Battle of the Bulge

Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge. I won't go into the history of the battle itself, as there are plenty of sources of information on the subject. I don't usually recommend Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia article on the battle is pretty good, although lacking in detail and context like nearly every Wikipedia article on a military battle. There are dozens of books and a few movies on the subject. Patton's memoir, War as I Knew It, captures the importance of the battle if you can stand a good bit of self-aggrandizement. Patton never lacked for confidence.

The Battle of the Bulge was not a pivotal moment in the European theater in World War II. That happened six months earlier at Normandy Beach. Or maybe it happened two years earlier at Stalingrad. You could make a case for either or several other battles. The Bulge was the last gasp for Germany, and like most last-gasp battles, the result was grotesque. The Germans might have had up to 100,000 casualties and American casualties numbered 81,000. Even if the Germans had won, they would have only delayed their inevitable defeat by a few months, although the casualties over the last days of the war would have been far worse and Europe would have been in much worse shape in the aftermath of the war. The war was already lost on the Eastern Front and the Battle of the Bulge sealed the deal on the Western Front.

My father fought in this battle. Dad was in Patton's Third Army which relieved the defenders in Bastogne and then continued to drive the Germans back out of Belgium. I blogged Dad's memoir on his war experiences almost nine years ago, a year after he died. It's about how you would expect a memoir to read from a farm kid who had already survived the absolute worst the Great Depression could throw at a person and a family. It is tough and direct and, unlike Patton's memoir, totally devoid of self-aggrandizement. Dad would later become a college chemistry professor and, as you would expect from someone with that mindset, the memoir puts a heavy emphasis on facts and chronology. Nonetheless, you can viscerally feel the fear he felt as he describes cowering in a foxhole at night while shells exploded overhead. He genuinely believed he would not live to see daylight.

Obviously he did or I wouldn't be writing this.

A few years before he died, Dad got to go to Belgium and France with a tour group of survivors of the battle. It was as you would expect, both celebratory and gut-wrenching. And it was therapeutic. The people in those countries were so incredibly thankful for what those soldiers had done, for what he had done. Even the French were kind and appreciative, for the most part. Dad was able to achieve a small level of peace with what he'd seen and survived. Not everyone he was close to in the war did survive. His best friend in the army, a man who joined Dad in rescuing several wounded soldiers during one skirmish, took some shrapnel in the last days of the war and died shortly afterward, with Dad desperately trying to keep him alive before the medics arrived. I hope a part of the peace Dad got from that tour was an understanding that what he did was not in vain, that it did serve a noble purpose.

Of the few survivors that remain from that battle, most of them would be over 100 by now. I suppose their numbers are quite few. It's unlikely you would know any of them, but if you do, please find some way to relay your thanks. Their courage in that battle was amazing and worthy of our appreciation. We owe them so much.