Battle Of The Bulge Quotes

Hey Pudge," the Colonel said. "What do you think of a truce?" "It reminds me of when the Germans demanded that the U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge," I said. "I guess I'd say to this truce offer what General McAuliffe said to that one: Nuts.

Marya put down her fork. “Why are you doing this, Koschei? I have had lovers before. You have, too. Remember Marina? The rusalka? She and I swam together every morning. We raced the salmon. You called us your little sharks.” The Tsar of Life held his knife so tightly Marya could see his knucklebones bulging. “Were any of them called Ivan? Were any of them human boys all sticky with their own innocence? I know you. I know you because you are like me, as much like me as two spoons nested in each other.” Her husband leaned close to her, the candlelight sparking in his dark, shaggy hair. “When you steal them, they mean so much more, Marousha. Trust me. I know. What did I do wrong? Was I boring? Did I ignore you? Did I not give you enough pretty dresses? Enough emeralds? I’m sure I have more, somewhere.” Marya lifted her hand and laid it on her husband’s cheek. With a blinking quickness, she drove her nails deep into his face. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I have worn nothing but blood and death for years. I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me. I have learned all the tricks you said I must learn. I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man. I have learned to lay my finger aside my nose and disappear. I have learned to watch everything die. I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too. And if I have watched all my soldiers die in front of me, if I have only been saved by my rifle and my own hands, if I have drunk more blood than water for weeks, then I take the human boy who stumbled into my tent and hold him between my legs until I stop screaming, you will not punish me for it. Are we not chyerti? Are we not devils? I will not even hear your punishment, old man.

A breeze stirred Dovewing's pelt, as is someone had walked past. She lifted her head an saw two figures standing just beyond her Clanmates. One was a badger with a narrow, striped face, the other a grotesque, hairless cat who's blind, bulging eyes saw nothing but everything. They met her gaze and nodded, just once. "Thank you." Dovewing heard, quieter then a sigh. "There will be three, kin of your kin, who will hold the power of the stars in their paws. They will find a fourth, and the battle between light and dark will be won. A new leader will rise fro the shadows. This s how it always has been, and always will be." -Rock and Midnight, The Last Hope

Some 2,500 of Washington’s Continentals perished that winter, roughly one in five of those who had entered Valley Forge just before Christmas. (In contrast, one in thirty American soldiers died in combat in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the nation’s costliest engagements in World War II.)

But Trump had gone to a military high school, and he felt that made him as much a military expert as if he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

The term supply chain is not new. It is fundamental to military strategy. It was the difference between winning and losing in the Napoleonic wars and the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The

The cost in grief and devastation, if it’s on the scene, is so immeasurably expensive that no one really wins. No human being disputes this fact of life, so why can’t human beings think of this before a war?

Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch — He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways. “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” Mrs. Weasley threw off her cloak as she ran, freeing her arms. Bellatrix spun on the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of her new challenger. “OUT OF MY WAY!” shouted Mrs. Weasley to the three girls, and with a swipe of her wand she began to duel. Harry watched with terror and elation as Molly Weasley’s wand slashed and twirled, and Bellatrix Lestrange’s smile faltered and became a snarl. Jets of light flew from both wands, the floor around the witches’ feet became hot and cracked; both women were fighting to kill. “No!” Mrs. Weasley cried as a few students ran forward, trying to come to her aid. “Get back! Get back! She is mine!” Hundreds of people now lined the walls, watching the two fights, Voldemort and his three opponents, Bellatrix and Molly, and Harry stood, invisible, torn between both, wanting to attack and yet to protect, unable to be sure that he would not hit the innocent. “What will happen to your children when I’ve killed you?” taunted Bellatrix, as mad as her master, capering as Molly’s curses danced around her. “When Mummy’s gone the same way as Freddie?” “You — will — never — touch — our — children — again!” screamed Mrs. Weasley. Bellatrix laughed, the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius had given as he toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly Harry knew what was going to happen before it did. Molly’s curse soared beneath Bellatrix’s outstretched arm and hit her squarely in the chest, directly over her heart. Bellatrix’s gloating smile froze, her eyes seemed to bulge: For the tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled, and the watching crowd roared, and Voldemort screamed.

American doctors did not of course know then what the Germans had discovered after the battle of Stalingrad. The combination of stress, exhaustion, cold and malnourishment upsets the metabolism, and gravely reduces the body’s capacity to absorb calories and vitamins.

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean, The blue pool in the old garden, More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific: The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant. Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs Nor any future world-quarrel of westering And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons, Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan. Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the grey sea-smoke Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this dome, this half-globe, this bulging Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia, Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleeping Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars.

As I looked out across the gym at row after row of stretchers the scene reminded me of one in Gone with the Wind. It is always the infantryman who suffers worst in war.

