Welcome to Someone Talked the official podcast of the National d Day Memorial, where leading experts spill all the secrets of the Second World War, with your host, doctor John C.

McManus.

Thank you, Bruce, Thank you Lynn, both of you put in this conference on thrilled to talking about the history of Ukuleles today, wrong conference, Sorry about that.

Didn't remember last night we were talking about the history of Eukuleles.

Isn't there something like that going on in this I really do want to talk that No Battle of Bulge.

I don't want to disappoint you too much.

I want to give you a kind of insight into I think an overlooked aspect of the Battle of Bulge.

You're all, of course very familiar with the Battle of Bastone and the siege and all of that business, and it's of course very very important.

It's a seminal moment of course.

In the history of hunter first ear Born Division, and I think to some extent.

For the US Army in terms of.

Resolve and destroying Hitler's last gas offensive in a kind of desperate hope to turn the war in the West around.

But there's way more to the story, I think than than simply endoers on our popular memory around one hundred and first, and it specifically there's the there's other units that fought, and this was the basics for my in my book, but other units that fought to buy time for the hundred and first to get the best owe so that the siege can happen.

And by then, of course it's a bit anti climactic on some levels.

But you're looking here, of course, at the the overall Western Front, in which I mean Hitler has decided that the last hope he can for getting something out of this war besides unconditional surrender, and his his demise is to perhaps fracture, of course, the Allied coalition, and by that he wants to to basically like a massive bloody nose upon the Americans, in particular at a fairly weak point in the line, the ardn where of course the Germans had so famously hit the French heart in nineteen forty that helped, you know, win the campaign.

At that point he figures he can have a kind of a redo to destroy a lot of American combat power, capture many British and Canadians, and kind of alter the balance of power in the West.

And create some sort of different political climate in which the Western Allies will sort of shrink from the idea of unconditional surrender and reconsider their alliance with the Soviet Union, which, of course Hitler's right in the sense that this is an alliance that is not bound to last.

Right, They don't have a whole lot in combat.

What he doesn't quite grasp is that the only thing that is going to keep them together in any near short term is his existence.

And once he's gone, then yes it will fracture, but that's his thinking.

And so it's all about hitting in the ardn and you know, the Bastone will be one of the kind of key points, all right.

So this is a kind of closer look at the operational area, centering to a great extent around Bastone.

Why do they need Bastone so badly?

Why do we fixate on it?

Well, you know, not too far from here, there's a town called Gettysburg, which is a crossroads town and really had no particular intrinsic military value, but becomes a kind of centerpiece in a rather famous Civil War battle because there are multiple roads converging on that town, and armies tend to move in the direction of roads.

Well, Bastone is something of the same thing.

There are multiple roads that converge on Bastone, and so in the central part of the German offensive area, they have to have Bastone for a number of reasons, the seven roads that converge there.

They need that roadnet as a kind of route of advance and for their lines of communication.

They simply have to have that.

Second, they really need it as a place to bring up supplies and reinforcements.

If the offensive is going well.

Of course they're going to need to reinforce it pretty heavily, and best Stone is a logical place to do that.

Bring the supplies up, bring the vehicles up, bring the reinforcements up, stage them, move them to wherever you're going, generally to the north, because the whole idea of this is to advance farther to the north across the Mirrors River.

Split the Allied armies from each other, most notably General montgomer Or Field Marshall Montgomery's twenty first Army group, who split that from the American armies.

That are farther to the south to capture.

Who knows how many people, And as I said, to kind of alter the balance of power, so Bestone becomes just sort of one place that will allow you to perhaps bring that vision about third.

He kind of needs it for that pivot point on the mirrors.

If you get your best case scenario and you do cross that river, you are going to need to move a lot of vehicles, a lot of stuff, a lot of firepower farther to the north, and best Stone for fifth Panzer Army, which is the sort of central army of the three that the Germans launching this attack.

Fifth Pans Army is simply going to need that.

So General ha van Munteufel, who is this guy right here, is the commander of said fifth pans Er Army, and he's charged with this mission of taking Bestone and doing it very quickly.

He told Bob Phillips, who is really, I think the pre eminent historian on what I call the Bastone corridor and the race for Bestone this early days of the battle to bulge, when Bestone is so important to fifth pans Army as that pivot point.

He told Bob that, you know, when he did not have he had planned to take Bastone by December seventeenth and when he didn't have it.

By then he knew that the German offensive was in trouble.

Okay, So Bob by the way flought there with f Company, one hundred and tenth Infantry Regiment, twenty eighth Infantry Division is a combat medic and later became really As I said one of the preeminent historians.

I'd highly encourage you to read his book.

It's called to Save Bastone.

So so Manteufel is admitting to him, this objective means the most to us within the first forty eight hours, if not even sooner.

If we can't have it in that time space, then.

It begins to lose its value, and our entire offensive is in trouble because in the bigger picture, speed is absolutely imperative for the German offensive.

It's a major gamble.

Of course, we all know that it's kind of loony on some level, of course, and many of the German generals thought so.

But it's predicated an idea of surprise, bad weather to ground Allied air primarily, and that minute timetable in which you've got to move quickly so to have any chance of overall success.

Crossing the mirrors going on, cutting off the Allied armies from one another.

That kind of thing you've got to move quickly, and in the bass Stone Corridor as anywhere else, speed is simply that crucial element.

Remarkably similar actually to Operation Market Garden, which the Allies had launched a couple of months earlier, and by the way, prompts the idea of an offensive on Hitler's part, because Market Garden was predicated the idea of quickly grabbing bridges, linking up with armor, getting into northern Germany, and doing all this very very fast without any kind of wrinkles in the whole plan.

