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Category: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'WW2 Tanks: Military Vehicles', 'WWII Tours', 'Battle of Iwo Jima Facts', 'Battle of Okinawa', 'Medal of Honor: Most Decorated Soldiers', 'WWII-era Jeeps'.

Kurt Vonnegut May 29, 1945 letter outlined his WWII POW ordeal
I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. 7 Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out. We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight, so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it.     [ mcall :: 2007-12-25 ]

Battle of the Bulge was the deadliest - The Ardennes Offensive
Germans launched Operation Mist, which started the Battle of the Bulge, when they attacked Allied Forces in the largest campaign the U.S. Army ever fought. It was Nazi Germany's last major attack. Some 14 German infantry divisions and 5 Panzer tank divisions swooped on 80,000 American soldiers. The battle was fought under such bad conditions that almost no footage or photos exist. Adolf Hitler outlined the strategy to take the offensive and buy the Germans more time. He reasoned if the US was forced to fight a defensive campaign, it could not launch offensives. At Schnee Eifel 7500 members of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division surrendered at once.     [ sunherald :: 2007-12-17 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

WWII veteran Richard S. McMenemy recalls Battle of the Bulge
McMenemy was a second lieutenant commanding a section of mortar in D Company, 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment, 5th Division. On June 21, 1944 - "D plus 14" - he landed on Utah Beach, and by the time he marched to the Battle of the Bulge, he was a 6-month veteran of fighting, with a Silver Star. Inside one duplex he set about getting a fix on his location when the building rocked under an explosion. An American Grant tank had fired a 75mm shell into the back duplex. McMenemy, shaken but unhurt, did a quick search. He opened the door to the basement and discovered 20 German civilians, all unharmed. "Things like that are unpredictable as hell."     [ billingsgazette :: 2007-12-17 ]

Touring Ardennes battlefield - Foxholes of the 101st Airborne
Having traveled to Pearl Harbor and Normandy, my wife and I were eager to visit Bastogne... After D-Day landing on June 6, 1944, Allied soldiers broke through the defenses and sped across France, and headed for the Rhine River in Nazi Germany. For the military, moving at such a rapid pace caused major problems, because supplies could not reach the men quickly enough. To relieve this problem Allied commanders set up 'The Red Ball Express', a truck transport system made up of black drivers. The Germans, realizing their situation, withdrew to West Wall, or Siegfried Line, a defense system with 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps built 1938-1940.     [ zwire :: 2007-11-08 :: Tours - History and Battlefields ]

Infantry officer Jim Love led his unit through the Battle of the Bulge
Article no longer available from the original source.
Jim Love, on D-Day: "I could see the beach, Omaha Beach. Then the ship turned to the right, headed toward Utah Beach. I ran up on the bridge, and the captain was drunk." The company had lost their place in line to land. ... On Dec. 17, before Love's anti-tank company could get into a tactical position, "we were attacked. It was dark, very terrifying." The next morning the tank attack resumed. Love said he "saw this German tank ... 50 yards away. He wasn't shooting." Love walked the U.S. tank into position, where it knocked out the German tank. "Unbeknownst to me, there was another tank behind me, shooting at me with his machine gun. He bounced a round off of my helmet."     [ dailypress :: 2007-09-24 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Quiet refuge became combat zone - The Ardennes Offensive
On Dec. 15 1944, Frank Kusnir Jr.'s unit was stationed at a castle in Clervaux, in what was supposed to be a quiet sector. In truth, Clervaux was a target, one of the spots where the Germans were preparing to launch the offensive that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. "All of the sudden, a couple of shells came in. Then more and more came. We said, 'There's got to be something up.'" Something was up. Swarms of German Waffen-SS troopers, supported by Tiger tanks, poured out of the forest and charged the castle while big guns pounded it to rubble. "We could have gotten out, but our orders were to hold at all costs."     [ pennlive :: 2007-05-29 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

