Washington’s Christmas Gift

The Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, which lit the fuse on the American Revolution, were followed by General George Washington’s successful siege of Boston in March the following year. (See my April 19, 2010 blog, "That memory may their deed redeem.") After that, however, the events of 1776 went mostly downhill for Washington and his Continental Army.

New York – at the time not more than a village on the southern tip of Manhattan Island – would be the next logical target of attack, Washington correctly surmised, so he moved his army and began fortifications to withstand the British assault. Some of the Army remained on Manhattan Island and in the village of New York. However, Washington sent some of the Army across the East River to fortify Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, thereby dividing his forces – a strategic blunder in military terms.

In July the British began arriving under the command of General William Howe and the stage was set for the Battle of Brooklyn Heights. It would cost the Americans 1,400 casualties that they could ill afford to lose – as badly outnumbered as the Continental Army was. Before the battle, Washington told his troops:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.

“The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”

Helped by local Tories on Long Island, the British were guided through an unguarded pass that allowed them to get into the rear of the Americans defending Brooklyn Heights. This they did while feigning a frontal attack that fooled the American forces into thinking they were holding the real British attack at bay. When it became apparent that the Americans were about to be surrounded, Washington was aided by sympathetic locals, who furnished him with every kind of available boat so that he could ferry the survivors across the East River to safety in New York throughout the night. He was helped by providentially calm waters and a fog which covered the retreat of the last soldiers, including Washington, just as day dawned.

The Continental Congress ordered Washington to hold New York City. But he was concerned that his army may have escaped one British trap on Brooklyn Heights for another trap on Manhattan. He kept his escape route open to upper Manhattan Island by once again splitting his forces, with 5,000 left in New York and the rest in Harlem Heights.

In September 1776 General Howe began landing 12,000 men on Manhattan Island and took control of New York. The Americans left rear guards at Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but withdrew the rest to Harlem where Howe tried to surround them. Washington then moved his army to White Plains, fought the British in a brief battle there, and continued moving farther north.

Howe gave up the chase. Instead, he returned to Manhattan and captured Fort Washington and its 3,000 Americans in mid November. Many were killed after surrendering. A few days later he captured Fort Lee, located across the Hudson River from Fort Washington and additional Americans.

Now on the run, Washington got the remainder of his army across the Hudson River and into the New Jersey countryside. But with British General Charles Lord Cornwallis in hot pursuit, he was forced to continue across the Delaware River and into Pennsylvania in early December. Of the 30,000 soldiers he had at his army’s peak, Washington now had only 3,000.

The battles around New York and the loss of the city were the worst period of the Revolutionary War. Morale was collapsing and entire regiments were deserting the revolution. Washington's army was also shrinking because enlistments were expiring. To save themselves from the pursuing Cornwallis, the army had destroyed boats or moved those remaining to the western shore for miles in both directions of where they had crossed the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey.

In the 18th century, armies went into winter quarters rather than fight in harsh winter weather. Cornwallis returned to Manhattan leaving only a small detachment of Hessian troops in Trenton for the winter. Washington could hardly believe his army had been spared pursuit and destruction.

The army encamped near McKonkey's Ferry, not far from the crossing site. Of the men Washington had, 1,700 were unfit for duty and needed hospital care. Valuable supplies had been lost in the hasty retreat across New Jersey. Lost also was contact with General Gates and General Charles Lee and their divisions of Washington’s army. Both were ordered to join the encampment along the Delaware, but snow prevented Gates and Lee was likely insubordinate, because of the low regard with which he held Washington, his commander.

However, on December 20, 2,000 of Lee’s men arrived under the command of General John Sullivan. Lee had been captured by the British on the 12th, allegedly in search of more comfortable lodgings, but since he was captured in a Peekskill New York tavern in his nightshirt, it was rumored that he had spent the night with the tavern’s owner – the “widow” White. An aide escaped to alert Sullivan, who took command. Later that day, Gates arrived with his division reduced to 600 due to expired commissions. Another 1,000 militia men from Philadelphia under Colonel John Cadwalader joined Washington after Gates arrived.

These reinforcements plus volunteers from the local area, raised Washington’s troop strength to 6,000 – enough for a small campaign. Orders were issued to bring supplies to the camp. Men were sent into the surrounding area to recruit new soldiers, producing more volunteers. The Hessians did their cause no good by mistreating the local residents, which helped raise militia troops in surrounding New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The low morale and expiring enlistments were problematic for Washington in those soulful days of 1776. But the first of a series of pamphlets under the general title of The American Crisis was published in the Pennsylvania Journal by Thomas Paine on December 19. Its soaring rhetoric gave a spiritual boost to those in arms by reminding them why they were fighting:

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Washington ordered that the pamphlet be read to his troops on December 23rd. But he knew something more than stirring words was needed to hold off the anticipated losses of soldiers when enlistments expired at the end of the year. Washington decided to commit his army to a bold winter action and announced to his staff that they would attack the Hessians stationed at Trenton before daybreak on the day following Christmas. Because the Hessians were German troops, they could be expected to celebrate Christmas by excessive drinking and feasting, leaving them vulnerable to the surprise of a dawn attack.