When it begins to go awry a little bit, that means it begins to go awry a lot.

And the German plan here is something of the same kind of of zero defect operations.

So that's the overall look at this.

So in my book alamoni ardn I argue then that the battle for Bestone is truly decided between December sixteenth and December twentieth, when the Americans largely won the race for the town, and you know, the dramatic siege that follows that we tend to remember much better is kind of anticlimactic now in making that point, I also want to hasten to add not necessarily trying to diminish what the hundred first Airborne does at best Stone.

By the way, they're also part of the last stage of that race for Bestones, then they play.

A crucial crucial role there.

But obviously what they do in hanging on when they're surrounded for the better part of almost a week in very difficult weather conditions without adequate resupply until about later on we'll live for the ages and should.

But I would argue if we're pulling back the lens a bit that in some respects in terms of how this thing affects the larger German offensive.

The bast Stone battle has already kind of been decided in that respect, and the question then once we have the siege is whether you know we are going to lose that entire incredible airborne division, and that matters.

But we could do that and we could still win in the Battle of the Bulch is the point.

So the race is when things are sort of in the balance.

So in that sense, I'm also saying beast Stone is more valuable to the Germans that first couple of days than it will be later on.

That first couple of days, it could be that pivot point if things go right.

Once you're talking later in the siege, it's a bit of an albatross around their neck because now it's really about a political symbol and then of course Hitler being Hitler, all about the political symbolism and all that, it's really going to draw in far too much German combat power relative to in supportance at that stage, which obviously does them no good.

Similar to other times in the war when Hitler had kind of taken his eye off the ball for the idea of political symbolism, bestone becomes that because he sees it as a kind of nest of American resistance, keeping Allied morale intact, all of those kinds of things.

But this is a sort of losing game for them, all right.

So Alan on the Ardenn is the story then a three distinct groups of American soldiers who held up the Germans for the better part of five brutal days, cost him essential time and of course ultimately bastone itself.

From December sixteenth through the eighteenth, the overwhelmed twenty eighth Infantry Division fought ferociously in a series of little towns in Luxembourg throughout December eighteenth, the soldiers of Combat Command R.

Ninth Armored Division basically sacrificed them at several small but really important road junctions on the Luxembourg Belgian border less than ten miles from Bestone, and they did that to basically buy time for others to get to best Stone.

And think about what that meant too.

I'll explore that in a moment.

The book, of course, reaches a climax, and our story reaches the climax on December nineteenth and twentieth, when the first soldiers from the Hunter first Airborne Division who have been rousted up as the theater Reserve and thrown into the mix here you know that they begin arriving in the bast Stone area, and of course Combat Command be the tenth Armored Division as well, and it's very very very significant.

So twenty eighth Division, let's start with them.

That's their.

Paps, their symbol, that's of course Pennsylvania National Guard, the Bloody bucket.

And of course when you when you ride anywhere in the Keystone State today, you obviously you see the bucket symbol on the road signs and all that.

Okay, so the twenty eighth had had fought in World War One as a National Guard division, had seen a lot of combat there, and it's mobilizer federalized again in World War Two.

The division's kind of rehabbed early on by Omar Bradley, by the way, who was a two star at that point, would eventually go on to other things.

But the twenty eighth Division sees its first combat in the summer in nineteen forty four in Normandy.

It doesn't go in on D Day.

It goes in about about a month later or so and fight some pretty pretty hard battles for some of the high ground in Normandy.

So the unit had been had been quite bloodied in that fight.

It's a mix of people who had been part of National Guard units in small towns in Pennsylvania before the war and the beginning of the war, but largely with a lot of post Pearl Harbor draftees and volunteers who have rounded it out.

And of course as the unit begins to fight more and more in combat, you're getting more and more of the latter category.

I mean, that's the pattern you see with a lot of National Guard divisions in World War Two.

So they have gone on to fight at the Siegfried Line two, that is the belt of forty vacations that protect western Germany from the coming Western Allied invasion.

Before that, by the way.

You may see in images of them in parading in Paris when the Allies liberate Paris in late August nineteen forty four.

Yeah, they get to do that, and we have the photo images that remain forever.

But the bottom line is they don't even get to spend the night there.

Most of them just simply have to move on and go on and fight in the Sigfried Line.

Not long after that, it was the fourth Division that actually got to spend at least one night in Paris and all the fun you can imagine for them.

The twenty eighth no fun for them, and it is kind of a hard luck unit.

So they've already fought in Normandy.

Now they're going to fight very hard in the Sigfried Line.

But something of the worst is yet to come.

They fight in the Battle of Hercan Forest, horrible misbegotten battle fought in the first Army Sector not too far from Achen on the western frontiers of Germany, in mainly in November nineteen forty four, the division had suffered over six thousand casualties, and of course, very very heavily prevalent in the rifle companies.

A rifle company in World War Two for the Americans would be about one hundred and eighty five hundred and ninety soldiers, give or take, and you were talking about one hundred to one hundred and fifty to two hundred percent casually rates.

Easily.

If you are a junior officer in any of those companies and you are still on your feet after ten days of the hurricane forest, you are really really lucky.

Almost everybody's hit.

The Italian commanders are hit and killed.

I mean, it goes on up the line.

It's a horrifying experience.

So they are pulled out of the line at the end of this debacle and they are sent to a quiet sector.

In the Ardenne.

We're going to give you a break.

You can rest, you can refit, you can get replacements.

It's going to be just wonderful.

So, as you've sensed you're right in the epicenter of the coming German offensive in the fifth Panzer Army sector.

That's the problem.

And so this has been it's been sort of German guys like this who have survived that long now are put into the supposedly quiet sector.

The division is covering a long front that is really more appropriate for two or maybe even three divisions.

