WWII German Soldbuch – Panzergrenadier Zoubek – Panzer Grenadier Regiment 304 – Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen – Fought Easy Company 506th 101 Airborne – Captured in Ardennes 1944 – Rare (Sold)

Description

Zoubek was from Vienna, born in 1926 he was enlisted into the German Army in May of 1944. 

Point to note before looking at the action reports for the Bulge, is that the 506th Easy Company fought this unit which is super cool… 

Serving with the 2nd Panzer Divisions Stab (HQ), he was at some point during the battle assigned to: 

Stabs Kompanie, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 304 (2 Panzer Division) 

For the Ardennes Offensive 2. Panzerdivision was attached to the XLVII. Panzer Korps commanded by General der Panzertruppe Freiherr von Lüttwitz. In addition to 2. Panzerdivision, the Korps consisted of the Panzer Lehr Division and 26. Volksgrenadierdivision.

As soon as the Volksgrenadiere of 26. Volksgrenadierdivision had secured crossings over the Our and Clerf Rivers, 2. Panzerdivision was tasked to breakthrough the American lines, bypass Bastogne to the north and race towards the Meuse and capture the bridges there. Only one day before the start of the offensive Oberst Meinrad von Lauchert took command of 2. Panzerdivision, so he was unable to meet all his commanders before the start of the offensive. In the pre-dawn hours of 16 December, Pioneers and a battalion of Panzergrenadiers crossed the Our river in rubber boats in order to capture the village of Marnach. This was meant to clear the road from Dasburg towards Clerf and further towards Bastogne, but the soldiers of the US 28th Infantry Division entrenched there held the village stubbornly. Only in the evening, when Pioneers finished a 60-ton bridge, were the division’s tanks able to cross the Our and join the fight. The defenders were then slowly pushed back. In the morning hours of 17 December an advance guard reached the town of Clerf, less than two miles west of Marnach and headquarters of the US 110th Infantry Regiment. The advance guard was stopped by Shermans of the 707th Tank Battalion. They lost four Panzer IV tanks in the fight, but destroyed three Shermans in return. The defenders of Clerf were furthermore reinforced by a tank company of the US 9th Armored Division, but in the evening all the American Sherman tanks were either destroyed or forced to retreat.  Clerf was finally captured. On 18 December what was left of the 110th Infantry Regiment was forced to withdraw to the west. However, the stiff resistance of the 28th Infantry Division had played havoc with the German timetable. Meanwhile, CCR, US 9th Armored Division established two roadblocks east of Bastogne, the northern one near the village of Lullange, where the road from Clerf entered that leading to Bastogne. The second roadblock was further south near Allerborn. In the morning hours of 18 December the forward elements of Kampfgruppe Böhm reached the northern roadblock. With the tanks of Panzer Regiment 3 close behind, the roadblock was soon surrounded and annihilated. The southern roadblock was overrun shortly after dusk.
Oberst von Lauchert now turned his Division to the northwest so as to swing past Bastogne in the north and maintain the momentum of the westward drive.

All the delays allowed the American reinforcements to reach Bastogne before the Germans. One of these was Team Desobry from CCB of the US 10th Armored Division which deployed at Noville. The little village north of Bastogne was directly in the way of 2. Panzerdivision. Covered by the morning fog, the tanks of 2. Panzerdivision manoeuvred for an attack on the village. When the fog suddenly lifted, more than thirty tanks were revealed to the defenders of Noville. Accurate fire from the American tanks and tank destroyers caused the attack to fail. At midday the 1st Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel James L. LaPrade reached Noville and immediately counterattacked. However, the paratroopers were unable to reach the ridge lines due to the withering German fire. Elements of 304. Panzergrenadier Regiment infiltrated toward the south of Noville. Threatened by the prospect of being surrounded and short of ammunition, the defenders of Noville finally retreated towards Bastogne on the afternoon 20 December, but they held up the advance of 2. Panzerdivision for nearly two days and caused heavy casualties.

The Highwater Mark

Shortly after midnight Kampfgruppe Böhm, which had bypassed Noville to the north, captured a bridge over the Ourthe River at Ortheuville. This opened the road to Marche and Namur invitingly, but 2. Panzerdivision did not move, as their tanks had run dry and they had to wait for fuel. This allowed the advance elements of the US 84th Infantry Division to occupy Marche. When the advance finally resumed at nightfall 22 December, stiff resistance was encountered at Marche. Lüttwitz ordered Lauchert to turn the bulk of his division west towards Dinant and the Meuse, and to leave only a blocking force towards Marche.

