Each combat command usually consisted of one armored battalion and one armored infantry battalion. Each combat command was a combined arms military organization of comparable size to a brigade or regiment and loosely patterned after the German combined arms approach to mechanized warfare. Leonard’s 9th Armored Division was, like most armored divisions of the period, divided into three separate combat commands (CC): A, B, and R (Reserve). When General Omar Bradley, 12th Army Group commander, visited Middleton at his headquarters in Bastogne, Middleton expressed concern about the overall defensive situation, only to be told, “Don’t worry Troy, they won’t come through here.” Middleton replied, “Maybe not, Brad, but they’ve come through this area several times before.” To help assuage his fears, General Bradley provided VIII Corps with the newly arrived 9th Armored Division. “Don’t Worry Troy, They Won’t Come Through Here” Although the Germans were on the ropes and expected to capitulate soon, General Middleton still worried about the thin spread of his on such a wide front. The three VIII Corps infantry divisions were responsible for an approximate 88-mile front that was just about three times that normally assigned an equivalent defending force. The 106th Infantry Division was newly arrived at the front, replacing the 2nd Infantry Division, and had yet to see combat. The 28th and the 4th had been severely mauled in the bloody battles of the Hürtgen Forest. Three infantry divisions, the 28th, 4th, and 106th, comprised VIII Corps. In December 1944, the Ardennes front or “ghost front” was an area where either veteran Allied units rotated in to rest and recover from terrible combat losses or where new, untested units arrived to gather some combat experience from the minor skirmishes that would occasionally flare up.
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