     Captain Seymour Green of the 9th Armored Division was commanding a small supply unit that had spent the night of December 16th in Ligneuville, three miles south of Baugnez. It was a Sunday morning, and he was awaiting orders to move out when a bulldozer driver came roaring down the hill road from Baugnez, screaming that German tanks were right behind him. Green had good reason to think that perhaps the excited bulldozer operator was exaggerating. He decided to check things out for himself.
     Grabbing a carbine, he ordered his men to get ready to move out and grabbed a jeep and driver. They proceeded up the road to a sharp bend; there Green told the driver to stay behind while he went ahead for a look. Creeping forward stealthily, he rounded the bend -- and came face to face with the lead tanks of Kamfgruppe Peiper. Green stopped dead in his tracks. So did the Germans. For a long moment, the most powerful thrust of the German offensive was stopped cold by one petrified American captain armed with a carbine. Then the Germans started laughing. They waved him aside and drove past, laughing. Green stood sheepishly by the side of the road. This incident would NOT go down in history books as "Green's Last Stand".
/The M1 Rifle
     The weapon Captain Green used to halt Kampfgruppe Peiper was the M1 carbine, a lighter version of the M1, the standard infantry rifle of the US Army. This was an excellent weapon, modern in design and very reliable. It was the first semi-automatic rifle in general use by a major power. 
     All the other major armies used bolt-action rifles, which fired one shot at a time. The soldier firing a bolt-action rifle must pull the bolt back, load a bullet into the chamber, push the bolt forward, and twist it down to lock it in place. This must be done each time he shoots. It is a slow process. With practice, a soldier can get off 10 shots a minute. In the heat of combat, this might not be enough.
     The semi-automatic rifle uses a clip of eight bullets. The burning gases from one shot are routed through a chamber to push a piston mechanism that drives the bolt back, loads the next bullet, and closes the bolt, all in about half a second. The end result is that the soldier simply aims and pulls the trigger for each shot, without having to reload between shots. After eight shots, though, a new clip must be loaded.
     (Fully automatic weapons fire continuously once the trigger is pulled. Machine guns, machine pistols, and assault rifles are fully automatic. Most modern armies equip their soldiers with fully automatic weapons and then try to train them not to waste ammunition.)
     The M1 was a powerful weapon. It weighed over nine pounds. Its 30-caliber bullet (0.30 inches in diameter) could kill a man half a mile away -- and the rifle was accurate enough to hit a man that far away. But it was also a cumbersome weapon. The M1 carbine was a trimmed-down version, with a shorter barrel and a smaller stock. It weighed less than seven pounds and was quite handy, but not much good for stopping a Panzer division./