Winter Breakout

It was a freezing cold December day in the woods of the Elsenborn Ridge in the Ardennes forest of Belgium. Christmas was a few days away, yet to 36 year old T5 Herb Bean, Christmas was the furthest thing from his mind. He was freezing cold, his feet were perpetually wet and numb and he was afraid. His unit, the 394 Infantry Regiment of the 99th Infantry Division had spent the last seven days in constant fighting with the German 277th Volksgrenadier Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division. Herb had seen things in the last few days that few men would ever see or would ever want to see in a lifetime. He felt like a changed man in many ways and he hoped and prayed that he would live through the next few days.

The airburst artillery was the worst. The German 88mm shells were designed to explode at treetop level which would create horrific wood splinters that could tear a human body into pieces. The only defense the men had was to dig in and cover their foxholes with logs from felled trees. Even that was not enough if a shell were to land directly into ones hole. “We were all scared of the 88’s” Herb said. Even when using a slit trench to relieve oneself was risky. “Suddenly, the 88’s were coming down on us and the bottom of that slit trench looked pretty good to me at that point.” Herbs rushed to his foxhole rather than hunker down in the frozen excrement and withstood another bombardment. The noise was deafening and the concussion from exploding shells could be felt in one’s chest. The men tried to make themselves as small as possible by crawling into their helmets. After the barrage lifted, the men crawled from their holes to a blighted land. Shattered trees lay about the forest floor and the air smelled of cordite and freshly cut wood. Wounded men screamed in pain as the medics attended to them and Herb shivered in his thin cotton field jacket and with his ears ringing and partially deaf from the explosions, said a thankful prayer that he had made it through another attack.

At age 36, Herb was the old man of the platoon. Most of the men were in their early to mid 20’s. He was already a married man and worked as a shipping clerk in the city of Newburport. He was drafted, given a paltry six weeks of basic training and sent to the war. He stayed with an English family when his unit was stationed in the UK before heading over to the ETO. He arrived on Omaha Beach months after the initial invasion and was trucked into Belgium in time for the German offensive in December of 1944. His division, the 99th, was known as the Battle Babies due to their inexperience. They were green troops that suddenly found themselves thrown against the battle hardened panzer grenadiers who attempted to roll right through them. Much to the surprise and consternation of the German troops, they were stopped cold by the “Battle Babies” of the 99th. Supported by accurate artillery fire in the form of mortars and heavy guns, the Germans suffered catastrophic losses. They simply could not push the Americans off the Elsenborn Ridge thanks to the massive concentration of heavy firepower.

In what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, the German advance through the Ardennes was now stalled. This was not supposed to happen, according to the German high command. The attack was planned for months and relied heavily on surprise and good supply lines to succeed. The initial attack did indeed catch the Americans off guard which resulted in town of Bastogne being surrounded and hammered by the Germans in a type of siege warfare. Unusually cold and snowy weather also hampered the ability of the armies to maneuver about. The Germans in particular had a difficult time in the thick woods of the Ardennes. Their tanks were meant more for open terrain rather than the dark thickets they now found themselves in. In addition, low cloud cover and fog prevented any type of air support from the Americans, which made the German’s job a little bit easier. Over in Bastogne, the 101st and 10th Armored did their best to hold on despite rapidly dwindling supplies of food, medicine and ammunition. At one point, the artillery was down to less than ten rounds per gun. The outlook looked grim…..the allies needed a miracle.

That miracle came on December 23rd. The sky over Bastogne and the Ardennes started to clear. American supply planes started to drop much needed ammo, food, blankets, medicine and a team of volunteer surgeons flew in on a glider to establish an operating room for critically wounded soldiers. In addition, P-47 Thunderbolts flew combat operations against the German troops and tanks to great effect. Up on the Elsenborn Ridge, the supplies started to trickle in……ammunition and warm clothing for the frostbitten troops. “Our boots were the worst” said Herb “All of us had frostbite on our feet, we simply couldn’t get warm!” Around this time, Herb suffered a minor heart attack due to the incredible stress from the nonstop attacks. “They sent me down to see the battalion doctor. He looked me over, listened to my chest and had me do a series of jumping jacks. When I didn’t pass out, he sent me back to the front line……that’s how short handed we were.”

