With the first light some eighteen Mark V tanks started down the ridge spur pointing toward Ouren at the same time the 1130th Regiment and the 156Th Regiment resumed the attack to cut off and destroy the forward American companies. Then as the attack got moving they were raised to lay heavy counterbattery fire on the 229th Field Artillery Battalion (Lt. First the Werfers and guns pounded the front line, particularly the 1st Battalion positions. The German artillery could take a hand this morning, particularly since a number of forward observers had wormed into the American positions. About an hour before dawn eleven searchlights flicked on, their rays glancing dully from the low clouds back onto the Lutzkampen-Sevenig ridge. This was the Mark V Battalion of the 116th Panzer Division assembling to lead the attack toward the Ouren bridges. Through the early hours of 17 December American outposts reported sounds of tank movement in Lutzkampen. Finally, the regimental antitank and cannon companies were disposed around Ouren guarding the bridges, the roads, and the regimental command post. Some additional help for the 112th did arrive before daybreak on 17 December, four self-propelled tank destroyers out of the 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion borrowed from Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division, at Trois Vierges. This move was made early in the morning with disastrous results recorded earlier.
Subsequently General Cota ordered them to go to the aid of the hardpressed 110th Infantry. On the afternoon of the 16th the division commander had loaned Neslon the light tank company of the 707th Tank Battalion, but after a sweep through the 1st Battalion area in which not a shot was fired the tanks recrossed the river.
Even so, the unit accounted for six tanks on the 16th and broke up two panzer assaults of company size. Colonel Nelson's antitank reserve, Company C, 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion, was deployed on the ridge west of the river, but these were towed guns, dug in and relatively immobile. The presence of enemy tanks in Lutzkampen constituted a distinct threat, even to infantry in pillboxes.
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