Days 15-18 of An Excellent Adventure. SUCH BAD THINGS….

In July 1944 there was an attempt to assassinate Hitler. What Hitler did, he rounded up his Generals, blindfolded them, took away their side arms and drove them around and around, so they wouldn’t know where they were going and brought them inthe basement of an old building and these guys figured that they were going to get killed. Hitler made his Generals reaffirm that although they knew it was risky to fight in the Ardennes Hitler was adamant about their commitment by having them sign document. A way of making sure everyone was officially on board, even if not in agreement.

Apparently a newspaper reporter coined the phrase “Battle of the Bulge” because on the map, where the Germans attacked it created a bulge - an outward curve in the Allied front line so that how it got it’s name.

The first real bulge fighting took place in the town of Clervaux and that is where 2 busloads of people stayed on our tour. Clervaux was the place that the Germans felt they could break through the allied lines so they started off in Clervaux which is in Luxembourg.

There is a story about in Lazarus 22 men were were under the command of a guy age 20 and they had to hold back the Germans what tell me more Story is What’s the guys

I never knew why Luxembourg was considered so important in historical detail and was called a Grand Duchy and is still a Grand Duchy today. In World War II it was strategically important because it is right in the middle of the German’s way of getting to Antwerp which was their main goal and controlling allied supply lines.

The Hurtgen Forest battle was even before the Battle of the Bulge between 1944 and into1945 it was this really tough fight in a dense forest right on Germany’s western border. The US Army was trying to push through to break into Germany, but the terrain was just awful super thick woods, rough weather, and the Germans had a ton of defenses up there. It ended up being one of the longest battles on German soil during the war and 6000 MEN died in just this one battle.

Another soldier Day Turned earned the medal of honor for his extraordinary bravery in January 1945. He led his squad by holding off a bigger German force for hours under tough conditions and it was this incredible active leadership that he received the medal of honor because he managed to capture about 25 German soldiers during this fight. Only four of his men were wounded.

I know I’m mixing up all my stories but my notes. I’m going to take a picture of what my notes look like because driving on a bus and a bumpy road. These notes look like nonsense writing so I’m trying to decipher them and they’re probably not in the order that they should be in the way the trip went.

Lyle Bouck was 20 years old and and he ended up leading a small platoon of 20 men in a pretty heroic stand during the battle of the bulge and held off a whole load. I can’t find my notes how many he held off, but it was a lot for more than 20 hours.

Joachim Peiper a really notorious SOB in the battle of Malmedy

Took 100 American prisoners and instead of keeping them as prisoners of war just took them into a field surrounded them with trucks with tarpaulins - when the tarpaulins were lowered soldiers standing on the trucks just machine gunned them down.

We went to each one of these sites on our buses

More to come -so much for my brain to absorb