Preparations began immediately. The attack plan called for crossings of the Delaware in three places, including the one that Washington would lead near McKonkey's Ferry. Boats were assembled to carry 2,400 men, many of whom lacked shoes despite the snow and most of whom could not swim. The boats must also shuttle 50 to 75 horses and 18 cannons across the river in the evening of Christmas Day 1776. Only experienced men were allowed to operate the boats – seamen from the Boston harbor area, dock workers, and ferrymen who knew the Delaware River well.

Washington ordered three days’ food rations to be carried and new flints were issued for all muskets. Except for senior officers, everyone was told only that as soon as it became dark they would embark on an unspecified secret mission. As they prepared, the weather worsened, turning from rain to sleet and snow. One soldier wrote in his diary that it “blew a hurricane.”

Washington appointed his portly chief of artillery, Henry Knox, to be in charge of the logistics of the crossing. Knox later wrote in his diary that the crossing was accomplished "with almost infinite difficulty", and that its most significant danger was "floating ice in the river". Another diarist wrote that the whole operation might well have failed "but for the stentorian lungs of Colonel Knox".

Washington was among the first to cross, commanding that a cordon be thrown around the little beachhead for security. No local was to pass through. His men were given as a password “Victory or Death.”

Only Washington’s group would make it across the Delaware to launch the attack. The foul weather prevented one of the other two groups from crossing; and the third group could not get their artillery pieces over the river and therefore ordered the men back into Pennsylvania.

Among Washington’s officers that night were young men who would later play important roles in the new Republic: future President but then Lieutenant James Monroe, future Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall, and Alexander Hamilton, future Secretary of the Treasury.

The crossing was complete at 4 a.m., several hours behind plan and losing the cover of darkness for the attack. It was a nine-mile march to Trenton in a driving snowstorm. At 6 a.m. Washington divided his men into two attack columns – one under Green’s command and the other under Sullivan. The columns arrived on the outskirts of Trenton at 8 a.m. and started the attack at two points. The Hessian garrison was caught asleep and still partially drunk. American artillery cannons were quickly wheeled into a position where they could sweep the area into which the roused Hessians poured. When their commander was mortally wounded, 900 of them gave up and only a few made good an escape to the south. Only two Americans were killed versus 22 Hessians killed and 83 wounded. Everything went so well for Washington’s rag-tag army, the fight was over in less than a half hour.

Washington's victory was complete but his situation remained precarious. The horrendous winter storm continued and he had to re-cross the river, this time with all of his prisoners.

When the news of victory in the Battle of Trenton became known, it reinvigorated the flagging spirit of revolution, steeled the will of the Continental Congress, and for the first time, gave hope to the colonies that freedom from the British might just be possible. England was shocked by the American victory, and potential allies in France, Holland, and Spain believed the revolution might be a force to be reckoned with.

Almost five years would pass before General Charles Lord Cornwallis would surrender the British Army in 1781 at Yorktown to General Washington. But he would concede that the war was lost on the heights above the Delaware that day after Christmas in 1776.

The Rest of the Story

For more than a half century, 18 million listeners a day on 1,200 radio stations would tune into their favorite news program, which began with a booming voice announcing:

HELLO AMERICANS! THIS IS PAUL HARVEY …
STAAAAND BYYYY … FOR NEEEWS!!

I was one of those 18 million, having “discovered” Paul Harvey during my college years as I drove to classes. I was particularly captivated by his delivery with its distinctive pauses and his signature sign off – “Paul Harvey … (pause) … Gooood Day!”

By his own admission, Paul Harvey fell in love with words and ran away to join radio in 1933. He rolled those words across the airwaves without a slur, taking special care to pronounce “nee-euws” instead of “nooze” and reck-ord” instead of “reckerd.” When two consonants abutted in multi-syllable words, as in webpage, Harvey made sure that one consonant ended before the other began by inserting an “a” as in “web-a-page.”

Notwithstanding his elocution, Harvey’s audience was down home Middle America and he spoke to it as if it were drawn up at his feet, intently listening. Unlike any other news program, Paul Harvey reported news that was largely out of the mainstream. His stories were G-rated, devoid of salacious and shocking reports of violence and tragedy – the fodder that fuels most news programs. A news story about the war in the Middle East might be followed by one about a bear cub who got stuck in a suburban garbage can, requiring its rescuers to devise a way to extricate the critter without being seriously clawed.

Over time a unique format developed which he called “Paul Harvey’s News & Comment” and it was broadcast twice a day – usually a 15-minute segment in the morning drive time and a longer 30-minute version at noon. A feature of the noon broadcast was his bumper before commercials – “And now … Page One,” later followed by Page Two and so on up to Page Four. I’ve been known to keep lunch guests waiting while Uncle Paul got to Page Four on my car radio.

Following the sign-on for News & Comment, the news never came first; the sponsor did. “I am fiercely loyal to those who are willing to put their money where my mouth is,” Harvey often said. Predictably some of his sponsors stayed with him for more than 30 years. All of the products and services he advertised he personally tested and used, and he personally interviewed every sponsor. Commercials were delivered live, most of them by Harvey himself, and almost all were ad-libbed so they had the honest ring of a trusted person referring the product to a friend. Here’s an example of Harvey’s folksy sales pitch:

"If the father in your family owns a truck," he would tell his audience, "have I got a Father's Day gift for you!!!," he continued with uncontained enthusiasm. “Get him a load handler. A LOOOAD HANNNDLER. I know; I've got one down on our farm in the Missouri Ozarks!"

