Posted on 12/19/2022 1:32:21 PM PST by SunkenCiv
General McAuliffe issued a memorable Christmas message to his troops:
Headquarters 101st Airborne Division Office of the Division Commander
24 December 1944
What’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. These units, spearheading the last desperate German lunge, were headed straight west for key points when the Eagle Division was hurriedly ordered to stem the advance. How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Division’s glorious history but in World history. The Germans actually did surround us. their radios blared our doom. Their Commander demanded our surrender in the following impudent arrogance...
Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: Well Done!
We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.
A. C. McAuliffe
(Excerpt) Read more at the-american-catholic.com ...
Good choice, imho.
That follows.
Lew Wallace, a Civil War general, supposedly lost his faith due to what he experienced in that conflict, but he’d been a lawyer before. /rimshot
After the war, and bored with lawyering, he took up writing, and thanks to a chance encounter on a train, wound up with “He Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” (1880).
One of his descendants wrote about this:
[snip] As a little girl, I was very proud of Lew. He had been a Union general in the Civil War. He had put Billy the Kid in jail (we had a letter from the Kid hanging in our back hall). He was a diplomat and, of course, a best-selling author. Editions of Ben-Hur took up serious shelf space in our house. I even have dim memories of my parents bringing home an illustrated program from the 1959 premiere of the film starring Charlton Heston. What I didn’t have was familiarity with the book that started it all, because Ben-Hur in its original version is a tough slog for today’s readers. But while adapting it I not only became a great fan of the text but also came to understand the surprisingly moving backstory. [/snip]
Whoops, typo!
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