Many soldiers closed their minds to the suffering of the Belgians as they focused on the priority of killing the enemy. Those who did care were marked for life by the horrors that they witnessed. Villages,

It was there in that green forest that we ran into the most frightening weapon of the war, the one that made us almost sick with fear: antipersonnel mines. By now I had gone through aerial bombing, artillery and mortar shelling, open combat, direct rifle and machine gun firing, night patrolling, and ambush. Against all of this we had some kind of chance; against mines we had none. They were vicious, deadly, inhuman. They churned our guts.

French forces remained under SHAEF command as a result of Eisenhower’s compromise, but headaches in dealing with the French authorities persisted. Eisenhower subsequently complained that the French ‘next to the weather . . . have caused me more trouble in this war than any other single factor’. SHAEF

The plans for the ground phase of Greif consisted of three parts: the seizure intact of at least two bridges across the Meuse by disguised raiding parties, the prompt reinforcement of any such coup de main by an armored commando formation; and an organized attempt to create confusion in the Allied rear areas through sabotage carried out by jeep parties clad in American uniforms.

Hemingway, eager not to miss the big battle even though he was suffering from influenza, managed to reach Colonel Buck Lanham’s command post near Rodenbourg. The house had belonged to a priest suspected of being a German sympathizer. Hemingway took great delight in drinking a stock of communion wine and then refilling the bottles with his own urine. He claimed to have relabelled them ‘Schloss Hemingstein 1944’ and later drank from one by mistake.

While Middleton was in an inner office with the commander, his driver slumped in a chair outside to catch a few minutes’ sleep. No sooner had he dropped off than someone stepped heavily on his feet. The driver woke angry. “Why, you son of a bitch,” he cried, “don’t you know I’m trying to sleep?” Then he saw he was looking up at George Patton. Patton leaned back and laughed. “Son,” he said, “you’re the first son of a bitch I’ve met today who knows what he’s trying to do.

If all superheroines were as indestructible as Superman, leaping across rooftops, smashing through windows, and flying through flames in a skimpy swimsuit wouldn't be such a problem. However, male heroes are usually presented as being unquestionably more powerful than women.Yet, they wear costumes that cover and protect most of their bodies. Women on the other hand, are written as weaker, and presumable less able to protect themselves. Yet they charge into battle with most of their bodies exposed............................................... ...............The reason for this superhero fashion double standard is that comic books have always been primarily targeted to a heterosexual male reader. As a result, female superheroes must look attractive to these readers. And in the world of male fantasy, attractive= sexy. So, revealing costumes are fitted onto idealized bodies with large breasts, tiny waists and impossible long legs. Men need to look powerful and virile, but can't display bulging genitalia showing through their spandex, as it would be too threatening for most straight male readers.

With German tanks climbing behind the lone platoon and without any means of antitank defense, Solis seized some of the gasoline from the Francorchamps dump, had his men pour it out in a deep road cut, where there was no turn-out, and set it ablaze. The result was a perfect antitank barrier. The German tanks turned back to Stavelot-this was the closest that Kampfgruppe Peiper ever came to the great stores of gasoline which might have taken the 1st SS Panzer Division to the Meuse River. Solis had burned 124,000 gallons for his improvised roadblock, but this was the only part of the First Army's POL reserve lost during the entire Ardennes operation.

We had our family patterns and were quite comfortable in them, which made it even more shocking when, just after his eightieth birthday, Papa began bringing up his time as a prisoner of war in Germany. Of course, I had always known that he had served in World War II and been captured, just like I had always know the stories about my grandmother and the build of their house. It's that peculiar type of family memory, where someone has obviously told you but you were too young to remember actually hearing it, so it seems like knowledge that was instilled at birth. Papa never brought it up, and my parents said they hadn't heard him mention it once in the previous fifty years. But suddenly, he was talking.

The Malmédy massacre would have repercussions reaching far wider than one might expect of a single battlefield atrocity in a long and bitter war. This "incident" undoubtedly stiffened the will of the American combatants (although a quantitative assessment of this fact is impossible); it would be featured in the war crimes trials as an outstanding example of Nazi contempt for the accepted rules of war; and it would serve a United States Senator as a stepping-stone toward a meteoric career. But the Malmédy massacre and the other murders of 17 December did not complete the list chargeable to Peiper and the troops of the 1st SS Panzer Division. By 20 December Peiper's command had murdered approximately 350 American prisoners of war and at least 100 unarmed Belgian civilians, this total derived from killings at twelve different locations along Peiper's line of march. PEIPER'S TROOPS ON THE ROAD TO MALMÉDY So far as can be determined the Peiper killings represent the only organized and directed murder of prisoners of war by either side during the Ardennes battle.136 The commander of the Sixth SS Panzer Army took oath in the trials of 1946 that, acting on Hitler's orders, he issued a directive stating that the German troops should be preceded "by a wave of terror and fright and that no

