[11] Striking at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, 16 December, the Germans achieved almost total surprise in breaking through Allied lines, beginning what is commonly called the Battle of the Bulge.

The 106th was later described as being "newly arrived and unpracticed", while the 28th had recently suffered heavy casualties in fighting to clear enemy forces from the Hürtgen Forest.

At the end of the conversation Middleton told an aide that he had given his approval to have the two regiments pull back to the west side of the river.

About 0720 the company crossed into the 110th Infantry zone, where the ground rose away from the highway and forced the tanks to advance in column on the road.

As the column emerged from the village of Heinerscheid, concealed high-velocity guns opened on the skimpily armored light tanks, picking them off like clay pipes in a shooting gallery.

At 09:30 on 17 December, the 2nd Panzer Division attacked Clervaux, with six German Stug IIIs from a Panzerjäger company and Panzergrenadiers in thirty armored vehicles advancing from the south.

With the forces of the 2nd Battalion, 110th, shattered or falling back, the ring around Clervaux was already closed on three sides by 15.00 and would grow tighter by the hour.

The advancing 2nd Panzer's 2nd Grenadier Regiment obliterated the 57mm gun and its crew, some wounded, scattered into the dense forest along the cliffs above the bridge then breaching the last defense of Clervaux from the north.

At about 17.00, with no opposition, a tank platoon from the Kampfgruppe which Colonel von Lauchert had sent to seize a bridge south of Clervaux wound its way into town from that direction.

Fuller was furious at what he thought was Gibney's uncomprehending attitude and asked to speak to Major General Norman Cota, the commander of the 28th Infantry Division, but was denied.

At that moment, a German Panzer coming down the north road into Clervaux began pumping 75mm shells into the ground floor of the 110th Headquarters in the Clarvallis Hotel.

Fuller called for volunteers to remain with the wounded who had taken shelter in the basement of the hotel and at around 19.30, he and as many in the building as were able to travel, including civilians, escaped the through third floor back windows via a narrow metal fire escape and climbed a rock cliff behind the hotel and struck out for Eselborn past the Benedictine Monastery on the ridge.

Captain Aiken attributed the Americans being treated well upon surrender to their fair treatment of 15 German POWs held in the castle.

Though the 110th Regiment and the 109th Field Artillery Battalion were shattered, the stubborn resistance offered by them and other VIII Corps units greatly slowed the German timetable.