by Thomas D. Morgan

There are many human-interest stories of heroism and sacrifice that have come out of the great Ardennes Campaign of 1944-45. One of the most unusual concerns that of Major Matthew Legler and his U.S. Military Academy 1939 Class Ring. He lost his ring during the hectic days of combat at the start of what Americans call “The Battle of the Bulge.” It was returned to him 40 years later by a young Belgian garbage collector whose hobby was military archeology.

The Quiet Ardennes
On 16 December 1944, Legler was a 28 year old major commanding the 1st Battalion, 393rd Infantry Regiment of the 99th Infantry Division. His battalion was positioned near the twin villages of Rocherath-Krinkelt, just west of the German border in the Belgian Ardennes Forest. The 99th Division was newly arrived from the United States and untested in combat. Since arriving on the Continent in November 1944, the 99th Division had been placed in a defensive sector to gain combat experience. The front lines of the 99th Division ran for 19 miles through belts of timber in the Ardennes that contained rocky gorges, small streams, and steep hills.

At the start of the German Ardennes Offensive, the 99th Division held the right wing of V Corps looking at the German West Wall defenses of the famed Siegfried Line. The Ardennes sector had been quiet for weeks, and the 2nd Infantry Division was attacking through the 99th Division to capture the Roer Valley system of dams. If this attack was successful, the 99th Division was scheduled to follow the 2nd Division and cover its southern flank. It was to be the 99th Division’s first, large-scale operation of the war. Little did anyone know how large-scale it would be.

The Ardennes sector appeared to offer no special risk, because V Corps and the 99th Division had only identified three under-strength German divisions to their front. When Hitler unleashed his Ardennes Offensive on 16 December, V Corps did not know that 12 of approximately 30 German divisions were assembled in front of it, ready to launch the breakthrough attack. The 99th Division was in the path of the 6th SS Panzer Army attack and, in particular, the I SS Panzer Corps consisting of two armored and three infantry divisions.

In late November, Legler had moved his battalion from regimental reserve to be the right flank battalion of the regiment. The 393rd Regiment only had two battalions on line, the 3rd and Legler’s 1st, because the 2nd Battalion had been attached to the 395th Regiment to the north. The 393rd Regiment had demonstrated in front of the German West Wall defenses during the 2nd Division/V Corps attack against the Roer on 13 December. The regiment was deployed along the Belgian-German frontier in the eastern edge of a long forest belt, and the International Highway that marked the border. The 393rd Regimental headquarters was in Krinkelt, and the 1st Battalion held a front of about 500 yards approximately four miles to the east. Of the twin villages of Rocherath-Krinkelt, the Belgian-German border cut diagonally through Legler’s battalion position, and the battalion had a view of the Siegfried Line defenses.

“All Hell Broke Loose”
The night of 15 December, Legler’s right flank units reported tank tracks clanking. Just before dawn on the 16th, Legler said, “all hell broke loose” as artillery, mortars, and Nebelwerfers (rockets) crashed into his positions, and tanks with searchlights ablaze came rumbling through the anti-tank obstacles of the Siegfried Line 300-400 yards to his front. The German gun and Nebelwerfer barrage lasted from about 0525 until 0600. Then, German grenadiers of the 277th Volksgrenadier (people’s infantry) Division advanced out of the artificial moonlight created by the tank searchlights. The other front line battalion of the 99th Division underwent the same type of overwhelming assault. The entire 277th Volksgrenadier Division was destined to hit only three battalions (the 1st and 3rd of the 393rd Regiment and the 2nd of the 394th). These battalions suffered greatly, but by absorbing and delaying the 277th Volksgrenadiers, they held up the entire I SS Panzer Corps.

Most of Legler’s fighting positions were at the edge of the forest belt overlooking the International Highway and generally open ground. That gave them better fields of fire than their neighbor battalions on either side. Legler’s battalion held on, and inflicted a heavy toll on the Germans with their mortar and machine gun fire. None of the advancing Germans got inside of Legler’s position, and the German assault in his sector ground to a halt. Legler credits his initial success to two factors. The battalion had fighting positions for every 1-2 men in addition to their sleeping foxholes; and daily leadership checks of the soldiers’ feet had kept the battalion free of the debilitating trenchfoot that was well-known to soldiers in the damp, cold Ardennes. Nevertheless, regardless of the reasons, it was a heroic action on the part of all of the men.

A Pyrrhic Victory
As the German attack stalled, the commander of the 277th Volksgrenadiers committed his reserve regiment and drove back the American lines about 300 yards in some places. Some of the platoons of Legler’s line companies fell back, and he had to commit his reserve to prevent a breakthrough. By the end of the day, Legler’s battalion still maintained a cohesive defense, but more than one-half of the battalion’s foxhole strength had been lost; and the 3rd Battalion on his left had its right flank pushed back several hundred yards, losing almost as many men as Legler.

