I’d guess you don’t really celebrate the new year when you’re enduring a historic Belgian winter and trying to not get shot at. That’s more or less what my great-grandfather was doing seven decades ago as a World War II combat medic. We don’t know about his individual time in the 137th Infantry Regiment, we didn’t even know that was his unit until years after he passed away, but I’ve pulled the unit history to get a glimpse of what he might have been going through. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion he was in, he never talked about it, so this is an educated glimpse of a guess.
So, then, for Dec. 31:
Company I was counterattacked by the enemy, who had positions in the woods to their front.
The 1st Battalion jumped off for the town of Villers-la-Bonne-Eau. Companies B and C entered the town and occupied some of the buildings. Two enemy tanks started shelling them. Men from the companies fired bazookas at them, but the tanks kept just out of range, and although several hit the tanks, they did not knock them out. The elements of the two companies were forced to withdraw to the cover of the woods.
At 1700 the Regiment was ordered to dig in for the night and continue operations the following morning.
The 2nd Battalion, less Company G, pulled back to the town of Surre and moved to north of Livarchamps.
Two hundred thirty-five men were reported as missing from Companies K and L. The majority of these men were believed to have been captured in the town of Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, where they had been cut off for two days by enemy tanks and infantry.
Sounds pretty grim for those two companies, indeed. This update — if you look in the map below and scroll a bit to the north and west into Belgium — includes a photograph from that part of the conflict. Scroll around in the rest of the map and click some of the pins for other days to follow along in the 137th’s fight.
This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. These markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.
