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79th Anniversary of the best response to a demand to surrender demand... ever.

Today marks the beginning of the largest battle that America n soldiers ever fought in, as well as, writes Antony Beevor, the greatest battle of World War II in western Europe. When I was a kid in Brussels, my elderly teacher was from the town of Bastogne, and had lived as a little girl through the encirclement of the town during the freezing Christmas with the troops of General "Nuts!" McAuliffe to whom the inhabitants handed out their sheets to serve as winter camouflage. Madame Cop loved my mother and often invited my parents to her home for dinner and...

NEWDigging Band of Brothers:Time Team Special with Tony Robinson (2023)- FULL EPISODE | 1:36:56Time Team Official | 187K subscribers587,149 views | Premiered September 30, 2023

World War II veteran, 95-year-old Vincent Speranza, took his final jump. His first jump out of an airplane in over three decades. (Via U.S. Army Recruiting Twitter account). Even as the World War II Allies pushed the German Army back toward their homeland in 1944 and 1945, victory was never a sure thing. Nothing illustrated that fact more than Nazi Germany’s 1944 suprise counterattack through the Ardennes Forest. It threatened to cut the Allied army in two, cut them off from their supply center at the port of Antwerp and destroy four armies in the field. “The Battle of the...

During the intense fighting at Bastogne in 1944, Vincent Speranza went to visit a fellow 101st Airborne Division paratrooper in a makeshift hospital. Speranza asked the man what he could do to help, and the man asked for a drink. Speranza set out to find something for his friend and came across a bombed-out tavern that, improbably enough, still had a functioning beer tap. He filled up his helmet with some Belgian ale and returned to the field hospital. Not surprisingly, other wounded GIs asked Speranza to bring another round, and he continued tending bar for the wounded soldiers, running...

General McAuliffe issued a memorable Christmas message to his troops:Headquarters 101st Airborne Division Office of the Division Commander24 December 1944What’s Merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting – it’s cold – we aren’t home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades of the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division....

Surrounded and greatly outnumbered, the men of the 101st Airborne Division were not expecting a merry Christmas in Bastogne, Belgium, in 1944. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe sent back just one word — NUTS! — to the German commander. When the German messengers appeared puzzled by the term, one of McAuliffe’s attaches told them that, loosely translated, they could “go to hell.” McAuliffe then penned a letter to his own troops, in recognition of the imminent holiday, informing them of the events that had transpired.

CORONADO, Calif. - A World War II veteran took a giant leap to make his 100th birthday memorable — literally. WWII Airborne Veteran Thomas "Tom" Rice participated in a tandem parachute jump in his home town of Coronado, California on Aug. 15. Rice, along with a member of Skydive Palatka, jumped from the Commemorative Air Force's (CAF) D-Day Squadron C-53 D-Day Doll, Rice's favorite aircraft, according to CAF. "The airplane that he loves is our C-53D DO ‘D-DAY DOLL’ and refers to her as his favorite aircraft which he nicknamed DOLLY," a CAF spokesperson told FOX TV Stations. Rice served...

snip The Battle of the Bulge has a special resonance for me, because my father almost died in it. He was a college student when World War II broke out. He graduated, then enlisted in the Army. He was sent to one of the big Army bases in the South for basic training. In those days, they gave every enlistee an IQ test; maybe they still do. My father’s performance on the test was good enough that he was pulled out of the ranks and sent to graduate school to become an engineer. (Drill Sergeant, with privates lined up: “Hinderaker!...

The Bulge, Day One, December 16th, 1944.

It seems that Americans have always been deployed to dangerous frontiers during the holidays as they’ve battled the enemies of freedom and justice. In December 1776, the entire American patriot cause was in danger of collapsing. Reeling from yet another loss to the British Army, General George Washington and his men retreated from New York to the frozen hills of eastern Pennsylvania. Desperate times called for desperate action. Instead of bivouacking for the winter, as was the custom at the time, Washington developed a daring plan to hit the enemy. On Christmas night, he led 2,400 starving and ill-clothed Continental...

