By KEVIN NEVERS
Sixty years ago today, at 5:35 a.m., a clanking diesel-belching horde of
German troops—25 divisions, 11 of them armored—punched a gaping hole in the
Allied front and poured into the Ardennes, the medieval forest in Belgium
from whose murky fastnesses four years earlier Hitler’s tanks had emerged
like monsters to overwhelm France.
The ultimate objective of Autumn Mist, as Hitler code-named his last
counter-offensive of the war, was to re-capture Antwerp—the port city in
Belgium through which the Allies were supplying their badly over-extended
lines—and at a minimum force a stalemate in the West, at least until Germany
had found a way to blunt or turn the Russians’ grinding advance from the
In the run-up to D-day, the fortunes of war favored Hitler. Thick weather
had grounded the reconnaissance aircraft which could have gotten a visual on
the men and machines massing to the east of the front. But Hitler also had
the connivance of the Allies themselves, who were as negligent in 1944 as
the French had been in 1940 in defending their soft Ardennes underbelly.
The dogfaces startled from their sleep that morning by the thunder of
artillery had no chance at all, as the Germans swamped a 90-mile stretch of
the front porously held by only four U.S. divisions, surged through them and
around them despite ferocious resistance, and descended on the Ardennes like
locusts. By Christmas Eve they had rolled 70 miles to the west, creating an
enormous bulge in the Allied front, and the Battle of the Bulge was fast
becoming the largest land battle waged by the U.S. in World War II.
It was also becoming the stuff of legend, at least as much for the horrific
conditions under which it was fought as for the heroics of the fighters. For
the U.S. forces surrounded and besieged in the Ardennes, hell had frozen
over and they were in it, a ghost-forest ghastly white in the snow and
shape-shifting in the fog, ungodly cold, where even the ancient trees seemed
to come to life to kill, blown to evil splinters by the air bursts of German
Frostbitten, hungry, on their heels, the beleaguered U.S. forces
nevertheless fought magnificently. At Saint Vith, at Bastogne, at
innumerable places not named on any map, they staggered the German drive,
bottlenecked it, stonewalled it. By Christmas Day Autumn Mist was slowing,
the Panzer columns were running short on diesel, and the bulge had begun to
taper at its leading edge. By Jan. 8 the bulge had been lanced like a boil
and was being rapidly drained. By Jan. 16 the original front had been
largely restored. Hitler had delayed the Allied push across the Rhine and
into Germany by all of six weeks.
For the U.S. forces the butcher’s bill was appalling: 19,000 dead, 47,000
wounded, and 15,000 captured, not one of whom expected to spend Christmas
fighting for his life. But mailroom clerks and motor-pool mechanics who
hadn’t fired a weapon since they were boots suddenly found themselves
warriors, as the rear lines became the front lines and then the
behind-the-lines. Veterans already blooded in Normandy and at Arnhem lost
more of it, and shed more of it too.
Some of them were born in Northwest Indiana, and a few of them live here
still. They belong to Chapter XXX of the Veterans of the Battle of the
Bulge, and the son of one of them, Barry Veden, has collected their stories
in a new book, My Heroes.
“Like all of these guys,” Veden says, his father, Edward, never talked much
about the war, although on one occasion—feeling less reticent than usual or
more melancholy—he led his young son to the bedroom, lowered his trousers to
expose his legs, and showed him the scars of the wounds inflicted by a
mortar round dropped on his platoon in the opening hours of Autumn Mist.
Then, on Dec. 5, 1997, Veden accompanied his father to Chapter XXX’s annual
dinner at the Michigan City Holiday Inn, and that evening, while the snow
was falling as it had once upon a time in the Ardennes, the old soldiers
told him a winter’s tale.
“My God,” Veden says, “the stories I heard that night.”
Veden does not consider himself anything like a military historian or
authority on the Battle of the Bulge. But he felt called to preserve those
stories, before time does to these men what the Nazi war machine could not
and buries their legacy of honor and horror with them. “I’m not trying to
glorify war,” Veden says. “I just wanted to put this in black and white so
it could be passed on to future generations. I want people to know what
these guys went through.”
Veden was eager to listen. And the men of Chapter XXX were eager to talk, as
though they themselves, in this last season of their lives and before it was
too late, needed to make sense of the pain and privation which had stolen
their youth. Perhaps some of them just wanted to pause and recall, one last
time, the names and faces of those who never lost their youth.
Veden listened to John Trowbridge of Valparaiso (101st Airborne), who,
riddled with shrapnel and separated from his unit, watched helplessly as a
German took point-blank aim at him, then for no good reason lowered his
weapon and walked away.
To Phil Huffine of Crown Point (106th Infantry), who, taken prisoner early
in the battle, saw his guards shoot the Americans too injured or sick or
tired to endure the forced march to captivity.
To Larry Tanber of Michigan City (705th Tank Destroyer BN), who was awarded
the Silver Star after refusing to abandon his armored car in an ambush,
neutralizing a key machine gun position with two rounds from the vehicle’s
37 mm gun, and then directing a murderous covering fire on the remaining
attackers until his unit was able to withdraw.
To Marion Shagdai of Michigan City (82nd Airborne), who was also awarded the
Silver Star after single-handedly storming a pair of machine gun positions,
eliminating the first at close quarters with grenades and Thompson, and
forcing the enemy at the second to scatter.
To Tom Evans of Portage (101st Airborne), who more than half a century after
the battle lost his leg to circulation problems caused by frozen feet.
And to his father, Edward Veden of Michigan City (28th Infantry), who
survived that mortar attack when eight of his buddies did not.
They suffered and sacrificed in very private ways. Yet the same memories now
and again come skittering to them all. The shriek of German rockets, dubbed
Screaming Meemies. The tangled woods of the Ardennes, like some haunted deep
in Grimm. The snow, endless blinding drifts of it, knee deep, waist deep,
stained crimson. And the cold, slicing to the marrow, more terrible an enemy
even than the German because it numbed the spirit. “The one thing they all
remember is the coldness,” Veden says. “And the one phrase I heard used more
than any other: dead frozen American bodies stacked like firewood at the
side of the road.”
They also remember the camaraderie under fire, the foxhole friendships, the
small acts of mercy which, at such a time and in such a place, must have
seemed like miracles. “They went through a lot together and they fought
together,” Veden says. “You’ll never find a more loyal friend than your
buddy in combat.”
And they remember the enemy. “Some of them will tell you that they still see
the faces of the men they killed,” Veden says. “And they wonder what they
would have done with their lives.”
The men of Chapter XXX, given the gift denied so many of their
comrades—given the gift which they themselves had denied others—were
determined not to squander it. “They survived,” Veden says. “They came home
and were hell-bent on making something of their lives. If I could make it
through that, they thought, I can make something of myself.”
And they did. They went to work in the mills and for the railroad, earned
degrees and bought homes, raised families and watched their children raise
families. And this may be their greatest achievement, not defeating the Axis
menace, but putting their triumph behind them.
“The guys were all willing to talk to me, some more than others,” Veden
says. “But a few changed the subject after awhile or had to stop because it
was just too painful for them. Later, after reading the rough draft, a
couple of guys called and asked me to delete passages they didn’t want
people to read. With all of the coverage of Iraq—and Vietnam too—civilians
still can’t even imagine the things that happen in war.”
Editor’s Note: My Heroes by Barry Veden is available from BookSurge.com and
$17.99. Or call (843) 579-0000.