Battle of the Bulge

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, the last major campaign of the Nazi German military on the Western Front in World War II. Like our winter in Michigan this year, it was unusually cold and snowy in that part of Germany in 1944, with average temperatures around 20°F but wind-chills as low as -20°F and inches of persistent snow on the ground. I've been thinking a lot about my grandpa, lately, and what he and so many others volunteered to fight to defend, the sacrifices they made, while I see the deeply disturbing authoritarian political backsliding unfold here and globally.

I have been sporadically engaged in genealogical research in the last year. This intersected with my 12-year-old daughter's recent fascination with Europe in World War II. My mom recently lent us my grandpa's medals, and I learned more about my grandfather's service as a combat medic in the war.

Grandpa would never talk about his experience in the War. I knew he was a combat medic, participated in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, where he was shot in the leg, but nothing else. He would sometimes tell us about the time he spent in England before they shipped over, joking about how he didn't understand their money and how welcoming the Brits were to US soldiers. Looking over his documentation, I learned he was in the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, and it became even clearer why.

Grandpa shipped out to join the 16th after they returned to England from brutal fighting in Sicily. The 16th was the division that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Omaha Beach was the most well-defended landing point that day, and the site of the heaviest American losses. Almost a third of his regiment was killed or wounded in that one day. I haven't been able to find the battalion or company he was assigned to. I know he was not in the second battalion. There is a memorial plaque for their combat medics, who set up on a rock on the beach to begin caring for the wounded. The second was also the battalion that landed first and took the most casualties. According to veterans, despite some inaccurate details, the dramatization of the Omaha Beach landing in Saving Private Ryan is the most realistic representation of what it was like to be there that day. That was Grandpa's first day in action in the War, tending to the wounded and dying in one of the bloodiest single days.

After this crushing first day, the 16th continued to fight across France and into the Belgium/German border zone, participating in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which lasted almost three months into the increasingly cold early winter of December, once again taking heavy losses. On December 12th, after more than six months fighting since D-Day, they were finally assigned to a rest camp to recover. Four days later, Hitler pushed back with a surprise attack, and the 16th was called back to defend against the German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge.

The cold winter limited the Allies' ability to use air support. Many of the Allied soldiers were not equipped for the cold, having arrived in Europe in the summer from home or from hotter places on the planet. Supply lines were lengthening, making it harder to keep soldiers supplied with the materiel they needed to fight and survive. Despite being fatigued, reinforced with inexperienced troops, and poorly supplied in a frigid winter, they fought for another month into January. After pushing back the Germans, they joined the counter-offensive through the winter. They captured Bonn, pushed across the Harz Mountains, and, by spring, were fighting in Czechoslovakia when the war finally ended.

From landing on Omaha Beach, his division spent 336 days in combat, with only four days of "official" rest from landing in Normandy until the war ended, through some of the bloodiest and hardest battles in Western Europe. He assisted thousands of wounded soldiers, saw many of them die or suffer horrible wounds, and other conditions of war. He was shot in the leg during the Battle of the Bulge, earning a Purple Heart. I can understand why anyone would prefer not to relive those memories.

I grieve for the wounds the soldiers on both sides suffered, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I am angry at the greed, hubris, and evil of the small men who created a world into that demanded people like my grandfather participate in a months long violent bloodbath. I can only be grateful for their service and honor it by remembering, and defending, the good things their sacrifices protected and expanded; to not allow those things to be destroyed by the arrogant, greedy, evil, small men who would put us all through a meat grinder to satisfy their own egos and deliver their own comfort.

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