So manpower is is thin.

It's the front lines are thin.

Of course, rifle companies are maybe a half strength, maybe a two third strength, getting more by the day, but not quite up to snuff just yet.

A lot of new guys coming in, a lot of guys who've been wounded or really severely traumatized in the in the hurricane forest coming back and really hoping to get that rest and rehab, and they're of course not really going to get it.

So this is a very close look at the twenty eighth division sector and you can kind of.

See how they're sprinkled out there.

They're parceled out their penny packet it out of these little like choke Point towns.

The Ardenna, as you may know, the area is characterized of course by woodlands as the name would indicate, but by gorges, valleys like Choke Point towns in narrow roads, some plateau and rolling fields, but a lot of valleys, gorgeous high ground, ridgelines, things like that.

So the reason the sector for the ar down as a whole, not just the twenty eighth, is held so thinly is because we've suffered terrible casualties in the course of the summer fall in nineteen forty four, and Allied armies are refitting, not just logistically and communications wise, but also in terms of manpower.

We don't, you know, to build el what John was talking about it pushing back against that inevitability thesis, which I couldn't agree more.

Here's another example.

I mean, we are, by the fall of nineteen forty four running out of combat infantry manpower, and we're having to kind of retrain people from other moss We're having to hastily train people in the States as replacements and then throw them into the maw, of course, especially once the Battle of Bulge goes on.

Because you know how costly that's going to be.

So the twentieth Division is a kind of microcosm of that larger kind of sense that America is beginning to reach something of the end of its resources on some levels, although it's better off than the Axis obviously, But so if you are the twenty eighth Division, it's small comfort though because you're holding a daunting amount of terrain, and the hope and expectation is it won't matter because the Germans are beat up even worse and they're not capable of doing much of anything.

So as those weeks go on, her can ends, you know, like second part of November, and now you're into early December, and you're resting and refitting and training up and being in new people.

You know, as that's going on, though, you're getting a sense, if you're in the twenty eighth Division in other parts of the Ardenne, that there's something up on the other side of the hill, that the Germans are up to, something that they're building an amassing strength for some purpose.

And you wouldn't know that as a private soldier necessarily, but you would be aware that this was happening and they were.

So there's this interesting kind of dynamic that happens in those say, ten to fourteen days before the German offensive in December sixteenth, is that from the ground up, many of the Americans are sensing that there could be an attack in the offing.

None of them really understand the full size and scope of the offensive, but they understand that something is up and they're each convinced that those at a higher level don't get it.

Again, I love that because it's so so army.

You know, Oh, they don't know it.

Squad level, they they're idiots, they don't know it, platoon level, company level, and all the way up to Bradley at Army group level.

And so I mean literally you see that of privates telling sergeants, sergeant's telling lieutenants and captains, captains telling their battalion commanders, regimental commanders, division commander Major General Norman Dutch Coda, of course, who is a D Day hero now has his own division.

Coda's worried and he's telling his boss, Troy Middleton, the core commander.

Troy Middleton is telling Hodges, the Army commander.

Hodges is telling Bradley.

On and on eCos.

And so there's a kind of a sense of for we don't have very good photo recon because of the weather.

You know, this is we don't have good communications intel because the Germans have have seized some of the radio communications because they know they have a leak because of they don't know about Ultra and all that that they know something's up.

So in other words, the intel is shrinking except what you're seeing on the ground.

And there's a sergeant And I love this too because this is so much like you know that the swaggering NCO who knows everything.

I mean, that's added what the what military organizations they're built around on so many levels.

So there's this guy at JJ Kuhn, very tough dude from from Wisconsin.

He is the ranking NCO and B Company one hundred and tenth Infantry at Barnoch, which is going to be right in the center of our map there.

And he's convinced the Germans are up to something, and he's convinced that nobody is listening to him.

So this is kind of disgusting, but he decides, all right, I'm going to go and get evidence that the Germans are moving around with fresh people and troops.

He goes and he trails a German patrol and he picks up their droppings and German other paper.

He puts it in a Manila envelope and he sends it up to his regimental commander.

You know, I guess that's one way to get his attention.

It's like, wow, So there is said regimental commander see the blue arrow that's Colonel Hurley Fuller.

I talked about a luckless division.

This is one of the most luckless individuals we will discuss here as part of this story.

Fuller had just come on to as commander of the one hundred and tenth Infantry almost almost right about this time.

Okay, now he's been around the block already.

He had commanded a regiment.

He commanded the twenty third Infantry Regiment, the second Infantry Division in Normandy and not successfully.

In the summer nineteen forty four, he had been relieved from command.

He was a He was a crusty, fifty year old guy from Texas.

He had served honorably and quite courageously in World War One.

He was one of these guys who, you know, sort of steadily just sort of hangs on with his military career, but is not considered to be you know, like a like a star about in the rise or anything.

He's kind of an afterthought, and he's crusty, and he's taciturn, and he's not always terribly pleasant to be around.

You.

You look at him, and I love this image because that's so Hurly Fuller.

He's kind of glowering at the guy that's a that's either an Article fifteen or a court martial proceeding of some sort.

And uh, you know, Fuller was not the guy to brighten your day, maybe is the point.

But he was fairly close with Troy Middleton, the core commander, and so Middleton kind of keeps him in the pipeline.

And then when a regiment opens up, obviously when the when the twenty eighth was decimated and a hurricane, he makes sure that Fuller gets a regiment.

So these guys don't know him and they don't think particularly highly of him when he does come on board.

And then's so that's why he started.

Cune thinks, oh, well, this nobody guy who's commanding us, now he's from the rear echelon.

