Posted on 01/25/2025 12:07:51 PM PST by Borges
It was the bloodiest battle American Soldiers have ever fought on foreign soil.
Hand Salute.
I knew a man who was there. He was in the quartermaster corps driving a truck through the area and got stuck there. He said he was saved because his mother taught him enough colloquial German that he was able to make the German soldiers calling out think he was a German. He had nightmares about that experience for years afterwards.
<>“We are objects. We belong to them,” he said. “If they don’t like us, they discard us. That became the way of life.”<>
At Disney World in the mid-90s, I had my first and last encounter with a group of Germans.
Arrogant a-holes. All of them.
Thank you for posting this. God bless all who fought against the tyranny that was the Nazis. Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another. Such love covers a multitude of sins.
Wish he’d told how and when he came to the US....his experience is interesting but missing those details.
My uncle, who would have been 105 this year, drove a tank in an armored division at the Bulge. The rest of his crew were killed but he survived and came home in one piece.
My father was shot in the leg and chin outside St Malo France, patched up and sent with the Big Red One and was cut off in the Ardennes Forest. Frost bite there. I’m lucky to be here. Thanked him for being hard to kill. Best man I’ve known in my life and I miss him.
“We’re paratroopers, we’re supposed to be surrounded.”
My grandfather served in the battle of the bulge and most of his unit was lost. He was wounded and had what at the time was called shell shock (probably would be severe PTSD today). He had amnesia and was not in his own uniform and missing dog tags. For several months my grandmother was told he was likely KIA but turned up in an army hospital in New York.
The army and VA did not know how to treat him so they used heavy sedation and anti psychotic drugs that ultimately lead to his death.
All have some, some gave all.
He was wounded and had what at the time was called shell shock (probably would be severe PTSD today). He had amnesia and was not in his own uniform and missing dog tags. For several months my grandmother was told he was likely KIA but turned up in an army hospital in New York.
The army and VA did not know how to treat him so they used heavy sedation and anti psychotic drugs that ultimately lead to his death.
If they still called it “Shell Shock”, he probably would have gotten better care.
My great-uncle (my grandma’s brother) died at the Battle of the Bulge, age 19. He was the youngest of 7, and the only son. Til the day she died, I don’t think my grandma ever got over it. Even my mother, who was about 10 when he died, would become tearful remembering that year’s Christmas, how every decoration was removed and nobody was allowed to celebrate anything. I still have the telegram sent to the family informing them of his death.
I had a distant cousin killed there. He was a cook. They ran out of hot food but needed more infantrymen for the front lines. So, he got the order to grab his rifle.....
One of my best friend’s had an uncle who fought in the battle that I met. He’d gotten a bad case of frostbite there. He said his feet were never really right again after the Bulge.
He settled in South Florida and refused to go anywhere where it got cold ever again.
My father, born 1920, an infantryman who carried a BAR, went into France in August 1944. He served in the 28th infantry division (the “bloody bucket”).
His unit marched under the Arc de’ triumphe and claims he and his BAR could be seen on the postage stamp memorializing that event. He then spent months engaged in hard fighting in the Huertgen forest (not an American victory), before his unit was rotated to the Ardennes as a rest assignment.
He led patrols reconnoitering the German lines, and warned HQ that there was a buildup, but the warnings were ignored. His unit was overrun on the first day of the battle.
With a small group of men, he tried to get back to American lines, but was captured on the third evening when, exhausted, his group went to sleep next to what they thought was a field of haystacks, but was in fact German tents.
He was sent to a POW camp deep in Germany. He and another soldier escaped for a several day period while being marched there, but were eventually recaptured.
He spent the next 5 months in the camp, where he caught and ate the occasional rat—his only source of protein. He returned home weighing half what he weighed when captured.
After being honorably discharged, he got himself educated at U. Cal-Berkeley, where he met, and married my mother. They eventually had six kids—all boys.
He spent the rest of his life as an insurance underwriter, keeping very fit, and passing away in 2004 at the ripe old age of 84. And for the rest of his life, if there was a loud noise at night, he would awake thinking he was being bombarded by German artillery.
Interestingly, he didn’t harbor a grudge against the German soldiers he fought against. He figured they were just being forced to do a dirty job.
But he did harbor a grudge against the French. When the French would approach the Americans to tell them the Germans were lurking nearby, the Americans would ask them to come along with them and show them exactly where the Germans were. But, he said, the French would invariably refuse and run away.
My uncle, my Mother’s middle brother was a.cook for the general’s staff after someone found out he could bake pies... everyone grabbed a rifle to fight off the assaults at the Bulge. Said he feet always felt frozen, but he survived it. His older brother laughed about the contrast with his service in No Africa...
I couldn't but a beer in any bar, once they found out that I was an American serviceman.
My uncle (at least 1) was there. I believe he was the only one of either side of my family (physically) wounded in WWII.
My Grandfather was wounded there.
My maternal grandfather fought there. Survived, came home, and shortly died in a car crash in Alabama.
Oh, one of the great lines.
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