"In September 1944 the campaign for the liberation of Alsace began. The 1st French and the VIIth US Army encountered stiff resistance in the Vosges Mountains against an enemy determined to defend a land that was attached to the Reich in 1940. In November, the French finally broke through the Belfort Gap, rolling down the plain from the south towards Colmar and liberating Mulhouse on the 21st.
With the Germans managing to reorganize an effective line of defense north of the city, flanking operations were launched in the La Hardt forest in order to take the Chalampé bridge on the Rhine. This would threaten the supply lines of the 19th German Army encircled in the Colmar pocket. From November 28 to December 3, bloody fighting raged in the woods to repel the French forces behind the Huningue canal, until the Jagdpanthers of the Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 654 gathered for the final assault..."