Fighting in the Ardennes would continue through late January, 1945, but finally the German were now fighting within their own borders. Herb recalled looking up one day upon hearing a low rumble and hundreds upon hundreds of Army Air Corp bombers; B-17’s were flying overheard on a daylight bombing raid over Germany. “Everybody cheered, we all knew that the war would be over soon and that we were going to win, it was quite a feeling.” Herb made it through the end of the war and saw first hand the evil of the Nazi regime when his unit liberated a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp. Later, while serving with the 1st Infantry Division, he would serve as a courtroom guard at Nuremberg, where the worst of the criminals of the Third Reich were put on trial for their crimes. Herb returned home to Newburyport in December of 1946 and got on with the rest of his life. He rarely spoke of his service in the Second World War and often seemed reluctant to discuss it at all. Herb Bean, my Grandfather, passed away in 1999 at the age of 91.

The Christmas Truce

When war broke out in August 1914, it was generally assumed the whole affair would be over and done with by Christmas. Both sides, cocky with their assurance of victory, envisioned themselves back home with their families in time for Christmas dinner. The reality was that this was not to be a quick fight and as weeks turned to months, it became apparent that Christmas would be spent in the trenches of the Western Front.

It was December 24th, 1914 in a sector of the front line around the Belgian town of Ypres. The rain had been falling all morning, but stopped around dusk and the cold set in. Many of the men in Capt Edward Hulse’s regiment were suffering swollen feet from the cold and wet. As darkness fell, the men set about opening their “Princess Mary tins”…small brass boxes containing chocolate, tobacco and a Christmas greeting from the Princess and King George. Over in the German lines, the men were opening their own versions, the Kaiserliche …….pipes for the officers and cigars for the men.

It was now full dark and the sector around the lines had grown quiet. Suddenly, Captain Hulse noticed that four Germans were walking across no-mans land toward his lines. They were unarmed and were walking in full view of all the troops. Captain Hulse and a few of his fellow Scots Guards rose up out of their trenches to meet them and discovered that the men were doing this on their own….there had been no official order of a truce……..the men simply wanted to come over to the British lines as a gesture of good will. From that point, soldiers from both sides poured into no-man’s land to meet with their foe. At first the British and German soldiers just stared at one another, but one, then another cautiously approached the other with a handshake, an exchange of tobacco, perhaps a photograph of a loved one and the men realized that the inhuman foe that they had faced across the wire and mud were very much just like they were. They had families that they missed and they longed for just a few hours of peace on this most unusual Christmas Eve. Hulse noted in his diary: “Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir exchanged, addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said “Virginian?” The fellow said “Aye, straight-cut”. The German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish”….it gave us all a good laugh,”

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was observed all along the lines of the Western Front…some more than others. First and foremost it gave men the chance to recover and bury their dead, but it also gave the men a much needed break from the appalling fighting. Both British, German and to a lesser degree, French soldiers met in the neutral area in front of their trench lines to sing Christmas carols, exchange buttons or other bits of kit, share tobacco and food and meet as friends instead of hated enemies. In many areas, football matches were hastily organized and played. In some areas, the truce lasted through New Years. When the British high command got wind of the truce, they were furious. In some cases, entire regiments were withdrawn and reassigned to different areas of the front. The Germans suffered a similar fate when their staff officers learned of the unofficial truce. Tragically, Capt. Hulse was killed in March of 1915.