The untold story of the American soldiers and the battle of bastogne
In "Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible," historian John McManus provides a fresh insight into the legendary defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The story of the 101st Airborne Division's defense of the road junction fails to acknowledge the role that small groups of outnumbered American soldiers, in units like the 28th Infantry Division and 9th Armored Division, played in slowing the German advance. It's a story he learned when he worked as a tour guide and historian with Stephen Ambrose Tours, leading groups to various beaches in Normandy.     [ newswise :: 2007-03-07 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Xmas at the Battle of the Bulge 1944 -- 11 Days in December
Leave it to General George Patton to capture the true meaning of the season: "A clear cold Christmas, lovely weather for killing Germans." With 11 Days in December, Stanley Weintraub takes us to the end of 1944 when the triumph of the Allies seemed a foregone conclusion to everyone but Adolf Hitler. It is the bold-face names who make the most impact, and not just generals like Bernard Montgomery and Patton. Also popping up are the war correspondent Ernest Hemingway, fighting a terminal hangover; David Niven, who had a hard time convincing the American soldiers that he was David Niven; and Marlene Dietrich on a USO tour.     [ philly :: 2007-02-16 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

The Battle of the Bulge - Crying GI, Gen. Patton and other memories
The Battle of the Bulge was the most bloody of the few European WWII battles American Forces had. Most of the casualties occurred within the first 3 days of battle, when two of the 106th division's 3 regiments surrendered. Ernest Hill was there: 2-3 of us of the 447 AAAW Battalion, went to eat ice cream and cake with a family in Diekirch. Our 28th Infantry Division had been assigned a quiet area. Next morning the building came under heavy bombardment. Our sergeant ordered a private to go find out if the owner was signaling the Germans. The private started to cry because the sergeant would not assign someone else to go with him.     [ alamogordonews :: 2006-12-29 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

War in Winter - Cold, snow didn't deter soldiers in Battle of the Bulge
Dec 1944: In the worst weather Europe had seen in 50 years, Tech Sgt. Richard Gile, an infantry rifleman, fought against heavily-armed German forces. The extreme cold, heavy snow, ice roads and an unrelenting enemy presented American soldiers one of the deadliest battles of WW2. "The Army was totally surprised by the enormity and ferocity of the German's attack on a sector that was deemed by the Allied High Command as 'quiet'. Many of the German soldiers were veterans of the terrible winter weather while fighting in Russia and were well-equipped with protective winter gear. The German force also had the latest models of superior fighting tanks."     [ eprisenow :: 2006-12-19 :: Infantry Soldiers of WWII: Foot Soldiers ]

Signs of WWII battle - and gratitude - in the Bastogne, Ardennes
World War II foxholes remain in the forests of the Belgian Ardennes. For anyone with a sense of history and interest in WWII, this is a remarkable journey for anyone interested in the battles of WW2. The Battle of the Bulge was America's bloodiest battle ever. More than a million soldiers, Americans and Germans, clashed on Dec 1944. Signature battle of the Bulge: At Bastogne, a town of 5,000, where German Panzer units encircled the American 101st Airborne Division, which was under the command of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe. Four days later, the German siege was broken by a tank battalion from General George Patton's 3rd Army.     [ bradenton :: 2006-12-11 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Waffen-SS firing squad in Battle of the Bulge: Malmedy Massacre
During the Battle of the Bulge, Staff Sgt. Bill Merriken and more than 100 American soldiers were captured by German Waffen-SS troops and herded into a field. But a German officer, Maj. Werner Poetschke, waved two battle tanks into position in front of the Americans. Then he gave the order for the machine gunners aboard the battle tanks to open fire. Merriken, standing in the front row, was hit twice in the back as machine gun fire raked across the fallen men. A German tried to remove his ring, but his finger was too swollen from the cold. Only 10 out of the 113 Americans survived.     [ newsadvance :: 2006-10-12 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Firsthand account of Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, fought in the winter of 1944-45, was the largest U.S. land battle of World War II, says US Army Center of Military History. The battle began on Dec. 16, when more than 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 battle tanks launched Hitler's last effort to reverse the ebb in his fortunes that had begun in Normandy on D-Day. After the first day of fighting, the German spearheads broke through the Allied front. The U.S. First Army was ordered to withdraw - all except a dozen men who were in charge of General Omar Bradley's communications. Richard Brewster told "We were ordered to stay there and keep transmitting until we were overrun."     [ townonline :: 2006-09-14 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

US attempt to stop Waffen-SS tanks in the front lines of Algers
In 1945, when the US Army sent 5 units to Algers to stop the heavily armed German attack by the Waffen-SS. Corporal Molinari stood with his fellow infantrymen as they starred down German panzers and high powered rifles. "It was a sacrifice. No question in my mind. They knew the Germans were far more powerful, but they wanted to put us up there to see what they had. I can remember seeing a tank and my lieutenant yelling to me 'Mo, get the bazooka!' I thought 'What the hell is he gonna do with this?' He fired it at the tank and wouldn't you know it, the damn thing just bounced right off that tread. That's what kind of battle we were up against." US army lost over 10,000 men that day.     [ townonline :: 2006-07-14 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

