Duty, Honor, and the Unlikely Heroes Who Helped Win the Battle of the Bulge
Episode Stats
Summary
The Battle of the Bulge is a story about a small group of American soldiers who were thrust into the middle of one of the most important battles in World War II and became the most decorated American platoon of all time. In the face of overwhelming odds, a group of men led by a 20-year-old leader named Lyle Bauck was determined to carry out his orders and hold a position despite being massively outmanned and outgunned by the enemy.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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the battle of the bulge commenced on the morning of december 16th 1944 the allies were ill prepared
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for this last desperate offensive from the germans and the campaign might have succeeded
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if a few things hadn't gotten in their way including a single green 18-man platoon who
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refused to give up their ground to the nazis alex kershaw shares the story of these men in his book
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the longest winter and with us today on the show he first explains the background of the battle of
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the bulge and how an intelligence reconnaissance unit that had never seen combat ended up in the
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thick of it and he describes the platoon's 20-year-old leader lyle bauck who was determined to carry out
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his orders and hold a position despite being massively outmanned and outgunned and how his
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men fought until they were down to their last rounds alex then shares how what bauck thought
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was a total failure being captured as pow's after just a day of combat turned out to have been an
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effort that significantly influenced the outcome of the battle of the bulge and how an unlikely
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platoon of heroes who initially went unrecognized for their valor became the most decorated american
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platoon of world war ii you'll find such an inspiring lesson in the show about living up to your duty and
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holding the line after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is battle of the bulge
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all right alex kershaw welcome back to the show hi great to be with you so uh we're coming up on
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the 80th anniversary of the battle of the bulge i'll be next year and you wrote a book two decades ago
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about the battle of the bulge it's called the longest winter and what i love with your books
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that you do about world war ii is you always find a small story you find a individual soldier a unit
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that you can talk about the stories of these individual people in the the broader context of
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this epic conflict that happened with world war ii and in this story you follow an 18-man platoon
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from the u.s army they are facing the main thrust of the entire german assault at the battle of the
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bulge how did you come across this story well i would written a book called the bedford boys that
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appeared in 2003 and did fairly well that was about d-day focusing on a company that had been
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activated first of all as a national guard unit from one small town in virginia bedford
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and anyway my editor said to me can you pick another small group of guys and thrust them
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into the middle of a very big battle in world war ii and the anniversary of the battle of the bulge is
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coming up maybe you could find a unit that accomplished amazing things during the battle
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of the bulge and i i just put a phone call through to a friend of mine who worked at the eisenhower center
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in new orleans university of new orleans and i said look i'm looking for a small group of guys like
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the size of a football team maybe ideally and i'm looking at the battle of the bulge can you make
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any recommendations about any unit that i could look at and he's like immediately said uh inr platoon
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in the 99th division commanded by a 20 year old called lao balk and here's his telephone number and i
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literally a few hours later called up lao balk this is over 20 years ago now almost 20 years ago now
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and um he answered the phone he was in st louis and i answered the phone and i said look i really
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don't want to disturb you but i'm really keen on writing about you and your platoon and and he he
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was okay with it i was like amazed that he's it was very polite and agreed to me writing about him
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and his platoon but he had one condition which was that i had to write about every single member of the
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platoon that was there that day on the 16th of december 1944 first day of the german attack during
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the battle of the bulge and you know the cut long story short that platoon became the most decorated
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of world war ii most decorated u.s platoon i should add and i gave him my word i said yeah okay i'll
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do my very best to write about every guy in the platoon and of the 18 that served in
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in the battle of the bulge i think there were 11 still alive when i began my research and i managed
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to interview all 11 amazingly and not one of them is breathing today as i speak to you i mean i
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imagine that's one of the hard things with your jobs even you started writing about world war ii
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right when these a lot of these guys were they were still alive but those numbers have been
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dwindling every year yeah i started interviewing seriously world war ii veterans in the
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late 90s and you know 16 million americans served in uniform in world war ii and there are
