The tigers of Bastogne : voices of the 10th Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge

342 Pages·2013·5.68 MB·English

by  Michael Collins

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2013 by
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS
908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083
and
10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW
Copyright 2013 © Michael Collins and Martin King
ISBN 978-1-61200-181-4
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-182-1
Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress and
the British Library.
all rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
ONE FRIDAY 15 DECEMBER
TWO SATURDAY 16 DECEMBER
THREE SUNDAY 17 DECEMBER
FOUR MONDAY 18 DECEMBER
FIVE TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER
SIX WEDNESDAY 20 DECEMBER
SEVEN THURSDAY 21 DECEMBER
EIGHT FRIDAY 22 DECEMBER
NINE SATURDAY 23 DECEMBER
TEN SUNDAY 24 DECEMBER
ELEVEN MONDAY 25 DECEMBER
TWELVE TUESDAY 26 DECEMBER
THIRTEEN WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER
FOURTEEN THURSDAY 28 DECEMBER
FIFTEEN THE FINAL CHAPTER
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX A: STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
APPENDIX B: COMMENDATIONS
APPENDIX C: U.S. ARMY ORGANIZATION IN
WORLD WAR II
APPENDIX D: U.S. ARMY UNITS IN AND AROUND
BASTOGNE 16–26 DECEMBER
APPENDIX E: 10TH ARMORED DIVISION
ENDNOTES
INDEX
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all veterans of war, particularly those of the 10th
Armored Division in World War II and notably John A. Collins Jr., who fought
with Team Cherry as a member of Company F, 90th Cavalry Reconnaissance
Squadron (Mechanized), in and around Bastogne during that bitter winter of
1944–45. He was author Michael Collins’s grandfather and the inspiration for
this book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my co-author and friend Martin King and his family for their
support during the writing of this book and for their hospitality during my trips
over to Belgium. Thank you to my fiancée Lisa for her love, support, and
understanding. Thank you to my parents, my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and
nephew, and my immediate and extended family and friends for their love and
support. My thanks to Howard Liddic, President of 10th Armored Division
Western Chapter, for his help with photographs, General Orders, and other
research, Phil Burge, Secretary/Treasurer of the chapter, and Craig Charlton,
webmaster for the organization’s internet site, for their help and support. Thanks
to Klaus Feindler for his help with 20th Armored Infantry Battalion’s history and
contacts, Christian Pettinger for his help with photographs and other 10th
Armored Division history, and Daniel Jordao and Marc Weber for keeping the
10th Armored Division history alive in Luxembourg. Thanks to Norman Faye
for allowing use of his father’s vast collection of photographs, Donald Naftulin
for photographs and information about his father, Gail Ryerson Parsons for
photographs of her father and other documents, and Jan Newsome for
information and photograph of her uncle Barry Browne. Thanks to John Vallely
of Siena College for his support, humor, and research help. And I feel a deep
debt of gratitude to all the 10th Armored Division veterans who allowed us to
tell their story, and to their family members for allowing us to keep their
memory alive in this book. I also would like to remember those veterans that
graciously supported our efforts who passed away before the publication of this
book: Richard Barrett and Thaddeus Krasnoborski, both soldiers who served
with the 420th Armored Field Artillery Battalion at Bastogne.
—MICHAEL COLLINS
Many thanks to my co-author and friend Michael Collins and his tremendous
family for their continued enthusiasm and support for this work. Thank you most
graciously to Steven Smith, Tara Lichterman, our editor Richard Kane, and the
expert team at Casemate without whom none of this would be possible. Thanks
also to my beloved clan: my wife Freya, my children Allycia and Ashley Rae,
my brother Graham and my sisters Sandra and Debbie, my brother-in-law Marc,
nephews Ben and Jake and my niece Rachel, my cousins Alan and Merle. Not
forgetting clan Roberts: Julie, Marc, Samantha, and serving naval officer
Jonathon. Posthumous thanks to my late Grandfather Private Joseph Henry
Pumford who fought at Passchendaele in World War One and provided
invaluable inspiration for all my early interest in Military History. He was
promoted to corporal but then demoted for punching out a sergeant. He was
unique in managing to terrify both sides in that conflict.
Special thanks to my dear friends Lt. Col. Jason Nulton and his wife Missy,
Comdr. Jeffrey Barta, and Gen. Graham Hollands for their wonderful support
and encouragement. Grateful thanks to our friend Mr. Roland Gaul at the
National Military Museum in Diekirch for providing us with some excellent
photographs for this volume. Top forensics expert Dr. Carlton Joyce provided
invaluable information about the weaponry used in the siege. Thank you to the
personnel at USAF Fort Dix and USAF Spangdahlem for their tremendous
encouragement. Thank you also to Mrs. Carol Fish and the staff at the United
States Military Academy at West Point for their ongoing support. Also, many
thanks to the staff at the Pentagon. My thanks to Mrs Laura Passuello at
Speciality Tours for her support and for helping to preserve history along with
the Capital Area WWII Roundtable and the Hershey-Derry Township Historical
Society Thank you also to the team at the Heintz Barracks “Nuts Cave” in
Bastogne for allowing us unique access to everything we needed there.
Thank you to my friend and brother “Battle of the Bulge” veteran Mr. John R.
Schaffner for his limitless wisdom and wicked sense of humor and Jeff Prior,
who provided his father’s diaries for the book. Thanks to the Battle of the Bulge
Veterans Association for their excellent work and support. Not forgetting the
Belgian connection, Dirk de Groof, Kristine, Rudy Aerts and Adeline who
always kept our glasses filled and our appetites satiated.
Last but not least, a deep and heartfelt thank you to all the wonderful veterans
who allowed us to interview and film them for this volume. They are the reason
we do this. They are all national treasures and their stories need to be read.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
(The “Ode of Remembrance” is an ode taken from Laurence Binyon’s poem,
“For the Fallen,” which was first published in The Times in September 1914)
—MARTIN KING