About 1030 hours on 17 December, the 393rd Regimental Commander ordered the 1st and 3rd Battalions to move to new positions closer to Rocherath-Krinkelt. The move was completed that afternoon. Just after dark, the Germans overran Legler’s not fully-established command post. Legler and some of his men evacuated the area and spent the night hiding in the forest. The next morning on the 18th, Legler and his staff returned to their former command post area, where he assembled the remaining troops of the battalion. Here, Legler joined Captain Bob McGee, the S3 of the 2nd Battalion of the 394th Regiment on his right flank, and his remaining troops. Together they proceeded west cross-country on the morning of the 18th, taking a few vehicles and those wounded that could be moved. While moving back toward Murringen and the American lines, the remnants of the two battalions met a hail of enemy small arms fire from a village. Communications were sporadic, but an artillery liaison officer with the group called in enough artillery fire from a Corps Artillery unit to enable the group to escape back into the woods. The main body followed a creek bed and, under cover of darkness, entered American lines in the vicinity of Wirtzfeld. On the morning of 19 December, the 1st Battalion, 393rd Infantry dug-in along the Elsenborn Ridge with less than 300 of its officers and men left.

Legler and his battalion remained on the Elsenborn Ridge until the end of January 1945. They formed part of the critical northern shoulder of the “Bulge” along with other V Corps units, the 9th, 2nd, and 1st Infantry Divisions. The 6th SS Panzer Army could not shake this hard shoulder free and the major German role in the Ardennes Offensive passed to the 5th Panzer Army to the south.

The Battlefield Gives Up The Ring
Legler has no recall when he lost his ring, nor when he first realized that he did not have it anymore. The heavy gold ring with an onyx stone was found in an overgrown foxhole in a forested area called the Rocherwald, not far from the village of Murringen. From the location of the foxhole, it would seem that the ring was lost on 17 or 18 December, when Legler and his unit were trying to avoid the Germans and set up a defense. The man who found it, Alain Jacquemain, was a 26-year-old garbage collector from Charleroi, Belgium, who spent his free time going over battlefields with a metal detector, l ooking for military souvenirs. Jacquemain had found many objects in this manner, and he had accumulated an extensive private collection of World War II relics. He even drove a restored World War II jeep as his personal vehicle. In spite of his previous success in ten years of searching on the battlefield, he admitted that Legler’s ring was the nicest thing that he had ever found. Naturally, he was excited with his souvenir and anxious to find its owner.

Finding the owner of the ring is almost a story in itself. Jacquemain found the ring in 1982. While visiting the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) near Mons, Belgium to see a rugby match, Jacquemain asked a British colonel if he could identify the ring’s owner. The colonel immediately recognized the ring as a West Point class ring and saw Legler’s initials engraved on the inside. U.S. authorities at SHAPE researched the USMA register of Graduates and determined that Legler was retired and living in Hilton Head, South Carolina. That got the ball rolling. The author and his commander, Colonel David E. Schorr, USMA 1957, became involved in notifying Legler, and negotiating with the Belgian Gendarmerie and Jacquemain for the return of the ring. It took almost two years to convince Jacquemain to part with the ring. Jacquemain delayed in returning the ring—not because he wanted a reward or to keep it, but because he wanted to be sure that Legler was really alive and that he would receive it. (Jacquemain had heard that Legler had died.) Also, it was Jacquemain’s fondest wish to be able to return the ring to Legler in person. That was not possible, and finally Jacquemain agreed to turn over the ring to the author in a semi-official ceremony at SHAPE. That way Jacquemain would have proof that he had done the right thing. The ring was promptly mailed to Legler, heavily insured, and he had it back almost 40 years after when he had lost it.

The return of the ring was a fitting end to a story that had started in 1938, when First Classman Legler bought his 1939 Class Ring from Tiffany’s. Legler wore his ring during his Firstie Year at West Point, and as a young officer for five years during peacetime and wartime training assignments, before ending up in Belgium in 1944. After surviving the initial stages of the “Battle of the Bulge,” Legler tripped a land mine on 1 February 1945 that resulted in his medical retirement in 1946 as a Lieutenant Colonel. The war was over for him, as well as his career in the Army. A Silver Star and Purple Heart are his souvenirs of the war. Since then, Legler retired a second time from Mobil Oil in 1980, and moved to Hilton Head.

When first approached about his ring, Legler did not seem anxious to return to the scene of the “Bulge.” No doubt the memories of fallen comrades, and the end of his promising military career, had something to do with it. In researching this article, the author was pleased to learn that Matthew Legler had finally returned to the Ardennes in 1989, on a historical tour with noted World War II historian Charles B. MacDonald. The battlefield had given up his ring after 40 years, and Legler had made his pilgrimage on the 45th Anniversary year of the “Battle of the Bulge.”

LTC Thomas D. Morgan, USA, Retired is a USMA 1958 graduate who visited the Ardennes several times while stationed at SHAPE in the early 1980s, and later in the 90s while working for a Defense contractor. The historical background sources for this article were: Charles B. MacDonald’s A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge; Hugh M. Cole’s The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, US Army in World War II; and correspondence with LTC (Ret) Matthew L. Legler.

—Submitted by Bob Rhodes, BOBA Vice President Military & Veteran Affairs