Ep. 11 - The Battle of the Bulge

With the Germans seemingly on the run everywhere in Europe, the Allies had hoped WW 2 would be done by year’s end 1944.  Those hopes were shattered when the Germans launched their largest counter offensive on the western front, the Battle of the Bulge.  A frustrated Tom Carr, who served as a scout, had warned his officers for weeks that the ermans appeared to be preparing a sneak attack, only to be ignored.  The Germans weren’t the only enemy American GIs faced.  Samuel Erlick recalled it was all he could do just to stay warm and avoid frozen feet.  Still, David Kitchen was grateful for the bitter cold that kept the war dead that littered the Ardennes Forest refrigerated avoiding the stink and maggots that would have been present otherwise.  German soldiers dressed as American GIs tricked David Kitchen’s squad into giving them their rifles.  Frank Caruk recalled that when German soldiers dressed as American GIs were caught they were summarily executed.  Mevlin Biddle took out three German snipers and three machine gun nests single handedly his actions earned him a Medal of Honor, though Biddle did not want to celebrate the killing he had done.  The Bulge desensitized a young Ross Rasmussen who afterwards was ashamed of his callousness recalling eating his lunch on the frozen corpse of a German soldier.  Separated from his unit, Murray Shapiro escaped German capture thanks to an old German woman.  Stan Davis spent 30 nights in his tank protecting Bastogne.  Their stories in more in this 11^th podcast of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

Tom Carr

Samuel Erlick

Frank Caruk

Melvin Biddle

Murray Shapiro

Stan Davis