All news had to pass the “Aunt Betty” test – so-called for his sister-in-law, an "old-fashioned housewife" who lived in Missouri. If he thought a story was too hard for Aunt Betty to grasp or too offbeat to interest her, Harvey would rewrite it or delete it from his news script.

His producer for almost 70 years was also his partner in life – Lynne Cooper. In 1939 she was a Tulsa school teacher who had come to do a program on KXOK where Harvey broadcasted. He asked her to dinner and proposed marriage during the meal. She turned him down, but they married the next year. Thereafter, he referred to her as “Angel Harvey.”

Paul Harvey was a channel for news that interested an audience whom he understood better than anyone, He once told Larry King, "I don't think of myself as a profound journalist. I think of myself as a professional parade watcher who can't wait to get out of bed every morning and rush down to the teletypes and pan for gold."

Their work day began at 3:30 a.m. in the ABC offices of "Paul Harvey News" on Paul Harvey Drive in the heart of Chicago. Unlike radio personalities today who wear shorts, blue jeans, and flip flops to do their broadcasts, Harvey always wore a starched shirt and tie to work. When broadcasting, he removed his suit or sports jacket and donned a starched blue lab cost with an ABC logo on the pocket. Angel would dress in a business suit and heels with her hair done as if she were going to a formal affair.

As soon as they entered their office, they began scouring the news feed teletypes, looking for stories they could mold into the day’s program. Harvey banged out the daily copy script on an IBM Selectric, rather than a PC, which he called “The Confuser,” that sat idle in another room.

The news was delivered live in a small broadcast studio in the office. After the noon broadcast, Harvey and Angel ritually lunched at the Tavern Club, located on top of the building from which he broadcasted. After lunch, they would return to the office for a final meeting of the day with their assistant, then they called their driver and would be home by 2 p.m. There might be a round of afternoon golf, but after a little early evening television, they would turn in at nightfall because the alarm went off at 3 a.m. the next morning.

Over the years, Harvey developed homilies that often found their way into his scripts: “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." If a program contained a news item in which someone had done something outrageous or offensive, Harvey would pay the offender the ultimate snub, saying, "He would want us to mention his name," followed by a period of silence, then he would start the next news item.

Paul Harvey used language like no other, introducing an unusual story with a phrase like, “Oh my, here’s a strange …” Words that he invented, like “bumpersnicker” and “guesstimate,” became part of the American vernacular.

He could report stories in a way that portrayed him as surprised as his listeners: "Doctors have removed a kidney stone from a woman that is the size of a coconut … seven inches across! Seven inches???!!!"

His style of delivery was his hallmark. Characterized by long, almost painful pauses, a listener might think the program had dropped off the air, until Harvey would come back and complete the thought or sentence. His programs included quirky stories like the nude sunbather who lay down on a hotel roof … unknowingly on the dining room skylight … or the Virginia fire department whose new colorful, scuff-proof, adjustable-size helmets were wonderful in every way except … they melted near heat.

People who had been married for many years held a special fascination, if not reverence, for Harvey. A regular segment of each news program was introduced as: “This day's news of most lasting significance …" and sometimes would be followed by, "Agnes and John Caroline in Lavalette, N.J., are 71 years along the way to forever together." The Harveys were married 68 years before Angel died.

The last item of a broadcast, which was often a funny story, would usually be preceded by the introduction, "For what it's worth …" No one could tell a story like Paul Harvey – teasing out the details with pauses so the listener created a mental picture of what was happening:

"For what it's worth, Mark Hatterer of York, Pennsylvania, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. I said, Mr. Hatterer gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation … to a dog … after the dog had nearly drowned … in a septic tank. The dog was drowning in a septic tank when Mr. Hatterer rescued it. After a veterinary doctor pronounced the Scottish terrier out of danger, Mr. Hatterer said, `You know … I … I hope I don't ever have to do that again.'... Paaaul Harvey........ Gooood-DAY!"

In 2000, ABC Radio awarded Harvey, then 82, a 10-year, $100 million contract to stay with the network. A 10-year contract with an 82-year old man was a tribute not only to Harvey’s enormous listening audience – about 22 million people – but also to his uncommon ability to inspire so much trust in his listeners that the products he advertised were assumed good values because Paul Harvey said they were. At the time that his contract was announced, I couldn’t help but remember George Burns, who at 95 signed a contract to perform in London in celebration of his 100th birthday.

On May 17, 2007, Harvey told his radio audience that Angel had developed leukemia. She died a year later at age 92. She was, one observer noted, what Colonel Parker was to Elvis Presley. Angel Harvey put Paul Harvey on track to have the phenomenal career that his became.

Harvey was forced to leave the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work and continued working as hard as ever despite his age and gradually declining health. He was 89 when Angel died, and while the light seemed to have dimmed in his life after she was gone, he continued to broadcast even after a bout with pneumonia. At age 90, with his workload reduced to a few broadcasts per week, guest broadcasters were needed to fill it. Some suggested it might be time to think about retiring. "Retiring," he scoffed, "is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice." He was still broadcasting the week before he died, which came less than a year after Angel’s death.

