The American force consisted of two squads totalling 18 men belonging to a reconnaissance platoon and four forward artillery observers, against a German battalion of about 500 paratroopers.

[3] Due to lost communications with battalion and then regimental headquarters, and the unit's subsequent capture, its disposition and success at delaying the advance of the 6th Panzer Army that day was unknown to U.S. commanders.

The Americans were expecting a counterattack in the area, but their intelligence completely failed to detect the Germans' movement of hundreds of armored vehicles and tens of thousands of infantry into the region.

[8]: 84  For the next few weeks his platoon established and maintained regimental listening and observation posts, conducted patrols behind enemy lines, and gathered information.

[3] On December 10, the reconnaissance platoon was ordered by Major Robert Kriz, commanding officer of the 394th Infantry Regiment, to a new position about 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of Hünningen, near Lanzerath, Belgium, a village of 23 homes and a church.

They were ordered to improve their foxhole positions and maintain contact with Task Force X, made up of 55 troops manning four towed three-inch guns from the 2nd Platoon, Company A, 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Outside official channels, he had also traded his unit's collection of German memorabilia with an ordnance supply officer for an armored Jeep with a mounted .50 caliber machine gun.

[3][4] His men dug an emplacement for the armored jeep and its .50 caliber gun, placing it in enfilade down the road along the Germans' possible line of advance.

Once an hour, in an attempt to fill the gap in their sector, they ran a jeep patrol up and down the line to stay in contact with units on their right and left flanks and to watch for any enemy movement.

Dietrich's assigned route (or Rollbahn) included narrow roads – in many places single tracks – which would force units of the Kampfgruppe to tail each other, creating a column of infantry and armor up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) long.

[17] The main roads designated for their use had many hairpin turns and traversed steep hillsides that would delay his already slow-moving towed artillery and bridging trains.

Their first impression was that this was the anticipated counterattack resulting from the Allies' recent attack in the Wahlerscheid crossroads to the north where the 2nd Division had knocked a sizable dent into the Siegfried Line.

I called regiment and told them, ‘the TDs are pulling out, what should we do?’ The answer was loud and clear: ‘Hold at all costs!’[19]Many shells exploded in the trees, sending shards of steel and wood into the ground, but the men were protected by their reinforced foxholes.

At 08:00, as the sun rose, the American platoon heard explosions and guns around Buchholz Station and Losheimergraben to the east and north where the 3rd and 1st Battalions of the 394th Infantry Division were located.

The 55 soldiers of U.S. 2nd Platoon, Company A, 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 14th Cavalry Group was initially ordered south to help protect Manderfeld,[3] but shortly afterwards were redirected to join the active battle near Buchholz Station.

[3] Bouck sent James, Slape and Creger to set up an observation post in a house on the eastern side of the village that had been abandoned by Task Force X.

[1]: 81 On the eastern side of the road, Robinson, McGeehee and Silvola attempted to rejoin their platoon, but found the way blocked by German soldiers who threatened to flank them.

Lieutenant Warren Springer and the other three men, Sergeant Peter Gacki, T/4 Willard Wibben, and T/5 Billy Queen joined Bouck's unit on the ridge, where they could continue to observe the enemy movement.

He dispatched Corporal Sam Jenkins and PFC Preston through the woods to locate Major Kriz at Regimental HQ and seek instructions or reinforcements.

[12] The German troops were reluctant to attack head on once again, and Sergeant Vinz Kuhlbach pleaded with the officers of the 9th Fallschirmjäger Regiment to allow his men to flank the Americans in the dusk.

The small American force had seriously disrupted the scheduled advance of the entire 6th Panzer Army's drive for Antwerp along the critical northern edge of the offensive.

[12] After virtually no sleep during the preceding night and a full day of almost non-stop combat, with only a few rounds of ammunition remaining, flanked by a superior enemy force, the platoon and artillery observers were captured.

Peiper's lead units did not reach Losheim until 7:30 pm, when he was ordered to swing west and join up with the 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division,[23] which had finally cleared the route through Lanzerath.

At midnight, he watched as a senior German officer (who he later identified as Peiper) attempt to obtain accurate information about the U.S. Army's strength in the area.

[3] The German advance never recovered from its initial delay, and Kampfgruppe Peiper only got as far as Stoumont, where the remaining vehicles ran out of fuel and came under heavy attack from American aircraft, artillery, and tanks.

However, in more than ten days of intense battle, the 12th SS Panzer Division was unable to dislodge the Americans from Elsenborn Ridge, where elements of the V Corps of the First U.S. Army prevented the German forces from reaching the key road network to their west.

Had the Americans given way, the German advance would have overrun the vast supply depots around Liège and Spa[2] and possibly have changed the outcome of the Battle of the Bulge.

[4] Corporal Sam Jenkins and Private First Class Preston were captured before they reached Allied lines, and they later joined Bouck and the rest of the platoon in prison.

Lieutenant Warren Springer and his three-man artillery observation unit — Sergeant Peter Gacki, T/4 Willard Wibben, and T/5 Billy Queen - also joined the men in battle.

"[31] On May 12, 2005, veterans of the 99th Infantry Division and local citizens of Lanzerath, Belgium, dedicated a monument composed of a small brass plaque alongside a bench and a United States flag to commemorate the fight on the grassy hill overlooking the village.