Scroll of Honor – Robert Cone Elliott
Christmas in Combat
Written by: Kelly Durham 
It was Christmas Eve, a night when he should have been snug inside his home with his wife Ileen, trimming a tree and perhaps wrapping that last surprise gift. Instead, Staff Sergeant Robert Cone Elliott of the 289th Infantry Regiment was marching along snowy Belgian roads to prepare to counterattack the Germans. It was 1944, and Elliott, a member of Clemson’s Class of 1945, was smack in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.
Elliott, a general sciences major, came to Clemson from Columbia in the fall of 1941. He was a member of that year’s Tiger Cub, or freshman, football team. The Cubs claimed the unofficial state title for freshman teams by thumping Furman 33-0, beating the Citadel 19-6, and the Gamecocks 19-7. The outbreak of war on December 7 changed the plans of many of the young men at Clemson.
Elliott returned home to Columbia and went into the grocery business.
Robert Elliott, front row, far left, and his 1941 freshman football teammates
In March 1943, Elliott reported to Fort Jackson and was inducted into the Army. He was ordered to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and then to Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky, for additional training. In 1944, he was assigned to the 289th Infantry Regiment of the 75th Infantry Division. The division sailed for England on October 22 and landed in France on December 13. Three days later, the Germans launched their great winter counteroffensive.
Though untested, the 75th Infantry Division was available and was rushed into defensive positions along the north shoulder of the bulge the Germans had pushed into Allied lines. On Christmas Day, Staff Sergeant Elliott’s 289th Infantry Regiment was ordered to block the main east-west highway between Grandmenil and Erezee. Soon, the Germans tested the fresh American troops. With a captured Sherman tank leading the column and masking the eight Panther tanks that followed, the Germans attempted to run the 289th’s roadblock. The Sherman got through, but in the melee that followed, a 289th bazooka gunner disabled a Panther tank at a narrow spot where the highway ran along the side of a cliff. The other German tanks were forced to retreat to Grandmenil.
By nightfall on December 26, a task force from the 3rd Armored Division, reinforced by infantry from the 289th, recaptured Grandmenil. The Germans’ strategic advance had been checked, and their initiative had been lost.
On January 19, as the 75th was fighting in the vicinity of Vielsalm, Staff Sergeant Elliott was killed in action. The Battle of the Bulge would continue for another week until Allied counterattacks finally restored the battle line to the Roer River. The battle was the largest and costliest combat of World War II for American forces, with more than 19,000 Americans killed. It was the last offensive of the war for Germany’s Thousand-Year Reich, which would last less than four more months.
Staff Sergeant Robert Cone Elliott was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star Medal, Infantryman Badge, Good Conduct Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with two bronze service stars, and WWII Victory Medal. He was survived by his wife, his mother, two sisters, and four brothers. In May 1949, Elliott’s remains were returned to Columbia, where he was reinterred in the Elmwood Memorial Gardens.
For more information on Robert Cone Elliott see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/robert-cone-elliott/
For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/
See also A Time For Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge by Charles B. MacDonald, 1985.