Let’s return to the question of the ocean tides. The cause of the twice-daily rising and falling of the seas is exactly the same as the cause of the 2,000-Mile Man’s discomfort: the non-uniformity of gravity. But in this case, it’s the Moon’s gravity, not the Earth’s. The Moon’s pull on the oceans is strongest on the side of the Earth facing the Moon and weakest on the far side. You might expect the Moon to create a single oceanic bulge on the closer side, but that’s wrong. For the same reason that the tall man’s head is pulled away from his feet, the water on both sides of the Earth—near and far—bulges away from it. One way to think about this is that on the near side, the Moon pulls the water away from the Earth, but on the far side, it pulls the Earth away from the water. The result is two bulges on opposite sides of the Earth, one facing toward the Moon and the other facing away. As the Earth turns one revolution under the bulges, each point experiences two high tides. The distorting forces caused by variations in the strength and direction of gravity are called tidal forces, whether they are due to the Moon, Earth, Sun, or any other astronomical mass. Can humans of normal size feel tidal forces—for example, when jumping from a diving board? No, we cannot, but only because we are so small that the Earth’s gravitational field hardly varies across the length of our bodies. Descent

When the Battle of the Bulge ended the war in the west had only about 100 days left. But what a One Hundred Days they became in Patton’s career! During that period he mounted four full-scale campaigns and wound up, somewhat baffled by the end when it came, inside Czechoslovakia with something resembling the military version of an unfinished symphony.

My body is a work of art, I told myself. The scars, the loose skin, the slight bulges where there once were none—they were like battle wounds. Motherhood, divorce, and everything in between shaped me, molded me. I made myself see the beauty in it.

SPADASSINS DIGLADIATE! ZIFFIDAE AND XEBECS CONTEND! GOL-IARD DUNKING! Slogans, signs, announcements, odours and personal greeters vied for attention, advertising emporia and venues. Stunning ’scapes and scenes played out in sensorium bubbles bulging out into the centre of the street, putting you instantly into bedrooms, feast-halls, arenae, harems, seaships, fair rides, space battles, states of temporary ecstasy; tempting, prompting, suggesting, offering, providing entrance, stimulating appetites, prompting desires; suggesting, propositioning, pandering. RHYPAROGRAPHY! KELOIDAL ANAMNESIS! IVRESSE!

I grabbed Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball from behind the cash register. My thumb went for the red scuff mark on the back of the ball, trying to rub it out like I always did whenever I got bored. Tucker was now preoccupied with lining up a pepper shaker cavalry across from a hostile regiment of saltshaker footmen. ... While Tucker stepped out back for his break, I commandeered his condiment armies. Gus’s cigarette smoke wafted toward the ceiling, pulled into the vent. The oscillating fan on the wall made the papers on the employee bulletin board flutter. Halfway through my recreation of the Battle of the Bulge, I shook Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball to find out if the German saltshaker would be successful in his offensive. Ask again later. Useless thing. If the Allies had taken that advice, the Axis would have won the war.

He was afraid that he was becoming just like his father, who was always angry and rarely talked with his children—except to compare them unfavorably with his comrades who had lost their lives around Christmas 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge.

Genetic researchers decided to follow a group of 200 Spanish teens who were on a 10-week quest to battle the bulge. What geneticists discovered was that they could actually reverse engineer the campers’ summer experience and predict which of the teens would lose the most weight depending on the pattern of methylation—the way their genes were turned off or on—in around five sites in their genome before summer camp even began.7 Some kids were epigenetically primed to lose the bulge at summer camp while others were going to keep it on, despite diligent adherence to their counselors’ dietary protocol.

I AM A creature of the British Army. My father served in the Second World War. My grandfather and his brother commanded battalions in the First World War; their

Waffen-SS prisoners were conspicuous by their rarity, either because of their determination to go down fighting, or from being shot on sight by their captors. One

Another division was even tougher in its views. ‘We have never been benefited by treating prisoners well . . . We are here to Kill Germans, not to baby them.’ Some soldiers in the 30th Division exacted their own revenge when they captured Germans wearing American combat boots taken from the dead. They forced them at gunpoint to remove them and walk barefoot along the icy roads.

As in all armies, it was not so much the fear of death as the fear of mutilation which preyed on minds. A German field hospital, or Feldlazarett, was little more than an amputation line. American doctors were horrified by the German army’s tendency to cut off limbs without a moment’s thought. A

Neuro-psychiatric cases, termed combat exhaustion, rose to nearly a quarter of all hospital admissions. The German army, which refused to recognize the condition, apparently suffered far fewer cases. Combat exhaustion produced recognizable symptoms: ‘nausea, crying, extreme nervousness and gastric conditions’. Some

There can be little doubt that the commitment and then grinding down of German forces in the Ardennes, especially the panzer divisions, had mortally weakened the Wehrmacht’s capacity to defend the eastern front. But

On 18 January, determined to repair fences, Churchill made a speech in the House of Commons to emphasize that ‘the United States troops have done almost all the fighting and have suffered almost all the losses . . . Care must be taken in telling our proud tale not to claim for the British Army an undue share of what is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever famous American victory.

