The Battle of the Bulge started today, December 16th, 1944

[irisblue]

Jack D, you were just a kid. 🕯️

[Capperdan]

1. My Dad was there

And still kicking at 93. He retired as a Colonel, and is disgusted with this President.

[irisblue]

2. Respect for your Dad

[cwydro]

38. Damn, he must have been what? 17?

Just a kid.

[Capperdan]

57. Yep, he says his first drink of alcohol was a glass of Schnapps in Switzerland when it was over

[wasupaloopa]

54. My dad was there too as was my father-in-law

[Victor_c3]

3. In 2005, I did a tour of the area surrounding that battle

I was a junior officer in the Army at the time and one of the senior officers in my brigade got the idea to get all of us officers together and walk through the battle. Actually, we drove through it and visited many key sites. We got a tour bus and hired a prominate historian who had written a number of books on the subject to show us around. Overall, it took us 4 days to go through it all.

Having just gotten back from Iraq within the previous year, standing in the same spots Soldiers in 1944 were standing had a lot of meaning to me. The historian who guided us had been doing this tour for decades and had met many of the veterans from both sides who fought in this battle. He was great with names and often personal details these guys encountered. It’s unfortunate that I don’t remember his name.

Holes in the ground that had been dug as fighting positions were still visible. You could also see all of the communications wire that had been stretched between various headquarters as well.

The scale of the operation was tremendous.

[Bradshaw3]

10. Thank you for the story

What you describe is what I call living history. When you can see foxholes that are still there for me it really brings the events to life - that at least is the feeling I got at Gettysburg when you see things like the rocks up on Little Round Top that were piled up by Union forces and are still there.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. Did you see it with snow on the ground?

It's an added dimension of misery. Just eating a frozen ration would be a major undertaking. Digging a foxhole would be an all-day effort. And then, on top of all that, there's a war going on.

[irisblue]

17. And sleeping in a snowcovered foxhole for 6 weeks. nt

[Victor_c3]

20. I was there early november

It was chilly, but no snow.

I was stationed at Grafenwhoer, Germany at the time. Coincidentally, in WWII, it was a German military base. Furthermore, supposedly plans for the battle where drawn up there as well, but I’m not sure if that is true or not.

I have done various field exercises in Germany in the winter. The cold and never being able to escape from it undoubtedly adds another dimension of “suck” to everyone dealt with in that battle. In that sense, I’m glad I fought my war where it was much warmer.

Position after position that we visited was overrun by the Germans. That was the intent of the battle, to break through the allied front. However, the victory was also in their overrun positions. Because of the fight the Allies fought, the Germans had to spend more resources and time than they planned on to break through these positions. All of these individual little spots where Americans were overrun, ultimately is what caused the Germans to lose. The German push exhausted itself before it was able to accomplish its goal.

All of the little towns I visited in Belgium and Luxembourg had monuments thanking the Americans and allies for what they did. American tanks left behind stand everywhere. Sadly, if you look at those tanks, they are all what are called “catastrophic kills”. They have holes in them from German munitions and it is obvious the occupants didn’t survive. If a tank was at all salvageable, it was fixed up and quickly returned to the fight.

[GulfCoast66]

63. Thank you so much for your description of the battle.

I never served but have read enough about the battle to know the general narrative is incorrect at the expense of the soldiers there.

The true narrative is that when hit by an overwhelmingly superior force, countless Americans remained on their post when defeat along with death or capture was the only possible outcome. Their sacrifice prevented the Offensive from being a repeat of 1940. Their steadfast defense cost the Germans 3-4 days and allowed the Allies to totally inilate the attacking armies.

The Generals commanding the allied counter offensive had no reason to credit these men when they could make themselves out as heros. Patton and Montgomery come to mind.

[WeekiWater]

4. W H was just a kid.

He began talking to me about it a couple of years before he died. Love you Grandpa.

