Has anyone been watching the Ken Burns documentary, “The War”? I rarely get a chance to watch television but MPT has been playing the heck out of it. I caught a piece of a recent chapter that dealt with the Battle of the Bulge. I have a very distant connection to this battle because, as a child, I lived down the road from a WWII veteran and Howard County resident who lost his leg in this battle to a German artillery shell. Unfortunately, this particular vet died several years back. I don’t remember much of his stories, other than that it was extremely cold, the snow was deep and Allies were surrounded in the French city of Bastogne by Nazis. The soldier next to him was killed by the shell that took his leg. I also remember him saying that he heard when the American General was informed that they were surrounded, he quipped about the Germans “those poor bastards.”
It is truly amazing anyone survived.
3 comments:
fm,
Once again Ken Burns has shown his mastery of the documentary. I have only caught a couple of segments but what I've seen has been excellent.
My father served in that war and saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. My favorite story of that battle is that of the American general commanding the forces inside Bastogne. I believe it was General McAuliffe. Under a flag of truce the German commander sent him a note to surrender or face anihilation to which McAuliffe simply replied "Nuts."
-wb
My understanding is that "nuts" was the cleaned up version of what McAuliffe said.
Of course, does it really matter.
I think what really matters is that we still haven't learned from history.
WW2 we didn't send the army to war, we sent the country to war, and we won.
That was the last time we as a country went to war, and last time we won.
Jim- welcome back! Ken Burns really drove home the whole point about the entire country being at war. Everyone had a “victory garden”, goods were rationed, and women were doing jobs traditionally thought of as “manly” jobs (Rosie the riveter and the whole bit).
Today, supporting the troops means putting a yellow ribbon on the back of your SUV that gets 15 miles to the gallon.
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