Photo of the Day

The Ardennes Forest was not on the Allies’ radar.

The seventy-five-mile stretch of heavy Belgian woods wasn’t perceived as having any strategic significance.

So, in late 1944, they sent four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions there for rest.

Troops from a German panzer division in Belgium, December 18, 1944.

The mistake in judgment was made clear early on the morning of December 16, 1944, when 200,000 German troops and 1,000 tanks mounted a surprise assault.

German troops run past abandoned US equipment, Belgium 1944..

Taking advantage of fog, deep snow and record-cold temperatures, the Germans intended to drive through the forest and reach the English Channel.

German soldiers advance through the forest of Luxembourg, 1944.

A successful drive would cut the Allied armies in two.

And the port in Antwerp, where the Allies were receiving supplies, would fall back under German control.

Americans dig foxholes in the Ardennes Forest while under fire.

In the opening salvo, the German army broke through the American line by the end of the first day.

Allied soldiers and Belgian civilians were massacred.

Dead Belgian civilians.

English-speaking German soldiers, disguised as Americans, captured critical bridges, cut communications lines, and spread disinformation.

And the city of Bastogne was surrounded, entrapping the men of the US 101st Airborne Division.

Captured Americans, December 22, 1944.

During Christmas week 1944, the city was the scene of the heaviest fighting.

But on Christmas Eve, an Army chaplain led a brief Christmas service for the Americans entrapped there.

Christmas Eve service for soldiers under siege in Bastogne. Many are wounded and could not be evacuated.

But most Americans fighting outside the city had no Christmas celebration at all.

Warren Spahn:

“I was from Buffalo, I thought I knew cold.

But I didn’t really know cold until the Battle of the Bulge.”

American soldier in a Belgian home.

A few American soldiers got lucky, receiving invitations into the homes of Belgian families.

Here is Keith Davis’s story:

“We were out in the outskirts of Bastogne, we found this farmhouse…

Inside was a man and a woman, and a little boy and a little girl…

the wife, she gave us some soup and some black bread.

We stayed there all night in this farmhouse.

The war was going on fiercely outside and for some reason the farmhouse never got hit.

American soldier in a Belgian home.

“We were there Christmas Eve.

We sang Christmas songs that night with this Belgian family.

We sang Jingle Bells and Silent Night.

The words were different, but the music was the same….”

Christmas Day airdrop of medicine and supplies for Americans trapped at Bastogne.

But good news came on Christmas Day.

The 2nd US Armored Division stopped the German tank advance, and the next day General Patton’s 3rd Army entered Bastogne.

Chow line, January 1945.

And throughout January 1945, American troops, with the support of many reinforcements, counter-attacked, succeeding in restoring the Allied front line.

Left: Captured German boys, January 11, 1945. Right: US Army medic treats a Belgian child in Ottre, Belgium, January 11, 1945.

The battle proved to be the costliest in US Army history, with more than 100,000 casualties, but it would be Hitler's last offensive on the Western Front.

Left: American soldier on the front lines near Houffalize, Belgium, reloads his rifle alongside two Germans killed in action, January 15, 1945. Right: US troops look for snipers in Brachelen, Germany, January 26, 1945.

It was on to Berlin.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda