The Tigers of Bastogne Voices of the 10th Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge

254 Pages·2013·6.92 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.
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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