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less than 120 000 alive today so you know you'd have to be 98 99 to have served in world war ii i mean
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some people lied about their age i met a guy just a few days ago who was actually 16 during the battle
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of the bulge a guy called harry miller but he lied about his age but you'd have to be 98 99 and that
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there aren't many 98 99 year olds around but that's the youngest you could be you know so yeah i i there
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are very few of the dozens and dozens of world war ii veterans that i interviewed who are still with us
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you know so we're going to talk about the story lyle bauck he's an amazing character amazing person
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and we're going to talk about his story and what he did with his unit at the battle of the bulge but
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what's interesting about your book your book doesn't start at the battle of the bulge it actually
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starts in july of that same year of 1944 in the wolf's lair and this was hitler's prussian headquarters
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why start the story of the battle of the bulge here well i wanted to start with a really dramatic
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scene and that was the planting of a bomb by count von staufenberg it was the what ended up being a
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failed assassination attempt of hitler one of many but it it really shook hitler up it wounded him
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badly he was injured almost killed by the blast it was in a conference room that was actually had open
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windows so if the windows had been closed and it hadn't been things could have been otherwise
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hitler could have been easily killed but anyway after that he started to think about how he might
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change the course of the war and and in the following months couple of months after that july
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assassination attempt he developed what became known as wacht amrein the code word for an attack through
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the ardenne in december of 1944 so i wanted to start with this very dramatic moment when a prussian
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aristocrat leaves a bomb in a suitcase and almost kills hitler and then examine how hitler after that
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near death event in desperation developed a plan that he hoped would end the war on his terms in the
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west that would change the outcome of world war ii so but i also wanted to meet my platoon members before
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they shipped out from the u.s so i i switched from hitler's near death to camp maxi in texas where the
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iron r platoon were being trained under the leadership of lao balk who was then just 20 years old so that's
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how i started and then they get you know they get shipped out to the uk and i believe the early fall
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of 1944 and then arrive in belgium in november of 1944 and they were literally on the line for just a
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couple of weeks before the battle erupted you know totally green troops it's supposed to be an elite
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unit an ir unit is an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon they're not supposed to be engaged in
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heavy combat quite the opposite they're supposed to be the eyes and ears of a infantry regiment you
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know if they're spotted and they end up in a firefight that's bad news because they're supposed
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to be patrolling secretly unobserved behind enemy lines and feeding intelligence back to regimental
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headquarters so you know when they were attacked on the 16th of december they were not a standard
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infantry unit and it was only because they had great leadership and they brought in a couple of
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extra 50 cal machine guns and mounted them on jeeps that they had any real firepower
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so yeah that's how i started with hitler and then following these guys to the front lines in
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the ardennes okay so yeah put this in the bigger context hitler at this point the nazis their backs
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were against the wall this is after d-day the allies were making progress in france and then
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we're heading to germany and as you talk about in the book this assassination attempt it wounded him
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it kind of shook him up but it also in a weird way enlivened hitler he kind of started liking his
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own supply he's like i'm awesome look they didn't kill me i'm invincible so maybe i can do this and
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he started looking at portraits of frederick the great and kind of talking with frederick the great
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saying i can do what you did and that's how he came with this final attack yeah and basically he
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you know he hadn't been killed and therefore he thought that providence or god had saved him for
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greater things and that fortune was on his side so yeah that's how he developed his actually very
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daring and you know really quite audacious plan at what became known as his last great gamble you
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know in the west so yeah then after that you switch over to to camp maxi to this unit this platoon
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i just said they're a reconnaissance platoon and you talk about how the guys who were selected for
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this unit they were handpicked what were the characteristics that the leaders were looking for
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for this i and r platoon um well you know i it's interesting that you asked that question because
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a fair few of the guys had never expected to be in combat they been in a special training program
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for you know college kids what were called whiz kids that where they were you know heading towards
