We were visiting one of my wife’s cousins. Her FIL and I were sitting on the front porch of his ranch house and after a bit, he started telling me about being in combat and being captured during the battle of the bulge. I got to spend the next two hours gently questioning him.
As POWs, they were starving. However, stealing food from another soldier was a big no no. While they were bedded down on a large concrete foundation one night, a soldier grabbed someone’s food, turned to run and in the dark tripped and impaled himself on some rebar. No one would do anything for him as he lay dying. The man suffered in agony while pleading for help and forgiveness; he finally died about 2:00 AM.
Mr. Brown, with tears rolling down his cheeks, said he had half of a potato that he was saving for his breakfast. He said, “I wish I could go back and give that boy my potato.” He also regretted not doing something for his fellow POW.
I was honored to have been the first person to hear his story since the war ended. His two sons had never heard his story. They were stunned when I mentioned what their dad had endured.
RIP Mr. Brown, you really were part of the greatest generation.

My dad started out in the Signal Corps late 1942. North Africa, France, Germany. Later in the war was with the 10th Armored Division and was at Bastogne. Shrapnel and frostbite took him out there. Hospitalized, released. On his way stateside somehow he found out his youngest brother in the Navy on a Destroyer was in London the same time he was. They met up, I have a photo of them together.

My uncle lost most of his unit in the Bulge. Never talked about it. His brother was in a hospital in Paris, my other uncle. He was put on a truck to go help.

Both went through the bocage, both told stories about about that. Not the bulge. We bought that victory, lots of brave men. Asshole nazis.

I just watched the Bastogne episode of BoB....such men

Dad was in the air corp attack on the Germans at the Bulge. My brothers father in law was on the ground in the infantry at the same time and wounded in the battle. What a shitty way to spend Christmas. The funny part to me was that all the years my mom and dad were married, she never knew he was in German during WW2. At all. It came out via letters he'd sent home and we received @ 1990. Long time after dad had passed away. The internet records where his unit was though, chased the Germans up the Rhine and then parked at Weisbaden and ran sorties from there till they surrendered.

http://warfarehistorynetwork.c...battle-of-the-bulge/
"From December 16, 1944, to January 16, 1945, according to the Army Air Forces’ official history, planes of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces destroyed 11,378 German transport vehicles, 1,161 tanks and other armored vehicles, 507 locomotives, 6,266 railroad cars, 472 gun positions, 974 rail cuts, 421 road cuts, and 36 bridges."
Small world.

My grandfather and his two brothers fought in the heavy fighting leading up to the Bulge and near Bastogne, all Armored Infantry. One of them was killed just before the Bulge and between Bastogne and Luxembourg City. He has a marker at the National Cemertary there in Luxembourg. Recently discovered my grandfather was awarded the Bronze Star but waiting for the medals and details. None of his children knew.

One cool story I read recently was about Airborne beer. Look it up, you'll be glad you did.

https://www.stripes.com/news/f...o-beer-fame-1.254178

The CFO of a company I once worked for was gimping around one winter. I asked him what his problem was and he said frost bite. He said he was in the Battle of the Bulge and had been a First Sergeant of his company. Never said another word about it. He passed away in 1990.

My Dad's infantry division had just pulled out of the month-long Huertgen Forest battle when they were called back in as reinforcements for the start of the Bulge. His memories included the terror of 88s hitting the tree tops, not taking prisoners after Malmedy and somehow getting a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving 1944.
The execution of prisoners weighed on him for the rest of his life.

You know they never talked about it, the horrendous events of war. Reading above how you wished you would have talked about it with those that experienced it made me want to contact my friend who had gone through the Vietnam War...then I got thinking who am I to want him to remember and make an accounting of the horrible events of the war? Why do I feel that my interest in the events should ever out weigh his wanting to forget or at least push as far back into his mind as possible.

A very good friend of mine fought at the battle. He also learned how to drive a truck during the fight. As he told the story to me, he never even sat in a truck before, his commanding officer told him just get behind the wheel and follow the guy in front of you, you will learn soon enough how to drive that truck.

That same man taught me how to drive a fire engine, E-78, when I was a a young candidate on the Chicago Fire Dept.

quote:

Originally posted by FlyingScot:
lots of brave men. Asshole nazis.

Not to try to change your statement, but there was a lot of suffering on both sides during that time period. We tell about it because we were losing in the early stages of that battle. The ones losing always suffer a lot. But we won the battle in the end. The same asshole nazis probably suffered more at the end of the battle. Some or most of it deserved, some arguably not.

I worked for a company owned by John Cochran and his brother Col. Phil Cochran of WWII fame.
My father played slow pitch softball with a company VP who was an M4 Sherman commander.
Christmas Day 1944 his tank was hit and he was the only survivor.
Great guy, from the Greatest Generation.

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:
Earlier this year I met a man who was present to hear McAuliffe's response given to the German officer. He'll never forget that moment, and I'll never forget meeting him.