[irisblue]

5. Respect for your Grandpa

[WeekiWater]

7. To Jack D as well.

[underpants]

6. My grandfather fought in that

He spent 2 years at the Greenbrier- it was an Army hospital after the war. A mortar landed in his foxhole. Everyone else died.

[irisblue]

8. Respect for your Grandfather

I married into the family decades after, he would only tell me that, as the 'barber' he started cutting the troops hair in Feburary 1945.

[Dennis Donovan]

9. My Dad was there with the 551st AAA AW Bn, Company B in XX Corp

Cprl, gun captain of a 40mm Bofors.

After the battle, during the Occupation of Germany, Regensburg (Dad in profile closest to the camera):


🕯️

On edit; I blew up the center of the photo because the children behind the officer are barefooted and watching the spectacle with a look of wonderment. I can't help to wonder what those poor waifs had just been thru the previous months...

[irisblue]

12. Respect for your Father

[3Hotdogs]

11. I was a teacher in New Providence. N.J. One of the teachers in our school was an Austrian,

conscripted by Hitler's army. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. His unit was surrounded and negotiations for surrender were taking place. He was the only one in his unit that spoke English so he was the translator.

Some officers wanted to fight on. Others in the unit threatened the officers if they did not surrender. He ended up in an army base in the U.S. Somehow he got to stay here and became a citizen.

Years later, the movie, "The Battle of the Bulge" was on tv. He was enthusiastically waiting to watch it. Next day, I asked him about the movie. He said he had to turn it off. The scene with tanks coming after the Germans was too real for him.

[leanforward]

13. Thank you for bringing up this date.

Read the comments. My dad was a combat medic through the bulge. As a military brat, he took us to Bastogne. He pointed out where there had been an aid station in a basement of a building off the square. Likewise, in the cathedral, the GIs had a fire in the middle of the church. When we were there, the pews had returned.

He also mentioned, that when the weather cleared on the 23rd or 24th, mother nature gave up air control. He and other survivors were assigned to the 101st while his unit, the 52nd AIB was reconstituted.

JFWIW, in meeting with the unit survivors, I met a gentleman who had become a 1st Sgt at the tender age of 21. Several of the guys at the reunions were lucky and made it all the way to Czechoslovakia, before the pull back.

[irisblue]

18. Respect for your Father

I recently rewatched 'Flags of Our Fathers' & 'Letters from Iwo Jima'; both movies made the point that to shoot the medic was a way to kill more soldiers. I recently read that shooting at medics in Iraq means massive artillery response to the shooters place. Somethings hold true over decades.

[Kaleva]

15. I knew a vet who fought in that battle

When the battle started, he spent the night crying in his foxhole because he thought he was going to be dead by dawn. He survived but many of his friends did not.

A number of years ago I did a service call for an elderly lady. I saw a pic of a man dressed in what I thought to be a WWII era dress uniform. I asked the lady who it was and she said it was her brother who had been killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

[irisblue]

19. Respect for that woman. Respect for that vet

[California_Republic]

16. It was a dark Christmas

The Allies thought the end of the war was near and then this.

[jeffreyi]

21. And on the other side of the world

The Oruku Maru and other "hell ships". My mom's first husband was a fatality.

[irisblue]

22. I had to google that. I knew in general about the POW/ Womens Camps in the Pacific

Source >>wiki...Ōryoku Maru (鴨緑丸, named after Yalu River) was a Japanese passenger cargo ship which was commissioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II as a troop transport and prisoner of war (POW) transport ship. Japanese POW transport ships are often referred to as hell ships, due to their notoriously unpleasant conditions and the many deaths that occurred on board. In December 1944, the ship was bombed by American aircraft, killing 200 Allied POWs. Hundreds more died in the months that followed.

Thank you for teaching me today
for your Mother. for her husband

[jeffreyi]

64. Thanks.

I never knew him, of course, but I think about him around this time every year. Those were very difficult times, I don't think modern people have a very good idea of how tough and violent things were. I know I don't.

