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...