"Tarver Engineering" wrote in message
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"ArtKramr" wrote in message
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Subject: This day in 1944: Hunger, frostbite, gangrene
From: "Tarver Engineering"
Date: 12/22/03 9:07 AM Pacific Standard Time
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"ArtKramr" wrote in message
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Subject: This day in 1944: Hunger, frostbite, gangrene
From: "James Linn"
Date: 12/22/03 7:24 AM Pacific Standard Time
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"ArtKramr" wrote in message
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The 101st was almost out of food and 30 cal. ammo for their
Garands.
Many
froze
to death in their foxholes overnight. It was still snowing. But
they
never
allowed the Germans to take the critical Batogne crossroads. In
the
meantime at
our field we had all our 6x6 with snowplows keeping our runway
clear,
Word
was we would be able to fly tomorrow, the 23rd. We just kept
looking
at
the sky
and thinking of the Battered *******s of Bastogne. We were so
close
we
could
almost touch them, but there was nothing we could do until the sky
cleared. We
all hoped for a better tomorrow. Iron men in harms way.

I watched a documentary recently on the 1st Canadian Paras. They had
trained
with the 101st in the US(and with the British as well).

They were plugged into the north side of the line at Bastogne, and
one
of
the interviewed vets complained that they wanted to stage a
breakthrough
to
Bastogne as they were about 15 miles north, but were told that
Patton
would
have the honours. As brave as that desire was to help their friends,
it
was
possibly much wiser to let an amoured division breakthrough than to
push
a
lightly armed para division in, one that didn't have proper winter
equipment, armour or sufficient arty(gee that sounds like the
Canadian
armed
forces of today).

Sound like if the 1st Paras had broken through they would just be
trapped
in
Bastogne with the 101st. The better part of valor. (sigh)

It was the Germans who were trapped at Bastogne.

A member of the 101st was quoted as saying, ": Th e Germans have us
surrounded.
Poor *******s.

My father claims the heaviest fighting he was involved with was the ten
days
after the the 101st was supposedly relieved. The 82nd was there so the
Germans could surrender, as FDR had issued a change of ROE to the 101st;
he
was not pleased with the Germans murdering prisoners.

Never happened that way. You refer to the Malmedy tragedy? It was a
small breakout attempt by 2 prisoners that turned into a few shots that
became a panic breakout that cost about 18 lives. It eventualy became a
propaganda lie that it seems to me is passionatly cherished perhaps because
it serves a purpose. An almost completely fabricated version of it is
endlessly and somewhat disgracefullty repeated without footnote in the Movie
"The battle for the Bulge". It Seems to have been an excuse for justifying
the murdering of the excedingly young conscipt Germans trying to surrender
and particularly Waffen SS. What little "evidence" that exists was
discredited as it came via the beating to a pulp of 18 German prisoners
testicles after the war.

Having personaly spoken to Austrian Army POWs who were held in open pens in
the snow for weeks and dieing from exposure and had to suffer several
murders by pot shots a night I know that elements of the US military can be
very savage. To be fair it seems to have been mainly Polish American units
that did this.



Another version is this:



The "Malmedy Massacre" is argued by others to be a hoax invented by wartime
sensation-mongers. During the Battle of the Bulge, a unit of the 1st Panzer
Division killed over 80 GIs during a fire fight. The American dead were laid
out in rows in the snow, but the Germans were forced to withdraw from
Malmedy before the dead soldiers were buried. Allied propagandists blew this
event up into a major atrocity story, claiming that the Americans had been
taken prisoner and then lined up and shot. Several Germans were tried after
the war for their participation in this war crime.

Either way, Malmedy was not characteristic of the Germans in the west.