Combat Command B planned to resume the attack early the next morning, but the men were delayed by surrendering Germans. After some 175 prisoners were rounded up, the attack began at 10:30 a.m. The lead elements of the 56th Armored Infantry reached the outskirts of Herrlisheim at about 11:30 a.m., but Company B suffered almost 50 percent casualties in the open, frozen fields. Once inside the town, the Americans ran into a German assault gun and heavy small-arms fire. Still held up on the west bank of the Zorn, American M4A3 Sherman tanks lined the banks of the river and provided fire support. Around dusk, German anti-tank guns started picking off the lined-up Shermans like targets in a shooting gallery. The American armor quickly withdrew back into Rohrwiller, leaving the infantry in Herrlisheim to fend for itself.

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Elsewhere along the front that day, the XXXIX Panzer Corps penetrated the VI Corps’ center, driving the American line back into the Haguenau Forest. The VI Corps was now fighting for its life on three sides. Brooks committed his final remaining reserve, the 14th Armored Division, to the fierce fighting that followed in the towns of Hatten and Rittershoffen.

The Germans in Herrlisheim, meanwhile, continued to fight back. That night, the Germans slipped more armored vehicles and white-cloaked infantrymen into the town. By 3 a.m. on January 10, the 56th Armored Infantry was effectively cut off. At dawn that morning, CCB attempted to move up several M-8 self-propelled assault guns, but the vehicles crashed through the ice on the waterways and could not be recovered until after nightfall. Several light tanks made it into Herrlisheim that day, but they proved useless in the heavy building-to-building fighting.

Later that day, the Bailey bridges finally arrived and the Shermans of Company C, 714th Tank Battalion, 14th Armored, prepared to charge across the Zorn to relieve the 56th Armored Infantry. The attack was preceded by an artillery bombardment along the northern edge of the Steinwald. Just as the barrage started, however, German artillery fired back in response. Several of the 714th’s tanks were knocked out, and the advanced command post of the 56th took a direct hit. The armored attack was canceled.

The 56th Armored Infantry in Herrlisheim was now down to an effective strength of only 150 men. Around 4 p.m., General Allen ordered the combat command to renew the attack. Colonel Bromley protested, arguing that it would be more effective to contain the bridgehead and let the Germans wear themselves out trying to sustain it. Allen relieved Bromley of his command, but later that night the general also ordered the evacuation of Herrlisheim.

For the next several days, both sides tried to build up their forces while glaring at each other across the fogbound fields and frozen streams. The Germans fed more units into the bridgehead, hoping to build up enough mass to punch through to the Germans fighting at Hatten and Rittershoffen, thereby pinching off the VI Corps’ salient. On January 13, Patch gave the VI Corps the 36th Infantry Division and Combat Command A of the 12th Armored, and Brooks immediately ordered the combat command to close on Gambsheim. That same day, Combat Command B repelled a strong German attack from Herrlisheim toward Rohrwiller. From about January 15 on, all German operations in the bridgehead came under the control of the XXXIX Panzer Corps, which now included the 10th SS Panzer Division, the 7th Parachute Division, and the 384th and 667th Assault Gun brigades.

The 12th Armored planned to renew its effort to take Herrlisheim on January 16, this time with two combat commands. CCB would attack again from Rohrwiller, while CCA would come in from the southwest, crossing the Zorn near Weyersheim, which was still in American hands. Combat Command A’s actual objective was Offendorf, which would cut off the Germans in Herrlisheim. At the same time, the 79th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 314th Infantry, would attack Drusenheim, and the French 3rd Algerian Infantry Division would attack north along the Rhine from Kilstett toward Gambsheim.

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