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positions in intelligence units or some kind of duty that was not in a foxhole on the front lines
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but because of the manpower shortage in the fall of 1944 the astp program as it was called was
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was cancelled and all these guys that were you know they very smart highly educated guys were sent
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into infantry units and um much to their dismay and disappointment um and so several of the guys in
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balk's intelligence and reconnaissance platoon were very smart very you know highly educated and uh
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didn't want to be there but hadn't had much choice so they were a formidable bunch they came from all
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over the united states they came from different backgrounds they were a diverse group different
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ethnicities they were you know truly an all-american unit in that sense yeah i mean you had you know
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one vernon leopold he was a german jewish refugee yeah part of this unit you had i think it's
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hernandez a mexican immigrant in there as well yeah from all over yeah there was a guy called
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milosevic who for those who remember the bosnian war his distant relative was milosevic in recent times
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so he was a serbian uh the son of serbian immigrants so hernandez the guy you mentioned he was
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you know he uh grown up in texas i actually managed to interview his widow in el paso
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when i was researching the book guys from the midwest from cities from rural america a couple
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of really good athletes so it was a real mixed bunch real you know a really interesting range
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of americans that laobout was commanding he was the second youngest in the platoon there was a
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guy called bill james who was 19 years old who was his runner but imagine that you've got
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you know 18 guys that you're in command of and you're the second youngest so you haven't seen
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combat before and you look like a kid i mean laobout looked very young so the question is you know why
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should any of these guys pay you any respect or carry out your orders when you've you've never been
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at war and you look like a boy so right well and balk has an interesting background i want to talk
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about him because he's a big part of the story yeah so he was young he was 20 years old but he
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actually like he got involved in the military like when he was 14 i think with the national guard he
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joined the national guard when he's 14 i actually have i think i have a photograph in the book or
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somewhere else but where i show a picture of him when he was just 14 in a whole group of other
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guys in the national guard and you know so he was very patriotic and it wasn't just because
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he received some pay when he turned up for drills etc he he was from the start he wanted to serve his
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country and by the time you know he got to europe to the ardenne in the fall of 1944 he'd actually been
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wearing a uniform for almost six years so you know it wasn't like he just came out of high school and
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ended up as a lieutenant he went through officer training school he was seen as having great
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potential by his commanding officer a guy called major crease and felt really proud that he'd been
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sort of singled out for leadership potential and given command of this iron opportunity it was a big
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deal to lyle balk he felt very honored by that did he show potential for like a capacity for leadership
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yeah he did definitely yeah i mean you know you go through officer training school they can work out
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pretty quickly whether you have what it takes to lead guys well you never know though i mean this
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is the this is the big issue which is that it doesn't matter how well trained you are you know
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when the bullets start whizzing by only then do you know whether you've got it or you haven't and
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that's something that every combat veteran will tell you that it's not until you actually get into
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combat that you realize who you are or or what what you can do or whether your leaders are any good or not
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that's always a big question mark you know so you've got 18 guys under this young man's command
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none of them know either what will happen in combat because none of them have been in combat before either
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so lots of questions you know when people start to try to kill you how do you react and they all found
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out on the 16th of december okay so uh this unit they should get shipped to europe and i when they
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were in camp maxi they didn't know where they were going yet they were i think you see this a lot
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in a lot of these world war ii stories these guys are at camp and then they get the order to load up
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in a train and they're on the train they're like all right is this going to go east or is this going
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to go west yeah because if it goes east we're going to go to europe if it goes west we're getting
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shipped off to the pacific theater and the same thing happened with these guys they didn't know
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until they got on the train and it started heading east yeah and you know i would say that by that
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stage of the war by the fall of 1944 most gi's would much rather go to europe than the pacific
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because the pacific was just a you know it's a different kind of war it was much much darker
