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(View the map) New Year's Eve came and went, uneventful, unspectacular, heralded only by bursts of machine guns on the stroke of midnight "just to start the year out right." On January 2, 1945, the 1st Battalion left its reserve position around Bra, to relieve the 325th Glider Infantry on the right flank. Enemy artillery fire increased in intensity, setting fire to many buildings in Bra with incendiary shells. The 504, relieved in the Bra sector on January 4, by the 329th Infantry, marched 15 miles to Fosse. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions immediately went into the attack and gained their objective - the high ground southeast of Fosse overlooking the Salm River. Enemy resistance to the advance was generally light, consisting mainly of small isolated units. Several poorly organized enemy counter-attacks in company strength were broken up by the 3rd Battalion with heavy losses to the enemy in both casualties and prisoners. The quality of enemy soldiers encountered at this time was far inferior to those met in earlier stages of the breakthrough. Whereas first contact with the enemy had been made with SS Panzer Grenadiers - first class opponents - the regiment was now fighting a heterogeneous mass of second-rate troops consisting of raw, ill-trained recruits, satellite troops, and "drafted" Russians. The degree of resistance offered by the enemy was in proportion to the inferior quality of their personnel. On the 9th, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Battalions, and the 551st Parachute Battalion, which had been attached to the 504 the day before, jumped off on an attack to reach the West Bank of the Salm River. In the early phases of the attack, enemy infantry and artillery resistance was stubborn. However, as the attack progressed, resistance waned with only the 2nd Battalion meeting any real opposition in the final stages of the advance. The line along the Salm was held and improved with little noteworthy activity until January 11, when the regiment was relieved and moved by trucks to billets in and around the village of Remouchamps. After a cheerful two weeks, during which the only outward manifestation of the enemy's ill-will was ro-bombs which putted continuously overhead on their way to Liege, the regiment was notified of a mission. Two days were consumed by staff meetings, command reconnaissance, map distributions, the usual stop and go, pack and unpack dry runs until on January 26, battalions loaded on trucks and headed toward St. Vith; the regimental CP was set up in a hall room of an antiquated, trophy-bedecked chateau in the neighboring village of Wallerode. The division field order was received, establishing as fact what most paratroopers had for several days taken for granted-an attack on the Siegfried Line. The First and Third Armies were to pierce the Line; the 504 was allocated the right flank of the First Army.
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