[dp0622]

My uncle Jimmy fought in this battle and others.

He was a gunner on a tank.

He told the whole story shortly before his death.

He said at one point he was shooing and killing many Germans but they just kept coming and he was crying and shooting and crying and shooting.

Another time he passed a German jeep with what he said was a higher ranking officer head back with a bullet in his forehead. He said that image stayed with him more than others.

I have a rose tattoo of his, my father’s and my Uncle Ralph’s names on the leaves coming out of the rose.

First and last tattoo. Adding another would be an insult to these men.

[jmacusa]

The Germans committed a number of horrendous atrocities during The Battle Of The Bulge. SS units , that is. The infamous ‘’Malemdy Massacre’’, the slaughter of some 300 Belgian civilians in Stavelot. The massacre of some 100 men in the village of Bandes and the murder of some two dozen men of the US Army's 30th. Infantry Division.

Most of the killing was done by an SS unit under the command of Jochen Peiper. Peiper was an ardent Nazi and a real ruthless thorough going bastard who made a name for himself on The Russian Front. He earned the name ''Blowtorch'' for a frightening tactic of the SS which was to lock civilians or prisoners in a barn or a church and setting it on fire. He survived the war and a short prison stint but got his in the end in 1976 when his home was fire bombed. Suspicion had the Bader-Meinhof gang as the culprits but it was never proven. All in all a fitting end for the ''Blowtorch''.