Introduction

In 1944, American struck back.

Reeling from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that had plunged an unwary nation into the second mammoth war of the 29th Century, the United States had been on the defensive for several years. General Douglas MacArthur, the Pacific military commander, had fled his headquarters in the Philippines in a PT boat and retreated to Australia to mount a counter offensive. In Europe, the Third Reich's ruthless efficient war machine had plowed through the Continent, conquering France with ease, and was slaughtering British civilians with murderous air raids on teeming cities and bucolic towns. The heel of Adolf Hitler's boot was squarely on the planet's neck.

All that changed on June 6, 1944. After several years of transforming America's industrial plant to produce weaponry on a grand scale-and with a renewed, vengeful MacArthur sweeping through the Pacific toward Japan-the United States and its allies crossed the English Channel in the greatest armada the world had ever seen to invade the European mainland at Normandy. The D-Day invasion represented the most monumental movement of men and war materiel in human history. Once the beachhead was established in a tidal wave of blood, the U.S. and its allies began pushing the Germans back from their conquests-back toward the Fatherland.

As the weather cooled and Europe feel into the grip of the most bitter winter in decades, American boys who'd been drafted into military service hastily finished up training and were shipped overseas to replace the men who'd perished on the Normandy beaches. The new soldiers were mostly teenagers for whom shaving was still an adventure. Bright-eyed and unsure of what lay ahead, they arrived in Europe and settled into their units for the final push into Germany.

Then the Germans struck back.

On December 16th, Hitler unleashed a ferocious counterattack that took the Allies totally by surprise. It remains unclear why Allied intelligence had failed to pick up advance indications of the counteroffensive, but that was a matter of only minor significance to the American soldiers in the field. Suddenly they found themselves swept up in what was to dubbed the Battle of the Bulge-the most momentous military engagement of the mechanized age. As a uniquely cruel winter sank its icy fangs into northern Europe, a million or more men were locked in mortal combat on a battlefield that ranged over much of the continent. The U.S. forces consisted of battle-hardened survivors of D-Day and untested replacements fresh from an America still scarred by the Great Depression. In the end, at huge personal sacrifice and in what was to become the proudest moment of their lives, they ultimately broke the back of the Nazi war machine.

This is the story of three of those men. For the most part, their stories are less unique than typical. They are the stories of many members of the U.S. Army in the closing months of the War in Europe and during the months of occupation that followed. They are stories gleaned from many hours of intense personal interviews with the men as individuals and in a group, where recollections of one man often stirred recollections by others. These interviews were conducted over several months during the late winter and spring of 2003, nearly six full decades after many of the events occurred. In some cases, the story of a particular incident was gone over time after time with the goal of removing from the recitation any hint of confusion of inconsistency.

Some of these memories were painful for the men who'd lived through the events, had overcome the horror of their experiences and moved on to new, less trying adventures in life. This is the story of each man, as he best recalls it and as best the facts can be determined over the course of those lengthy interviews. In some cases, details like names and precise places were lost in the shroud of time. In others, fresh insights emerged under questioning. Each man recalled the experience as a series of isolated episodes strung together against a larger tapestry of a world at war.

The men were aided in their recollections by their own records of their time as warriors, by events recorded in their unit histories and by the memories of those close to them. Each man also had the opportunity to go over the recitation of these warriors' tales before this book was printed. In short, what you will read here is the best available version of the truth as recounted by three of the gallant, gutsy guys who saved the world from the most towering evil since Genghis Khan.

Continue to Prelude >>