He doesn't understand the stuff, So I'm gonna get his attention with these German droppings, you know, that's his way of speaking, communicating, shall we say, the regimental commander.

Well, Fuller's just as worried as Cune.

That's what the sergeant doesn't quite understand because he's squawking to his and he's in a hell of the spot with his regiment.

Truly at the epicenter of Mantoifel's part of the offensive, the one hundred and tenth and to some extent there the other regiment to the north one hundred and twelve are gonna get hit on December sixteenth by the better part of six German divisions fifth Parachute, Panzer Laire, twenty six Folks Grandier, second Panzer, five sixtieth Folks Granadier, one hundred and sixteen Panzer, all elements of them somewhere in that sector that you're looking at there, And of course the regiments, neither of them really has any kind of continuous front.

You're out posting.

You're out posting across the our river into Germany, and that means, like, you know, a fire team of four or six guys, maybe a squad of a dozen if you've got that, are gonna head over there in the daytime and then come back at night and hunker down in a town or in foxhole prepared positions somewhere outside of the town.

And that's about what you got.

Do you really control the road net not quite.

I mean, you resupply, no problem, but if the Germans come, all of this is going to be in question.

And that's your situation.

An underman understrength overstretched division.

These two regiments in particular that are right in the middle of where Mantoifa wants to go.

Where does he want to go?

Best hont that's the whole point of this.

Okay, So company amplitude sized units then are kind of clustered in those towns you're looking at there, and they're going to be able to try or they're going to try to deny the Germans access to movement on those roads.

That's the key to it all.

When does the offensive start at five point thirty in the morning on December sixteenth.

There's a massive artillery bridge some parts of the front in the aar Den other parts not in the twenty eighth division sector there is that massive artillery bridge.

The Germans also, somebody had a bright idea on their side that since it's obviously a very dark part of the year in the r Den, days are short, you're going to be moving at night in the darkness a lot that you would have spotlights to bounce off the cloud so that your guys can see the way forward.

Well, the other side can see you too.

That's the news for you.

Whoever came up with that spotlight idea and so a lot of these Germans are just silhouetted and they're getting just absolutely raked over by American firepower in those early hours.

It's incredibly wasteful what happens.

So what you're going to see is the Germans aren't going to have a problem advancing to and maybe around the American positions, but they're going to have a heck of a problem eliminating the American presence in those towns you're looking at there.

These kind of clusters of American resistance are going to hold them up and cost them valuable time.

And some of the heaviest fighting takes place at the towns as they're sort of looking around the whips.

As we look when we go back looking.

Around the map a bit Violer, hose Engen, Marnoch, where Kune was, loots comping, you know, you can kind of see where where these places are are are located.

It at every one of those spots that I just mentioned, these garrisons fought hard, usually a rifle company, sometimes augmented with a with a heavy weapons, heavy machine guns, eighty one millimeter mortars, sometimes with engineers, like at hose Engen, where you have the better part of a company of engineers that's stationed there with a rifle company from one hundred and tenth Infantry.

The Americans are generally deployed, as I mentioned, in foxholes or in the buildings, and these are pretty good defensive positions.

There are also some tank destroyers like toad code guns.

There's some armor, and the fighting is incredibly intense.

On December sixteenth, the Germans are going to launch suicidal attacks.

The Americans are slaughtering them in droves.

What is slaughtering them the mortar fires, you can imagine artillery fire since all these these lines of vans are pre cided, machine gun fire, rifle fire, as long as your Amma holds up.

And that's the question, right When.

The enemy overran positions, they did take prisoners, but sometimes the Americans fought to the death.

And you know, I mean that was the pattern and what you were getting when you're calling higher headquarters for help.

And this is worth mentioning, is they're usually telling you.

Hold at all costs.

Okay, I think it's worth sort of pausing a minute and think about what that means.

What they're saying to you is you will stay there and you will fight to the death for some larger purpose.

What is that larger purpose?

Well, as we said, to cost them time, to cost them best own or wherever else they may want to go.

That's really easy for me to say right here and all of us since we weren't there.

But if we're the poor guys.

In the middle of that situation and we get that order, think about what that means and the best case scenario what you're looking at as time goes on.

Since the Germans have so many local advantages, the best case scenario you're probably looking at is that you're going to be captured.

And that is no picnic either, you know, the captivity of the rest of the war.

So this is the order that's coming down.

One example I'll give you at Viler, there's a young squad leader named the staff Sergeant Bill Meller.

His attack.

His squad is attacked repeatedly by superior German forces.

They're just mowing them down.

He recalled seeing everything imaginable in front of me.

Armored infantry, personnel, care self propelled artillery, jeep like vehicles, anti tank guns, thousands of foot soldiers.

The fighting is incredibly intense there and elsewhere.

His company commander is, you know, is in another position, fighting as hard as he can.

There are so many German.

Dead and wounded there that the German the two sides actually agreed to a temporary truce to police them all up.

But Viiler squad holds out, our Meller squad holds out for most of December sixteenth.

And that's quite an achievement about it.

Half I think about half his guys are killed he and the others are are captured.

He wrote a fascinating book, by the way, about that that he published many years later.

Interesting little anecdote of how this affected him.

He told me when he when he had really gotten back into the mindset of writing about this and talking about it and publishing it, that you know, as he wrote about it and wrote about it and wrote about it and sharpened his manuscript and was really sort of in that place again that as he was concluding writing one day, he unconsciously reached down to pick up his rifle.

Yeah, and yet it wasn't there, you know, because it was sixty seventy years later.

That tells you something, you know, that's a microcusm what's going on.

Hose Engen holds out even longer.

The end of the you know, well in December seventeenth, there's this enormous fighting good that goes on there.

