A recollection of his worst day in the Battle of the Bulge still haunts a veteran, three-quarters of a century later.
Pvt. