Southeast of Spa runs the Amblève River, the creation of a series of tributaries flowing south from the springs and swamps of the rugged Hohes Venn. The nature of the ground along which the Americans would attempt to defend the myriad headquarters and service installations, railheads, and depots, must be explained. General Hodges' First Army headquarters, set up in the déclassé resort hotels and casinos of the once fashionable watering place, was remote from sound of battle on the morning of 16 December, but in a matter of hours the slashing thrust of the 1st SS Panzer Division roughly altered its ordered existence. Verviers, an important and densely stocked railhead lay eleven miles north of Spa. Liège, twenty miles northwest of Spa, was one of the greatest American supply centers on the Continent. At Spa, which had served the German Emperor as headquarters in World War I, the First Army had established its command post surrounded on every side by service installations, supply dumps, and depots. Behind them, roughly in the triangle formed by the cities of Liège, Verviers, and Spa, lay the supply installations built up through the autumn to support the advance toward the Rhine. Army command on 16 December were deployed north of the Belgian Ardennes.
The bulk of the fourteen divisions under First U.S.
The 1st SS Panzer Division's Dash Westward,
The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (Chapter 11) Chapter XI
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