wanne, and shortly before noon the vanguards appeared on the road overlooking the bridgehead - on the road between 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s Rollbahn E. In absence of specific instructions concerning the bridgehead. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin H. Vandervoort, the commander of the 505th’s 2nd Battalion, decided to hold it and send F company across. A JEEP towed a single 54mm anti-tank gun across stringers laid on top of the broken bridge structure while F Company positioned itself in the woods to the right of E Company.
As the Panzers could not manouvere on the soggy ground the fighting broke out in a series of hand - to - hand engagements. The 57mm gun was soon put out of action amd the situation was worsening for the paratroops when the regimental commander, Colonel William E. Ekman, arrived in Trois-Ponts and ordered an immediate withdrawal. With the grenadiers right behind them, the pull back was actually a desperate retreat as the paratroops scrambled down the cliff face, there were many who were too hard pressed and could only jump into the river below. The pursuing grenadiers got across the Selm behind them by fording it or driving over the makeshift bridge but once the 2ns Battalion reorganized itself, it was able to throw them back on to the eastern bank. By late afternoon the Salm bridge at Trois-Ponts was blown for a second time in four days; on this occasion by the 82nd Airborne Division engineers.