Paul Harvey was the descendent of five generations of fundamental Baptist preachers. He was socially conservative, and religion shaped his daily life. Beginning in 1965 he broadcasted a special program every year on Christmas Day that became a tradition. Whatever I was doing on that day, I made time to listen to it. I can’t think of a better way to end this week’s blog than with Paul Harvey’s annual Christmas Story, since Christmas is a few days down the week.

It is hard to capture the intonations of his spoken words with written words, particularly his notable pauses, which I’ve attempted to replicate with dots (…). Even with the limitations of telling Harvey’s story in written form, it is a message for the ages.

Today I am going to tell you a modern parable and the man I’m going to describe was not a scrooge … he was not a scrooge … he was a kind, decent, mostly good man; generous to his family, upright in his dealings with others.

But he just didn’t believe all of that “incarnation” stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense to him, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise.

He could not swallow the “Jesus story” about God coming to earth as man. Why would God want to do anything like that?

“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you and the family to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite; that he would much rather stay home, but that he would wait up for them.

So he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall and he went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier. Then he went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.

Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. And then another … and then another. At first he thought someone must have been throwing snowballs against his living room window.

But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter, they had tried to fly through his large landscape window!

Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter – if he could direct the birds to it.

Quickly he put on his coat and galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn, opened the door wide, and turned on a light.

But the birds did not come in.

He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow lighted, wide open doorway of the stable.

And yet to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them, he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms, but instead they scattered in every direction … every direction except into the warm, lighted barn.

Then he realized they were afraid of him. Of course they were! To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature, if only I could think of some way to let them know they can trust me, that I’m not trying to hurt them, I’m trying to help them.

But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led, they would not be shooed into the barn because they feared him.

“If only I could be a bird myself for a few moments,” he thought to himself. “If only I could be one of them and mingle with them and speak their language and tell … and tell them not to be afraid … and show them … and show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I’d have to be one of them, so they could see … and hear … and understand.”

At that moment, the church bells began to ring.

The sound of them reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells … Adeste Fideles … listening to the bells pealing the glad tiding of Christmas …

And he sank to his knees in the snow …

“Now I understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why you had to come.”

Merry Christmas to all of my blog readers!

Christmas in Bastogne

After landing troops on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the American, British, and Canadian Allies pushed east toward their objective: the German heartland. By November, the advance had slowed to a crawl due to German resistance and the logistics of supporting the Allies’ battle line, which extended north and south from Holland to Switzerland for 100 miles.

While the Germans were fighting the Russians on a broad front in the east, they possessed an advantage on the western front in the winter of 1944 – they were no longer defending all of Western Europe. Their front lines in the west had considerably shortened and were much closer to the German heartland. As the German army fell back, their logistics grew less complex, despite the fact that the Allies controlled the air. Additionally, their extensive homeland telephone and telegraph network meant that radios were less needed for communications, which reduced the volume of ULTRA intercepts –.the Allies access to German coded radio traffic.

Notwithstanding the imbalance in fighting strength – the Allies had 96 divisions at or near the front while the Germans had 55 – after a September briefing on the status of the western front, Hitler decided that Germany would launch an ambitious winter counteroffensive in the Ardennes – the vast Belgian forest that separated the American and German lines. It was so dense that a person could easily become lost and vehicles could not operate in it. This forced traffic onto the few roads that traversed the Ardennes, making them and the villages through which roads ran strategic objectives in Hitler’s counteroffensive. Therefore, anyone who could read a map quickly recognized the strategic importance of two Belgian towns currently in the hands of the Americans. St. Vith, which sat at the intersection of six roads, and Bastogne, at the intersection of eight roads.

The offensive would crash through the Ardennes, as was done in 1940 when the German army surprised and defeated France in days. In 1940, however, German troops had passed through the Ardennes in three days before engaging the enemy, but the 1944 plan called for a battle in the forest. The coup de main was to advance westward to the Meuse River, then turn northwest for Antwerp and Brussels. The close terrain of the Ardennes would make rapid movement difficult, though open ground beyond the Meuse offered the prospect of a successful dash to the coast.

For the offensive to be successful, four criteria were critical: (i) the attack had to be a complete surprise; (ii) the weather conditions had to be poor to neutralize Allied air superiority and the damage it could inflict on the German offensive and its supply lines; (iii) the progress had to be rapid – the Meuse River, halfway to Antwerp, had to be reached by D +4; and (iv) allied fuel supplies would have to be captured intact along the way because the Wehrmacht was short on fuel. The German General Staff estimated they only had enough fuel to cover one-third to one-half of the ground to Antwerp in heavy combat conditions.

Hitler laid out a plan to attack the Allied lines in Belgium with 38 divisions. Despite major misgivings from his senior commanders, Hitler would not yield on his plan and the jump-off date was set at December 16, 1944. It would be an unexpected stroke against the Allies.

Allied commanders considered the Ardennes area to be unsuitable for a large-scale German attack because of its almost impenetrable terrain, and certainly no surprise attack through this hostile region was thought likely given the current horrendous weather conditions – rain, snow, sleet and ice – which would later prove to be the worst weather in recorded history. Moreover, none of the ULTRA intelligence reports suggested that combat-ready German divisions were stationed in the area; only those in need of rest and refitting were believed to be facing the Ardennes. What little intelligence they had led the Allies to believe precisely what the Germans wanted them to believe – that the German preparations being carried out were only for defensive, not offensive operations. Bastogne, therefore, was only defended by a US Army division that had seen continuous fighting almost since D-Day and was assigned to this sector of the battle line because it was unlikely to see action. Mixed in were various other units whose troops and officers had seen no combat thus far in the war.