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much more brutal japanese refusing to surrender just a really atrocious barbaric series of islands you
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have to hop from one to another and i i think most gi's thought that you know if they were fighting
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against the wehrmacht if they're fighting against even the ss hitler's you know most about
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followers that they sort of good chance of being taken prisoner that they might not be headed that
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you know if the worst came to the worst and they did end up as pow's that they could survive the war
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whereas you know the idea of being taken prisoner by the japanese in the pacific was almost as horrific
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as fighting them okay so they end up in europe and they end up in belgium in the ardenne forest
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when this is late november early december give us an idea because i think maybe people have seen
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band of brothers the battle of the bulge scene like it was cold what i mean give us an idea what
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what were the elements like in this area what were they up against well they're in kind of very hilly
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terrain in the ardenne very thickly forested areas and then some pasture but it was the coldest winter
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in living memory so you know people always look at movies like the battle of the bulge and
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pattern and uh you see those beautiful couple of episodes from band of brothers i think they're
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my favorite and it is it does look extremely cold in fact it was colder than usual so people weren't
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kidding when they said it was literally people were freezing to death that you in foxholes unless you
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hugged your foxhole buddy to share their body warmth or you took really you know serious precautions
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you did stand a good chance of of of not waking up of being frozen in your foxhole so we're very cold
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the for the first few days of the battle of the bulge the skies were overcast it snowed in different
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areas and then finally the skies cleared at the 23rd of december after about a week but the conditions
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were miserable you were out there not getting hot food subsisting on k rations you know having to
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spend every night in a foxhole maybe you had a blanket over you and if you were lucky to cover
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the foxhole and you wake up and it would be like stiff as wood in the morning and you did that night
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after night after night and it was extremely exhausting it was very very very harsh indeed and you were
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constantly worried about getting trench foot it was mud slush just a very very difficult fighting
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conditions and in fact probably some of the most difficult of world war ii in the pacific there were
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horrendous conditions but i think the battle of the bulge every veteran will tell you that the thing
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they remember most is is just how goddamn cold it was you know yeah and in addition to to the harsh
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weather conditions the troops were just they were inadequately supplied and you know they're just
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generally unprepared in a lot of ways for a big attack we were running out of men in the fall of
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1944 so because of the broad front strategy pursued by the allies which meant that we had a front line
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running from you know the dutch border right through to italy was thinly manned we didn't have enough
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divisions to put on that very long front line and the ardennes was the most thinly manned part of that
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broad front the divisions that were there were green they hadn't seen combat before or they were being
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rested after the battle of the hurtkin forest which was a real meat grinder so thinly manned not seen combat
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before harsh conditions and not expecting an attack the position of the allies in late fall of
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1944 was that they were going to man this line and then gather new infantry regiments material and
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other supplies and then launch a spring attack into the heart of the third reich they had no idea
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absolutely no idea the average soldier that is that the germans were capable of launching such a
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massive surprise attack and in fact although intelligence suggested that some kind of attack could occur
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at the very highest levels of the allied command the attack took them completely by surprise i mean it
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was stunning i mean it caused panic and chaos you know over 200 000 germans suddenly attacking you in
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a place that you least expected in really difficult terrain they did not expect that at all quite the
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opposite how are they able to hide that i mean at this point hadn't we cracked the enigma and so we were
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able to decipher codes and things like very good very good point and that goes to a broader issue which
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is that we over relied on uh having broken the german codes and you know enigma information we kind of
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got lazy we thought we knew everything the germans were up to but before the battle of the bulge
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hitler had stated that there should be no radio communication that orders should be written by hand
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those who knew about the the plans for the battle were to keep it within a very tight circle
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anybody found relaying information about the forthcoming plans was to be executed the way that
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the germans actually gathered those 200 000 soldiers and you know over 500 tanks over a thousand
