Unternehmen: Wacht Am Rhein
79 years ago today the Germans launched their last offensive on the Western Front of WW2. The allies did not believe the Germans were capable of launching an offensive this late in the war, but they were and came close to changing the outcome of the war. The western offensive of the winter of 1944 was codenamed "watch on the Rhine" (header). I always had an interest in what became known as "The Battle of the Bulge" because my granddaddy was there in one of the AAA outfits attached to the 101st. The cold and hunger during the siege of Bastogne was one of the few stories he told me of the war (I believe the winter of '44/'45 was the coldest on record for Europe). Anyhow, a fellow WW2 enthusiast passed along this article from Beaches of Normandy tours pertaining to that battle fought in a cold distant land long ago and the man who made a famous one word reply when asked by the enemy to surrender back when America was well, you know.
The Man Who Said "Nuts"
Here's another story--
ReplyDeletehttps://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/12/bill-harris-the-bulge-and-christmas-1944.html
My father was in the Yankee Div and there during bulge. Have some of his old photos and pics we took years later where his small group had to evade & hunker down in a small Belgium village about 20klicks from St. Vith's
ReplyDeleteMy dad was in the YD,too.He was one of the replacements for losses during the Bulge,so he was in it at the end of the battle.He ended up in Linz,Austria at the end of the war.He had a lot of stories he didn't tell until the last months of his life about those last months of the war.
DeleteWar Minister Albert Speer is how they had anything left for one last hurrah.
ReplyDeleteHe decentralized production into small units such as a farmer's outbuilding then it was all pieced together later.
How about George S. Patton turning direction and racing to Bastogne to finally bail out the 101st Airborne!
Legendary warriors are never forgotten.
My Dad was there and told a similar story. He said it was the coldest he'd ever been in his life. They slept in farm houses somewhere in the Ardennes. He was instructing the artillery how to use the radio proximity fuse (VT fuse) that helped the Allies turn the tide in the Battle of the Bulge.
ReplyDeletethey don't make men like that anymore. my grandfather came home from WW1 alive but with chemical burns and scars on his neck and hands from mustard gas. he stayed and fought until the eleventh hr of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918 and then enlisted in the British Expeditionary Force for 12 yrs before he came home to start a family. he wouldn't talk about his experiences to anyone. we could only imagine the horrors he saw in the trenches.
ReplyDeletewhat has happened to men, i think it's the fluoride that they have been putting in the water since the 60's but i don't know. something has happened. i wouldn't think that social media has been around long enough to do THAT much damage to peoples minds.
"What has happened to men" ... all of the men with any kind of patriotism and pure guts were killed off in the two world wars last century, especially in Europe. What we see now is the result of all of that breeding with men who aren't gutsy or patriots. That and all of this feminist crap we've been subjected to for the last 50 or so years. We've been on an ever steepening downhill slide since.
DeleteNemo
good times make weak men
DeleteMy grandfather got his purple heart after being wounded during the battle of the bulge. He wasn't one to talk about his time in the war.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor Donald Britt who died at 90 some 8 or so years back was captured during the battle. He.never forgave the US government for abandoning him and all the others. Wrote a book I still have about his life and the whole affair surrounding the battle. He was bitter to end. Interesting.how little.has changed, only gets worse.
ReplyDeleteThis must be it, but no not available:
Deletehttps://www.amazon.com/Survived-Donald-Britt-Janet-Jordan/dp/B004A3K3PA/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=36L2N83VQ3K2L&keywords=Donald+Britt&qid=1702789733&sprefix=donald+britt+%2Caps%2C393&sr=8-2
Patton's response
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePCVxoWlB2g
What a waste of men from the US and Germany dying for what? Help communism flourish? Patton did say we were fighting on the wrong side. Hybo
ReplyDeleteOne of my uncles was a medic with the 82nd airborne. He was there.
ReplyDeleteOne of best and most heartbreaking episodes of Band of Brothers is #7 Breaking Point. So many great scenes but the ones depicting the horrific artillery barrages by the German 88's was NIGHTMARISH.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/UmdxOk1kvBk?si=4xKrRU1-2RBr5mIc
Actually, the Krauts never came close to changing the outcome of the war with this. As always, the logistics weren't there (losers study tactics, etc) and there was nothing behind the initial punch (Dolf had to strip the Western defenses). Add to that the fact the whole thing relied on the weather staying bad (remember Georgie's prayer?) and this was an annoyance rather than a real game-changer.
ReplyDeleteThe German's logistics plan was to capture American supply depots. That would have given them all the K-rations they could eat and enough fuel to keep the Panzers going for a while longer (fuel was tight for the Allies, too, but nothing like the German shortages). If they hoped to break the Allies with this attack, they'd been taking their meth pills for _much_ too long, but IF the American soldiers had reacted the way Germans often did when cut off from their orders from above, it's possible this might have set the Allies back enough that "unconditional surrender" would have changed to "let's negotiate".
DeleteSo what happened to that plan? I don't know about the rest of the front, but on the northern flank, there's a Michigan engineering battalion that claims a Panzer division destroyed in this battle. For speed, the Panzers didn't bring bridging equipment, and they had only enough fuel to reach an American supply depot. The engineers were ordered to blow up all the bridges in that area, but the Panzers were moving so fast mostly they had to hide until the Germans went past, then emerge and blow the bridges _behind_ them. They _did_ get ahead of the Panzers on the last bridge, stopping them one river short of the depot they were relying on for fuel. If the Germans had any full tanker trucks, Panzergrenadiers, and bridging equipment for follow up, it was going to need a week or more to get past all the blown bridges.
So the Panzers were trapped between blown bridges in several little pockets. They drove around pointlessly until out of fuel, and started walking home, picking their way across the rivers on broken bridges or whatever they could find for boats and rafts. If they managed to avoid capture by the American units that had reorganized themselves, they were still just tank-less tankers learning how to be infantry.
Combat vets often don't talk about things. My uncle was a Corpsman with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, and subsequent operations. He wouldn't talk about it either. He had no desire to relive it in any way.
ReplyDeleteMcAuliffe had only one star at Bastogne.
My uncle was in the 101st and parachuted into France where he got shot in his hip as he was coming down. He spent a few months back in England recuperating after a few operations. He could no longer jump or march so he was reassigned to 3rd Army as a supply NCO where he drove a truck. He made it to Bastogne with Patton where he saw a few of the 101st troops he knew. Before it was over he got his second Purple Heart by getting shot in his other butt cheek. That one was not as damaging and he was back in less than 2 months.
ReplyDelete