Task Force Hudelson

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Military_and_War World_War_II

Task Force Hudleson

On December 16, 1944, the German Army launched a counteroffensive, with the code name Wacht Am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine) in the snowy hills and woods of the Ardennes Forest. The attack in the Ardennes would begin the Battle of the Bulge. It would be the greatest pitch battle ever fought by the United States. Before the battle’s conclusion over a million combatants would be engaged in fierce fighting along a front from Holland to the Swiss border. In response to strategic requirements resulting from the course of events that were developing in the Ardennes the Seventh Army had to suspend its offensive operations in the Rhenish Palatinate. The Battle of the Bulge would completely reverse the situation in the lower Vosges and Alsace.

As the ferocity of the German offensive in the north became more evident, the combat resources of the Allies began to shift north. General George Patton’s Third Army went north to help stabilize the front. Along with Patton would go a significant number of armor from the 14th Armored Division’s three Tank Battalions. The offensives against the Siegrifed Line abruptly ended, as the Seventh Army took over Patton’s Third Army’s former position as well as maintaining their own front. Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army would now be the Allied intelligence picked up many signs of another large build-up of enemy forces directed towards an assault on the Seventh Army sector. By and large the Allied Command dismissed the possibility of another German offensive because of a false preconception that such an attack would be doomed to defeat therefore irrational to undertake. However, as a precaution General Patch organized his forces with the XV Corps covering the defense of Lorraine and four defensive Task Forces, respectively named for their Commanders, responsible for the defense of Alsace. TF Linden (42 Infantry Division), TF Harris (63rd Infantry Division) and TF Herren (70th Infantry Division), would be deployed on the right and center front of the line, where a German counter-attack was expected. On the left wing of this thin line was TF Hudelson. This was the smallest by far of the four forces. It consisted of two Cavalry Squads, an Armored Infantry Battalion and Company-A of the 125th Armored Engineers.

Just before Midnight on New Years Eve, 1944 the German Army Group G launched Operation NORDWIND, the last major counter-offensive of the war. The 21st Panzer and 17th Panzergrenadier attacked the thinly stretched, 110 kilometers (68 mi)-long front line held by the U.S. 7th Army position in a pincer movement from the Sarr River and Colmar pocket. The German hoped the Alsace offensive and possible destruction Patch’s Seventh Army would bring the American offensive action in the Ardennes (Battle of The Bulge) to a stop. More importantly, if Alsace was retaken, it could possibly incite a French civil war (between Vichy, Communist and the Free French Army) that would disrupt the whole Allied supply system. The assailment on the Patch’s sector would begin a twenty-six-day defensive battle for Alsace. Task Force Hudelson found itself engaged by elements of 5 enemy divisions, Everywhere there was chaos and confusion along the Hudelson front. An olive stream of fleeing trucks, jeeps, ambulances, scattered Infantry and Calvary units jammed the narrow, slippery, rutted, steep sloped roads. The congestion and poor road conditions slowed the Task Forced withdrawal and caused collusions. However TF Hudelson, managed to delay and blunt the German advance until substantial reinforcements from TF Linden, TF Harris and TF Herren could arrive and stem the attack. Although the defense of Alsace was a sideshow of the major war in Europe causalities were high. The total number of casualties for the U.S. 7th Army would be approximately 3,000 killed, 9,000 wounded, and 17,000 sick and injured.

Sources

The Story of the U.S. Seventh Army (New York: Sarpedon Publishers 1999), Memories of the 14th Armored Division (Paducah, KY.: Turner Publishing Company1998), When Odds Were Even, by Keith E. Bonn ( Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1994), The History of 14th Armored Division, by Joseph Carter (Atlanta; Albert Love Enterprise 1946), Riviera to the Rhine, by Jeffrey Clarke, & Robert Ross Smith (Washington DC.: Center of Military History, US Army 1993); Seven Days in January: with the 6th SS Mountain Division in Operation NORDWIND by Wolf T. Zoepf (Bedford, Pa.: The Aberjona Press 2001); The Finial Crisis: Combat in Northern Alsace, January 1945 by Richard Engler (Hampton, VA.: Aegis Consulting Group 1999)