Some do escape, you know, not just when I was in Gin, but at other spots, and they gravitate west, they begin to move in that direction.

But at hose Engen again you're talking about inflicting major, major casualties in the north.

At lutz Kampen, that's the one hundred and twelfth Infantry.

The Germans used flame tanks there, so flamethrower tanks.

So imagine being on the wrong end of that.

And there's this almost like dramatic, almost movie like moment where tank destroyer guns take out those German flamethrower tanks, thus saving the lives of many infantrymen, including a guy named Alex had will eventually be the Deputy Conventioner of Major League Baseball someday, you know, later on in his life.

So one hundred and twelfth Infantry fights very hard again to cost German Panzer Division crucial time.

And then it kind of retrogrades a little bit to the northwest, and it's going to combine forces with other Americans that are going to come into play along that northern shoulder.

Of the bulge.

The one hundred and tenth farther to the south doesn't have that option because it's just enveloped by the core of fifth Pans or Army, all those divisions that I mentioned.

Marnock is where a lot of this will play out.

Marnock where J.

J.

Kun was and the fighting goes on, building the building house to house out in the fox holes.

Kune and his guys have very little option but to either fight to the death or try to escape west.

They're fighting with bazukahs.

I mean, it is absolutely kind of free for all.

There's another town called Munsausen, which isn't too far away, as you see on the map.

C Company one hundred and tenth Infantry is fighting there.

Us some heavy weapons elements.

There's a misbegotten light armor attack from the seven to seven Tank Battalion which is just parceled out and thrown into the maw.

Because remember Fuller's just just putting out fires, just dealing with crises from the command post.

He's got back in Clairvaux, which you see on the map as well.

So well, during that fighting, you know, again you kind of just stalemate the Germans there for a while.

And there's some even close combat.

So there was a German company commander, key guy named Captain Hines Novak, who dismounts from his his I think it was a tank and he's he's cornered by a guy who was an ex busher butcher from from Chicago, ambushes him, slashes his throat, and beats him to death.

And the German Novak's people find him later on and they always want to know who did that.

It was interesting because even from the from the distance of you know, decades later, when I began to study this, uh, some of the American veterans knew who this guy was, but never mentioned him by name.

That's why I say, the guy who was an ext butcher from Chicago obviously knew his way around cutting things, and so he does he puts those skills such as they are, and to use to kill a key German commander.

There there's another incident where the Germans where German armors help propelled guns are moving forward and the commanders are out of the hatch and they don't they're not button down.

An American sniper takes out several of them.

So what the message I'm giving you is you're costing them valuable land, power, resources, time.

All of that is building up, though they are technically winning because eventually they're going to take the ground.

At hose Engen they out number you seven eight to one.

Okay, so they're going to get Hoseingingen eventually, but boy, you left a mark on them.

So at Clairvaux as where some of this climaxes for the one hundred and tenth Infantry at least, and that's where some of the most dramatic events happen.

You've got to get the best own.

You have to get to Clervo.

You simply have to if you're moving east to west, and that's true even today for the most part.

So Clairevaux is the headquarters for one hundred and tenth Infantry for Hurley Fuller, he's holed up in the Clara Vallis Hotel, which existed there for decades after World War Two.

Only recently, unfortunately, has it been raised and it's turned into another building.

But for years you could go and the Claravalis Hotel was pretty similar to what you would have seen back in World War Two.

It's built, it was built against like this cliff side, so Claivau is this little town like somebody compared it like custard in.

A bowl kind of thing.

So you've got these ridgelines on either side, and then a little town on the low ground, but this winding road and a castle protects the entire movement along the road.

And then the Claravallas about a mile away.

So here's German armor trying to wend its way through the town from the second Panzer Division and other units, and then they end up in this close quarters battle.

The remnants of Fuller's one hundred and tenth infantry armor that's coming into play from the seven to seven Tank Battalion.

All of that is kind of choke pointing them in Clairvaux.

And it's not until December eighteenth that the American soldiers who are holed up in the castle are are going to have to surrender, mainly because the Germans hat fired to the roof of the castle, not for any other reason.

The Americans were sniping at them, inflicting devastating damage on them.

They were like close like like you know, almost turret to turret encounters between tanks, believe it or not, in the narrow streets of Clairvaux.

When you see Clairvaux even today, it's the same streets, and you're like, how could a tank even operate here, much less fight that close.

It's almost kind of mind boggling.

Fuller is trying to you know.

So I called this the book Alamon the Ardnes.

It came sort of a double entendrec because of course Fuller comes from Texas, and he was very mindful of Colonel Travis and the Alamo and even compared himself to that.

When he calls his higher ups asking for help, and he's convinced, like everybody all they don't know what's going on.

You know, I can't get through to.

These fools, you know that thing.

And so he's he's on the phone.

With the chief of staff of the division and he's trying to explain to him how bad this is, what's going on in Clairvaux, and some skepticism on the other side of the line from a guy named Gibney, Colonel Gibney.

And on cue, a German tank pokes its muzzle through, you know, like a window of the hotel and just snaps off a shot and it carrims up and down the hall and explodes, and you can imagine the racket that made.

And now the Gibney's like, what was that?

You know, He's like, that's a tank like here, and so yeah, it is that bad.

And I mean that's the kind of situation you're talking about.

So Fuller escapes the claravalis across a fire escape onto the higher ground.

The few of his guys has this odyssey before he's finally captured.

And there's other guys from one hundred and tenth Infantry Wore doing something of the same thing.

In the meantime, of course, Middleton has been reacting to bring up as much combat power as you can.

You see how some of this is played out.

And now we have the ninth Armored Division come into play.

They have been hastily mobilized and sent into the maw here why to basically hold some of those key crossroads west of clare Vaux so that the Germans cannot get the best owed quickly.

