Some time ago, I was involved in the making of an exciting documentary on the Battle of the Bulge. Belgian television maker Chris Michel interviewed a dozen veterans who had traveled to Bastogne with Forever Young, an American wish organization that had paid for the men’s travel to Europe. Second from left in this picture [...]
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, the chubby GI in the middle of the picture, was an affable man from Knoxville, Tennessee, who liked to crack a joke with his men, and they loved him for it. But the laughter quickly died when their regiment, the 422nd Infantry, became encircled on the Schnee Eifel during the first [...]
Cheneux, Belgium. No helmet. No body armor. No Sherman tanks or Hellcat tank destroyers to seek protection from. Yet here, on 21 December 1944, Walter Hughes of the 82nd Airborne Division, armed with nothing more than a Tommy Gun, is storming into a hail of fire in the Ardennes as his 504th Parachute Infantry takes [...]
As an historical consultant for the grave adoption foundation at the American cemetery in Margraten, I was pleased to report on Facebook in April this year that the remains of a soldier listed on the Walls of the Missing had at last been identified. John P. Sersha, a private of the 82nd Airborne Division, went [...]
My newest book, ‘Those Who Hold Bastogne,’ has been available as hardcover, paperback, and e-book with Yale. But it is now available also as audiobook download with Tantor and can be listened to on TuneIn. The audiobook is narrated by John Lee who just recently also tackled Andrew Roberts’s ‘Napoleon.’ It is, after all, merely [...]
In 2013 Belgian Peter Van Pelt came across an intriguing find in a Belgian forest near Dochamps. He discovered part of a GI belt, coins from Morocco, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany, and the dog tags of Frank Norton from Silver Creek, Georgia. After some research, it turned out that T/5 Frank Norton had [...]
As the author of ‘Those Who Hold Bastogne’ (published with Yale), I am very happy and most honored to have been invited to become a member of the advisory committee of the newly created Bastogne Memorial. The Bastogne Memorial has ambitious plans as it sets out to transform Bastogne into an international center of documentation, [...]
This past week the response to my ‘Love Lost’ post on Facebook has been overwhelming and very positive. Still, many people were keen to point out that the kind of grave adoption that exists at the American cemetery in Margraten in The Netherlands is much more widespread and a tradition practiced since decades at American, [...]
Warren and Mabel Rose Feil enjoy one of their last moments together in their garden in Alabama in April 1944. A year later, Warren, a private in the 84th Infantry Division, was killed in Germany on his birthday. When Mabel found out that he lay buried in the American military cemetery of Margraten, she wrote [...]
Just recently, close to six hundred pieces of ammunition were unearthed during utility works in Michamps, a hamlet immediately northeast of Bastogne. As I recount in detail in my newest book, this is an area where in early January 1945 the American 6th Armored Division engaged in fierce battle with the Waffen SS. But, to [...]
