Christmas at Bastogne

[Valin]

National Review:

Seventy years ago, American heroes spent the day halting Hitler’s advance in Belgium.

Rich Lowry

Dec. 24 2014

 

General Anthony McAuliffe (inset) and 101st Airborne soldiers at Bastogne. (Photo: U.S. Army)

 

‘What’s merry about all this, you ask?”

 

Thus began a Christmas Eve message from General Anthony McAuliffe to his troops besieged at the Belgium town of Bastogne. Adolf Hitler had launched a desperate counteroffensive against the allies in the West in December 1944. As described in the book No Silent Night: The Christmas Battle for Bastogne, the town became a linchpin of the Battle of the Bulge.

 

(Snip)

 

The American general rushed the 101st Airborne (the “Screaming Eagles”) to the town, together with other units. Seventy years ago, the heroes of Bastogne, or, as they were fondly dubbed, “the battered bastards of Bastogne,” spent Christmas breaking the advance of the German army in one of the most storied fights in American history.

 

It is Bastogne that gives us some of the great statements of American military defiance. When the Germans demanded surrender of his forces, Generl McAuliffe shot back with his famous rejoinder, “NUTS!” A soldier’s quip captured the spirit of the American defenders: “They’ve got us surrounded, the poor bastards.”

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

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