This is an excerpt of a letter my dad sent my mother about some of his experiences in WW II. It is about the Battle of the Bulge....the bloodiest battle of WW II..... The next morning we moved up and attacked. We charged across a road and the artillery was coming in so heavy we had to return to our original position, it was my first attack and I was plenty scared, the shells were landing all around me and I saw on fall where I had been, I was surely glad I had moved. That night we dug in and the next morning we dropped our packs and pushed forward, that’s when I lost the picture of you and the kids, I never saw that pack again. We didn’t know it then but we were starting a six week battle in the Ardennes forest that was to be the worst we’d ever experienced, with no blankets or anything to keep warm we fought and slept in the woods most of the time in fox holes. We lost most of our men there from frozen feet & hands. I slept about 15 minutes at a time and then the cold was so painful I had to get up and jump around to warm up. It seemed I couldn’t put on enough clothes to keep warm, once the clothes got cold we froze right through, we’d walk a ways and fight get all sweated up inside, and then we couldn’t possibly get warm. It was the first week after we entered the Ardennes that I lost my gloves, and I tore my scarf in two pieces and wrapped them around my hands to keep them a little warm. Our rifles were so jammed up with snow they didn’t shoot half the time. We seldom got hot meals, because the kitchen trucks couldn’t find us or couldn’t get to us in the woods, sometimes we hauled the mermite cans for miles so we could get a hot meal, and then we had to eat it in the dark, being very quiet and taking turns coming out of our fox hole to get chow. Many a time I ate C rations that were frozen solid and I had to keep them in my mouth to melt so I could eat them and what was worst of all was lack of water, our canteens were frozen solid and we couldn’t start fires, for fear of drawing enemy artillery firs, sometimes we went for days without food then when we did get it we’d bolt it down like starved people and get cramps. For six weeks I never washed or cleaned up, my hands were so dirty I couldn’t see the color of my skin, I was wet from the knees down and the bottom of my pants and overcoat was froze solid and it scuffed back and forth when I walked. Finally we hit Burtonville there we thought we’d be relieved but no! we fought on for another two weeks, then one morning we were moved up at 3:00 in the morning walking about 5 miles in two feet of snow and attacked a town at 8:00 that morning, we had to cross an open field and I could see tracers going over my head from all directions. I was on the extreme left contacting the unit on that side, and that was Ephrem’s unit but I was so excited I forgot to ask the fellow where their Hq was. That’s where Ephrem thought he found me. On that attack, two other fellows and myself were sent out on a patrol into town to clear the first house, we started walking across an open field toward the house, and I could see the bullets landing in the snow around the other fellow’s feet, they were coming from the woods on our right, we couldn’t go very fast because the snow was so deep, I didn’t have any snips so we had to climb over a barbed wire fence. We finally reached the house and it was a combination barn & house, one fellow went in the barn and myself and the other went into the house, I was ready to throw a hand grenade in, when I spotted a woman in the door way. We went in and started searching the house and in the back room we found those Jerries well armed but they weren’t too willing to fight. We went through the house and found some apples and filled our pockets, we were pretty hungry since we hadn’t eaten since the day before, there was no point in our staying there so myself and the other fellow that searched the house started back with the three prisoners, we followed the Jerries up through the snow till we reached the barbed wire fence, that’s where we made our mistake. The Jerries climbed over first, and while we climbed over they got a little ahead of us and some Jerries in the house on our right, took advantage and started shooting at us, they hadn’t fired before for fear of shooting their own men, that we had taken prisoner, but now they were throwing everything at us, we hit the ground and started digging in the snow, the Jerries started running toward our lines so we didn’t have to worry about them, but is was a long time before we finally managed to creep & crawl to our line. At 7 we got one K ration to every 3 men, I was so disgusted, I wouldn’t even dig a fox hole, I was cold, wet, dirty, hungry, and tired, the artillery had been pouring in all day and my nerves were shot. Finally after dark we were relieved but not for a rest like we thought we’d get, but we got on trucks and then the 40 & 8’s and rode for three days down to southern France, we had finished the battle of the Bulge. St. Vith was taken and our objective reached. We were known as the Bloody Bastards of the Belgium Bulge , and after 2 months of hard fighting we moved out with 17 men in a company that once numbered 200 we left behind us many friends that we’ll never see again, Purple Heart Hill, that’s what they called the hill outside of W…y Belgium the worst battle we’d ever had.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 10:13:29 +0000
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