The letters US soldiers forgot in the heat of battle
They have lain unopened in a horse manger in a forgotten part of the Belgian countryside for more than 60 years. But now, a set of well-preserved letters, prayer books and cartoons abandoned by American troops days before the Battle of the Bulge have been discovered. The items were left between Oct and Dec 1944, just before Germany launched its final offensive of the war. Soldiers of the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division were resting in farmhouses in Belgium close to the German border. On Dec 16, they were called to the front line for one of the bloodiest encounters of the war.     [ telegraph :: 2006-04-23 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

D-Day invasion and Battle of the Bulge - 10 medals 60 years later
Article no longer available from the original source.
Leslie Harris parachuted through a hail of bullets in the morning darkness of D-Day - the pivotal invasion of France in WWII. The American soldier landed in an irrigation canal, found his Army regiment, and went on to fight for the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. Then came the invasion jump into Holland, where Harris was wounded by shrapnel. Then came the Battle of the Bulge. And then came a wait, nearly six decades long, for his medals. On Thursday Harris finally received 10 medals and awards for his service in WWII.     [ suburbanchicagonews :: 2006-03-25 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Americans during Battle of the Bulge: "We figured we'd end up in the North Atlantic"
A 358-foot-long barge docked at the port of Antwerp, after dodging torpedoes 60 days across the stormy ocean. But Barton Smithey and Glen Alleman Jr. didn't think they would be staying in Antwerp for long. On Dec. 16, 1944 - just a week earlier, Adolf Hitler had thrown the last of his armed forces into a last-gasp battle. At the start of the surprise attack, dozens of U.S. Army units were pushed back west to the English Channel by German panzer tank battalions. At the time, in the midst of confusion, panic and the fog of war, there was no relief in sight. "We just figured we'd end up in the North Atlantic," Smithy said. Alleman nodded his head silently in agreement.     [ muscatinejournal :: 2006-03-23 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

The fields of Europe during WWII
By the time Lipps was drafted, he was well aware of WWII raging overseas. "I was still in school when Pearl Harbor was bombed, I couldn't figure out why a little country like that (Japan) would attack a big country like us." The Army made Lipps part of Company B 254th Engineer C Battalion. While overseas he saw action in Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland and the Ardennes. "The Ardennes was a forest and there just wasn't a tree left when the fighting got done." Lipps and his fellow soldiers were honored with a Presidential Unit Citation. "We had 6 or 7 tanks and half tracks knocked down and all we had to fight with were .30 (caliber) machine guns, bazookas and rifles."     [ centralohio :: 2006-02-27 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Lieutenant-Colonel Freddie Allen won 2 DSOs in the Ardennes
In Dec 1944, the Germans broke through in the Ardennes in what was their last substantial counter-offensive on the Western front. The 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment was deployed in wooded country interspersed with steep, icy, snow-covered tracks. On Jan 7 1945 regiment was ordered to attack the village of Grimbiemont. The battalion formed up in a snowstorm driven by an arctic wind, but just before the attack their Advance HQ group received a direct hit. Allen reorganised his HQ and moved forward to the Start Line. But when he got there, he found that the tank support for his forward companies was not available because, they could not cross the frozen stream.     [ telegraph :: 2005-08-01 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

Battle of the Bulge Remembered 60 Years Later
Full week of events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. 1944 Allied and German forces faced off in the Battle of the Ardennes, more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge. It proved to be one of the largest and bloodiest battles of WWII - one that demonstrated the resolve of the U.S. Army despite being outnumbered and faced with difficult circumstances. In the winter of 1944, Germany was losing the war. The Allies had invaded France in June and were driving the Germans east. But Adolf Hitler, not about to accept his fate, had directed an ambitious counteroffensive as a desperate, last-ditch effort to halt the Allied advance.     [ defenselink :: 2004-12-26 :: Battle of Bulge: Ardennes offensive Bastogne ]

See also

'WW2 Tanks: Military Vehicles'

'WWII Tours'

'Battle of Iwo Jima Facts'

'Battle of Okinawa'

'Medal of Honor: Most Decorated Soldiers'

'WWII-era Jeeps'.

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