Kampfgruppe Böhm raced up the highway towards Dinant, followed by Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen, finally reaching the woods near Celles before daylight on 24 December. The advance elements of the division were only 9 km away from the Meuse crossings. The remainder of 2. Panzerdivision was stretched all the way back to south of Marche with the dual mission of continuing the westward advance and of protecting the northern flank.
Meanwhile, the American 2nd Armored Division began to arrive northeast of Celles. Their CCA moved south into Buissonville, while the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron occupied Humain, blocking 2. Panzerdivision route of advance. The leading Kampfgruppen were cut off.

In the meantime Kampfgruppe Böhm had reached the village of Foy-Notre Dame were it encountered several tanks of the British 29th Armoured Brigade. Losing several vehicles to British fire and running out of fuel, the reconnaissance battalion went to ground. 2. Panzerdivision was stopped less than 5 km short of the Meuse crossings.

On 25 December CCB of the 2nd Armored Division launched its attack on the cut off German Kampfgruppen. It was a clear day, and the attack received excellent air support.

Kampfgruppe Böhm was soon destroyed. Lauchert ordered a relief attack to be conducted by Kampfgruppe Holtmeyer. The attack began on 25 December, but was soon stopped by the 2nd Armored Division. The remnants of Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen finally received permission to withdraw. Abandoning all their equipment about 600 men made it back to their own lines on the night of 26 December. 2. Panzerdivision was no longer combat effective. The Ardennes offensive had failed.

In 1945 the remnants of 2. Panzerdivision fought in the Mosel region and along the Rhine. When the war ended in May 1945, the division surrendered to American forces at Plauen. 

Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen
Commander: Major Ernst von Cochenhausen (304. Panzergrenadier-Regiment)
Units: II. Bataillon/304. Panzergrenadier-Regiment; two companies of I. Abteilung/3. Panzer-Regiment with 32 Panther G tanks; I. Bataillon/74. Panzer Artillerie-Regiment with 10 Wespe and 6 Hummel self-propelled guns; one self-propelled Battery of  273. FlaK Bataillon; 38. Panzerpionier-Abteilung.
Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen followed behind Kampfgruppe von Böhm as the division’s armoured battle group. However, all of the battle group’s panzergrenadier were mounted in trucks.

Major Ernst von Cochenhausen, the commander of the German advance force, waited for the sunrise when he would resume the advance in what was expected to be the final leg to—and across—River Meuse. Forty-four-year-old von Cochenhausen was a veteran who had participated in the German seizure of the Czech Sudeten area in 1938. He had been wounded already on the fourth day of the war against Poland in 1939, but returned to first-line service and commanded a motorcycle battalion on the Eastern Front. After completion of the regimental commander training, he was in December 1944 transferred to the 2. Panzer-Division, where he became deputy commander of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 304. In this position he led the combat group that was named after himself, Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen. Along with the armored reconnaissance battalion, this constituted the 2. Panzer-Division’s advance force.

On the crest of the hill above Château de Jemeppe, American military vehicles that had been knocked out by German fire a couple of hours ago, were still smouldering. These belonged to a combined task force from two American divisions—the 84th Infantry and 3rd Armored—that was routed on the evening of 22 December, after which the Germans could take Hargimont. This was but the latest of a series of successful engagements between the 2. Panzer-Division and various American forces since the Ardennes Offensive had begun one week earlier.

From their perspective, the men of the 2. Panzer-Division had all the reason to feel proud of the division’s accomplishments in the war. The division had been founded already in 1935, when Hitler reintroduced military conscription and began the reconstruction of the German Armed Forces. The first commander of the division was no one less than Heinz Guderian, the father and founder of the new German Armored Force. The 2. Panzer-Division participated in the march into Austria (Anschluss) in March 1938, and the occupation of the Czech Sudeten area following the Munich agreement in September that same year. In World War II, the 2. Panzer-Division fought with great success on almost all theaters of war—Poland in 1939, the West in 1940, the Balkans in 1941, the Eastern Front 1941 to 1944, and finally the Western Front, including Normandy, in 1944.

The 2. Panzer-Division reached the zenith of its career on 20 May 1940, during the Blitzkrieg in the West, when it became the first German unit to reach the English Channel. Thus, a whole Allied army group was caught in a huge ’sack’ in the north. This settled the fate of France. One month later, France, Germany’s old arch enemy, had to surrender under humiliating circumstances. However, the question the men of the 2. Panzer-Division could ask themselves there in that little Belgian village called Hargimont on the cold night of 22 December 1944, was whether they were not actually on the verge of superceding even the accomplishments of 1940.

