Did you know a bad phone line got two U.S. regiments killed?

Losing an entire regiment in a matter of days is a terrible loss; losing two is worse. This is exactly what happened to the U.S. 106th Infantry Division, the Golden Lions, at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. What made the event especially tragic was that the loss was caught neither by incompetence nor the enemy’s brilliance, but by something so mundane as a bad phone line.
 
The inexperienced company was posted to the Schnee Eifel, a low mountain range in Eastern Belgium and Western Germany, and lay right in the path of the German surprise offensive. According to the U.S. Army Service Manual, one division was supposed to guard 5 miles (8 km) of the frontline; the 106th, along with an attached regiment-strength cavalry regiment, were strung out over 21 miles (34 km). Two of the division’s three regiments, the 422nd and 423rd, were in the front and badly exposed, while the third regiment was farther back in reserve.

The division commander, Major General Alan W. Jones, phoned his superior, Lieutenant General Try H. Middleton, commander of VIII Corps, to request permission to withdraw his forces. The phone line was secure, but intermittent, and frequently cut out for long moments. Author John Toland later pieced together their conversation as below:
 
Jones – I’m worried about some of my people. [Referring to the two regiments.]
Middleton – I know. How are they?
Jones – Not well. And very lonely.
Middleton – I’m sending up a big friend, ‘Workshop’ [codeword for the 7th Armored Division]. It should reach you about 07.00 a.m. tomorrow.
***Jones – Now about my people. Don’t you think I should call them out?***
***Middleton – You know how things are up there better than I do, but don’t you think your troops should be withdrawn?***
Jones – I want to know how it looks from where you are. Shall I wait?

The two lines marked with asterisks were the sentences the other commander didn’t hear due to the bad line. The two generals walked away from the conversation with a fatal misunderstanding: Middleton through Jones was pulling his troops back, while Jones was under the impression that Middleton wanted the two regiments to remain in place, and gave orders to that effect.
 
German forces quickly surrounded the two regiments, which were forced to surrender. The number of American casualties from the blunder was around 6,500. With two-thirds of his unit gone, a distraught Jones later exclaimed “I’ve lost a division faster than any other commander in the U.S. Army.” One of the lost regiments counted Jones’s own son among its numbers, and Jones himself suffered a (non-fatal) heart attack in the evening of the catastrophe.

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