Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Christmas in the Ardennes Forest, 1944

Heard this a long time time ago, nice to remember it.

My dad was finishing infantry training in Paris TX at Christmas 1944. He was given a 3-day pass but was limited to only travel 250 miles from Paris. Home was 500 miles away in Union City TN. He put Little Rock Arkansa on his pass and hitch hiked the 500 miles home. Spent one night then back to Texas.

I'm fairly certain that dad was being trained for the planned invasion of Japan, but the German offensive and the need for replacements changed that. He was on a train to NYC within hours of getting back to Texas. He crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. Crossed Britan on another train, then a LST to France and on a train cattle car to Belgium. He missed the worst of it but was there by early January 1945.

They took the Garand he was issued in France, painted a red cross on his helmet and attached him to a field hospital. He spent the rest of the war driving a Dodge Power Wagon ambulance to pick up wounded at the front and bring them back to a field hospital. Said the thing that scared him the most was crossing the Rhine on a pontoon bridge while the Germans were blindly shooting artillery at it.

When the war ended he stayed behind as part of the occupation forces. He got back to NYC in April 1946 on a liberty ship.

I wish I had gotten to hear more of what my dad did. He was in the Army Airforce stationed in England. Some time after D Day he was stationed in France where he met my mother. They later married after the war. I was an oops baby apparently because my mother was 41 when she had me in 1968. My dad passed away when I was around 8. He would have been 103 now. It won't be too long until all of those guys that fought will be gone.

My father fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 2nd Infantry division. Some very tough fighting in the cold and wet.

Since back in my grammar school years, I have had an insatiable appetite for WWII books.

It grieves me that there will no longer be any more first-person accounts of WWII combat to look forward to.

Our Boy Scout Leaders were World War Two Vets.

My Grandfather Buck Mason told me he bent his spoon on a can of frozen meat for Christmas dinner 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge_Monument

LIBERATORIBVS
AMERICANIS
POPVLVS BELGICVS
MEMOR
IV.VII.MCMXLVI.



translates to "The Belgian people remember their American liberators – 4th July 1946."

My Dad was drafted in 1941 after Pearl Harbor as a 33 year old soldier from ND. He spent 1942 and most of 1943 in the Aleutian peninsula waiting for the anticipated Japanese invasion which never came. They lived in tents or plywood huts and ate mostly cheese, crackers and peanut butter in AK. I have the knife his brother sent him to provide some protection against a possible Japanese attack in their tents since the government could not supply enough knives to the soldiers while in AK. In late 1943 he was shipped from AK to California, took a train to New Orleans and got on a ship to Europe. He and his best friend from grade school who had been with him in AK ended up in an engineer battalion in the Ardennes Forest carrying M-1 carbines instead of real rifles in time for the Battle of the Bulge. Their job was clearing trees and building roads and bridges. In foxholes one night, his best friend in a foxhole a few feet from him was killed and Dad survived. Dad never spoke much about his war experiences because of that. He never ate cheese, crackers or peanut butter that I know of after he got home. He also refused to let me buy an M-1 when Klein's in Chicago was offering them through the mail for $20 in the late 1960's. I was not yet 18 and needed his signature to buy. My cousin who is five years older than me was able to buy one on his own since his Dad also would not sign for him. My cousin still has his carbine. Dad's refusal was based on his personal experience that those rifles were not acceptable weapons. Often wish he would have been more talkative but understood the pain that talking about his experiences caused him.

During The Bulge a neighbor was shot through the mouth (cheeks) and had another bullet deflected by his shaving kit that was in his shirt pocket.

Years ago the US Army Ordinance Museum was still In Aberdeen MD. They had I think around 40 acres full of US and German vehicles and guns.
The Old Man and I spent the day going over them. To see that with a man who had intricate knowledge having fought them in battle is something I’ll never forget!
As I said, he was the driver of a half track that hauled a mortar squad.
He was always to stay with the vehicle, and spent many cold, lonely, sometimes terrifying nights camped out it the ring mount manning the.50 cal M-2.
Said one night he couldn’t see squat but he could hear something pulling on a barbed wire fence.
He said every time he heard the fence screech, he’d lay out 5 or 6 rounds from the.50. Scared half to death.
When the sun finally came up in the morning there were around 2 dozen dead sheep!😀
Told me of him and another guy spent a night trying to dig a foxhole by a set of railroad tracks in the cinders. The Germans had an M-42 they’d spay the roadbed with. Between the cinders flying and the sparks from the rounds hitting the rails, he thought he was done for.
Scared to death, but you kept going because of your buddies.
I know that comradeship first hand. I think every military veteran does.
Reon

That’s a picture of the 289th infantry

Mine too. One had been in the Luftwaffe. Shot down and captured by Russians. Didn't get out until the 1950s, and he was one of the lucky ones. Hated Russians, said they were animals. Crazy for German watches. First thing they searched for on the prisoners.

Dad died by suicide in 1974. Miss him most days still. He was a bombardier navigator instructor in B24s or 25s. Hard to remember now. He was sent home on leave, preparatory to going to England. While on leave the Germans gave it up and Dad was sent to a now defunct air base in Iowa from which he was discharged. Miss you Dad. Eyes water at times like this. Miss all the WW II vet friends I grew up knowing. All my buddies' fathers.
Thanks for the history and movie reference. At the time I watched it I failed to notice it was based off of a true situation. Since the mid seventies I have doubted anything Hollywood put out. News media as well.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and God Bless, RZ.

I think, Steven Ambrose , said, at times, first cousins fought each other.

Awful thing, war.

Thank you!

Great story.

My dad was a BAR Man in the 104th Timberwolf Division. He was wounded with shrapnel at the Battle of the Bulge. From my recollections he was everywhere mentioned in Band of Brothers. He talked about drinking wine from Goring's Chateau. Liberating the concentration camp shown in Band of Brothers. He had no Army buddies to keep track of after the war. Out of his company him and one other guy were the only original members of the company still their when the war ended. I did not understand why he had no Army buddies until watching Band of Brothers. The new guys were killed and wounded so quick that the old guys did not make friends with them. He did not talk about WWII much at all. Probably everything he said about his military time could have been said in about 6 hours all added up. Most of that was just before I was headed off to Oakland on my way to Vietnam. He did give me some good advice. A Good Run Beats a Bad Stand Any Day. I still remember that Fifty some years later.

Bob R

Pop was on an LST. Landed on Omaha Beach. Never talked about it much, but one time he said, "Once you smell it you will never forget what burning human flesh smells like". Pop quit school after his junior year at age 17 and went to Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago for diesel engine school. Worked in the engine room on the LST. Of course the ship was flat bottomed and he said one time going back to England empty they were light in the water, a German U- boat shot at them with a torpedo. He said you could hear it scraping across the bottom of the ship. Said if the torpedo would have been set a little more shallow he would not have been my dad. The haul on a LST is only 3/8" thick plate.

Well, there went 90 minutes of my morning 🙂

I missed that the first go-round, thanks.

Hey neighbor, thanks fo posting the story.