Posted on 12/16/2013 6:30:04 AM PST by OKSooner
Sixty nine years ago, the largest land battle ever fought by the US Army started today. Do you know anyone who was there? Or maybe someone from your family was there and didn't come back, or came back changed in some way?
My Dad was there, 82nd Airborne, 508 PIR. He’s still around, but suffering from dementia. He survived the war from D-day until the end without major injury. During the Bulge, his toes turned black from frostbite, but he managed to keep all of them.
He never talked about the war until later in life.
Thank you for the thread, it is sickening how many people do not realize significant days in history. God Bless the men from Bastogne to Wereth, Elsenborn Ridge,St.Vith, Schoenburg, Malmady to many others. You stopped Hitler Cold but at the highest cost to Americans in WW2. God Bless our last WW2 Vets.
My daddy was there....a young private. His nerves were shot for a while when he got back home. I cry whenever I see footage of that battle, knowing he was there.
Nuts!
I’ve been to the Ardennes twice spending 3 or 4 days there each time to visit each battle site. Bulligen, Krinkelt-Rocherath, Stavelot, St. Vith down to Bastogne to name a few. I’ve read everything I could find about the battle and have a good sized library of the best books. It’s nice how the people there still care for the area at Five Points. (Malmedy). When I was last there, nothing had ever been built in the massacre field. I’m fascinated how the privates, sergeants, lieutenants and young captains made all of the right decisions, sometimes unknowingly, during all of the confusion to stop the Germans.
My husband’s dad was there, a young 17 year old, 75th Division, in Grand Hallieux. They were there in January. He lost a leg - a mortar landed very close. If he’d been farther away, he would have died. Never talked about it, until my husband found a guy in Florida with the same name as his buddy, and that guy told my husband everything. Then the buddy called my father-in-law and they had a wonderful reunion.
We went to that area on our last trip to Europe, drove through the little towns, found the bridge where he was wounded. There is a teeny museum there, very moving, and in the center of town, there is a large memorial plaque thanking the Americans. Inside the little church is an area commemorating the soldiers, once again - and notes from a recent visit from those who fought there.
Father-in-law died a few years back, Our son thought it was the best ever to have a grandfather who put his socks on (his wooden leg) with thumbtacks.
508th PIR...quite a legacy. Do you know how many combat jumps he had?
And the debate still continues over what Gen McAuliffe (division commander at Bastogne) actually said to the German commander, when he was asked to surrender..
My dad had a childhood friend who I would see occasionally, who lost toes to frostbite as he and his company were lost/isolated in the woods somewhere in the Ardennes for a week
Thank you so much to all the brave survivors of that terrible battle.
I'm not sure. He jumped at Normandy. The 508th got scattered everywhere and he was one of the few from the 508th who went into Sainte-Mère-Église to try and reconnect with others from the 508th. He said he saw the paratrooper hanging from the roof of the church and just assumed he was dead.
He also jumped into Holland for Operation Market Garden and fought for the Nijmegen bridge.
The German war machine could no longer keep up with the bombings and these were the finest and best units which Hitler had to throw into the war. Thanks to the ill-timed firing of General Patton (who was reactivated in time to turn the tide), the Allies were digging in to await the spring thaw before going back on the offensive.
The Russians, meanwhile, were advancing on the eastern front. Proper military protocol would have dictated that these armies be employed in the east, but Hitler's choice was telling: Nazi ism is a much closer cousin to Bolshevik ism. And, despite their disagreements in methodologies, their end game is the same.
God Bless him. My father-in-law was w the 101. He jumped in Huskey and was wounded jumping out the door. He was stationed in Egypt and Italy from 41 to 46 before coming home.
It took a bottle of brandy to get him to open up. After a while he went up to the attic and brought down his footlocker that had not been open since 46. All his pics, medals, uniforms, and other parifalia was in there. We spent hours going through his stuff.
He died Jan 19, 2012 of pneumonia and had dementia.
The Nuts letter is for real. I saw one of the original carbon copies (I think there were three) in a superb military museum southwest of Chicago. I wish I could remember the name of the town or the museum, but it was put together by a foundation of one of the former publishers of the Chicago Tribune . . . back in the day when that fishwrap was on the American side.
The typewriting was clear and I don't remember the full content of the entire letter. But I cannot forget the opening line: Nuts.
Gen McAuliffe was too proper of a gentleman to use the more appropriate expression "Go p*ss up a rope!"
The German people themselves certainly preferred the western allies.
History of the 113th antiaircraft artillery battalion. My grandfather wrote the history of battery D. He lost a toe to frostbite and hearing in 1 ear to German 88mm artillery shells in Belgium.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/158942992/113th-Antiaircraft-Artillery-Gun-Battalion-History-All
When I was a young Captain stationed in Germany, our corps commander was LTG William Desobry who had commanded Team Desobry in the defense of Noville on the outskirts of Bastogne. The Belgians were building a new museum in Bastogne and Desobry arranged for a restored M4 Sherman tank to be donated to stand in front of the museum.
He presented the tank at the dedication of the museum, but the bronze dedication plaque was not yet ready. When the plaque was finished, I became part of a delegation sent to Bastogne to present the plaque. We were treated like kings by the people of Bastogne, given tours of the battlefield by civilian survivors, and were guests of honor at a banquet held at the city hall. In the entry of the city hall stood a life sized statue of an American Soldier and an American flag on permanent display. Those people remember.
My Dad’s doctor was a young surgeon there. You being OKSooner would know where he was from. The stories of frozen amputated limbs and frozen bodies are true but it was true in many places that winter.
Every two weeks was pay day and to deposit the check we went to the bank in a town an Okie would know. At the bank, without fail, without saying a word, he made a donation to the little VA box at the bank and put a small paper poppy in his lapel then we would walk down the street to JM’s Cafe for payday lunch. Of course he donated and wore the poppy for his buddies who would never be the same.
One terribly cold day he brought a little man home in the evening. A hitchhiker who was headed for the sailor’s and soldiers home somewhere in Michigan if I remember right. I remember three things in particular. Mom welcomed him and made a great dinner, he said he was warm for the first time in days, he was merchant mariner and had been torpedoed twice in the war. Dad bought him an ticket and put him on the bus for Michigan the next morning. I don’t see how we survived, wouldn’t these days, Dad did this with some regularity.
Dad started hitchhiking and riding the rails when he was 13 during the depression. He had noting but will and a good mind. He made it and made it well. He was a great engineer, a professor and a Naval Aviator in the war. Dad demonstrated to us that it takes a will, a hand up and not a handout to change your station in life.
Dad was a very tough man on the outside. Kind, fair and honest in everything but he had a hard edge. He was grudging with praise or complement but when it came we knew it had been earned and that he was proud of us.
The Russians brought vengeance. The Americans brought candy bars.
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