The division was shaken by the shock of battle. Even its commander was thought to be close to cracking up under the strain, and officers seemed unable to control their men. After bitter fighting to take the ruins of Chenogne on 1 January, about sixty German prisoners were shot. ‘There were some unfortunate incidents in the shooting of prisoners,’ Patton wrote in his diary. ‘I hope we can conceal this.’ It would indeed have been embarrassing after all the American fulminations over the Malmédy–Baugnez massacre.

The 112th Infantry Regiment of Cota’s 28th Division found that ‘on the morning of the initial assault, there were strong indications that the German infantry had imbibed rather freely of alcoholic beverage . . . They were laughing and shouting and telling our troops not to open fire, as it disclosed our positions. We obliged until the head of the column was 25 yards to our front. Heavy casualties were inflicted. Examination of the canteens on several of the bodies gave every indication that the canteen had only a short time before contained cognac.

Over the previous 150 years, the border areas of Eupen and St Vith had moved back and forth between France, Prussia, Belgium and Germany, depending on the fortunes of war. In the Belgian elections of April 1939, more than 45 per cent of those in the mainly German-speaking ‘eastern cantons’ voted for the Heimattreue Front which wanted the area reincorporated into the Reich. But

The bad visibility to prevent flying, which Hitler had so earnestly desired, was repeated day after day. It does not, however, appear to have hampered artillery-spotting aircraft on unofficial business in the Ardennes. Bradley received complaints that ‘GI’s in their zest for barbecued pork were hunting [wild] boar in low-flying cubs with Thompson submachine guns.

In Waffen-SS units especially, the excitement and impatience were clearly intense. A member of the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend wrote to his sister on the eve of battle. ‘Dear Ruth, My daily letter will be very short today – short and sweet. I write during one of the great hours before an attack – full of unrest, full of expectation for what the next days will bring. Everyone who has been here the last two days and nights (especially nights), who has witnessed hour after hour the assembly of our crack divisions, who has heard the constant rattling of Panzers, knows that something is up and we are looking forward to a clear order to reduce the tension. We are still in the dark as to “where” and “how” but that cannot be helped! It is enough to know that we attack, and will throw the enemy from our homeland. That is a holy task!’ On the back of the sealed envelope he added a hurried postscript: ‘Ruth! Ruth! Ruth! WE MARCH!!!’ That must have been scribbled as they moved out, for the letter fell into American hands during the battle.

Our troops know of the atrocities committed by the enemy and know that now it is a matter of life or death, we or they.’ A number of senior officers made it clear that they approved of revenge killing. When General Bradley heard soon afterwards that prisoners from the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend had spoken of their heavy casualties, he raised his eyebrows sceptically. ‘Prisoners from the 12th SS?’ ‘Oh, yes sir,’ the officer replied. ‘We needed a few samples. That’s all we’ve taken, sir.’ Bradley smiled. ‘Well, that’s good,’ he said.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!

a massive, battle-scarred animal with long waves of wet, dark hair falling past his heavy pectorals, his arms corded with muscle, his legs long and bulging with power. Through the bars that separated them, his blue eyes glowed with menace and his mouth parted as if it were just a matter of seconds before her blood was on his tongue. And he was naked. Dear God, the only thing on him was a blinking collar around his thick throat— As a scent of dark spices reached her nose, it was a shock to like the way he smelled. Given all that menace, stale sweat and the fresh flesh of his victims seemed more up his alley, yet instead, she found herself breathing deep, her body kindling in a way she couldn’t understand.

Two weeks later, fire bombs destroyed Peiper’s house and killed the sixty-year-old former commander of Kampfgruppe Peiper.

to me, love isn’t knowing every detail about a person. That’s for cowards. It’s about knowing enough to make you want to spend the rest of your life pulling back the layers

That such a small force was entrusted with defending the critical Losheim Gap demonstrated the complacency with which American commanders viewed the

That such a small force was entrusted with defending the critical Losheim Gap demonstrated the complacency with which American commanders viewed the possibility of a German offensive in the Ardennes.

Indeed, wargame hobbyists will often amass collections of hundreds or even thousands of titles, sometimes a dozen or more on a popular topic like Gettysburg or D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge. For the more critically minded among them, the goal is not to find the single, definitive simulation—indeed, one that merely mechanically replicated the historical outcome at each playing would be deemed a failure—but rather to compare and contrast the techniques and interpretations across the different designs, much as a historian reads multiple accounts and sources to arrive at her own synthesis of events.

A World War II battalion headquarters in combat is difficult to describe because they varied so much. Typically, the actual headquarters was where the commanding colonel set up his command post (CP). He might use a tent about twelve feet square or a log-covered bunker. Headquarters personnel might consist of the battalion commander (usually a lieutenant colonel), his executive officer (a major), and captains for administration (S-l), adjutant in charge of operations (S-3), and supply (S-4), with a first lieutenant for intelligence (S-2).