[SaintLouisBlues]

23. My Uncle David was killed there, Dec. 31, 1944. Here's where he's buried. I hope to visit there some

day, like my Dad was able to do a few years ago:



The Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial is located in Hamm, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. The cemetery can be found 2.5 kilometers southwest of Luxembourg Airport. It is administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Under a U.S.-Luxembourg treaty signed in 1951 the U.S. government was granted free use in perpetuity of the land covered by the cemetery, without taxation.

The cemetery, which is 50.5 acres (20.4 ha) in extent contains the remains of 5,076 American service members. On 22 occasions two brothers rest side-by-side in adjacent graves. Most of the interred died during the Battle of the Bulge which was fought nearby in winter 1944/1945. The 5,076 headstones are set in 9 plots of fine grass, lettered A to I. Separating the plots are two malls radiating from the memorial and two transverse paths. Two flagpoles overlook the graves area. Situated between the two flagpoles lies the grave of General George S. Patton.

Not far from the cemetery entrance stands the white stone chapel, set on a wide circular platform surrounded by woods. It is embellished with sculpture in bronze and stone, a stained-glass window with the insignia of the five major U.S. commands that operated in the region, and a mosaic ceiling.

(from wiki)

[irisblue]

24. Respect for David

[Saboburns]

59. My condolences

Reminds me of something that really touched me. Great War inscriptions that I saw on Twitter.

"You lie in a foreign land dear son, may a kind hand lay down a flower for me"

Link to tweet

?s=19

Some of those inscriptions are jarring, and this one really stayed with me.

[SaintLouisBlues]

60. Thanks for that Saboburns

[Saboburns]

61. You are very, very welcome.

All the Best!

[Shemp Howard]

25. Mel Brooks was there.

Brooks was in the 1104th Engineer Combat Group. As he said later, “I was a combat engineer. Isn’t that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in this world are combat and engineering.”

Got to love Mel!

[irisblue]

31. Respect for Mel Brooks

I did not know that, another reason to enjoy his movies

[pecosbob]

58. I love that he produced Get Smart along with Buck Henry...

[pecosbob]

26. The General That History Forgot...Maj. Gen. Troy H. Middleton

and One That Popular Lore Created

http://87thinfantrydivision.com/mitch-kaidy/the-general-that-history-forgot-and-one-that-popular-lore-created

[irisblue]

33. That's quite a read. Thank you for posting that.

On edit...
This section gave me goose bumps on reading it...

..."the American and German armies clashed head-on, an action known in military circles as a “meeting engagement.”

From Dec. 30, 1944, through Jan. 12, 1945, fighting raged all around Bastogne. “In snow, sleet, and deepening cold,”

Each Army, knowing the stakes, head on fighting. No wonder that Jack would not talk about that specific
time.

[MicaelS]

48. Wow, I thought I knew about WWII.

Have never read this story. Thanks so much for posting.

[leanforward]

56. Thank you for the link.

[oasis]

27. Thank you, Irisblue for posting. We should never forget our WWll heroes.

[Siwsan]

28. My Uncle Ray was there

[irisblue]

30. Respect for Ray

[Grasswire2]

29. My Uncle Pat was there.

He came home with "shell shock". Many years later I sat next to him in a movie theater; the feature was about the Wild West. One scene started unexpectedly with the sound of a cannon. My uncle jumped out of his seat, momentarily looking for a place to dive. He often had the shakes.

He was once captured briefly by Germans. He also served in Africa, and was about to be sent on to the South Pacific when the war ended.

As awful as it was for him, the experiences of my Uncle Bob as a POW for nearly four years in the Philippines were infinitely worse.

And what a time it was for their mother at home.