So you have combat command reserve.

You may know, an armored division in World War two had basically three components combat command A B and then reserve.

This is CCR combat Command Reserve, and that basically means combined arms of tanks armored infantry, armored engineers, you know, an armored artillery it self propelled, all that kind of stuff in the le like.

Okay, so you have a combined arms task force that is basically going to hunker down at a crossroads here called Anti a new chaft and for you civil war buffs, it's it's I mean, this is I think remarkably like Chancellorsville.

It's this this innocuous little crossroads that means nothing under most circumstances but now becomes kind of solid gold real estate.

Why because in this case, the Germans have to have that crossroads to move on to best Stone.

CCR basically parcels out as it's thrown into the mix.

It's two task forces, one called Taskforce Rose anothery're called.

Well Tasks.

Rose plays the main role.

They're sent there by the CCR commander, Colonel Joseph Duke Gilbreth, and he basically.

Tells him hold it all costs.

So what I'm telling you is you will stay at that crossroads and you will fight to the death to buy us enough time to send people to best Stone to then hang on to the town.

So the Germans cannot have it.

Small comfort isn't it.

So Once the Germans survivors get past Clervaux, now they smash into task horce Rows and the others in these crossroads that we're talking about here.

This is a fight that goes on for the better part of about half the day on December eighteenth, and more or less these units fight to near extinction to buy Middleton about seven or eight hours to send more troops to Bastone and its en bronze.

You know, twenty eighth Division doesn't quite fight to extinction, certainly, it is diminished severely, but if anyone really fights to complete extinction, almost it is CCR of the ninth Armor, and there it.

Becomes so anonymous in this whole story.

And this, by the way, was even reflected in the historical record because hardly anybody was left, and it was so like Meria is an historian, it was a little hard sometimes to track all this down live veterans forget it.

There weren't too many much less preserved records and whatnot, so it really had to piece this together almost from the German point of view too.

So I think it's really important to be mindful of that that that is such a key moment in this race for Bastone, when Task Force Rose is able to hold out.

The Germans, though too as they're advancing, they're thoroughly confused about the status of the one hundred and tenth Infantry because they end up capturing Fuller, and then they capture another guy, Colonel ted Seely, who was in temporary command.

And then there's another guy in play, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Strickler, who had commanded the regiment before and was like XO of Fuller, And there was another point attention because Strickler thought he ought to have been in charge, and he's like the Eyes and Ears and the German though he's a Romanos, they're like, what do we have to do to destroy this regiment?

You know, like there's a commander popping up every second, you know.

So in the confusion there was some good there, but it all comes from this horrible circumstance.

So Middleton has bought time then for CCB at the tenth Armored Division to come into play.

They're coming from the south, they're coming up from the south, and then of course the Hunter first Airborne is going to be brought in from from the west, from from Paris and it's en Vorans or whatever.

These guys are on leave.

So the evening of December eighteenth and nineteenth is really important.

CCB arrives in the area, the Bastone area late on that day, and of course elements of the Hunter first Airborne aren't too far behind, coming in on.

Like like flatbed trucks.

This is best Stone.

You can see kind of a spoke defense, a rounded spoke defense that's going to form by the time we get sunrise on December nineteenth.

Colonel William Roberts is the commander of CCB tenth Armored, and he splits his command into those three distinct task forces you see there to defend those eastern approaches to best Own.

So you may know, even after the siege happens, most of the fighting of Bestone is not in the town itself.

It's in the areas around it.

The area is close to it, where again you're kind of choke pointing them and they have to take the road, transit points and all this kind of stuff.

So Bestone is already getting to be less valuable for the Germans as we get more and more time take off here.

But still, let's say they grab it now in the nineteenth maybe they get some level of use out of it.

Roberts wants to prevent that, okay.

So you see the three task forces there.

TM O'Hara under Lieutenant Colonel Smiling Jim O'Hara.

He was the commanding officer of the fifty four with Armored Infantry Battalion.

But he's got obviously tanks and engineers too.

These are all combined arms.

O'Hara had this weird habit of whenever he would talk to you, he'd smile.

So it could be like there's been a death in your family and he's like smiling at you.

You know, he's like, why does this guy always smile at me?

So it was very disquieting to to to many of his staffers and many of his soldiers.

They didn't quite know what to make of that.

But he was He was a pretty effective commander, nonetheless, but that's why he gets that nickname.

So you can kind of see where he's where he's deployed there where Tim O'Hara is deployed to the south in the center.

Taskworce Cherry under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Cherry.

He was a commander of the third Tank battalion.

But again, obviously he's got infantry and engineers as well.

He's got something of a really tough go.

He's got his task horse struck out, strung out on that road near from Longville back into Bastone.

The Germans are gonna attack on either flank, especially Panzer Lair, which is a very potent formation, and so Passwort's cherry is gonna or a hell of a wallop, especially around Longville.

And some of the worst fighting happens at this bend in the road where there's this grotto, so you can imagine like a cliff side and then cut out of the rock is this beautiful grotto which had been there for who knows how many years.

But the problem is you got vehicles are arrayed along there, and it's a good marker point for the Germans, and so there's shells popping off going through vehicles smashing against the rocks around the cliff sides, around the grotto.

In the grotto, it's basically a fish in the barrel kind of thing.

But again, Taskworth's sherry fights back pretty hard, and it's costing them mobility, it's costing them time.

They're not able to control that road well enough to begin to push into best Stone at least to take the town.

Some of the most bitter fighting happens at Noville in the north, where you have Team deso Bery under twenty six years old.

Men yourself at twenty six year old, we're talking about bringing history to young people.