Why the Hürtgen forest was not bypassed is still a major question. Possibly the Allies feared the Germans would open the floodgates on the Ruhr dams just to the forest’s south. Opening the gates would have flooded much of the land to the northeast. Some experts feel that the dams could have been captured and the forest still bypassed, but it is possible that the Allied leadership felt that the forest could also have been used as a base from which the Germans could launch a major counteroffensive.

Normally, artillery shells come into the ground at a sharp angle, and their shrapnel fans out and slightly upward to the front, much of it going harmlessly into the ground or straight up into the air. When a shell explodes overhead in a tree, almost half of its shrapnel spreads out and downward like rain, and it is infinitely more lethal.

The Third Army commander's last instruction to his commanders reflected the admonition against a dribbling attack given by General Eisenhower: he (General Patton) favored an attack in column of regiments, "or in any case lots of depth." As usual Patton was optimistic. He felt certain that the enemy was unaware of the storm about to break, that German intelligence had not spotted the appearance of the 26th Division in the area, and that it did not know the exact location of the other two divisions. "Drive like hell," said Patton.

The Germans negotiated this forward roadblock without a fight, the ubiquitous and deceptive Sherman tank again providing the ticket. When the panzers, some eight of them, arrived at the main foxhole line the German tankers swiveled their gun turrets facing north and south to blast the battalion into two halves. One unknown soldier in Company K was undaunted by this fusillade: he held his ground and put a bazooka round into the spot but he had stopped the enemy column cold in its tracks, for here the road edged a high cliff and the remaining panzers could not pass their stricken mate. Apparently the Panther detachment had outrun its infantry support or was apprehensive of a close engagement in the dark, for the German tanks backed off and returned to Grandménil.

The engagement at Sadzot was fought by squads and platoons, and so may be appropriately called a "soldiers' battle"; with equal propriety the name coined by the GI's for this confused action is used here: "The Sad Sack Affair.

By 2 January 1945, the eve of the Allied attack to destroy the Ardennes salient, the Germans had thrown 8 armored divisions, 20 infantry divisions, and 2 mechanized brigades into the Battle of the Bulge.

During these eighteen days the Americans had employed 8 armored, 16 infantry, and 2 airborne division in the line.

The majority of the German panzer divisions had the same manpower configuration as the two U.S. square armored divisions (the 2d and 3d), that is, a little more than 14,000. The six remaining US armored divisions had the new triangular organization with a roster reduced to 10,666 officers and men. The armored weight of the opposing divisions, however, strongly favored the Americans, for the German panzer division brought an average of 90 to 100 medium tanks into the field whereas the American triangular division was equipped with 186 and the two square divisions had 232 medium tanks in their organization tables. Hitler personally attempted to compensate for this disparity by ordering the attachment of separate Army tank battalions of 40 to 50 Panther or Tigers to the regular panzer divisions.

The Germans had a family of three main battle tanks. The Mark IV, which received its first real combat test in May 1940, weighed twenty-seven tons, had somewhat less armor than the Sherman, about the same maximum road speed, and a tank gun comparable in weight of projectile and muzzle velocity to the 76-mm. American tank gun but superior to the short-barreled 75-mm. The Panther, Mark V, had proved itself during 1944 but still was subject to mechanical failures which were well recognized but which seemingly could not be corrected in the hasty German production schedules. This tank had a weight of fifty tons, a superiority in base armor of one-half to one inch over the Sherman, good mobility and flotation, greater speed, and a high-velocity gun superior even to the new American 76-mm. tank gun. The Tiger, Mark VI, had been developed as an answer to the heavy Russian tank but had encountered numerous production difficulties (it had over 26,000 parts) and never reached the field in the numbers Hitler desired. The original model weighed fifty-four tons, had thicker armor than the Panther, including heavy top armor as protection against air attack, was capable of a speed comparable to the Sherman, and mounted a high-velocity 88-mm. cannon. A still heavier Mark VI, the King Tiger, had an added two to four inches of armor plate. Few of this model ever reached the Ardennes, although it was commonly reported by American troops. Exact figures on German tank strength are not available, but it would appear that of the estimated 1,800 panzers in the Ardennes battle some 250 were Tigers and the balance was divided equally between the Mark IV and the Panther. Battle experience in France, which was confirmed in the Ardennes, gave the Sherman the edge over the Mark IV in frontal, flank, and rear attack. The Panther often had been beaten by the Sherman during the campaign in France, and would be defeated on the Ardennes battleground, but in nearly all cases of a forthright tank engagement the Panther lost only when American numerical superiority permitted an M4 to get a shot at flank or tail. Insofar as the Tiger was concerned, the Sherman had to get off a lucky round or the result would be strictly no contest.

