Brigadier General Bruce C. Clarke should have been on leave in Paris, enjoying a well-earned break from the nearly constant combat he’d been in since the D-Day breakout in late-July launched the Allied sweep across France led by the tank unit he then commanded—Combat Command A (CCA), 4th Armored Division. When that Allied “Blitzkrieg in Reverse” brought the European war’s front line to Germany’s doorstep that autumn, however, Clarke had been promoted to Brig. Gen. and given command of CCB, 7th Armored Division—a troubled outfit Clarke had quickly whipped into shape.
But, instead of relaxing in Paris, at 2:30 p.m., Dec. 17, 1944, Clarke was on the top floor room of a school in St. Vith, Belgium, in the northern sector of the Ardennes Forest region of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Standing alongside Maj. Gen. Alan W. Jones, the beleaguered and overwhelmed commander of U.S. 106th Infantry Division defending this sector of the Allied front line, the men used binoculars to observe swarms of German infantrymen backed by panzers approaching the town’s eastern outskirts. These were lead elements of the massive German Ardennes Offensive—soon to be called The Battle of the Bulge. The vital St. Vith crossroads sat squarely in the path of the German main attack. After a few tense minutes, Jones turned to Clarke and said, “You take command, Clarke. I’ll give you all I have…I’ve lost a division quicker than any division commander in the U.S. Army.” If the vital crossroads and transportation network at St. Vith was going to be held and the German advance delayed or stopped, it was up to Bruce Clarke do it.
