     At 3:00 PM on December 18th, PFC Fred Morgan of the 28th Infantry Division staggered into the roadblock set up by Task Force Harper, ten miles east of Bastogne. He'd been fighting and running for three days now. Most of Morgan's buddies were dead now, and Morgan had passed into that state some called "walking dead". He knew that he was going to die, that nothing he could do would alter that fact, so he might as well do some fighting. It wasn't rage and it wasn't suicidal; it was a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable that comes from seeing too many people die.
     Most of the other stragglers headed through the roadblock and on to the safety of the rear, but Morgan buttonholed a lieutenant and asked where he could do some good. The lieutenant led him to a foxhole line. Morgan dug himself a hole and settled in. Somebody came by with some hot coffee and a sandwhich.
     At 6:00, the attack hit. Panzers came churning forward, with infantry howling behind. The handful of Shermans at the roadblock were quickly wiped out, as was an anti-tank gun. Morgan concentrated on the infantry; tanks without infantry cover are vulnerable to close-in assault.
     "Let's get outta here!" the guy next to Morgan shouted.
     "I'm not going anywhere," he grunted. The other soldier hesitated, then leapt out of his hole and ran. More GIs bolted, but Morgan knelt in his hole, picking off advancing Germans. A Panzer IV, seeing the lone defender, sprayed the area with its machine gun, but Morgan ducked, waited, and resumed firing. The tank drove to Morgan's hole, spun around, and began working its treads, tearing up the soil and destroying Morgan's hole. When it drove off, there was nothing left of PFC Morgan.
/Roadblocks
     Much of the Battle of the Bulge was fought in roadblock battles. The terrain in the Ardennes is so forbidding that cross-country movement is almost impossible. Thus, the roads are the only way to get around, and a simple roadblock can halt an offensive in its tracks.
     A roadblock consists of several mutually supporting elements. First is a physical blockage on the road to prevent the enemy from bulling through at high speed. An overturned tree or disabled truck can do this. Some anti-tank mines sprinkled in front of the roadblock will discourage attackers as they get close.
     Next you need some heavy weapons: tanks, tank destroyers, or anti-tank guns. These should be concealed a few hundred yards behind the roadblock. Once the fighting starts these will be exposed and could be knocked out quickly, so it's best to dig them in.
     Lastly, you need an infantry screen. The infantry can't stop the tanks, but it can prevent the enemy infantry from getting close. If they have bazookas, they can take out some of the tanks themselves. You'll need your infantry to spread out on either side of the roadblock to prevent the enemy from enveloping the position from the flanks.
     If you're in good shape, some artillery in the rear could make the roadblock almost impregnable. But that seldom happens.
     The value of a roadblock is not that it stops the enemy cold -- few did. Rather, it stops light reconnaissance forces and forces the enemy to deploy a full-scale attack to break it. Such deployment is a time-consuming process. A roadblock delays the enemy./