Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Krusher on December 16, 2004, 01:00:26 PM
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On December 16, 1944, General Bradley came to my headquarters to discuss ways and means of overcoming our acute shortages in infantry replacements. Just as he entered my office, a staff officer came in to report slight penetrations of our lines in the front of General Middleton's VIII Corps and the right of General Gerow's V Corps in the Ardennes region. . . . - Dwight Eisenhower, "Crusade in Europe"
It had started with the dawn: an unexpectedly heavy artillery barrage. How had the retreating Germans managed to mass so many guns? Was this just a local attack, or a feint to distract the attention from a major blow elsewhere?
Soon it became clear that the enemy had massed more than artillery. The Sixth Panzer Army, a mobile reserve that had disappeared from the view of Allied intelligence, reappeared. When the barrage lifted, German armor came pouring out of the woods, headed for the seam between the British and American armies.
Instead of sheltering behind the Siegfried Line, the "retreating" Germans were advancing. Through an only lightly defended 50-mile stretch of the Ardennes.
Allied intelligence had collected reports of a transfer of German troops from the Eastern to the Western front in the fall of 1944, and there was ample evidence that they were being reassembled in the Ardennes, but word never filtered up to headquarters. No one had connected the dots. (Sound familiar?)
The weather wasn't on our side, either. The coldest, snowiest winter in European memory made Allied air superiority irrelevant. The panzers sped on, opening a growing wedge. Allied headquarters was compelled to sacrifice unity of command as the German advance split the British and American armies; Ike had to designate separate commanders for each sector of a crumbling front.
In the heat of battle, confusion reigned. Disguised as American MPs, English-speaking, American-accented Germans were sending relief convoys down the wrong roads, or into murderous ambushes. Just liberated French cities were exposed again, and Paris was jittery. The British press demanded that Eisenhower turn command of the land forces over to Montgomery - or anyone else competent.
Von Runstedt and his staff had taken everything into account except the sheer cussedness of the American resistance. The 7th Armored held onto the crossroads at St. Vith longer than anyone would have imagined possible. And at Bastogne, the key to the battle, the 101st Airborne refused to yield at all, and entered legend.
According to the German battle plan, Bastogne was to be overrun on the second day of the operation; it never was. General Anthony McAuliffe's one-word response to the German commander's surrender terms would become a classic summation of American defiance: "Nuts!"
Forced to split up and go around isolated pockets of American resistance, the German advance slowed. Unlike 1940, there was no breakout. Methodically, the Allied command drew up new defensive lines, then held. And to the South, Patton was turning the whole Third Army on a dime and hurtling to the rescue . . . .
Before it was over, the Battle of the Bulge would involve three German armies, the equivalent of 29 divisions; three American armies, or 31 divisions; and three British divisions augmented by Belgian, Canadian and French troops.
More than a million men would be drawn into the battle. The Germans would lose an estimated 100,000 irreplaceable troops, counting their killed, wounded and captured; the Americans would suffer some 80,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed - that's a rate of 500 a day - and 23,554 captured.
But the Allied forces held. And the war went on, moving across the Rhine and then into the heartland of the enemy. Against all
bitter expectations, the conflict in the European theater would be over in four months.
There's a different kind of war on now, but war itself remains the same brutal experience. And it invokes the same admixture of fear and desperation, bloody miscalculation and incredible heroism, over-confidence and unchanging defeatism.
Much was gained by that decisive victory in the Ardennes 60 years ago, but victory obscures as much as it reveals. How the Battle of the Bulge turned out may seem inevitable now that history has unfolded but, as Wellington was supposed to have said of Waterloo, "it was a damned close-run thing."
The passage of time erodes memory, and we tend to forget the pain, the sacrifices, the mercurial swings of public opinion, the alternating hopes and fears, the daily uncertainty of war . . . and the necessity of endurance.
Sixty years ago at dawn (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulgreenberg/pg20041216.shtml)
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WOW.... pretty amazing numbers considering the events of today.
More than a million men would be drawn into the battle. The Germans would lose an estimated 100,000 irreplaceable troops, counting their killed, wounded and captured; the Americans would suffer some 80,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed - that's a rate of 500 a day - and 23,554 captured.
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NUTS!
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Time to throw Band of Brothers: Bastogne & Breaking Point in the DVD player tonight.
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Originally posted by indy007
Time to throw Band of Brothers: Bastogne & Breaking Point in the DVD player tonight.
I was thinking the same thing :)
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My great uncle Charles was there. He liked to tell amusing stories from the time when he was in the army, but he never would talk about the fighting. He wouldnt even watch the movies. He said he made it out of Hell once, he saw no point in going back.
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All unnecessary had
Patton been allowed to close the falaise gap and rush across the rhine in the late summer/early fall of 1944
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385720599/qid=1103242003/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/002-9381837-0981642?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
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My Grandpa Joe, fought with the 80th Infantry Division there.
He was wounded by shrapnel and was taken off the front line due to combat fatigue.