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artillery pieces how they gathered them along the front line in the ardennes is one of the great
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achievements of hitler's forces in world war ii it was miraculous almost they so they um you know
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the germans strafed allied positions to cause a distraction while tanks and other men moved to
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the front lines they did so after dark because it could be spotted by allied air forces during the day
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they muffled the tank tracks they had vehicles go over straw that had been laying on roads they made
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sure that the ammunition in many cases was carried to the front by hand again trying to avoid being
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spotted in vehicles they even went so far as to ban soldiers from having fires with wood they used
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charcoal instead so that they wouldn't create smoke so that we couldn't spot them everything was done
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in the in utmost secrecy and to avoid detection so yeah they did a did a superb job of gathering
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those forces in all three armies well over 200 000 troops gathered and when they attacked
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at 5 30 that was null hour zero hour 5 30 a.m on the 16th of december they took everybody by surprise
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i should add to that that there were intelligence reports coming back to the allies that strongly
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suggested that some kind of attack was in the making you know the iron r platoon itself laubauk's
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platoon had detected strange noises and had reported back that something was going on but at high levels
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there was a really serious complacency they just thought the germans were incapable of launching this
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kind of scale of attack that they were really a spent force in the west and didn't see it coming and
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didn't expect it who was uh leading the attack on the german side the overall commander was von
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runnstedt he was the overall german commander and then you had various wehrmacht divisions and then
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ss divisions the the main strike force the main or rather the spearhead of the german attack was to be
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entirely ss so you know ss stands for schutzstaffel that's hitler's private army they're above the law
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they are responsible for carrying out many of the atrocities of the second world war committed by
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the germans they ran the concentration camps and within the waffen ss which is the army ss if you
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like they were the troops that hitler trusted most toward the end of the war especially after
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a wehrmacht general von stauffenberg had tried to kill him so hitler didn't trust his wehrmacht generals the
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standard army officers and generals didn't trust them and therefore the main responsibility for
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success in backdam ryan in the attack in the ardennes that rested on the shoulders of ss
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officers and generals and in particular a guy called jockin piper who was in command of what was
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called kampfgrouper piper that was a task force special task force that went ahead of the an ss panzer
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army and was tasked with breaking through american lines and reaching the muhrs river within 48 hours so
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really the success of the campaign of the battle rested just on one guy's shoulders and that was
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lieutenant colonel jockin piper who led that spearhead of ss troops that attacked on the 16th
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december you know and he was told you got to get here by this time you know don't mess around don't
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take prisoners you know if you get there then we've got a chance if you don't the war's lost so huge
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responsibility for anybody to be carrying on their shoulders and without jumping too far ahead jockin
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piper you know almost managed it it was mission impossible but he almost got there we're gonna
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take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so let's talk about
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the battle of the bulge so it started december 16th 5 30 in the morning how did it start when did
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bauck realize because again bauck is like in the middle of this like he's at the front line
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him and his unit they're there they had seen some german soldiers in the area but they didn't know
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there was a big attack coming when did they realize oh my gosh this is a big giant attack
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well the barrage that preceded the attack that began at like 5 30 was one of the biggest barrages of the
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second world war so germans just shelled the hell out all the american positions along you know the front
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line would have been around about 50 miles long the northern shoulder of what became the battle of
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the bulge was manned by the 99th infantry division in the center you had the 106th infantry division and
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then the 28th infantry division and to the south you had other american forces that both of those
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shoulders on the north and the south they performed pretty well they withstood you know incredible
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pressure but the south that the center of the line folded pretty quickly so the first time that
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bauck knew what was going on was when you know the skies lit up at 5 30 and he and his his platoon all
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jumped into their foxholes and took shelter you know it was a very very powerful barrage and uh
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that was the same all along the line so that the barrage was the first it was the wake-up call the
