To the left of the cavalry group ran the boundary between the VIII Corps and V Corps, its northern neighbor being the 99th Infantry Division To the right of the 106th lay the 28th Division, constituting the center of General Middleton's corps. The fate of the 106th Infantry Division and the 14th Cavalry Group was bound together on that day by official orders attaching the cavalry to the infantry, by circumstances of terrain, and by the German plan of attack. The Losheim Gap was occupied on 16 December by a reinforced squadron of the 14th Cavalry Group. Most of the little villages here are found in the draws and potholes which further scoop out the main valley. The Losheim Gap is no pleasant, pastoral valley but is cluttered by abrupt hills, some bare, others covered by fir trees and thick undergrowth. On the western side of the gap the Our River meanders along, and beyond the river to the west the plateau appears once more in heavily wooded form. At the western foot of the Schnee Eifel there runs a long narrow valley incised in the high plain, the so-called Losheim Gap. This middle ridge, so important in the action that developed in the 106th Division sector, inclines northeast-southwest. *ĭispositions of the 106th Infantry Divisionįrom the Eifel plateau protrude three distinct ridges or ranges, the central being called the Schnee Eifel. Fortunately, the picture as seen from the German side of the Schnee Eifel is fairly complete and can be applied as a corrective in most of the major areas of controversy and contradiction. Even so, some relaxation of the rule is necessary if a sustained and sequential narrative is to be presented. Since the author has been forced to depend in so great degree on the human memory, unaided or unchallenged by the written record, the scholar's old rule "one witness, no witness" has been generally applied. But the officers and men of the 106th Division who so narrowly escaped the German trap or who spent months in German prisons would be less than human if they did not seek to discover the cause of this debacle in either human error or frailty. The historian, as a result, must tread warily through the maze of recrimination and highly personalized recollection which surrounds this story It should not be concluded that reminiscence by those caught up in this disaster is consciously tendentious. Since the major part of the division was eliminated from combined operations with other American forces on the second day of the German counteroffensive, information from contemporary records is scanty and, as to particulars, often completely lacking.
The story of the 106th Infantry Division and the attached 14th Cavalry Group is tragic.
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