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 until the day Patton brought relief. There was not enough blood to go around, not enough plasma, and little, if any, morphine to dull the pain. “Patients with head wounds or injuries to the chest or abdomen were awaiting a slow death,” one doctor noted ruefully, “because they could not be operated on.” But the medics heroically tried what they could to alleviate some of the suffering and the Americans who survived were eternally grateful to them. In this blurred picture medical personnel are busy in Bastogne’s perimeter at a time when the exceptional Belgian winter of 1944-45 is building up to blizzard proportions.