General McAulliffe said "Nuts" when his Chief of Staff woke him up and said the Germans wanted them to surrender. The actual "NUTS" response delivered to the Germans was typed on a piece of paper and handed to German Major Henke. US Army Website

My grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 94th Infantry. He never talked about it, other than to call it his “walking tour of Europe.” After he died I learned he was awarded a silver star and two Purple Hearts. His was truly a great generation.

quote:

Originally posted by rburg:

quote:

Originally posted by FlyingScot:
lots of brave men. Asshole nazis.

Not to try to change your statement, but there was a lot of suffering on both sides during that time period. We tell about it because we were losing in the early stages of that battle. The ones losing always suffer a lot. But we won the battle in the end. The same asshole nazis probably suffered more at the end of the battle. Some or most of it deserved, some arguably not.

We should remember that those German soldiers were following orders. Not sure what the "rules of war" were back then about dealing with prisoners. Were enemy prisoners to be protected?

I talked at some length with Germans who were in "the bulge" and they were scarred by it as were the Allies.

A B17 crashed on a hill top very near the village where my wife grew up. The kids saw the parachutes as the crew bailed out.

Those Americans were picked up by a senior German officer who demanded, and got, food and drink for the Americans. Funny part of that story was that the village mayor was asked by the German officer if the prisoners had been fed. Mayor said that they had not. Asked why, he responded, "they have no ration cards". German officer saw that the Americans were fed and seen by the village doctor and then loaded them in his vehicle and drove off.

quote:

Originally posted by Dbltap:
I worked for a company owned by John Cochran and his brother Col. Phil Cochran of WWII fame.
My father played slow pitch softball with a company VP who was an M4 Sherman commander.
Christmas Day 1944 his tank was hit and he was the only survivor.
Great guy, from the Greatest Generation.

My father in law's boss (Forstmeister) was in the German Panzer corp. His tank got hit by a US 90mm round. He was standing in the turret at the time. Said it blew him about 30 feet into the air and badly burned him. His visible scars were on his hands and they were pretty well crippled. He was a minor member of the German nobility with estates that were in the East Zone. Thus, lost to him.

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
Not sure what the "rules of war" were back then about dealing with prisoners. Were enemy prisoners to be protected?

The 1929 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was in force, but application varied. One basic principle was that its rules were only effective on a reciprocal basis between signatories, of which Germany was one among most nations of the world, but the USSR and Japan were not (though the latter promised to abide by its terms in 1942). Therefore Soviet POWs were pretty much treated on the level of KZ inmates by Germany, starved and worked to death or mass-executed, unless they joined the Wehrmacht's auxiliary forces, the foreign formations of the Waffen-SS, or proxy forces like Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army. Keep in mind that the war in the East was conducted as a racially motivated war of destruction to gain Lebensraum by Germany. Obviously German POWs were not treated much better by the Soviets in return.

In the West, POWs were generally treated according to the Geneva rules on a reciprocal basis, individual incidents notwithstanding; SS units machinegunning prisoners tended to draw retribution in kind by Allied forces, so everybody had an interest in not endangering their own welfare in the event of being captured - unlike on the Eastern front, people had something to lose there. Of course with millions of people fighting, there were still individual war crimes on either side, including by civilians; I remember at least one incident where a US bomber crew who had bailed out of their stricken aircraft and were led away under guard were lynched by German townspeople who saw a chance to exert revenge on the guys who had bombed them for years. Then there were illegal orders like Hitler's 1942 "Kommandobefehl" to shoot Allied commando soldiers on sight or hand them to the SD (Security Service, the SS intelligence arm, who would usually execute them) on the grounds that they were "using methods outside the international agreements of Geneva". The British commandos in the raid on the Norwegian heavy water facilitiy were killed under that order, which was similar to the "Kommissarbefehl" to shoot Soviet political officers on sight.

Western POWs imprisoned in camps in the East seem also to have been afflicted by the loser attitude to international rules there. There was the case of British prisoners kept at Auschwitz (which had not just the infamous extermination camp but was a large complex of different installations, including separate ones for Soviet and Western POWs) who were forced to work in ammunition production, illegal under the Geneva Convention. Prisoners of different Western nations were also treated differently - the French and Polish were considered beaten nations with the rules of warfare no longer relevant, often released from military captivity just to be used as civilian forced laborers. POWs of former German allies who switched sides like the Italians, Romanians and Bulgarians tended to encounter conditions approaching those of Soviet prisoners late in the war. And obviously as the supply situation in Germany broke down towards the end, all POWs suffered from shortages of food, medicine etc., probably more so than German soldiers and civilians.

quote:

Originally posted by PossibleZombie:
I've got Soldiers who whine when the temp is in the 50s and they have to be outside. I can only imagine how today's Soldiers would fare in that environment.

They'd likely suck it up and endure it just like those men did in Bastogne. Cause really, what other choice would they have?