At 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 16, 1944, the Germans began the assault with a massive, 90-minute artillery barrage using 1,600 artillery pieces across an 80 miles front on the Allied troops facing the Sixth SS Panzer Army. History would remember this as the Battle of the Bulge. The temperature in Bastogne on that day was 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Poorly equipped American forces would suffer greatly while German forces, drawing on years of experience of fighting the Russians, were equipped with warm and practical clothing.

Heavy snowstorms engulfed parts of the Ardennes area. While having the desired effect of keeping the Allied aircraft grounded, the weather also proved nettlesome for the Germans because poor road conditions hampered their advance. Ineffective traffic management and snow drifts several feet deep led to massive traffic jams, and fuel shortages plagued the forward German units.

American soldiers found their rifles jammed constantly in the frozen air. They had to urinate on them to free their mechanisms. A biting wind sliced through their wet uniforms. Many suffered frostbite. A heavy fog hung over much of the Ardennes region. Tanks moved at a crawl and half-tracks ground to a halt in the thick mud. On that December in 1944 American combat troops were not dreaming of a white Christmas; they got the real thing and hated it.

Eisenhower and his principal commanders quickly realized that the ferocity of the German attack signaled a major offensive, not a local counterattack, so they ordered vast reinforcements into the breakout area. Within a week, 250,000 Allied troops streamed to the front. Eisenhower personally ordered the 101st to the Bastogne crossroads with instructions to hold at all cost. Advance elements of the 101st rushed to Bastogne and began entering the town in trucks on the morning of the 19th. Hitler’s troops would have to dislodge them or face a counterattack and a likely defeat. Still, the early prospects were daunting for the Americans.

In 1944 Bastogne was a market town located on a 1,600-foot plateau overlooking the surrounding Ardennes. Its wartime population was a bit over 4,000 – dwarfed by the 10,000 American soldiers now deployed in the village and the several surrounding outposts in nearby hamlets. Major General Troy Middleton was the VIII Corps commander in charge of the battle sector that included Bastogne. “Now don’t get yourself surrounded,” Middleton had warned Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101st.

On the Saturday of the German breakout, things were normal in Bastogne – the shops and markets were open on the Grand Rue and they were doing a bustling business. The next day, Sunday, refugees began streaming in from the east indicating that something unusual was afoot. Around noon, the electricity went out all over town – not an unusual occurrence for the town. But on the morning of the third day, Monday December 18th, artillery could be heard off in the eastern distance and American stragglers began entering the town. By midday, civilians were leaving, pushing carts heaped high with possessions. Those who stayed moved into their cellars for safety from the bombardment they expected would come. One of those who stayed was Renée Lemaire, a beautiful 30-year old with blue eyes and a cascade of brown hair. Renée had trained for four years at a hospital in Brussels to become a nurse. She would be invaluable in the days ahead.

On the evening of Tuesday, December 19, German reconnaissance units began colliding with the American outposts surrounding Bastogne. Furious fire fights broke out but the outposts, supported by other units of the 101st in Bastogne, continued to hold, forcing the Panzer columns to swing past them on the north and south, and move around to the west. The Germans succeeded in closing a ring of steel around Bastogne on Wednesday the 20th, completely cutting off the town from the American battle line.

Over the next several days the Germans threw everything they could at the American pocket of resistance, hoping to puncture it. On December 21 the German unit Kampfgruppe Kunkel launched a fierce assault against an outpost in a hamlet west of Bastogne but was repulsed. The Germans tried again four times on the following day, Friday the 22nd, to no avail. Withstanding similar attacks on outposts south of town, the 101st held, supported by the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions that barely made it into Bastogne before it was surrounded. Attacks on the village caused its situation to deteriorate quickly as ammunition dwindled, gasoline ran low, and medical supplies ran out. Food was scarce, and by December 22 artillery ammunition had to be restricted to 10 rounds per gun per day. Temperatures fell below zero, and overcast skies prevented supplies from being dropped into the city and prevented fighters from attacking German positions. But morale remained high, and the perimeter around Bastogne still held.

By nightfall on the 22nd, the rough outline of a fighting perimeter had formed, and Bastogne became a “hole in the doughnut” as one officer called it. All aid stations had been converted to hospitals since evacuation of the wounded was impossible. Exhausted army surgeons shook their heads in frustration as men died who would otherwise have been saved with better care and facilities. Renée Lemaire pitched in to help as a nurse, caring for over a hundred patients, many of whom had no beds and lay on blankets on the floor.

The Germans had clearly underestimated the American resolve. Around noon on the 22nd, therefore, two German officers and two enlisted men walked up a snow-covered road under a white flag of truce to an astonished Army check point. The Germans carried an ultimatum from their commander in the sector, General von Luttwitz. It insisted that there “was only one possibility to save the encircled American troops from total annihilation: that is, the honorable surrender of the encircled town.” It gave their commander two hours to consent or German guns would “annihilate” the US forces and level Bastogne.

