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 their way into Noville under cover of darkness. Private Addor was now part of a bazooka team and spotted an enemy tank so close that he ‘could have spit on it if my mouth had not gone dry all of a sudden.’ He was instantly knocked over by a loud blast. When he came to, he looked up at the long barrel of an American tank destroyer that had fired at the enemy tank over his head. A lieutenant was standing over him and tried to tell him something. ‘I could not hear anything at all,’ Don Addor recalled, ‘but a tremendous ringing and roaring.’” All over the Ardennes, tank destroyers played similar crucial roles in halting the German onslaught. In the picture below, American crew members proudly pose near their tank destroyer, probably in the vicinity of Stavelot on the Bulge’s northern shoulder.
