'Vernielde Duitsche tank in een Belgische stad' 'Knocked out Nazi tanks stand in Belgian street.

'Vernielde Duitsche tank in een Belgische stad' 'Knocked out Nazi tanks stand in Belgian street. Two smouldering German tanks, knocked out by American bazooka and rifle fire, stand in a Belgian street with a dead crew member lying across the back of the first tank, as the Americans answered the Nazi counter-attack into Belgium. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander-in chief, Allied Expeditionary Force, described the attack as the enemy' s supreme effort to break out of a desperate plight. Supreme headquarters announced December 23 that a German armered column had reached the area of Marche and had cut the Marche-Hotton road. Hotton is 26 miles due south of Liege on the river Ourthre, and Marche, six miles from Hotton, is 38 miles west of the German Luxembourg border. More than 4.000 Allied aircraft blasted the Germans in and behind the battle area. Major aerial encounters developed, resulting in 178 Nazi planes being shot down, 22 more probably shot down, 29 damaged and nine more destroyed on the ground. The same day, December 23, American ground forces cut into the lower flank of the German penetration due north of Luxembourg at Mersch. U.S. Signal Corps Photo'