An American officer delivered the note to General McAuliffe and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Ned Moore, who read it out loud. McAuliffe’s first reaction was to utter, in sheer disgust, “Aw, nuts.” After discussing the situation with his staff, everyone agreed that McAuliffe’s initial outburst was the ideal response to the German demand, and the general wrote out a formal reply. In words that have since become legendary. The note said, “To the German Commander: NUTS! From the American Commander.”

A regimental commander visiting McAuliffe’s headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Harper, insisted on taking the reply personally to the Germans. Even though the German Lieutenant representing General von Luttwitz had spent years in the import business and spoke fluent English, he could only translate the reply literally to the other officer in the party. “Nuts” perplexed both. “Is the reply negative or affirmative?” the Lieutenant politely asked. LTC Harper, trenchantly translated the colloquialism for the Germans: in plain English. “The reply is decidedly not affirmative, and if you continue this foolish attack, your losses will be tremendous.”

"If you don’t understand what ‘Nuts’ means,” continued Harper, “it is the same as ‘Go to Hell!’ and I will tell you something else; if you continue to attack, we will kill every goddamned German that tries to break into this city.” The German officers snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “We will kill many Americans. This is war.”

“On your way, Bud,” snorted Harper.

Over the next several days in the face of unrelenting German assaults, the Americans held on often by their frostbitten finger tips. But the sky cleared on December 24, allowing air drops of ammunition, food and medical equipment. Christmas in Bastogne had arrived a day early in the form of more than 150 American cargo planes that flew the drop missions, dipping and diving to evade anti-aircraft fire from the German batteries, with several crash-landing inside the American zone.

General McAuliffe’s message to his troops on Christmas Eve is recorded in many accounts of the battle:

“What’s merry about all this, you ask? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer divisions and one German parachute division. The Germans surround us, their radios blare our doom. Their commander demanded our surrender, and received the following reply…‘NUTS!’ We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present, and, being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms, are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.”

The men at the front were not as upbeat as McAuliffe. They had cold white beans for their Christmas Eve dinner. Captain Dick Winters, who became somewhat famous as a result of the Band of Brothers television series, remembered that “dinner that night consisted of five white beans and a cup of cold broth.” Out on icy line, Sergeant Robert Rader and Private Don Hoobler, both from the same town in the Midwest, sat in their frigid foxholes. Rader said, “As the night wore on we talked of our homes, our families, and how they were spending their Christmas Eve. Hoobler felt sure all of them were in church praying for us.” They probably were, and that was a good thing. The Luftwaffe viciously bombed Bastogne that night, causing extensive damage and killing numerous civilians and American soldiers. A German bomb fell through the roof of an aid station and exploded inside killing 30 people. One of them was Renée Lemaire.

There was no let up on Christmas Day. Hitler had demanded that the town be taken immediately. The Germans let loose several armored attacks against the Bastogne pocket. Once again they were driven back, with heavy losses. Inside the town some soldiers attended religious services. Others tended to the wounded, or buried the dead. Most were outside, holding the perimeter.

On December 19, Eisenhower had met with his key commanders in Verdun. Knowing the plight of the 101st in Bastogne, he asked if anyone could get up there and relieve them. Patton said he could attack with three divisions. “When can you start?” Ike asked. “In 36 hours,” Patton replied.

Christmas in Bastogne arrived on December 26, when an armored column from Patton’s 3rd Army pierced the German cordon around the city. The next day it rolled up into the center of Bastogne. It had traveled over 150 miles in six days, fighting pitched battles and tank engagements along the way.

With the arrival of Patton’s armored divisions, the Bastogne siege was over. On December 29 troops of the 101st Airborne Division unleashed a counterattack against the Germans on the edge of town.

The failure to take Bastogne essentially ended the Battle of the Bulge. It had been the bloodiest of the battles the US forces experienced in World War II; one in which the 19,000 American dead were unsurpassed by those of any other engagement. A total of 17 Medals of Honor were awarded, seven of them posthumously.

The official casualty figures for the campaign from German High Command were 84,834, although unofficial estimates range between 60,000 and 100,000. German losses in the battle were critical in several other respects. The last of the German reserves were now gone, the Luftwaffe had been shattered, and the remaining German forces in the West were being pushed back to the defenses of the Siegfried Line.

This was the last Christmas of the war.

On April 30, 1945 Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.

General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, signed the Allies’ unconditional surrender documents for all German forces on May 7, 1945.

The Day of Infamy

At 30 minutes past noon on December 8, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt began an address to a Joint Session on Congress:

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

A Japanese task force of six aircraft carriers had slipped its moorings in the home islands on November 26, 1941 and sailed to an attack staging point northwest of Hawaii. The attack employed 360 planes in two waves – the first wave focused on the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor while the second destroyed parked aircraft to prevent their mounting a retaliatory attack.

At 7:53 a.m. Hawaii Time the slow torpedo bombers arrived over target and commenced the attack on Battleship Row anchored at Ford Island.

The USS Raleigh was the first ship hit. After receiving six torpedo hits, the USS West Virginia quickly sank.

