If the Krauts crack the defenses in the North Shoulder, they won’t surround the 101/AB Division in Bastogne, but the entire 1st Army in Belgium.
Feb
04
2009
Category : 082nd Airborne Division
In late March, 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division was engaged in training activities at its base camps at Sissone, Suippes and Laon, France. Reorganization under the new Table of Organization was under way and a schedule of intensive airborne training was being carried out. Experiments also were being conducted with new equipment, including the new recoilless 57-MM gun. Several tentative airborne missions were in the planning stage at the Division’s Headquarters at Camp Sissone. Late in the afternoon of March 30 1945, the Division CO, Maj Gen James M. Gavin was called to XVIII Corps (Airborne) Headquarters at Epernay France.
Here he received instructions to the effect that the 82nd A/B Div and the 101st A/B Div were to concentrate southwest of Bonn in Germany.
On Mar 31 1945, at 1400-H, the 82nd was attached to the Fifteenth US Army and given the mission to patrol a section of the West bank of the Rhine River. This river was the Western boundary of a hugh pocket of German resistance in the Ruhr area. Aside from patrols the Division probably would not cross the river and movement of the Division to the new area would begin on or about Apr 3 1945.
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