The Germans were ready and waiting behind their defenses, confident that the terrain to their front was virtually inaccessible. They were misled by the certainty that no one could keep supply lines open in such weather, using the miserable forest ruts that served as roads. The Germans overlooked the fact that the WWII U.S. airborne divisions were comprised of fighting regiments and battalions, unencumbered by huge supply trains, kitchen trucks, tanks heavy and light artillery and large medical facilities.
The airborne battalions were essentially lean, self-dependent fighting units. They had two or three jeeps per battalion, light machineguns, and mortars for organic artillery. Moreover, all of their equipment and ammunition was manhandled by the paratroopers, who usually traveled by foot.
Medical evacuation was initially by stretcher to a collecting point where stretcher-equipped jeeps transported the wounded to an austere aid station.
Each day the snow got deeper, the temperatures lower, the fog and mist thicker, the chill winds more penetrating -- yet the 508th PIR troopers advanced. All day long, troopers struggled in long twisting columns warmed by rapid movement through deep snow under heavy loads and then freezing whenever the columns halted, confronted by German patrols or for a brief rest.
Warren Brown, a PFC in the Hq1 81mm mortar platoon says. I wore a burlap potato sack like a shawl for warmth. Whenever our column halted, I shared the sack with my Lieutenant. We would put our feet in the sack, pulled it up as high as possible, wrap our arms about each other and fall over in the nearest snow bank.
We napped that way until the column started moving again. Neither of us suffered frozen feet throughout the campaign.
By late afternoon, January 28, the regiment assembled in division reserve around the small Belgium hamlet of Wallerode. A group of Germans, that we had apparently by-passed earlier in the day, wandered into the assembly area. In the ensuing firefight, some casualties were sustained but all the Germans were killed. | 