The Utah, an ancient battleship converted to a target ship, was bombed and torpedoed. Rolling over, she snapped her mooring lines and settled on her outboard side. Sailors trapped inside began banging on the hull, and many who had escaped the Utah went back to rescue them. Since the trapped sailors were in an air pocket near the keel, a welder had to sit on the bottom of the hull under Japanese strafing fire to burn two escape holes.

On the other side of Ford Island, the Oklahoma, bombed and torpedoed, heeled over and sank.

At 8:10 a.m. an armor-piercing bomb fell between the No. 1 and No. 2 turrets of the Arizona, exploding the forward magazine. The explosion ripped open the ship like a tin can igniting a fire that swept the entire ship, cremating many of its sailors. Within minutes the Arizona sank to the bottom taking 1,300 lives with her.

Dive bombers and fighters tore up Hickam Field and Wheeler Field, the main air bases on Oahu. The 171 planes in the second wave attacked Bellows Field near Kaneohe on the windward side of the island, and went on to attack Ford Island.

Ninety minutes after the attack began, it was over. The toll was staggering – 2,386 Americans were killed, including 55 civilians who died from unexploded American anti-aircraft shells landing in civilian areas. Among the wounded were 1,139 civilians.

Eighteen ships, including five battleships, were sunk or run aground in their escape.

Of 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, 155 of which never got off the ground. Almost no aircraft were in a state of readiness that would have allowed them to take off and defend the base. Twenty-four out of 33 PBYs were destroyed, and six others were damaged beyond repair. Panicky friendly fire on the ground shot down some airborne American planes, among them five inbound from the carrier Enterprise which was at sea with the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.

Troops caught in barracks and bunks were mostly killed by Japanese fighter aircraft.

Only 55 Japanese airmen and nine submariners were killed in the action. One Japanese submariner was captured. Of Japan's 414 planes engaged in the attack, only 29 were lost during the battle.

The American servicemen who distinguished themselves in the attack on Pearl Harbor received 16 Medals of Honor, 51 Navy Crosses, 53 Silver Crosses, four Navy and Marine Corps Medals, one Distinguished Flying Cross, four Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and three Bronze Stars – a measure of the valor shown that day.

Work began immediately on ships that could be refloated and repaired, a task that required 20,000 hours of underwater work by divers. Within six months, five battleships and two cruisers were patched well enough to tow them to mainland shipyards for extensive repair.

The Oklahoma was raised but never repaired. The Utah and Arizona were so badly damaged that they were left where they sank and are visible today. The Arizona would become a permanent memorial and the tomb of the sailors who died on it that day. It remains a ship of the line and its flag is raised every day, but only to half-mast.

It would be May 17, 1942 before the West Virginia would be pumped out. During its repairs, the bodies of 70 crewmen were found as well as a calendar that had days scratched off. The last date scratched off was December 23 1941 – 16 days after the attack.

As bad as things were, they could have been worse.

America’s three aircraft carriers – the Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise – were untouched by the Japanese attack because they were at sea and the attackers did not look for them. Had they been taken out of action, the Pacific Fleet's ability to conduct offensive operations against the Japanese would have been crippled for at least a year.

Since the attack had taken the battleships out of action for some time – the intent of the Japanese was to destroy them – the US Navy had no choice but to change strategy and emphasize carriers and submarines over battleships, something it had not done in its pre-war planning. Navy doctrine heretofore had been heavily influenced by the theories of Captain (later Admiral) Alfred Mahan who lived before the era of carriers. He contended that the decisive battles in war would be won at sea by battleships. Battleships, therefore, became the capital ships of the American Navy and consequently were the targets of the Japanese attack. The attackers had also read Captain Mahan’s writings.

Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

War between Japan and the US had been considered a possibility since the 1920s, although real tension did not begin until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. During the decade that followed, Japan expanded into China, leading to all out war between the two countries in 1937. In 1940 Japan pushed forward and invaded French Indochina (modern day Vietnam). The attack on the American installations at Pearl Harbor was part of the Japanese grand strategy to block the US Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl from taking action against Japan’s next conquest into Southeast Asia against Britain, the Netherlands, and the US presence in the Philippines.

Planning for the attack began early in 1941 by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of Japan's combined fleet. It was Yamamoto's duty to carry out Japan’s plan to rule the Pacific. He did not believe that Japan could win a sustained war with the US, but if it could knock out the strength of the US fleet, the balance of power in the Pacific would shift.

The true genius behind the strategy for the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, was Commander Minuru Genda. He may have been the most brilliant officer, Japanese or American, that took part in the Pacific Campaign. Genda believed the task would be "difficult, but not impossible" and began working on the details of a plan that employed six Japanese carriers in an overpowering air strike.

Captain Mitsuo Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack. He led the first wave to its targets. Once the operation was underway, Fuchida and Genda became the subordinate officers of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the senior commander of the attack fleet.

Yamamoto insisted on compliance with the conventions of war and demanded that Japan declare war on the US at least 30 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor commenced. Japanese diplomats tried to uphold these conventions, but the attack nevertheless began before the notice was delivered. The reason? Tokyo had cabled a 5,000-word notification to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese Ambassador to deliver in time. In fact, US code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before the Japanese Ambassador was scheduled to deliver it.

