Vivid new Battle of the Bulge photos offer never-before-seen look....

Dailymail ^ | 12-17-11

[InvisibleChurch]

Breath taking pics...

[momtothree]

Amazing photos, InvisibleChurch. Can’t you just feel the cold?! It just looks bitterly cold.

[InvisibleChurch]

They are better men than me.

[JosephMama]

That photo of Adolph looks like der Untergaang.

[svcw]

Nice pix, very interesting. The one of the 15 year old German kid was actually very sad.

[adorno]

I didn’t see John Wayne in any of those photographs. What’s up with that?!?

BTW, were those photos colorized, or where they originally in color?

[Red_Devil 232]

Excellent post!

[momtothree]

My husband’s Uncle was there. He told family members that he was never so cold in his life and hoped he would never be cold again.

[Red_Devil 232]

Better than me too!

[Drew68]

The one of the 15 year old German kid was actually very sad.

Not really. The war was over for him and on much better terms than his counterparts on the Eastern Front faced.

Chances are good he went on to live a long and comfortable life in West Germany.

He might not have known it at the time but he was very fortunate.

[hinckley buzzard]

I had the privilege of speaking at length with a veteran who was in the seige of Bastogne. They had to pee on their weapons to get them to work, and had no winter uniforms. When I first asked him, he just got this look in his eye and said, "Yeah, Belgium. F*ing Belgium...it was sooo cold..."

Needless to say, he thought highly of George Patton and the Third Army.

[mylife]

Fascinating.

[Lady Lucky]

Hitler’s looking a little photoshopped there!

[abb]

for your file.

[razorback-bert]

bookmark

[bleach]

And I complain about shaving with cold water. One tough dude.

[Twotone]

My brother-in-law’s father was in the march to relieve Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe. The only comment I ever heard about his march was that he ‘didn’t like Patton much.’

Too bad the men who experienced this wouldn’t talk about it much. My own father was a pilot instructor. He got orders to go overseas three times, but they were always rescinded. They were too desperate for instructors.

[CatherineofAragon]

Thank you so much for this. My late father fought in this battle. I know it’s silly, but when I see pics/films from the BOTB, I always look at the faces to see if one of them might be him.

[TEXOKIE]

God bless these GI Joes forever.

[TEXOKIE]

Kathyinalaska, I thought you might like to alert the canteen folks to this!

[warsaw44]

agreed. Devastating photo.

Battle of the Bulge photos are quite rare. In color - I’ve never seen any. Color was available at the time but you just rarely ever see them. They are not common at all.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Thanks for posting the pictures.

With regard to the picture with Hitler in it, the man on the far right standing and pointing at the map looks like Heinz Guderian.

[big'ol_freeper]

Those tears were tears of relief

[Lady Lucky]

There’s a photo there captioned “Exhausted...shows signs of fatigue.”

He doesn’t look fatigued to me. He looks highly dangerous!

[moose07]

Bookmark, Thanks for the thread.

[cripplecreek]

My grandfather lost one of his toes to frostbite and the hearing in one ear to German 88 mm fire in the Ardennes.

[MaxMax]

/bump

Those pictures are incredible.

[paudio]

That picture really reminds me of those Hitler parody on YouTube. Like this one: Hitler finds out that Rush Limbaugh won the Judge Dance Contest

[US Navy Vet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge

[potlatch]

Amazing pictures, thank you for posting. I always feel a ‘silence’ in my heart when I view these old war photos.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075565/Vivid-new-Battle-Bulge-photos-offer-seen-look-war-weary-soldiers-braving-frigid-weather-fight-Nazi-Germanys-major-offensive-World-War-II.html

[Guenevere]

The Greatest Generation

[Happy Rain]

That tank looks like an M26 Pershing heavy tank—definitely NOT a Sherman.

[Guenevere]

Different theater of war....but a must read is...

Unbroken..by Laura Hillenbrand

My dad was in the CBI (China/Burma/India)

[Ax]

The day before I left for USAF basic training in 1960, my uncle came by the house. He’d never said anything about his war experiences before, but that afternoon he told me that he’d been in Belgium and France during that time with First Army Ordnance. Must’ve been pretty grim.

[central_va]

Definitely not Shermans.

[bravo whiskey]

correct

[wagglebee]

Outstanding pictures!

[fso301]

Nice pix, very interesting. The one of the 15 year old German kid was actually very sad

These pic's aren't new.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19670326&id=KXssAAAAIBAJ&sjid=bcwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5816,4438263

[Daffynition]

Most excellent! May I interject this little known tidbit about the Battle of the bulge,and the amazing Col. Norman Vaughan

Wartime activities utilized his dog driving expertise. In 1942, during World War II, Norman Vaughan arrived with his six dogs aboard the USCGC Comanche to retrieve one of the two crashed B-17’s Norden bombsites from the 8-plane “Lost Squadron”; USNR LTjg Freddy Crockett (also a dog driver on Byrd’s First Expedition) with his dog teams had just rescued the 25 aviators from the ice who had gone down with the planes. (Later, from 1981 to 1992, Norman Vaughan returned to Greenland each summer to help locate all of the eight downed planes frozen under the ice; he also helped recover one of the “Lost Squadron” aircraft — the P-38, named “Glacier Girl”– which has since been restored and flown.) By 1943, the effort to utilize dogs for war purposes was shifted to command of Colonel Vaughan, North Atlantic Wing, Air Transport Command, Army Air Corp. He trained and equipped the search-and-rescue sled dog units to retrieve pilots and cargo from crashed aircraft. By the end of the war, at least 100 downed pilots were recovered.

In 1945, as the Battle of the Bulge was being fought and heavy snows blanketed the Western Front, Col. Vaughan argued for a month that dogs were the only transport that could rescue and return the wounded to the rear of the battle for medical treatment. Finally, General Patton issued the order “Send in the dogs.”

With impressive coordination, Vaughan quickly assembled 17 drivers and 209 dogs to a training camp in Maine, then deployed them to France. Because of administrative delays, the dogs did not arrive before the snows melted and so did not participate in the Battle; however, the operation proved the ease with which dog teams could be assembled and dispersed whenever the need arose. Dogs were used in this way until helicopters realized their full potential in the 1950’s and took over those functions. Later, beginning at age 72, he participated in thirteen 1100-mile long Iditarod sled dog races in Alaska, where his last finish was in 1990 at the age of 84.

[AppyPappy]

My cousin was there. His daughter married a German and his dad was there too. Different side though.

[Bobalu]

the 15 year old German kid was actually very sad.

Yup, you just want to give the poor kid a hug.

[Admin Moderator]

Sorry folks, these are copyrighted images from a source that has issued us a complaint. Do not post them here.

[momtothree]

What is sort of amazing is in each of their faces, I am sure you see a bit of your Dad. I cannot imagine for one second what they went through. All of them heroes!

[jmacusa]

The last surviving uncle of my childhood, my Uncle Fred, served with the 84th. Infantry Division, 3rd. Battalion , 335th. Infantry Regiment, I Company. He saw combat in and around Marche and Soy Belgium and was wounded in early January of 1945. He was hit pretty bad but he made it out there and back home again. Thanks Unc’ and God bless you. We won’t see the likes of men like this again.

[momtothree]

My husband’s Uncle said that it felt like even the core of your bones were frozen. When he got back home, he hated the Winter. (He loved it when he was a kid... some things stay with you forever)

[fso301]

http://www.life.com/gallery/36632/battle-of-the-bulge-rare-unseen?iid=mostpopular-viewed#index/0

[cubreporter]

yes it was. He was a kid like so many of our own. What a horror for ALL OF THEM.