As they sat down around a large square table, an SS guard assumed a position behind each chair, glowering with a ferocity that made at least one of the generals, Fritz Bayerlein, fear even to reach for his handkerchief.

Still physically shaken by the bomb blast which so nearly had cut short his career, the Fuehrer raves and rambles, boasts, threatens, and complains. As he meanders through the “conference,” really a solo performance, one idea reappears again and again: the final decision must come in the west and if necessary the other fronts must suffer so that a concentrated, major effort can be made there. No definite plans can be made as yet, says Hitler, but he himself will accept the responsibility for planning and for command; the latter he will exercise from a headquarters some place in the Black Forest or the Vosges. To guarantee secrecy, nobody will be allowed to inform the Commander in Chief West or his staff of these far-reaching plans; the WFSt, that is, Jodl, must form a small operational staff to aid the Fuehrer by furnishing any needed data.7

The view was widely held that the Fuehrer did not accept any opinion other than his own.

The most impressive argument for ascribing sole authorship of the Ardennes idea to Hitler is found in the simple fact that every major military decision in the German High Command for months past had been made by the Fuehrer, and that these Hitler decisions were made in detail, never in principle alone.

The Western Front in Early December The Allied attacks in November had as their objective the decisive defeat of the enemy west of the Rhine and the seizure of a foothold on the east bank of that river. By the end of November, the US First and Ninth Armies, charged with the main effort, had made some gains in the direction of Bonn and Cologne. The 21 Army Group, in the north, had crossed the Waal River, the left arm of the lower Rhine. The US Third Army had put troops on the Saar River. Farther to the south the US Seventh Army had captured Strasbourg and reached the Rhine. The 1st French Army, on the extreme south flank, meanwhile had liberated Belfort and entrapped sizable German forces in the Colmar pocket. Although Allied losses had been high, those inflicted on the enemy had been even greater, probably on the order of two or three to one. But the Allies had failed to achieve their main strategic goals: they had not decisively defeated the German armies west of the Rhine, nor had they crossed the river.

The staunch defense of Bastogne had impeded the Fifth Panzer Army drive to the west, just as the desperate rear guard battle by the 7th Armored at St. Vith had slowed the advance of the Sixth, demonstrating the axiom of World War I that no salient thrust into the defender's position can be expanded rapidly and successfully if the shoulders of the salient are firmly held by the defender. The human cost of the Bastogne battle, therefore, probably was not out of proportion to the military gains achieved. The 101st Airborne Division suffered battle casualties numbering 105 officers and 1,536 men. CCB of the 10th Armored Division had approximately 25 officers and 478 men as battle casualties. There is no means of numbering the killed, wounded, and missing in the miscellany of unrecorded tankers, gunners, infantry, and others who shared in the defense of Bastogne. Nor can any casualty roster now be compiled of those units which fought east of Bastogne prior to 19 December and gave the 101st Airborne Division the time and the tactical opportunity to array itself in the defense of that town.

The boundary between the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies bisected the 14th Cavalry Group area by an extension south of Krewinkel and Manderfeld. North of the line elements of the 3d Parachute Division, reinforced by tanks, faced two platoons of Troop C, 18th Cavalry Squadron, two reconnaissance platoons and one gun company of the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion, plus the squadron and group headquarters at Manderfeld. South of the boundary the 294th and 295th Regiments of the 18th Volks Grenadier Division, forty assault guns, and a reinforced tank destroyer battalion faced Troop A and one platoon of Troop C, 18th Cavalry Squadron. On no other part of the American front would the enemy so outnumber the defenders at the start of the Ardennes counteroffensive.

to the icy roads and the pockets of resistance which

As might be expected, the overall effectiveness of air attacks along the roads turned on the configuration of the ground. The 9th Bombardment Division put 136 tons of high explosive on St. Vith, which stood in the open with a wealth of bypass routes around it on relatively level ground, and stopped the German traffic not at all. Even when the RAF dropped 1,140 tons in a carpet bombing attack at St. Vith, the road center was out of commission for only a day. Yet a mere 150 tons put on La Roche over a period of two days stopped all major movement in this sector of the Ardennes road net. La Roche, be it noted, lay at the bottom of a gorge with access only through deep defiles.

Generalleutnant Adolf Galland, commander of the Luftwaffe fighter arm, has written the Luftwaffe epitaph in this manner: "The Luftwaffe received its death blow at the Ardennes offensive.

The total of American battle casualties reported for the period 16 December through 2 January (although these probably were incomplete returns) numbered 41,315 officers and men, of which 4,138 were known to be killed in action, 20,231 were wounded in action, and 16,946 were reported missing.

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion.

An omnivorous reader of military history, Hitler was fond of relating episodes therefrom as evidence of his catholic military knowledge or as footnotes proving the soundness of a decision.

