The Battle of the Bulge – here’s a recent account about a veteran of the battle:
The crisp, winter sun burned through the fog around noon in the town of Longchamps, Belgium … revealing a wall of German tanks aligned on the snow-capped hillside.
No sooner did 2nd Lt. Everett “Red” Andrews call the target back to his fellow troops in the 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, than he was struck through the mouth by shell fragmentation from the ensuing German onslaught.
“I hold the record for the shortest time spent as a forward observer ever,” he joked, before calmly describing the scene in graphic detail. “I peaked my head above the fox hole to see if we hit the targets, and next thing I knew I was clutching the blood from my mouth in my hands and trying to put it back in me. I thought I was going to die. I was twenty-two years old, I didn’t know. I guess besides my bright red hair at the time, that was another reason folks call me ‘Red.'”
The fragmentation is still lodged in his lower jaw, sixty-five years after forcing his early exit from the seminal World War II Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle in U.S. Army history.
Andrews received a Purple Heart for his injuries suffered during the battle. He is quick to defer the significance of his service and the harsh conditions he experienced, first mentioning the hardship of the infantrymen he served alongside.
Here is an excellent description of the overall battle. It is important that we remember these events, and the men and women who served in them. We are forgetting far too much of our history – we aren’t teaching our children and grand-children just what this country has done, and what it has meant to those who sacrificed the most for it.
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