We thank both you and your Dad for your service to our country.
My father was made a guest of the Wehrmacht during the Battle of the Bulge, after his division helped throw off the German timetable for Hitler’s last offensive in the West.
The 28th Division paid a high price for the delay, but the newspapermen were in Bastogne with the more glamorous, and equally heroic, story of the refusal of the surrounded Airborne to surrender. The story of those outnumbered infantrymen refusing to yield, outnumbered and outclassed by German heavy armor, isn’t told much today.
He wouldn’t talk much about combat, but he’d share stories of his time as a “Kreigie”, and my favorite was the one about the German officers inspecting his POW barracks, and how this big fat old German Sergeant would throw the door open, holler “ACHTUNG!” and stand at attention while the officers poked and prodded, looking for contraband or evidence of escape efforts.
When the officers left, the Sergeant would glare haughtily at the American prisoners, and make a great show of slamming the door shut...and on the back of the door a silk map with a rude nickname, showing the latest positions of the allied advance gained from crystal radio sets, would flutter briefly while the GI’s grinned at each other.
Thank you canteen for remembering.
We thank both you and your Dad for your service to our country.