Between 22 June 1941 and 1 November 1942 the German armies in the USSR had swept up 5,150,000 prisoners of war (setting aside the Russians killed or severely wounded) but still had failed to bore in deep enough to deliver a paralyzing blow. A quick and decisive success in the second half of 1944 against 555 Soviet units of division size was out of the question, even though Hitler would rave about the “Russian bluff” and deride the estimates prepared by his Intelligence, Fremde Heere 0st.

A blow here would strike the seam between the British and Americans and lead to political as well as military disharmony between the Allies. Furthermore an entrance along this seam would isolate the British 21 Army Group and allow the encirclement and destruction of the British and Canadians before the American leadership (particularly the political leadership) could react.

mendacious

The plan for the Ardennes counteroffensive was born in the mind and will of Hitler the Feldherr. Its conception and growth from ovum are worthy of study by the historian and the student of the military art as a prime example of the role which may be played by the single man and the single mind in the conduct of modern war and the direction of an army numbered in the millions.

These divisions and heavy weapons might or might not suffice for the task at hand, but the total represented the best that the Wehrmacht could do. Of the armored complement on the Western Front-2,567 tanks and assault guns-Army Group B and OKW reserve had been given 2,168. About a third of this latter total would have to be left for the time being with the Fifteenth Army to shore up the right-wing defenses in the Roer sector. Some four hundred tanks and assault guns were all that remained to German divisions on the rest of the long Western Front.

The 38th Squadron could report a count of two hundred German dead in front of its lines. The 326th Volks Grenadier Division was finding its position at the pivot of the Sixth Panzer Army offensive a costly one.

The battle plans and tactics of the Fifth Panzer Army, more than those of any other German army that took part in the Ardennes counteroffensive, bore the very strong personal imprint of its commander, General Manteuffel. As a junior officer in the prewar panzer troops, Manteuffel had made a mark as an armored specialist. His record in North Africa and Russia, where he achieved a reputation for energetic leadership and personal bravery, brought him to Hitler's attention and promotion directly from a division to an army command. Despite the failure of his Fifth Panzer Army in the Lorraine campaign against Patton's Third Army, Manteuffel was listed by Hitler for command in the Ardennes. His staff, carefully selected and personally devoted to the little general, was probably the best German staff on the Western Front.

the monolithic USSR was a less susceptible object than the coalition of powers in the west.

One of the greatest skills in the practice of the military art is the avoidance of the natural tendency to overrate or underestimate the enemy.

Greif

The capture of Waldbillig on 20 December marked the high-water mark of the 276th Volks Grenadier Division advance.

At Petit Coo, close by Stavelot, S/Sgt. Paul Bolden and T/Sgt. Russell N. Snoad decided to attack a house from which the Germans were firing. While his companion fired to cover him, Bolden rushed the door, tossed in a pair of hand grenades, then went in firing his Tommy gun. Bolden killed twenty of the enemy, then withdrew. A blast of fire killed Bolden's comrade and wounded the sergeant, but he dashed back into the house, killing fifteen more of the enemy. (Bolden later received the Medal of Honor and Snoad was awarded the DSC posthumously.)

During the afternoon a gunner from the tank destroyer platoon, Pfc. Paul C. Rosenthal, sighted five German tanks and a truck moving north of Lützkampen. Firing his 3-inch gun at 2,000 yards range he destroyed all, tanks and truck; he had used only eighteen rounds of high-explosive and armor-piercing-capped ammunition.

The best way to handle these Heinies is to fight 'em.

The inability of the western leaders to hold their people together in the face of defeat was an oft-expressed and cardinal axiom of the German Fuehrer, despite the example of the United Kingdom to the contrary.

On the afternoon of 16 December Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, commanding the V Corps, concluded from the fragmentary reports coming out of the main battle area that the 2d Infantry Division might soon find itself in a difficult situation. He asked the First Army commander, General Hodges, for permission to call off the attack at Wahlerscheid and move the 2d Division to the natural defensive line offered by the ridge running north and south of Elsenborn. This was refused. Late in the evening the deputy corps commander (Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner) cautioned General Robertson to keep the unengaged troops of his division in hand for a quick change of plan, despite the order to continue the attack.72 By this time the three battalions of the 9th Infantry and two of the 38th were committed. On the morning of the counteroffensive’s second day, with the American position in the 99th Division and VIII Corps sector rapidly deteriorating, Gerow renewed his request. The First Army commander was unwilling to give orders for a withdrawal but authorized the V Corps commander to act as he saw fit. Gerow phoned Robertson; it was now about 0730.