[irisblue]

32. Respect for Pat Respect for Bob Respect for their Mothers

[mitch96]

41. "sound of a cannon. My uncle jumped out of his seat"

When I was a kid in the late '60s an acquaintance of ours who just go back from Vietnam. We were at a college "rathskeller" listening to some music when someone thought they were cute and set off a fire cracker.. We all jumped and then asked where Shultzy was.. He dove under the table and took him a minute or two to come out. He was obviously shaken... Never saw him again...
m

[Grasswire2]

42. It never leaves them.

And there are so many instances that can be the trigger. Car backfiring, etc. (Do cars backfire any more?)

[irisblue]

43. Independence Day Fireworks and NY Eve fools

Got to be a bad days for many

[Cousin Dupree]

34. My father received a Purple Heart for his injuries in the Battle of the Bulge. A real hero.

[irisblue]

35. Respect for your Father

[TeamPooka]

36. There's a great book Nobody Comes Back by Donn Pearce, who also wrote Cool Hand Luke, about the

Battle of the Bulge.
Based on his personal experiences there.
I knew him and it's a great book.

[irisblue]

37. Respect for Donn

[panader0]

39. My uncle got a Purple Heart there.

[irisblue]

40. Respect for Uncle

[elocs]

44. My dad stepped on a booby trap while fighting in Germany in Nov. of '44

and the war was over for him then.
He was a heavy machine gunner and had joined up before Pearl Harbor and had fought through North Africa and into Sicily, then to England where he trained for D-Day, landing on Omaha Beach and then fighting through France and finally into Germany.
If it were today he would have been diagnosed with PTSD. He really was killed in WWII, it just took him 25 years to die. Only after he had died I found out that he had a Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster, campaign medals, and a Silver Star.

[irisblue]

45. Respect for your Father

[Generic Other]

49. These guys were tough

I don't know how they had the strength to survive that. Don't ever want to find out either.

[elocs]

50. Until you got killed or wounded badly enough not to be able to fight anymore,

they just kept throwing you back into the fight. I have a letter that my dad wrote to his dad after D-Day and it didn't say much other that "you almost had 1 less son this day".
There are American cemeteries in Europe, in places like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands where a second generation there is caring for the graves of the men they know fought and died to free them.

On a lighter side, I've always wondered if I had or still have an older brother or sister somewhere else in Europe or North Africa because my father was a good looking young man who sang and played the guitar and certainly had a way about him. It was 8 years before he ever met my mother and I'm sure he didn't live the life of a monk.

[Generic Other]

46. My Dad was there too

He was 39. He won a Bronze Star for saving a kid. He proudly carried a card in his wallet proclaiming himself to be one of the Sons of Bitche. Century Division.

[irisblue]

47. Respect for your Father

[DinahMoeHum]

51. My dad was there, in the town of St. Vith, Belgium.

He was a radio operator attached to a HQ company with the 106th Infantry Division. His unit was overrun, and he was a POW in Germany for several months. Liberated by Patton's troops in April 1945.

[irisblue]

52. Respect for your Father

[dameatball]

53. I am not sure how to link to this. But google Gene Ellenson's letter to the UF team referencing his

experience at the Battle of the Bulge. You do not have not be a UF fan to appreciate what it was like.

[leanforward]

55. Thank you for the link

Read it several times. That sounds like the way it was done. I know once the weather cleared, everything showed up. As mentioned earlier the Coach has passed. My dad has passed.

One of the things I always look for in the telling of experiences is the units involved. My dad was part of the 9th Armored Division, 52 Armored Infantry Battalion. As a combat medic he worked the battalion Medical Officer. When the Bulge happened, the Medical Officer and his medics were able to make it back to Bastogne and set up shop.

[irisblue]

62. Respect for your Father

[Aristus]

65. I once met a German veteran of the Battle of the Bulge.

It was back when I was a Medical Assistant. The man came in to the clinic, and I got a chance to talk with him about his WWII service in the Wehrmacht.

What was interesting was learning that the American Brotherhood of Battle of the Bulge veterans accepted him as a member, even though he fought for the other side. He told me that their belief was "Hey, you endured the same hardships that we did; you belong."
Which I thought was very cool.