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'Wacht am Rhein' 21.Dec.1944 1.SS Panzerkorps

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La Gleize

The Kampfgruppe, no longer in a position to counteract the American’s response, found itself trapped, without adequate supplies, in a narrow pocket around La Gleize. Peiper knew that if Kampfgruppe was to survive as a fighting unit until effective reinforcements reached him, he could not go on holding all the area in which it was surrounded. The need to consolidate his available strength became even more evident when a small American outfit ventured as far as Stoumount - La Gleize road. The grendadiers had thrown them back and taken prisoners, including the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion of the 119th Regiment, Major Hal D. McCown, but not before the Americans had blocked the road by blasting down trees.
 Around noon Peiper called all his senior commanders at his command post in the gatekeeper’s lodge of the Foide-Cour château to review the situation, as a result of which was to decided to concentrate all available forces around La Gleize and try to keep the gate open the bridge near Cheneux.
 The evacuation of the positions ar Stoumount would leave the Froide-Cour château outside the defense perimeter. Inside the château were about 130 American prisoners taken during the fighting around Stoumount and Cheneux, and it also contained the Kapfgruppe’s casualty clearing station, where 120 German and a number of American wounded were sheltering. Before the line was pulled back later in the afternoon, therefore, all the German walking wounded and all the American wounded in the château under care of a German medical surgeon and two American medical privates who had been working at the clearing station since their capture in Stoumount. The withdrawal from the Stoumount area and back across the Ambléve from Cheneux to defensive positions immediately behind the bridge was carried out at during the late afternoon without incident or American interference 
In Cheneux fierce house to house fighting persisted between the 504th paratroopers and the rearguard covering the contraction of the bridgehead. By the time that the Americans finally took the village they had suffered 225 dead and wounded.


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