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signal and then after that ended around about eight o'clock in the morning the front lines of the
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german attack the advanced troops started to break through american positions and it was around about
00:27:03.400
that time in the morning that the iron platoon spotted their first first germans who were paratroopers
00:27:09.440
that had been sent ahead of jock and peiper's ss troops the paratroopers were there to sort of it was
00:27:16.800
believe mop up very light american resistance because the barrage would have done its work the
00:27:22.680
lines were thinly held it was hoped that there would be so much chaos and confusion and panic
00:27:28.200
that there would be very insignificant american resistance and that actually was in many cases
00:27:34.820
the care you know that happened to be true but they didn't count on lao balconist platoon
00:27:42.320
carrying out their orders which were to hold their positions at all costs and that's what they did
00:27:48.860
they did and again they just had their their rifles and they had that 150 caliber on a g yeah they
00:27:54.640
actually had i think i think they had two 250 calibers and and then you know m1 rifles and
00:28:00.640
bow could have had a carbine which was the standard issue for an officer but um so yeah they they manned
00:28:07.440
positions above a small village called lanzarath which was you know right in the middle of the
00:28:13.120
northern part of the shoulder but more importantly it was a overlooking a road which the germans had
00:28:19.220
labeled roll barn b that means route b and that was the route that jock and peiper was going to take
00:28:26.200
to break through american lines and hit his objectives so they happened to be in the you know the worst
00:28:33.100
possible place at the worst possible time uh just 18 of them in the platoon and they were confronting
00:28:39.760
you know a force of several hundred paratroopers and then behind those paratroopers were jock and peipers
00:28:47.700
ss troops and you know dozens and dozens of tiger and panther tanks what's really amazing about this story
00:28:55.840
is that under that kind of pressure right being so outnumbered so outgunned balk and his men they
00:29:03.160
would have been really tempted to run you know to retreat but they didn't they stood their ground
00:29:08.060
yeah i mean when he got the orders he decided to carry out his orders but there were several guys in
00:29:14.520
the platoon that you know weren't quite so happy about that because they thought they were didn't stand
00:29:19.980
a chance that you know they were up against this massive force and that what difference did it make
00:29:24.720
if they went down fighting and you know took a few dozen or whatever with them some of them thought
00:29:29.800
maybe it would be a better idea to pull back and regroup and form a better line of defense that
00:29:34.120
why sacrifice their lives for you know really no good reason they were massively outnumbered after all
00:29:40.660
but you know laobout was a good officer and an order was an order and he told his men that we're staying
00:29:45.880
and you know no one's no one's going to leave later in the day when they got into really serious
00:29:52.280
combat they were attacked actually in all four times by the germans and held their positions but
00:29:57.840
later in the day as the situation became increasingly hopeless he did say if you want to go you can go
00:30:04.680
i'm staying but if any of you guys want to go you can go and you know try and escape the german
00:30:10.660
penetration and join other americans and fight another day but none of the platoon actually did that
00:30:18.900
they all stayed put there were many cases in the first hours the first couple days in fact of the
00:30:24.860
battle of the bulge where the americans did turn and run you know that that was understandable they
00:30:29.680
were you know petrified they were up against a much greater force and they they turned tail and uh
00:30:36.540
you know that that may have been a lack of courage or it may have been very sensible because
00:30:40.780
you know they wanted to carry on fighting and they thought by retreating they might stand a better
00:30:46.780
chance of putting up a good fight so but that was not the case for the iron opportunity they all
00:30:50.780
they stayed they stayed where they stood and they fought extremely well yeah you wrote about
00:30:55.460
balk he returned to this place in 1969 and he said that he realized perhaps the one factor above all
00:31:02.200
their youth had explained why he and his men had stood and held that older men fathers wiser more
00:31:08.260
cautious adults would surely retreated as soon as the germans appeared in such superior numbers
00:31:12.600
so his youth probably played a role in that yeah and i think he was you know this is the first day of
00:31:19.500
of real combat i mean they'd been patrolling behind enemy lines that they had a few close shaves but they
00:31:25.160
actually hadn't engaged with the enemy before so this was the first true test and uh i think laobat
00:31:33.000
wanted to prove himself you know he was young everyone was watching him looking at him thinking well what's
00:31:37.460
this guy got and he wanted to show that he had the right stuff and he did you know yeah they they were
00:31:43.300
attacked frontally they were on a hillside near a tree line foxholes are still there you can actually
00:31:50.220
go i was back there in may i went to actually went to laobat's foxhole so they were along the tree line
00:31:56.960
well placed and they balk had done his best to reinforce the positions he'd done what he could
00:32:03.240
and the paratroopers that attacked them were badly led and they ran at them across an open field
00:32:10.780
open slope it was a barbed wire fence that bisected the field and as they were trying to climb over the
00:32:16.700
fence the 50 cows literally just mowed them down i mean some people say that you know there were 500
00:32:22.600
germans that were killed or wounded some people say it's more like three or four doesn't it doesn't
00:32:27.620
matter what did happen was that four times the germans attacked up this hillside near the village
00:32:35.500
of lanzarath and these 18 guys in the iron iron platoon repulsed them every time you know they were
00:32:43.000
they're running out of ammunition by the time it was all over it was like sort of getting dark around
00:32:48.640
about four o'clock in the afternoon people forget just how long darkness lasted in that part of the
00:32:54.340
world on in december 1944 you almost have 16 hours of darkness so got lights around about 8 8 30 in
00:33:02.360
the morning got dark around 4 4 30 in the afternoon and by around four o'clock in the afternoon many of
00:33:08.840
the platoon were literally down to their last rounds they'd been firing in firefight for a lot most of
00:33:15.180
the day a couple of them were seriously wounded and miraculously only just a couple but um literally
00:33:22.640
you know with a few more minutes half an hour maybe it would have been dark and they had nothing
00:33:28.320
left to fight with and so it was at that point that bauck said you know if you want to try and get
00:33:33.280
away now's the time to do so undercover darkness he still was going to stay and then finally the
00:33:40.100
paratroopers got smart and realized that these full frontal assaults up this hillside were disastrous
00:33:46.780
and they decided to try and outflank the platoon's positions and so they came in in from the flanks