Amidst the horror of the great charnel houses of the Western Front, the Christmas Truce proved to all that the inherit goodness of humankind could not be snuffed out and that goodwill towards all still existed in the least likely of places

Preserving the Abomination

Recently, while diving into the dark depths of Ebay, I came across an item put up for auction that made my skin crawl: a complete and purported original concentration camp prisoner uniform. If this wasn’t bad enough, the seller was also trying to hawk an electric wire insulator from Auschwitz, which had been authenticated. I posted the link on a WW2 collectors forum that I am a member of and the overwhelming feeling is that the uniform is a recent reproduction, probably for a film production. What I did learn was that there is an actual collectors market for Holocaust artifacts. Armbands, uniforms, documents, children’s dolls, shoes and photographs are all available for the highest bidder. I suppose I shouldn’t really be shocked by this…..people have been collecting Nazi regalia even when WW2 was still going on. In fact, the market for German WW2 militaria is so great; the majority of items being sold today are a clever fake or reproduction. While plenty of original items are still around, the demand far outweighs the supply.

When I was active in the militaria show circuit, I used to hit all the local shows and flea markets and after a while you got to know most of the regulars. The folks who collect militaria can be dived into three categories for the most part. Reenactors/collectors who use their items for living history displays or to trade with other reenactors (I was a member of this category) Hardcore collectors who were not reenactors, but loved to buy items for their own personal collection which would never see the light of day and the third category……the Scary People. The Scary People dealt only in SS regalia and by the tattoos on their arms, it was clear where their sympathies lay. These folks used to scare the piss out of me. I would see them at the local shows dealing amongst themselves, buying and selling anything connected with the SS. Many of them wore SS rings and sported Nazi tattoos which they flaunted openly. Most of my friends at the show didn’t pay these guys much heed and some even traded with them, but I would avoid them like the plague. So I suppose if the market for SS regalia is so hot, then the market for items connected to their victims must also be popular as well. After a fashion, I stopped attending the various shows……..mostly I couldn’t take the carrion bird atmosphere of the dealers and vendors, but also the pro-Nazi bullshit was starting to get on my nerves. I simply didn’t want to be in the same space as these tattooed yahoos who think that Hitler was a neat guy.

All of this brings me to my main point. What really is the best way to preserve the memory of the Holocaust? To date, the various camps that make up the Auschwitz complex are falling apart. The camps were never meant to survive for more than 65 years. Once the de-population of the Jews from Europe was complete, the camps were to be torn down and the evidence destroyed. The Nazis wanted all memories of the Jews to be eradicated from the collective consciousness of its master race. To this end, Synagogues were burned down, Jewish cemeteries destroyed, grave tablets broken up to be used as paving stones and the entire Jewish population centers systematically liquidated. Today in Warsaw, Poland, only a very small section of the original wall that ringed the Jewish Ghetto remains……the Nazis destroyed the entire Ghetto….every building and just about every resident. Modern markers and memorials abound, but not much is left that is original to those terrible days of WW2.

Much has been written about Auschwitz concerning its fate. Scholars argue how to best preserve it. One school of thought says do nothing….let it fall to decay. Others say keep it from falling apart, but don’t repair anything that may have been built by the Nazis and still others say restore it as a future memorial. One of the surviving gas chambers at Auschwitz was rebuilt by the Soviets after the war as proof of the Nazi atrocities that were committed. Today, that rebuilt gas chamber is used by various historical revisionist assholes as “proof” of the myth of the Holocaust. To that end, the overall restoration of Auschwitz is generally not looked upon favorably. For now, the site is being kept from falling apart, but no serious restoration work is being done.

Many feel that the camps serve another purpose other than reminding people of the genocide that took place there…….the camps are mass graves where millions of their relatives died. Their cremated remains lie just below the surface. It is unknown how many tons of human ash is buried at the various camp sites, it’s simply impossible to know for sure. In the recent past, visitors could pull up sections of sod and see the pale calcified ash mixed with soil underneath. At the Majdanek camp, the human ash pile is said to be as large as a modern football field. This perhaps will be the eventual fate of the camps. When the wood rots away, the concrete is reduced to pebbles and the wire rusts away to dust, people will still come to these sites to mourn their long dead relatives or perhaps it will become a memorial park where future generations of school children will go to learn about one of the largest crimes in history.