A class project where our group took first hand accounts of the men at Bastogne and the Battle of Bulge. Thank you to the service men for their sacrifices and efforts.

A clear cold Christmas,’ General George S. Patton of the U.S. Army wrote in his diary. ‘Lovely weather for killing Germans, which seems a bit queer, seeing Whose birthday it is.’ The skies had finally cleared with intense frosts moving in from the east, offering an opportunity for Allied fighter bombers — previously hampered by cloud — to break up German attacks as they were assembling. Christmas Day 1944 witnessed some of the most blood-soaked, desperate fighting of the war in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

World War II Battle of Bastogne Belgium, part of the larger Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge. Encircled by the German Army the 101st Airborne Division fights to survive in the frigid cold winter weather. C-47 transport planes drop supplies by parachute to the encircled 101st Airborne Division. American troops gather the supplies. Scene of a crashed C-47 on snow covered field. Snow covered tanks. Soldiers in snow covered foxholes and trenches. Tanks on snow covered field firing. Close-up of soldier in foxhole using a field radio. U.S. soldiers firing rifles and machine gun from foxholes. Captured German soldiers...

For the troops serving overseas, Christmas time can be a bleak, depressing period. Whether guarding a motor pool, commanding a company or landing a jet on a carrier, thoughts of loved ones stay with our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines night and day. They dream of snow-covered landscapes, decorated and brilliantly-lit trees, abundant food and the warmth of a holiday home. It seems that Americans have always been deployed to dangerous frontiers during the holidays as they’ve battled the enemies of freedom and justice. In December 1776, the entire American patriot cause was in danger of collapsing. Reeling from yet...

<p>On the morning of December 19, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower strode into the gloomy school building in Verdun that housed the main headquarters of General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group. He had called a meeting of all the senior commanders under Bradley. More than just the building was gloomy; the weather outside was a dark gray, and the tactical situation facing the American Army in Europe was also dark. Adolf Hitler’s gigantic Ardennes counteroffensive had been launched three days before, and German Gen. Hasso von Manteuffels’s Fifth Panzer Army was about to surround the all-important road junction at Bastogne. The news had reached the United States, and near panic reigned from across the ocean.</p>

By December 23rd holding the line around Bastogne was less of an issue compared to the crisis of dwindling supplies. Not only were troops short on food and medical supplies but ammunition was frighteningly low. Rounds were rationed and soldiers were ordered not to fire unless attacked directly and even then to only fire two rounds. Colonel Thomas L. Sherburn, the artillery commander, was intentionally reporting overestimates of supply levels simply to maintain morale.

Belgium’s King Philippe, right, and Queen Mathilde throw nuts to the public, during the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, in Bastogne, Belgium, on Saturday. The tradition dates from when the Germans asked for the US surrender in Bastogne, to which General Anthony McAuliffe answered: ‘Nuts!’ Photograph: Yves Logghe/AP Braving snowy weather, Americans and Belgians gathered in the Ardennes on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of one of the biggest and bloodiest US battles of the second world war, the Battle of the Bulge. Jean-Claude Klepper, 62, of Virton, Belgium, said “we must never forget what...

December 1944 World War Two was in overdrive. The major powers were slugging it out about the world - in Europe, Africa, and in the Pacific for 5 long years already- since 1939. The United States had entered the fray when the US Congress had declared war on Japan (December 8, 1941) for attacking Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). Then on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States. We were in the war for the long haul. Early December 1944, we had thought the war, at least in Europe, would be over in a...

U.S. Honors Belgian Nurse for Valor in World War II BRUSSELS (AP) — A Belgian nurse who saved the lives of hundreds of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge at the end of World War II was given an American award for valor on Monday. The nurse, Augusta Chiwy, who is 93, received the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service medal from the American ambassador, Howard Gutman, in a ceremony at the military museum in Brussels. “She helped, she helped and she helped,” Mr. Gutman said. He explained the long delay — 67 years — in presenting the award...