Gotta love Mel.
Posted on 12/11/2019 7:44:05 AM PST by NEMDF
Francis X. Murphy was just 18 years old when he got married on Dec. 6, 1941. The next day, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the United States was at war.
Murphy joined the 83rd Airdrome Squad. He went to Europe and fought in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. To this day, the 95-year-old from Whitman remembers the bloodshed from what remains the third-deadliest battle in American history.
“You either kill them or they were going to kill you, and that’s how it was,” Murphy said bluntly.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
My daddy was in a machine gunner group in the Battle of the Bulge.
About half his group was killed, he never talked about it...
2 Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star...
I wonder what unit he was is? It certainly wasn’t the 83d Airdrome Squad because that never existed. The story doesn’t offer enough clues to help sort it out.
My Dad was in the Navy in the Pacific in WWII, but one of his good friends at work lost toes to frostbite at the Battle of the Bulge
I suspect the author of the article is no expert on these things....
Gotta love Mel.
My maternal grandfather’s brother GI was killed at the Bulge. My dad was stationed in Australia for WW2.
My Father’s Battalion was at the Bulge.
They were very fortunate. I have their official Army history.
The 208th Engineer Combat Battalion was logging in the Ardennes when Lt. Col. Scott got a message asking if he could quit and move the battalion to a certain location Within 24 HOURS.
He replied that they could and then they did. It turned out to not be the place where the German’s attacked.
The 291st was the one who bore the brunt. They were the ones opposite the tip of the spear and they were up to the task. They guessed right every time and blew each bridge just before the tanks arrived.
Mel was in the 300th Combat Engineer Group. Shug Jordan, Auburn’s legendary coach was also in the 300th.
My late uncle drove a tank in General Patton’s Third Army at the Bulge. He was the only survivor of his tank crew. He came out of the war basically without a scratch but with some mental trauma. Terrible battle, 19,000 American soldiers killed, many thousands injured or missing.
Hence the sobriquet “Those Damn Engineers” from Standartenführer Joachim Peiper
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
> I wonder what unit he was is? It certainly wasn’t the 83d Airdrome Squad because that never existed. <
I think the author meant the 83d Airdrome Squadron. That unit evidently existed. Here’s a mention of it:
http://www.americanairmuseum.com/unit/1490
> Mel was in the 300th Combat Engineer Group. <
Yes. And he once commented about that. Mel: “I was a Combat Engineer. Isn’t that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in the world are combat and engineering.”
My great uncle was injured during the Battle of the Bulge.
My great aunt always said he had “scrapnel” in his head!!
That’s the clean version. When told that a bridge he needed to push his troops across quickly had just been blown up by US Army engineers who got there first, he threw his maps down and screamed “the god damned Engineers!”
Needless to say when word got back, they loved it and immediately adopted “the god damned engineers” as their nickname.
My grandfather and my wife’s grandfather were both at the Bulge, and both were captured by the Germans and spent the (short, thankfully) remainder of the war in POW camps.
> My late uncle drove a tank in General Patton’s Third Army at the Bulge. <
The father of a friend of mine was in Patton’s Third Army. An he absolutely hated the general. His tank was racing towards the front when they passed by General Patton himself. Patton stopped the tank and fined my friend’s father for not having his tie on.
My dad’s 2nd cousin.....so I guess my second cousin once removed was a cook in one of the US Army units at the Bulge. They were surrounded and obviously no more fresh food was coming in to be prepared and since they were running short of rifleman and everybody in the Army went through basic training, he along with any other rear echelon troops they could find were thrown into the battle to hold the line. He got killed at the Bulge doing so.
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