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Originally posted by Krusher
I was thinking the same thing :)
Me three! :aok
I like the quote in there that says (paraphrase)
"Pattons tanks claimed to have rescued the 101st airborne in Bastogne who were surrounded. Troops from the 101st said they never needed a "rescue" to begin with"
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Band of Brothers is the best film ever made.
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Hey Pongo, I'm right in the middle of "A Blood Dimmed Tide". Great book, not really about the battle but the stories of the men who fought it, from both sides; their impressions of what was happening in thei little hundred yard square.
Tom
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I like to post this pic:
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/145_1103259462_145_1100141397_joehyman.jpg)
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If it were WW2online, 30-40 havocs would have shown up in 3 minutes and took out all the armor.
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Lots of celebrations here yesterday (Am less than 50 miles from Bastogne... in the Ardennes area too). Saw a parade of vets in the streets.
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Originally posted by Saintaw
Lots of celebrations here yesterday (Am less than 50 miles from Bastogne... in the Ardennes area too). Saw a parade of vets in the streets.
I hope the weather was better for the celebrations than it was for the real event :)
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Originally posted by Saintaw
Lots of celebrations here yesterday (Am less than 50 miles from Bastogne... in the Ardennes area too). Saw a parade of vets in the streets.
a nice article on the celibrations...
U.S., Belgium mark Battle of Bulge anniversary
By ROBERT WIELAARD
Associated Press
BASTOGNE, Belgium -- Amid snow flurries and a chilling wind, Belgium's King Albert II honored U.S. soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany 60 years ago in the Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle for American forces in war.
Veterans from across the United States returned today to find this market town that was at the center of the fighting much as it was on that bitter cold December in 1944 -- covered in snow and buffeted by wind. ADVERTISEMENT
The old soldiers, wearing military berets and caps, were greeted with warm applause, hugs and kisses from a grateful crowd that lined the streets.
"I'm very happy to see so many people come out for this event," said Miasy Dumont, 68, from nearby Ludelange, Luxembourg. "This is the last time I'm sure. In 10 years there will be no more veterans."
The king, joined by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, led a commemoration and laid wreaths at the vast Mardasson memorial on the edge of town. The ceremony paid homage to the 19,000 American soldiers killed and about 61,000 wounded in the largest land battle for U.S. forces in World War II. The fighting also claimed 120,000 German lives.
"All soldiers memorialized at this monument are part of the greatest generation," said U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
After the half-hour ceremony which included a U.S. honor guard from the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky., veterans were driven by bus from the towering memorial back to the center of town.
Once there, they again enjoyed warm applause from crowds lining the main street to the town square and attended a sound and light show and a parade of World War II vehicles.
The day began with a parade of veterans, marching bands, World War II-era jeeps, trucks and ambulances through Bastogne. The vehicles rumbled past the town's central square, named for Anthony MacAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101st Airborne division, whose paratroopers repulsed repeated attacks.
On Dec. 22, 1944, MacAuliffe was given two hours to surrender by the Germans or face "total annihilation." His now famous reply: "Nuts!"
A commemorative throwing of nuts was also to take place at the square.
There were guided walks along the defensive perimeter south of Bastogne that was relieved by Patton's Third Army, which rushed north from France to help defeat the Germans. The battle raged for six-weeks across the Ardennes hills of southern Belgium and Luxembourg, but the market town of 14,000 bore the brunt of the fighting.
"The American veterans who have returned 60 years later to the battle site represent those who gave their lives on our soil so that today we can live free," Bastogne Mayor Philippe Collard said in French at a memorial honoring U.S. General George S. Patton.
He added in English: "we will never forget. You are home here."
Rising out of the Champagne fields of northern France, the Ardennes highlands sweep across southeastern Belgium, cover much of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, then flow into western Germany's Eiffel range.
Sixty years ago, their valleys, trout streams and rolling hills were the scene of Hitler's last gamble. His panzer divisions smashed through the forests, catching the Allies by surprise and driving the front westward in a "bulge" that ran deep into Belgian territory.
There was so much destruction that its impossible to know exactly how many people were killed in action, how many went missing and how many were wounded.
The battle drew in more than a million troops -- 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans and 55,000 Britons -- who fought in bitter cold from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945.
The Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge in Arlington, Va., says 19,000 American troops died in the battle.
The Mardasson Memorial on the edge of Bastogne is built on the spot where German artillery bombarded the Americans in the town below, honoring the U.S. forces killed and wounded during the Ardennes offensive.
The memorial bears the names of U.S. Army units that participated in the action as well as the names of the then 48 U.S. States in bronze letters. There is also a plaque bearing a Latin inscription saying: "Liberatoribus Americanis Populus Belgicus Memor," or "The Belgian People Remember Their American liberators."
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In the book I'm reading, the point is made that there were quite a few Germans and German leaning citizens of that part of Belgium. The support of the local population at that time wasn't universal. There are a number of accounts of citizens pointing out the location of American units and places where stragglers were holed up.
Neither good nor bad, people have their reasons for believing what they do. Interesting, though. It was probably very obvious who was going to win by that time, and it's not exactly the same as choosing which soccer team you like best.
I'd appreciate any insight on this that those of you who have it could share with me.
Tom