Imagine as a twenty six year old Task Force Commander William Desabric commands a twentieth Armored Infantry battalion.

He's a Georgetown graduate, and of course, as you know, he's got tanks with him, he's got tank destroyers with him, and then he's gonna have a battalion of one hundred first with him, the first battalion of the five or six Parasured Infantry Regiment.

He has to basically defend Noville.

What's the importance of Noville?

That is, if you're like the Germans, that's your key pivot point to move Norpe to the Mirors.

So you've got to have them.

And again the town is in the smaller ground with ridgelines around it, and so you end up in this incredible close quarters fight in December nineteenth and twentieth, with fog, with poor lines of visibility, blind alleys, and buildings in this with armor and tank destroyers and infantry all fighting to the death in the middle here where the Germans are gonna launch multiple attacks against Team Desibrie.

And I mean again, it's costing them valuable time.

They simply cannot absorb this in the larger context.

So Decibree is badly wounded.

He has his his command post in a in a schoolhouse and he and Colonel Lieutenant Colonel L.

Parade, who was the commander of the first Battalion five or six Parashute Infantry, are conferring there.

And so somebody made the mistake of parking a vehicle right outside in front of the schoolhouse, which was in the German line of vision, and they are like, oh, that must be a valuable objective.

So they snap off some shots.

Shells just smashes through, goes through this.

Uh this like trunk dresser trunk that was put in front of the door for protection, comes through.

It kills La Parade.

It terribly wounds Descibree, like.

His eyeball is hanging down, his cheek, part of his face is torn away.

They they stabilize him and evacuate him, but you know, you know, the Germans are everywhere, and he eventually gets up, gets captured.

He does survive the war, and eventually there he is.

He becomes a three star general.

He retires to the three star general.

So by the time the Noville Fight is done on December twentieth, the Germans finally take the town.

You have.

You know, here are the remnants of people who have gravitated back to Bastone from the twenty eighth Division, from Combat Command B, combat Command R, whatever it would be.

Here they are.

And by this time now the siege sets in, and I mean Pastone doesn't mean that much to them anymore.

They've lost too much time and too many people, and that's the problem.

So the order goes to the commander of the second Panzer Division, which has been diminished by about one third of its combat strength.

Maybe forget best Stone and head for the mers.

And that's so true.

Thousands of Americans, of course, have been captured around the whole bulge area.

By the next day, of course Bestone will be surrounded and it transitions now from that race into.

The sea that we all remember so well.

But the Germans in effect have kind of lost, and they've lost in terms of what the objective could have meant to them thanks to the efforts of those overwhelmed units, which is again why I think the title alamoni ar Den.

Is really appropriate.

So when you go to the.

Best Doing corridor now, of course it's peaceful.

Fortunately, there are monuments, markers, statues adorning the region.

They bear mute testimony to these incredible events that took place there, of which today I'm only giving the highlights.

But I will tell you the ghosts are never that far away.

You can feel it.

They're in the.

Rebuilt churches, the barns, the homes, the castles, the road nets.

It's really not that different now and you could kind of just sense this, and you can, especially since it in the lonely woods where so many anonymous battles took place and where you can still see the remnants of foxholes from people who fought they're eighty some.

Odd years ago.

Those are the ghosts.

Those are the unheard voices of these very young guys guy who many of them sacrificed their lives, you know, for this larger purpose, whether they wanted to or not, whether they knew it or.

Not, that's the effect of it.

So I would conclude today by just saying, may the ghosts never be forgotten.

Thank you.

Question, Yeah, Bob Phillips, Yeah, I apologize I should have mentioned that more clearly.

Bob Phillips was, Now you can maybe after I've told you the story what happens with thee hundred and tenth Infantry, now you can maybe contextualize how he comes to this story a little bit.

He's a Remember he's a medic.

It's a combat medic and f company one hundred and tenth Infantry, So he's in the middle of these events were talking about.

I think he was captured, but I could be wrong about that.

He also served in the Korean War too, by the way, they were, Yeah, so that was I think the what the three twenty six Airborne Medical Company.

So, yeah, the hundred first loose.

It's a lot of its medical complement early in the game, and they really have to to improvise.

This is I think very well portrayed in Band of Brothers.

In the appropriate episode there, the one that focuses on Doc Row played by played beautifully by Shane Taylor.

You really do see the kind of shoestring medical effort and the local medics too.

Renee Lamaire and August Chiwi were real people who were really involved in best Own, and Lamaire was killed in a German bombing raid as they show.

So yeah, the medical effort there was was very difficult, also simple because you couldn't evacuate the wounded as well once the siege happens, and the siege is happening by by the end of the day in December twentieth and in a twenty first roughly, yeah, great question.

So Fuller is captured and he has a very very difficult captivity.

It's a whole odyssey he has, like most of the POW's Uh, you know, he loses weight, he's he's certainly traumatized in his case.

Of course, he's guilty for feels guilty for losing his regiment.

He's trying to to h to have some sort of command presence, you know in the POW camp, which is very challenging.

Uh.

He ends up in a situation in which he's kind of quote liberated by the Soviets and isn't too happy with them and never really likes them a whole lot the rest of his life.

But the good part of the story is that he goes on to a pretty prosperous post war life.

So though his military career left something to be desired in terms of, you know, if you want promotions or whatever.

I think it's fair to say about Hurley Fuller that he was he was a really courageous person and uh and of course he was very successful and civilian life, so he had I won't say a happy life, but at least, you know, a quality life with his wife, and he went back home to her.

He wrote about his experiences, I think, quite movingly in a way to try and document what would happened to the one hundred and tenth.

But he's a he's a kind of tragic figure too on some level.

Strickler goes on to become a general in a Pennsylvania National Guard.

