     Major Paul Solis of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion had been sent to Stoumont on the morning of December 18th with orders to hold the town until the 30th Infantry Division could arrive. He set up his meager defenses carefully but was caught off guard by an early German attack that captured the main bridge. For the next few hours his tiny force of one infantry company and a platoon of tank destroyers fought a desperate delaying action against heavy odds. By 10:00 that morning, the Germans had gotten overwhelming strength over the bridge and were about to crush Solis' tiny force. He ordered a retreat. In the confusion, most of his command retreated west on the road to Malmedy, while Solis and one platoon took the road north to Spa.
     A few miles out of town, he was flagged down by a desperate Belgian soldier. This was the site of the huge First Army gasoline storage dump, holding over three million gallons of gasoline. The dump was guarded by this one soldier and a handful of civilians. Solis could hear the clank of pursuing German tanks coming up the road. If the Germans got their hands on all this gas, they could fuel their entire offensive all the way to the sea. And all Solis had to stop them was a platoon of tired infantry with no antitank weapons. Solis could feel the hand of Fate pointing directly at him.
     Working frantically, Solis' men poured thousands of gallons of gas into a roadcut at a sharp bend in the road. When the first German tank appeared, they ignited the gas. The Panther tried to get past the flames but couldn't find a path. The German column turned around and returned to Stoumont.
/Gasoline
     The great German general Heinz Guderian once averred that the most important component of a tank is not its gun but its engine. If so, the most important supply to an army is not ammunition but gasoline. The amount of gasoline needed by an army is staggering. Consider the basic numbers: a typical American infantry division was equipped with between 2,000 and 3,000 vehicles of all kinds. Only a few hundred of these were actual combat vehicles; most were three-quarter ton trucks. A corps might have 10,000 vehicles. And on Christmas Day, 1944, the American combat forces fighting in the Bulge mustered over 100,000 vehicles. This huge force consumed over a million gallons of fuel a day -- every drop of which had to be shipped in from the United States, piped across Europe in a pipeline specially constructed for just this purpose, and distributed to the combat units. This gigantic logistics feat was one of the unsung triumphs of the American Army in World War II.
     The German forces were not as highly motorized as the American forces and so needed only about half a million gallons of gasoline a day. Although the High Command had stored up four million gallons for the offensive, they had great difficulties getting the fuel to the troops. The roads were jammed with troops and horse-drawn wagons, torn up by the tank treads, and slippery with ice. The fuel trucks couldn't keep up with the armored spearheads. The 12th SS Panzer Division spent the 20th of December sitting around waiting for fuel. The next day, the 2nd Panzer and 2nd SS Panzer Divisions did the same./