As an author of books on World War II and the Battle of the Bulge who has been based in Sydney, Australia, for the past thirteen years, I pay regular visits to Europe’s battlefields for reality checks on the challenging conditions there. On the left is my favorite picture of a visit this January to [...]
In my book ‘Those Who Hold Bastogne’ I tell the hair-raising story of how, on Tuesday, 19 December 1944, a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne and 10th Armored Divisions managed to hold on to Noville, a village just north of Bastogne, despite ferocious attacks by German armor: “Some tanks managed to push [...]
In 2008 a dog tag was unearthed in northern Germany by a man who worked for an explosive ordnance disposal team. He had been looking for unexploded bombs near a former World War II airfield at Bad Zwischenahn to make sure that the area was safe for new construction. The dog tag had belonged to [...]
And wishing all those displaced by war across the globe more peaceful times. In the picture below, civilians in La Gleize are among the lucky survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. They pensively look into the camera after American forces halted the merciless Waffen SS force of Kampfgruppe Peiper in a battle that razed [...]
One could be forgiven for mistaking this, at first glance, for a picture taken somewhere near Stalingrad. But these are not Soviet or German soldiers on the Eastern Front. They are paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division at the end of January 1945 pushing the last German forces out of what remains of the Bulge [...]
Of all the pictures to have come out of the research for my book ‘Those Who Hold Bastogne,’ I have always considered this one to be among the most poignant. With the 101st Airborne Division’s main hospital captured west of Bastogne before the siege had even started, the remaining medical personnel fought an uphill struggle [...]
In December 1944 and January 1945, the 30th Infantry Division played a crucial role in the Battle of the Bulge. The crack outfit first helped stop in its tracks the formidable and ruthless Waffen SS force of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Then, once the northern shoulder of the Bulge was shored up, the veteran infantrymen went on [...]
On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War II, American veterans talk of their experiences at Pearl Harbor and how they hope the next generations will not forget the history of this war. “I was just a young kid,” reminisces one veteran. Another one remarks, in the understatement [...]
An emotional Corporal Harry Hudec of Cleveland, Ohio, respectfully kisses the marble cross on the grave of his lieutenant, Joseph Duffy, at the American World War II cemetery in Margraten, The Netherlands. Joe Duffy, a married man from Pittsburgh who left behind also several brothers and sisters, was 24 when a sniper killed him during [...]
Before the start of the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, this densely forested region of Belgium and Luxembourg was described as a ghost front, an area where nothing much was happening, a quiet sector. But on 21 October 1944 this is where Lieutenant and nurse Frances Slanger’s life was cruelly cut [...]