During the week that had passed since the opening of the German Ardennes Offensive on 16 December 1944, the 2. Panzer-Division had advanced about sixty miles on miserable country lanes and muddy fields, subduing any resistance which the mighty U.S. Army had confronted them with. ‘Enemy morale seems strongly shaken,’ the divisional commander, Oberst Meinrad von Lauchert, wrote in a report which he compiled on the evening of 22 December 1944. Von Lauchert continued:

‘Since our fight at Noville we have encountered only weak resistance that was easily overcome—except south of Marche today.’

This was the result of a whole series of utterly devastating defeats dealt by the 2. Panzer-Division to its American opponent.

It all started in the wee hours of the night of 1516 December 1944, as specially selected assault troops from the division silently paddled across the German border river Our, and under the cover of darkness and fog crept past the American positions in the mountains on the other side. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other German troops from fifteen other divisions advanced in the same silent way to assume attack positions along the Ardennes Front. The attack caught the unprepared Americans completely by surprise. Soon the panzer division’s armor was able to cross a hastily completed bridge, and at the small village of Marnach, three miles into Luxembourg, the 2. Panzer-Division smashed the first armored force that the Americans put up against them.

The 2. Panzer-Division’s next task was to secure the crossing of River Clerve at Clervaux, seven miles from the point of departure. This was achieved on the second day of the offensive, in a tank battle in which the Americans lost sixty and the 2. Panzer-Division not more than four tanks. The regiment from the U.S. 28th Infantry Division that tried to stop the Germans here, was completely annihilated, and the regimental commander, Colonel Hurley Fuller, was among the large number of Americans who were taken as prisoners.

In the space of forty-eight hours, the victorious and confident American Army on the Western Front had been thrown completely out of the way, and its demoralized soldiers fled headlong to the west, pursued by German armored columns that seemed to be absolutely invincible. Among the most advanced German troops was Meinrad von Lauchert’s panzer division.

On the third day of the offensive, U.S. 9th Armored Division brought forward its reserve force in an attempt to halt the 2. Panzer-Division. The ensuing combat ended with the American force being almost completely obliterated. Leaving the hulks of forty-five burning Sherman tanks behind, what remained of the American armored unit withdrew. Among those that were killed, was the commander of U.S. 2nd Tank Battalion. That evening, the 2. Panzer-Division stood four miles to the west of its point of departure, and so far it had suffered no more than marginal losses of its own.

The Americans now brought a third division—the 10th Armored from Patton’s Third Army—against the 2. Panzer-Division’s southern flank. But during two days of violent tank battles, even this American division had to see its tanks getting knocked out in the dozens. The final, decisive battle took place at Noville, a small community northeast of Bastogne. When the 2. Panzer-Division stood victorious in Noville, having mowed down another task force of U.S. 10th Armored Division, it might well have been able to capture the strategic town of Bastogne through an attack from the north. But the German commanders had other plans for von Lauchert’s division: It was to form the spearhead of the lightning offensive that sought to establish a bridgehead across River Meuse, forty miles further to the west. The German report of 20 December 1944 stated, ’The enemy is fleeing towards the west.’

By now German 2. Panzer-Division not only appeared to be completely invincible; on its left flank stood German Panzer Division Lehr, led by the renowned Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein. To the right stood German 116. Panzer-Division, the famous ’Windhund’ Division, which just like the 2. Panzer-Division had surged forward like a steamroller, crushing any American resistance in its way. This armored division also had advanced sixty miles in less than a week. A bit further to the east, two more panzer divisions had marched up—the 2. SS-Panzer-Division ’Das Reich,’ and the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen’—along with an infantry division. When the offensive was initiated, these German forces had a combined strength of over four hundred operational tanks, of which nearly two-thirds were of the model Panzerkampfwagen V Panther—far superior to anything the Western Allies could muster in the shape of tanks.

At the sunrise which von Cochenhausen waited for in Hargimont, the 2. Panzer-Division would take the shortest route across the fields on the frozen plateau towards the bridge over the Meuse at Dinant. Indeed, the distance that had to be covered to reach this place was twenty-five miles, but there was nothing but quite weak Allied forces between Hargimont and Dinant, so the Germans could expect to reach their goal during the next day, 23 December. Quite confident, the divisional commander von Lauchert reported to the Corps headquarters on the evening of 22 December 1944:

’We will continue our advance with our main force. […] We will occupy the zone Celles, Conjoux and prepare to cross the Meuse at Anseremme [just south of Dinant].’

…..

Other comments:

Issued: Camo Net and Rifle as well as a full uniform and combat kit, as well as iron rations. Sadly he pulled his awards page just before being captured, which was common if you had something to hide. 

Comes with his discharge papers as he was sent home in Christmas of 1948 to Vienna.