Because of the delay in notifying the American government, the Pearl Harbor attack became a strategic blunder in Yamamo’s mind, even though both he and Genda wanted a surprise attack. While his staff members were celebrating its victory, Yamamoto spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression." Upset that the bungling of the Japanese Foreign Ministry allowed the attack to happen while their countries were technically at peace, Yamamoto quickly realized American citizens would be enraged and said prophetically, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

With considerable accuracy, American war planners had assessed how the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, but they believed war would be declared first before any attack was launched. There was, however, a general sentiment that the Japanese would be foolish to attack an American territory and certainly "the most impregnable fortress in the world" – Pearl Harbor.

The American counterparts of the Japanese commanders were Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the US Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, and Lt. General Walter C. Short, the commander of the army base charged with the protection of Oahu. If one were to look at the training the Japanese troops underwent in preparation for Pearl Harbor supervised by Genda, Fuchido, and Nagumo, and the training that took place under Kimmel and Short, knowing as they did how high the tensions between the US and Japan were, one would find the American commanders severely lacking.

Kimmel and Short, however, were ignorant of vital intelligence that might have made a difference in their preparation. Fearing that it could reveal that cryptographers had broken the Japanese code and were routinely reading their cable traffic, Washington did not pass on information to Kimmel and Short that there was a strong likelihood of an imminent attack.

During a later naval inquiry of the attack in 1944, a cryptographer testified that:

“On December 1, we had definite information from three independent sources that Japan was going to attack Britain and the United States ...”

“On December 4, 1941, we received definite information from two more independent sources that Japan would attack the United States and … at 9:00 p.m. December 6, 1941, we received positive information that Japan would declare war against the United States, at a time to be specified thereafter. This information was positive and unmistakable and was made available to Military [US Army] Intelligence at this same time. Finally at 10:15 a.m. (Washington time), December 7, 1941 [about 5:00 a.m. Hawaii time], we received positive information ... that the Japanese declaration of war would be presented to the Secretary of State at 1:00 p.m. (Washington time) that date.”

All decoded messages, the cryptographer testified, were promptly passed on to the President and other key civilian and military personnel. Yet both Kimmel and Short were kept in the dark about the most pertinent of these messages.

Blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster, therefore, can be laid everywhere from Washington to the Hawaiian department. The Roberts Commission put most of the blame on Kimmel and Short, citing dereliction of duty and errors in judgment on their part. Both officers got their day in court, but it did not go well for them. While all blame for Pearl Harbor could not be squarely placed on their shoulders, none would be placed on Washington.

Admiral Kimmel lost one of his four stars and was relieved of command. Until his death in 1968, he worked to clear his name, an effort taken up by others after his death, including his son and grandson. Attempts to restore his rank as a four-star Admiral were rejected by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.

General Short also lost a star, retired from the Army 14 months after Pearl Harbor, and took a job at a Ford Motor Company plant in Dallas, Texas. He lived to see the end of the war but died in 1949 of a chronic heart ailment.

The results the Japanese later achieved in the Philippines were essentially the same as they achieved at Pearl Harbor, although General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in the Philippines, had been given almost nine hours’ warning that the Japanese had attacked Pearl, and he was given specific orders to prepare before a follow up attack could strike his command. MacArthur did nothing. His inaction resulted in the loss of US air power in the western Pacific, forcing the complete withdrawal of the US fleet from Philippine waters and allowing the Japanese invasion of the mainland. He was never censured, relieved of command, or reduced in rank.

In order to boost morale following the Japanese defeat at Guadalcanal, Admiral Yamamoto decided to make an inspection tour of Japanese defense bases throughout the southwestern Pacific. On April 14, 1943, US naval intelligence decrypted a message containing Yamamoto’s specific itinerary – complete with arrival and departure times and locations – as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and protect him. Yamamoto was killed on the morning of April 18, 1943 near Bougainville when his aircraft was shot down in an ambush by American P-38 fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military and homeland morale.

After leading the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nagumo went on to lead it in the Battle of Midway where his luck ran out. American code-breakers enabled his Midway attack to be ambushed. He lost four carriers and most of their air crews. It would prove to be the turning point of the Pacific Campaign. When it was apparent that his defense of Saipan against the American attack was doomed, Nagumo committed suicide on July 6, 1944.

The military career of Yamamoto’s brilliant subordinate, Minuru Genda, who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack, came to an end when the Imperial Japanese Navy was dissolved. He returned to active duty in 1954 as a member of the newly-established Japan Air Self-Defense Force, eventually rising to the rank of general and later the chief of staff. After retiring from the postwar military in 1962, he was elected to the upper house of Japan's legislature. Genda died on August 15, 1989, exactly 44 years to the day after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and just one day short of his 85th birthday

Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader of the air attack on Pearl Harbor, became a Christian and an evangelist preacher after the war. Among several books that he wrote in the postwar years was From Pearl Harbor to Calvary, the biographical story of his conversion. In 1960, he became an American citizen. Fuchida died in 1976.

This week, Tuesday December 7 will pass almost unnoticed by the current generation of Americans, as it usually does. It will be the 69th anniversary of the Day of Infamy.


Post script: After 30 years of researching the Pearl Harbor attack and interviewing the principal survivors, Gordon W. Prange published the seminal work on the event: At Dawn We Slept. From it was produced the 1970 film Tora! Tora Tora!, whose title comes from the code-words used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved. Tora means tiger in Japanese.