00:33:53.720
through woods and started to seize each of the foxholes and the way they did that was that they
00:34:01.300
fired at them they threw grenades and then when they got close enough they would shout out you know
00:34:05.580
in german get out get out or rouse rouse is what they actually said get out and they literally pulled
00:34:13.900
several of the platoon members out of the foxholes by hand and these guys you know didn't give up
00:34:19.860
easily they uh in a couple of cases they literally had fired their last rounds and what role did this
00:34:27.660
stand that balcony's unit that they made that day what role did it play in the battle of the bulge for
00:34:34.640
the allies well you know uh with bout what happened was that he was beside bill james his runner
00:34:39.340
in his foxhole and suddenly the barrel of a machine pistol was thrust through a slit at the front of
00:34:46.560
the they created a really good well-defended command post and covered it with logs and so there was a
00:34:53.400
slit about you know two or three feet wide by maybe six inches high and suddenly a barrel of a german
00:35:00.340
machine pistol came through and it was pointed right at balk and instinctively i mean he didn't have time to
00:35:07.320
think about it instinctively he pushed it to the side and the german opened fire and and fired
00:35:12.760
unfortunately right into bill james's face so unbelievably bill james wasn't killed but he took
00:35:18.800
a lot of rounds in his face later on i think he had to have over 20 plastic surgery operations to try and
00:35:25.600
repair his face really badly disfigured and bleeding everywhere at the time you know balk thought he was
00:35:32.020
going to die very quickly so balk was pulled out with james james is like you know in and out of
00:35:40.180
consciousness balk doesn't surrender quickly enough with it put his hands in the air rather after it's
00:35:46.340
being pulled out of his hole and it's shot in the leg and then he has to try and prop up his buddy
00:35:52.340
but bill james who was a good friend of his too and is marched down the hillside towards a cafe in
00:36:00.400
nanzareth and you know he passes german corpses the barbed wire fence is sort of piled high with
00:36:07.040
dead or dying germans or bleeding germans and uh as he's staggering down this hillside after dark with
00:36:13.800
a german pointing a gun in his back he hears this click and he thinks to himself oh the guy's shot me
00:36:20.080
i'm dead this is what happens when you're dead you you know i'm i'm dead but i'm still on this hillside
00:36:25.620
but in fact it was just the german messing with him trying to scare him by pressing the trigger on
00:36:30.480
his empty barrel at least that's what our theory is today so to cut a long story short you know none
00:36:35.740
of the platoon were killed there was a forward artillery observer that was attached to the platoon
00:36:40.020
there were three guys i think there were forward artillery observers that found themselves in the
00:36:44.760
position that day and a guy called gacky was killed so he was the only fatality but none of the actual
00:36:50.820
platoon were killed a couple of them seriously wounded you know obviously bill james
00:36:55.020
you know really had his face almost blown off and they're put in the cafe cafe schultzen which is
00:37:02.720
the building's still there after dark and balk's sitting there with his buddy bleeding out
00:37:08.360
you know his uniform soaked in his blood and he's thinking himself okay i've had one day in combat it
00:37:15.640
was a complete and utter disaster you know i carried out my orders but i've got two of my platoon shut up
00:37:21.920
and we're all going to be prisoners of war you know what what a great achievement i think less than
00:37:26.200
24 hours of my first day of real war and i i messed it up completely and so he was very you know they
00:37:33.560
were sent into plw camps a very bad time to be sent into plw camps in the third reich when
00:37:39.680
there was very little food and the third reich was collapsing you know they weren't treated particularly
00:37:44.880
well they lost a lot of weight and all throughout that winter and the spring of nine you know winter
00:37:51.160
1945 and spring of 1945 bout was haunted by what happened in lanzarath he felt like a complete failure
00:37:59.380
he felt like he you know the one thing he'd wanted in his life since he was 14 was to serve as an army
00:38:05.360
officer and to you know win honor and maybe not glory but to do his duty and he felt like he completely
00:38:11.180
failed and was very depressed it's depressing being a plw anyway it wrecks your mental health
00:38:18.080
but he just he felt like he really had achieved nothing and and had failed miserably and so it was
00:38:26.460
only many years after the war in the 60s when bill james who did survive the war even though his face had
00:38:33.200
been you know almost blown off he went into surgery in the third reich and was operated on without
00:38:38.220
anesthetic etc and german doctors managed to save his life but in the 60s bill james read a book by
00:38:46.060
john eisenhower who was allied supreme commander dwight eisenhower's son and john eisenhower wrote a
00:38:51.680
book called the bitter woods which was about the battle of the bulge i think it was published in 1965
00:38:56.600
and it was a really good in-depth study of what happened during the battle of the bulge and in it he
00:39:02.960
recounted the actions of the platoon he interviewed bill james and others that were in the vicinity and
00:39:10.780
you know bill james read the book and he called up lao bauke out of the blue and he said you know what
00:39:15.700
i know that you've always felt that we shouldn't talk about this we shouldn't you know revisit that
00:39:22.300
terrible time but in fact what we did was amazing because we actually held up the main strike force
00:39:28.600
the spearhead of the german attack during the battle of the bulge and by holding our positions
00:39:34.680
carrying out the orders doing our duty even though it seemed insane and pointless at the time
00:39:41.760
we delayed piper's strike force by maybe 24 hours and that 24 hours that was a very critical time that we
00:39:51.160
you know we we threw the ss off their timetable and if you've only got 48 hours to get somewhere and
00:39:59.480
you lose 24 hours then you got real problems and that's exactly what happened you know piper was
00:40:05.020
delayed by the inr platoon by other units too but predominantly by the inr platoon's actions that day
00:40:11.180
and that totally messed up the the critical german schedule and made a big difference to the outcome
00:40:18.040
eisenhower argued and others would argue to the outcome of the of what happened on the first and
00:40:25.040
second day of the battle of the bulge which was the the really important point of that battle you
00:40:30.420
know there were objectives that had to be reached if they weren't reached the battle yes it would
00:40:34.960
continue but ultimately it would fail it was all about getting somewhere quickly in the first 48 hours
00:40:40.540
and so you know james said that you know we what we did was amazing we were in the wrong place at the
00:40:46.100
wrong time but boy by carrying our orders we actually made a big big difference to that vast
00:40:52.680
battle and it is the biggest battle ever fought by the u.s fought by the u.s army in world war ii
00:40:58.560
