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Battle of Bulge vet relives Allies' desperate winter

Rush to Bastogne blocked Germans
December 16, 2004

BY RICHARD PYLE
ASSOCIATED PRESS


Vincent Vicari knows about the Battle of the Bulge -- not from books, movies or a TV miniseries, but because he was there.


He remembers Dec. 16, 1944, when the field phone rang in the command post of the 101st Airborne Division's artillery regiment near Reims, in eastern France, and a voice told him to wake his boss, Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, and have him report immediately to HQ.


He says that as McAuliffe went out the door, he turned and said, "Lieutenant, stay by that phone. Don't move." And he remembers the call an hour or so later, telling him to alert all units to "get ready to move out, immediately."


Those units couldn't know it then, but they would soon be spending Christmas fending off Hitler's last desperate attempt to turn the Allied tide that had been advancing since D-Day, six months earlier. The six-week battle to come would be the largest of the war in western Europe.


By midnight, the troops had gathered their gear and boarded hastily organized convoys of trucks, Jeeps and other vehicles for a bone-numbing dash to the front.


"Nobody knew where we were going," recalls Vicari, now 84 and retired in Easton, Pa. "We had never heard of a place called Bastogne."


Bastogne, a market town where several roads converged, was critical to blocking the German advance.


Aided by heavily overcast skies that grounded Allied aircraft, 200,000 German troops and 600 tanks were surging westward through the rugged Ardennes, driving a wedge into U.S. lines that on battle maps would become famous as "the Bulge."


"We gamble everything," Gen. Gerd von Runstedt, Germany's commander in the west, had told his forces on Dec. 16, according to Alex Kershaw's "The Longest Winter," a new book on the battle.


Stretched across the forested terrain were five U.S. Army divisions -- outmanned, outgunned and mostly untested in battle.


By contrast, the 101st Airborne, the "Screaming Eagles" had jumped into the dark behind enemy lines on D-Day and fought across France and Holland. They were seasoned fighters, but even their biggest weapons were no match for the Wehrmacht's fearsome 70-ton Tiger tanks.


As the Americans rumbled through a bitterly cold predawn, they met their defeated comrades stumbling to the rear. Vicari says, "Whenever the convoy slowed, we jumped off the trucks to get their ammo, hand grenades and guns."


By getting to Bastogne first, the Americans were able to block German movements in southern Belgium. But after a week of fighting, the paratroopers and their supporting forces were surrounded.


German artillery shelled the town. Snow and fog allowed only a few supply drops, and many parachutes drifted into German lines, delivering much-needed ammunition, food and medical supplies to the wrong side.


"Some of the townspeople gave us white sheets to cover our uniforms in the snow," says Vicari. "It was so cold that GIs had to keep their rifles under their coats to keep them from freezing."


American units in other areas fought stubbornly to stop the German advance and prevent capture of fuel supplies, a prime German objective. Thousands of GIs were taken prisoner, however, and at Malmedy, Belgium, more than 80 were machine-gunned by Waffen SS soldiers in one of the war's most notorious battlefield atrocities.


Allied forces executed 18 English-speaking Germans who had slipped through U.S. lines in American uniforms to create chaos.


"The night before their execution, their captors allowed some German nurses who were also prisoners to sing carols to them in their cells," British author Max Hastings writes in a new book, "Armageddon."


At Bastogne, the 101st's paratroopers repulsed repeated attacks and were desperately low on ammunition. In the wintry darkness, U.S. soldiers sang "Silent Night" and heard Germans singing "Stille Nacht," the same carol.


On Dec. 22, four German couriers approached U.S. lines under a flag of truce with a message "from the German commander to the American commander."


Asserting that Bastogne was encircled, the note gave McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st, two hours to surrender or face "total annihilation." It offered "the privileges of the Geneva Convention" to the would-be POWs.


What came next would be one of World War II's seminal moments.


As Vincent Vicari, McAuliffe's personal aide, recalls it 60 years later, "General Mac read the note and said, 'Aw, nuts.' Then he asked, 'What should I tell them?' "


Lt. Col. Harry W.O. Kinnard, the division operations officer, said, "Why not tell them what you just said?"


"What did I just say?"


"You said, 'Nuts,' " Kinnard replied.


McAuliffe scribbled a reply: "To the German commander. Nuts! From the American commander." He handed the message to Lt. Col. Joseph Harper, who had escorted the German couriers.


To the Germans, who didn't understand the American colloquialism, Harper explained: "It means the same thing as 'Go to hell.' "


Some have speculated that "nuts" might be a sanitized version of what the tough paratroop general actually said. Not so, Vicari says.


"General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language," he said.


The next day, the weather cleared, enabling American P47 Thunderbolts to attack enemy positions while cargo planes dropped supplies to Bastogne's defenders, who by then knew that Lt. Gen. George Patton's 4th Armored Division was fighting through German-held territory to relieve them.



A breakthrough
On Dec. 26, Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams, commanding the 37th Tank Battalion and under orders to attack German positions in a nearby village, realized that the road to Bastogne was open. His first four Shermans roared into the battered town about 4 p.m.


Vicari recalls Patton himself arriving soon after. He pinned a Distinguished Service Cross on General Mac.


Bitter fighting continued across the front, but the Bulge was shrinking and on Jan. 8, even Hitler conceded failure. Abandoning hundreds of their fuel-starved panzer tanks, the Germans began retreating toward the Rhine. By Jan. 28, the battle was over.


The Allied casualty toll included 8,600 Americans and 200 British troops killed, 21,000 captured or missing and 47,000 wounded. The Germans suffered nearly 68,000 casualties, including 17,000 dead.


War historians offer a mixed verdict: the Battle of the Bulge delayed the Allied timetable for victory in Europe by at least six weeks, but because it depleted Hitler's best forces, it made the final push to Berlin less costly.


Bastogne is today a tourist favorite. It has a Place McAuliffe, and a Rue Nuts.


Vicari returned to civilian life as an official of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.


From his perspective, the Bulge was Bastogne: "Hitler wanted it, and they used up a lot of fuel, a lot of ammo and a lot of men trying to take it. I don't think there was anybody who had guts like our people." Only he didn't say "guts."

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