Michael Collins - Voices of the Bulge: Untold Stories from Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge

VOICES
OF THE
BULGE

UNTOLD STORIES FROM VETERANS
OF THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

MICHAEL COLLINS and MARTIN KING

To the veterans featured in this volume
and to their comrades who did not make it home
to have their voices heard.

First published in 2011 by Zenith Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 400 1st Avenue
North, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA.

Copyright 2011 by Michael Collins and Martin King

Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy U.S. Army.

Maps: Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping

All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purposes of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the Publisher.

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Designer: Diana Boger
Front cover image: Imperial War Museum (EA50557)
Back cover image: Time to eat for American GIs. National Archives
Frontis image: Soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division take a break during their advance across the
snow-covered fields of the low countries. Mary Evans/The Image Works

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Collins, Michael, 1984

Voices of the Bulge : untold stories from veterans of the Battle of the Bulge / Michael Collins and Martin King.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7603-4033-2 (hbk. w/jkt)

ISBN-10: 0-7603-4033-1 (hbk. w/jkt)

1. Ardennes, Battle of the, 1944-1945. 2. Ardennes, Battle of the, 19441945Personal narratives, American. 3. VeteransUnited StatesBiography. 4. United States. ArmyBiography.
5. VeteransGermanyBiography. I. King, Martin, 1959 II. Title.

D756.5.A7C657 2011

940.54219348dc22

2010044524

Digital edition: 978-1-61060-268-6
Softcover edition: 978-0-76034-033-2

Printed in China

CONTENTS

1 The Center of a Storm
16 December 1944

2 The Offensive and the Atrocities
17 December 1944

3 Were On the Move
18 December 1944

4 A Rock and a Hard Place
19 December 1944

5 Fighting Back
20 December 1944

6 Digging In and Holding On
21 December 1944

7 Our Worst Enemy
22 December 1944

8 Siege, Relief, and Strife
23 December 1944

9 Christmas Eve on the Bulge
24 December 1944

10 Christmas Day on the Bulge
25 December 1944

11 Breakthrough
26 December 1944

12 It Isnt Over Yet
27 December 1944

13 The End Game
28 December 1944End of January 1945

M APS

P ROLOGUE

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE was the largest land battle in United States military history. It began on December 16 at 0530. Green troops of the 106th Golden Lion Division were rudely awakened from their winter sojourn by the menacing rumble of Tiger and Panther tanks on the move. Just over the German/Belgian border, out in an area known as the Schnee Eifel, three German armies had assembled almost under the noses of the Allies. The Allies were completely taken by surprise by this attack.

Imagine being a young American out there in 1944. Its the worst winter since records began with temperatures often falling below negative 28 degrees Celsius. Your main priorities are keeping warm and keeping your belly full. Youre a long way from home, and although you do not know it, you are in imminent danger of being killed or captured, or both. Some of those young guys from the United States had not even seen real snow, let alone fought in it. Suddenly you are awoken from your restless sleep by the sound of explosions and Screaming Meemies, Nebelwerfers spitting out shells in your general direction. Hell really is unleashed as soldiers from the German army throw everything they have at you. How absolutely terrifying that must have been. Now put yourself in the place of a young German soldier on the offensive. Confident, motivated, and ready for action, but that confidence would take a severe battering within a few short days. Then there were the civilians living in peaceful old communities that had existed and thrived for centuries in the Ardennes. They had reluctantly endured four years of occupation, but in September 1944, they had found themselves liberated from the yoke of Nazi tyranny by advancing Allied forces. For them, life was getting back on trackuntil December 1944. Some of the civilians found their lives irrevocably changed by the sequence of events that unfolded in the Ardennes during that bitter and vicious encounter.

These are the true stories of the survivors of that terrible battle in their own words.

P REFACE

Martin King: I know the Ardennes, and I know about the infamous Battle of the Bulge. Its a very tranquil place now, but back in the winter of December 19441945, it was anything but. I live in a small village near Antwerp, and I have spent more than twenty years looking around those hallowed fields and forests. Meticulously inspecting foxholes, bomb craters, bullet holes in masonry, and other evidence of the massive battle that occurred there in the winter of 4445. Evidence is vital to a battlefield historian, and thankfully theres still plenty of it to be found down in the Ardennes, and the good thing is that one does not have to look too hard to find it. During my time researching the battle, Id read virtually everything ever written about it; moreover, Id met many veterans whod actually been there at the time, and to a man, they fascinated me.

I met Michael Collins in person back in July 2006 when he visited Belgium with his family. After his visit to the Ardennes, we exchanged a few e-mails about the Battle of the Bulge, and some time later we came up with the idea of writing about it. We did not want to contradict and analyze the existing accounts of the battle, or be accused of attempting to write the definitive account of it. Our mission had a higher purpose: to collate as much factual information as possible and write the story from the ground up, based as much as possible on the recollections of the last surviving veterans of that battle. Therefore, we decided to loosely divide each chapter into four sections. First, theres the historical timeline, i.e., what was going on during that particular day in the battle. Second, there are the veterans recollections, what they saw and experienced on that day. Third, weve included stories about our personal heroes, and fourth, we talk about the bigger picture, what the people there did not know at the time.

Michael Collins: My journey to the Ardennes began with the discharge papers of my grandfather, Pfc. John A. Collins Jr. I always knew that my grandfather had fought in Pattons Third Army during World War II, but that was it. I also knew he had liberated a few souvenirs from his adversaries at the time, including a Nazi banner, a Luger pistol, and the metal insignia of a German officers cap. On his discharge papers, I found the name of his unit, 90th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), Troop F. After finding out what unit he fought in and reading a few books about the Bulge, my parents and I decided in late 2005 that it was time to go over to the Ardennes to see where my grandfather had fought. Since I was going abroad to Cork, Ireland, in July 2006, late June was the time we chose to go. We booked a tour through a tour company, and we saw that Martin King was going to be our tour guide.