Oh yeah, yeah, great question.

There's a couple so Noville.

So let's look at Novill there the north.

So I remember I mentioned it's Decibert's twentieth Armored Infantry Battalion.

There's two guys there whose stories stand out to me.

A young doctor by the name of Jack Pryor.

He was a first lieutenant at that time.

He came from Vermont, and so he has to set up this improvised aids to in an old barroom.

So they basically they take out all the tables.

They try and use the tables to provide a barrier against the windows in case shells come in and whatnot.

And they basically set up as many litters and other ways to lie down as you can, so you can imagine yourself.

This is not like a big bar either.

It's like a dive bar sort of thing.

So imagine yourself in this little barroom, caring for six, eight, ten, dozen and a half guys the best you can.

And so he's trying to stabilize people even as all these other events are happening in the violent battle that I just kind of you know that I mention, And so then he's having to figure out, how do I triage these guys?

How do I stabilize them?

When we bug out of here?

Is there anybody I'm gonna have to leave behind?

And you know, this is just amazing to me when you consider he's I think in his twenties.

Stretch out of med school.

There's another guy who and Pryor gets out by the way, But there's another guy named Larry Stein, and his story is fascinating He was from a fairly prop fress German Jewish family and they had this great life in Germany.

I think they owned a bicycle shop.

And here this is kind of a microcosm.

All of a sudden, you.

Know, the Nazis come to power, and where all this starts to go sideways.

So all people who used to be, you know, like schoolboy friends of Larry, now are you know, hostile to him because he's the Jew.

He's harassed by Nazi gangs on the way home from school and you know, a horrible thing.

So his family tries to get out.

He's lucky to get out, to get a sponsor, like an uncle in New York City.

The family loses almost everything, and I don't know if all of them got out.

Some did to join him later.

But here you can imagine yourself having to come to a brand new country, you learned a new language, new culture, going to high school, you know, in American high school like anybody else, and expected to just make your way.

And he ends up in the in the US Army, and he ends up in twentieth Armor and Infantry Battalion and in this fight at Noville.

And so he had operated like as an interpreter to interrogate German POW's and as a recun scout guy a number of times in the Noville Battle when he has some really close calls, and of course you don't want to be captured, you know, and image yourself in that circumstance when that's a real possibility.

The stress for Larry Stein was kind of off the charts.

Fortunately, you know, he gets out.

He has a long career as an engineer, just an amazing guy, I think on many levels.

So those two really stand out to me.

Yeah yeah, sure, oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's a whole blend of stuff.

When I did this book, you know, that was twenty some years ago, there were still a pretty good number of veterans around, so a lot of the information, like especially the personal stories, came from first hand interviews I did or people like I knew and spoke to that kind of thing.

But there's no paucity of a great contemporary primary source material.

National Archives, Carlisle, the twenty eighth Division Archives at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.

Right right there on posts a guy named Charlie Olig who has been the keeper of this incredible material.

Oe L.

L.

I.

G.

I think for years and years, and I know he's still in play because I someone I knew worked with him just last year.

So that in addition to also, you know, the Library of Congress has its Veterans History project, and there's been a lot of good interviews preserved there.

The problem, of course, for a control freak historian like me, is oh, I would like to ask.

Him that that Oh asked, why didn't.

You ask him this?

You know, so because somebody else is doing the interview, it's a little frustrating, or if it's just an oral history, but still it's a valuable resource.

But the sad reality too is, you know, most all these guys are gone, so we don't have that interaction with them that I think, in a way was the key to to bringing you.

This kind of on site.

Here's the mood, and here's the human story kind of it, kind of the side of it.

M m m yeah.

Oh, they absolutely are, I think.

And and again I don't want to take anything away from the hundred first guys who were at bay Stone, and also the the other armor that was there with them and the artillery units incredible, but it all had to happen with them having the time to get there otherwise, no go.

I think there's a number of heroes.

I think I think.

Lyle Rose, you know, taskrus Rose, that basically fights to extinction and now that costs him his life, and I mean, nothing more could be asked of us, could it.

I mean, I think Hurley Fuller on some of this, I think he does pretty well managing a horrible situation.

You're a regimental commander and you've got elements of five divisions crashing down on you, and you cost him the better part of two days.

I think I think he does pretty well.

And in my opinion, I think one hundred and tenth Infantry should get a presidential unit citation.

We've been after this for years.

It didn't happen in the aftermath of World War Two because so many people had been lost, you know, and and the records and all that, and so the army historians were like, well, they must have just surrendered, and so I guess it wasn't much going on there.

But in reality, as you know, that wasn't the situation.

You know, there's another guy named Gustin Nelson who commands one hundred two Wealth Infantry at lutz Kampen.

You remember the retrograde movement that they have to the Northwest.

I think he holds his regiment together beautifully.

He's a West Point graduate in nineteen twenty one.

I mean on and on egos.

In that regard, there are private soldiers and squad leaders like Meller Bill Miller, who I think should be remembered forever.

If we use that loaded word hero, I think maybe that applies another guy named Jack Garherty, who I think he and his squad inflict enormous damage at Noville.

I mean they should be remembered.

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And someone talked, I'm Angela Hatcher Lynch.

About love, because that's what I'm thinking of.

Man, it's a military secret that I love you.

Ay, how about romancing?

If you can keep a secret, well, can I take you dancing?

If you take my heart and keep it.

I'm not saying a word.

I'm careful whatever I do.

I guess everyone's heard.

I want to give on my love to you.

If you gotta talk to someone, don't give any information.

It smart to me, A dumb one, simply tige the conversation.

Let's talk about love.

That's what I'm thinking.

It's no secret.

No secret.

It's no secret that I love you.