re: Dec 16th began the Battle of the Bulge.

The father of a long time family friend was at the Battle of the bulge. I was too young and dumb to really get a chance to talk to him much about it but I do remember that he was missing the upper parts of both ears. He told me he lost them to frostbite.

You got a random French nonc/tante that you don't know about?

quote:

---

Go here for memoirs

---

My grandfather was supposedly there too... apparently wouldn’t say much, but story is he was 1 out of 2 to make it back from his company and had long term frostbite pain to feet. Died at 49 from alcoholism I believe, my mom found him

A very dear friend who is no longer with us, received a silver star, two bronze stars, and a three Purple Hearts during Battle of the Bulge.

quote:

---

I never got an answer about that before he died.

I have his medals on my wall, though, and he apparently got decorated during his service. In addition to normal stuff like his tech sergeant stripes, I believe he had a Bronze Star.

---

Interesting. The Army renamed some ranks when the USAF came online. Tech became SFC in the Army, but was carried on as TSGT in the USAF.

The Museum in Bastogne is one of the best I've ever been to.

Another interesting note we got out of him at one point as he got older.

Before he got drafted, he was working in a factory in the state where he ended up assembling what became the duck boats for the Normandy invasion.

My mom pointed out later that he had all his medals up and did all his American Legion conventions for what he did in uniform and the single most significant thing he may have done got completely overlooked, even by himself, given how important those boats were to the invasion.

My uncle, mom’s brother, was there, shot in the abdomen, transported to field hospital for surgery and survived. Her other brother was on a torpedo boat in the Pacific at the same time. She was only six months old, the youngest of eight kids.

He never liked to talk about it but there’s a kind of funny story. Thirty some years later, his psycho drug head neighbor, began threatening and cursing him as he drove past on his way home. This goes on for awhile and finally my uncle had enough and got his rifle and said he was going to kill him. The sheriff’s office was called and showed up. Meanwhile his son walked up on the porch steps to take the gun from his dads and my uncle did some combat maneuvers with the rifle and my cousin found himself flat on his back in the yard. Finally my mom and aunt showed up and managed to talk him down, SO didn’t arrest him. Psycho neighbor left him alone after that.

This nice old man I knew was in Infantry in WW2 in Europe.Right after I finished reading about the Battle of the Bulge I mentioned to him that I had read about how awful it was.He told me “I was in it””Then he started shivering violently and and clutched his arms across his chest like a self-hug.He said I don’t remember much about it except I’ve never been so cold,I’ve been cold ever since”.He continued to shiver for a few minutes.I felt bad about bringing it up.