almost 800 000 americans involved in some way i think the merzenogon offensive in the first world war may
00:41:05.180
have come close or you know historians can argue about which was the larger number of men involved but it was
00:41:11.020
certainly the most lethal battle for the u.s in world war ii more americans were killed in the
00:41:15.500
battle of bulge than any other single battle in world war ii i think some 19 000 lost their lives it
00:41:21.280
lasted from the 16th of december through until officially the 16th of january the bulge in the
00:41:29.860
allied lines was erased at hufolies so it's a month-long slugfest and very high casualties 19 000 deaths
00:41:38.240
a very bloody difficult battle indeed so yeah they made a big difference they made a really big
00:41:43.320
difference to that that last great battle on the western front in world war ii so you mentioned
00:41:49.080
john eisenhower wrote a history and he he concluded that balk and his platoon they played a big role
00:41:57.060
in giving the allies time to regroup from the surprise attack but the thing is these guys they
00:42:05.080
didn't get any recognition they didn't receive awards immediately for their efforts on december
00:42:10.280
16th why is that why didn't they get any awards uh it was because the the importance of their actions
00:42:17.580
weren't recognized until eisenhower wrote his book that came out in 65 and then you know bill james
00:42:25.780
called up balk and said you know we we did something quite extraordinary it was very important
00:42:30.780
and persuaded balk to try and you know get some kind of recognition for the platoon that was a long
00:42:38.980
long process it was a very difficult process you know to to award medals after an action long after
00:42:47.020
an action it's very difficult you have to pass legislation through congress you have to have
00:42:51.360
affidavits it has to be very very well documented and to his credit lao balk um led that campaign because
00:42:57.940
he wanted his men to be recognized it wasn't in it for himself at all but he wanted his men to be
00:43:02.960
recognized and i think that was a way of him coming to terms with that sense of failure that he'd felt
00:43:08.400
and a public recognition of what his men had actually done would have erased that sense of of regret and
00:43:15.220
failure and so in the late 70s the efforts to get the platoon recognized succeeded the platoon were
00:43:24.080
awarded medals and when you add up all the bronze stars with valor the silver stars the dscs for the
00:43:32.660
18-man platoon they actually became for a single action the most decorated u.s platoon of world war ii
00:43:39.000
so a long campaign but ultimately successful and you know lao balk was very proud most of the platoon was
00:43:46.380
still alive when they received their awards in washington dc and i think it was 1978 before
00:43:55.180
the first game of the season they appeared at yankee stadium on the mound and lao balk throughout the
00:44:01.880
first pitch and their night their names appeared in lights at yankee stadium when it was sort of
00:44:08.160
hollywood ending you know these guys had had done their duty had suffered greatly had survived the war
00:44:14.300
as powws had come back started families worked really hard and then you know more than 30 years
00:44:22.120
later were finally recognized and had their names in lights and had this wonderful absolutely a
00:44:28.980
hollywood ending to this very unlikely story so as you took a deep dive into the lives of these men
00:44:35.800
did you get any life lessons from them i think same kind of life lessons you get from talking to
00:44:43.320
anybody that has been in combat whether it's world war ii or not um that you know the route to
00:44:50.220
contentment lies through service to others so i i think that they all felt incredibly all of the
00:44:56.640
world war ii veterans i've ever interviewed obviously were proud of their service did not boast about it
00:45:02.520
did not think they'd done anything particularly special they did their duty they served their country
00:45:07.500
and were just lucky to come home felt blessed that they did get to come home and have long lives
00:45:15.040
and i think they also felt very fortunate that they had got to survive but they'd also been at a moment
00:45:22.360
in world history when their actions had counted you know encountered a great deal in terms of the
00:45:28.600
platoon that was was absolutely the case you know they they were only in combat for maybe you know
00:45:34.420
eight o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon but those 18 men what they did in those
00:45:39.640
hours really made a huge difference in terms of you know us being able to vote today us being able to
00:45:45.620
live in democracies in terms of defeating the third right but those were vital hours so the life lessons i
00:45:52.240
i should have learned by now and i haven't learned enough other you know helping other people being
00:45:58.040
unified putting aside your differences working for others serving others that's where you get real
00:46:04.300
contentment from and i think the older you get the more you realize that you've got to find some kind
00:46:09.600
of cause in life that's bigger than your own ego bigger than yourself and the best way to do that is to
00:46:16.060
help other people you know well alex this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn
00:46:20.540
more about your work at my website www alexkershaw.com that's the best place to go or you can go on amazon
00:46:27.740
and and buy my books alex kershaw plug it into the uh search engine but yeah um you know um just google me
00:46:36.560
fantastic well alex kershaw thanks for time it's been a pleasure oh my my pleasure thank you so much
00:46:41.740
yet again for having me on you're wonderful you got an amazing podcast there thank you very much
00:46:46.240
thank you my guest today was alex kershaw he's the author of the book the longest winter it's
00:46:52.240
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at
00:46:56.120
his website alexkershaw.com also check out our show notes at aom.is battle the bulge
00:47:01.280
where you find links to resources when you delve deeper into this topic
00:47:04.240
well that wraps up another edition and another year of the a1 podcast thank you all so much for
00:47:16.840
listening to the show we know there are thousands of podcasts that you can listen to out there so it
00:47:21.300
really means a lot that you choose to spend some time with us thank you for listening thank you for
00:47:25.740
your continued support we really do appreciate it also want to take some time to thank some people who
00:47:29.840
work behind the scenes here at the show first kate mckay she's my wife and the producer and editor of
00:47:34.220
the podcast kate works really hard to make sure the final episode that you all listen to is the
00:47:38.940
best it can be and beyond producing the podcast kate's also contributed a lot of great articles at
00:47:43.460
art of manliness.com so thank you kate for all that you do for art of manliness also want to thank
00:47:48.340
creative audio lab here in tulsa there are sound engineers they make sure the sound quality of our
00:47:52.600
podcasts are the best they can be so thank you to dylan and john for all that you do for the podcast
00:47:57.240
we're taking a break for the rest of the year to celebrate the holidays with our family
00:48:00.620
we'll be running some rerun episodes from all of us here at art of manliness merry christmas