I was a member of K Company - 345th Regiment. I was in the Communications Section of Company Headquarters, carrying the SCR536 Handy Talky, relaying and receiving messages to and from the platoon leaders or carrying the SCR300, communicating with Battalion Headquarters. What follows are my experiences during this time. It may be totally different from the experiences of other surviving members of my company. You are generally only aware of what is happening in a radius of 100 feet or so. Some incidents I can remember as part of a chain of events. Other incidents are isolated and I can't put them in context. I will try to contribute more as time and memory permit.

After the Battle of the Bulge, our division was sent to Luxembourg to relieve the 4th Infantry Division. In turn, we were relieved by the 69th Division on January 28, 1945.

After another cold, miserable ride in flat bed trucks through shattered Bastogne and Houffalize, we dismounted in knee-deep snow in a darkening St. Vith. We were crammed in with the 7th Armored and 82nd Airborne, but it would not be for long.

Several of us from K Company gathered in what might have been a German chow line. Frozen bodies of German soldiers lay scattered - gray logs, covered with snow. Once a fire was going, these gray dead were rolled near the fire for a seat. They were dead and they wouldn't know.

At dawn next morning, we filed through town and into the hills. Our first casualty came from a Bouncing Betty mine. The trail following an open ridge was a beaten path through snow. Why was it tripped by the tenth man or twelfth man, and not the first man? A step different by inches from those before? Now we stepped carefully in the footsteps of the man ahead. Afterwards, walking safely into the late afternoon, we stopped in a woods overlooking a broad valley.

In deep, frozen ground, we could only hack out foxholes about two feet deep. We were supposed to sleep with our boots on. I couldn't do that. I put my galoshes outside the hole. Mine had holes in the soles. I put my boots in my sleeping bag and my canteen in my armpit. If we had a night attack, I would have to fight in my socks. In the morning, as usual, I couldn't put my boots in my galoshes until they were thawed by a fire.

We began to take sporadic artillery tree bursts. A platoon runner, who smoked a pipe and carried a can of Prince Albert in his hip pocket, came in to get a message for his platoon leader. A minute later, he was killed by a tree burst. It was so sudden. We had just watched him fill his pipe, puff on it, and set off through the woods.

We assembled in the woods and walked in two files down a road with ditches on either side. As expected, we were shelled. We dove for the ditches, but got up and ran downhill when one of the officers yelled at Sgt. Moulton to get the men moving. The road led into a large flat valley. We proceeded without incident to two large houses on the right and a small hill on the left, with the road curving around the hill.

Our lead platoon was fired on by a German anti-tank gun. We pulled back and asked for help. Soon a Sherman tank rumbled down the road. We yelled and tried to get the tankers' attention. "There's an anti-tank gun around the hill." Maybe they couldn't hear us. A single shot from the anti-tank gun disabled the tank. It erupted with black soldiers who ran back down the road. I later learned this was the 761st Tank Battalion, the subject of a book and TV show fifty years later. A second tank came down the road, but quickly went into reverse and disappeared when the crew from the first tank told them what happened. A patrol was then sent around the backside of the hill and disposed of the German anti-tank crew.

Twilight came and the advance was halted. We moved in to the first of two large buildings on the right side of the road. Darkness came and with it the coldness of January. Broken furniture fed a fire in the fireplace. One of our men stepping outside the front door jumped back as a burp gun ripped at him. Germans had sneaked into the second house. How to rout them out?

We had an FO (Forward Artillery Observer) with us, but his radio didn't work. We came up with a simple, but insane scheme. We would shell the almost adjoining house. The FO gave me the coordinates. I forwarded them to Battalion Headquarters via the SCR 300 company radio, and shells - one at a time - started dropping on or near the German-occupied house. Minute adjustments were made, all by sound. No visual observation. It was dark. Step outside and you could be cut down. Firing continued through the night. Our house was never struck, due to the skill of the battalion artillery or just dumb luck. In the morning, the Germans were gone.

We formed up in a column of two - five yard intervals, one on each side of the road - around the curve, past the German anti-tank position, and forward. After several miles, we came on a horseshoe curve. We were getting deeper into the Ardennes, reclaiming the route of the German offense that drove through the 106th Division. The ravines on the right were a jumble of artillery and trucks pushed down by advancing Germans to clear the way.

We were sure German artillery would be registered on that curve. Sgt. Reuel Garber asked me to follow him as he searched for PFC Donald Blank. As we slabbed up a hillside toward a farmhouse, an 88 fired on us. Looking across the ravine to an open space on the wooded hills, we could see a German crew working the gun. Sgt. Garber was struck by shrapnel in his right hand. He was already missing his trigger finger. He gave me the SCR300 and ran downhill. I ran uphill toward the farmhouse. The Germans stopped firing. Why waste artillery on one man?

After reaching some abandoned chicken houses, I waited for the German battery to disappear and moved back down to the road. Sgt. Garber had been evacuated and the missing Donald Blank had been killed.

We continued for several more miles without meeting any resistance until we were relieved in the early afternoon by another company. Company K had been in the attack for 32 hours.

In the mid-afternoon we marched back to a cluster of houses to get some rest. We mounted the stairs of one promising house only to discover a tank crew already occupied it. We pointed our weapons at them and told them it was "our" house. -- we had fought for it. The law of eminent domain prevailed and they left. Before entering the house, we had relieved them of a case of 10-in-1 rations strapped to the back of their tank.

In the early evening, as we emerged from the house, we saw a battery of our 105s setting up and starting to fire. We were gaining ground.