It was between noon and one o'clock of 17 December, on the road between Modersheid and Ligneuville, that the German advance guard ran into an American truck convoy moving south from Malmédy. This was ill-fated Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. The convoy was shot up and the advance guard rolled on, leaving the troops to the rear to deal with the Americans who had taken to the woods and ditches. About two hours after, or so the dazed survivors later recalled, the Americans who had been rounded up were marched into a field where, at a signal, they were shot down by machine gun and pistol fire. A few escaped by feigning death, but the wounded who moved or screamed were sought out and shot through the head. At least eighty-six Americans were massacred here. This was not the first killing of unarmed prisoners chargeable to Kampfgruppe Peiper on 17 December. Irrefutable evidence shows that nineteen unarmed Americans were shot down at Honsfeld and fifty at Büllingen.135

oblique hints that the 4th Armored should get a move on. Thus, at the close of the 23d McAuliffe sent the message: "Sorry I did not get to shake hands today. I was disappointed." A less formal exhortation from one of his staff reached the 4th Armored command post at midnight: "There is only one more shopping day before Christmas!

The destructive power of those thousands of five hundred-pound bombs overwhelmed the senses. The dead from both sides lay twisted and torn, some half buried by overturned earth. Bloated cows with stiff legs thrust skyward in death lay everywhere, as did burned-out vehicles and blasted equipment. I’ve never been able to erase it from my mind.

Nuremburg, which we went through on trucks, was my first view of a major city bombed by the Allies. Besides being an important railhead, it was also a highly emotional target as the sacrosanct heartland of the Nazi cult, the wellspring of Hitlermania, the breeding ground of the Third Reich plague.

Adolf Hitler set in motion preparations for a battle that was to assume epic proportions, the greatest German attack in the West since the campaign of 1940 had brought down the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in swift and ignominious defeat. It was destined to involve more than a million men and to precipitate an unparalleled crisis for the Allied armies. It was also to involve one of the most egregious failures in the history of American battlefield intelligence. Yet it was also to become the greatest battle ever fought by the United States Army.

He who defends everything,” Frederick the Great used to admonish his generals, “defends nothing.

A small girl among those being evacuated to Sorinnes had lost her shoes, so an American soldier from the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion forced a German prisoner at gunpoint to take off his boots and give them to her. They were much too large, but she was just able to walk, while the German soldier faced frostbitten feet.

A clear cold Christmas,’ Patton wrote in his diary that day, ‘lovely weather for killing Germans, which seems a bit queer, seeing Whose birthday it is.’ Patton

On Tuesday 26 December, Patton famously boasted to Bradley: ‘The Kraut has stuck his head in the meat grinder and I’ve got the handle.’ But this bravado concealed his lingering embarrassment that the advance to Bastogne had not gone as he had claimed it would. He

The surgeons wasted no time. They went straight to the improvised hospital in the barracks and began operating on the 150 most seriously wounded out of more than 700 patients. They operated all through the night and until noon on 27 December, on wounds that in some cases had gone for eight days without surgical attention. As a result they had to perform ‘many amputations’. In the circumstances, it was a testament to their skill that there were only three post-operative deaths.

On the southern flank, Company B was fast going to pieces. As infiltrating Germans approached Britton’s command post in a house, they yelled in English: “Come on out!” To which Britton yelled back: “Fuck you, come on in!”[354]

Among these have been an unhealthy number of near-death moments, many of which I look back on now and wince. But I guess our training in life never really ends--and experience is always the best tutor of all. Then there are the most bizarre: like jet-skiing around Britain in aid of the UK lifeboats. Day after day, hour after hour, pounding the seas like little ants battling around the wild coast of Scotland and Irish Sea. (I developed a weird bulging muscle in my forearm that popped out and has stayed with me ever since after that one!) Or hosting the highest open-air dinner party, suspended under a high-altitude hot-air balloon, in support of the Duke of Edinburgh’s kids awards scheme. That mission also became a little hairy, rappelling down to this tiny metal table suspended fifty feet underneath the basket in minus forty degrees, some twenty-five thousand feet over the UK. Dressed in full naval mess kit, as required by the Guinness Book of World Records--along with having to eat three courses and toast the Queen, and breathing from small supplementary oxygen canisters--we almost tipped the table over in the early dawn, stratosphere dark. Everything froze, of course, but finally we achieved the mission and skydived off to earth--followed by plates of potatoes and duck à l-orange falling at terminal velocity. Or the time Charlie Mackesy and I rowed the Thames naked in a bathtub to raise funds for a friend’s new prosthetic legs. The list goes on and on, and I am proud to say, it continues. But I will tell all those stories properly some other place, some other time. They vary from the tough to the ridiculous, the dangerous to the embarrassing. But in this book I wanted to show my roots: the early, bigger missions that shaped me, and the even earlier, smaller moments that steered me.

The corners of his mouth twitched. “God’s Blood, you are a naïve child. Do you truly believe that all marriages are decent and that all women go to the marriage bed as virgins?” Furious all over again, she tried to yank herself from his grasp but he held her tight. “I told you that I would not be your whore and I meant it. I’ll kill myself first.” “And I told you that you will not be my whore. You will be my wife. There is a distinct difference.” She froze mid-struggle. The golden brown eyes bulged to the point of popping from her skull.  “What?” she managed to blurt. He stood tall from his position of hovering over her, his hands still on her arms, and kissed her chastely on the forehead.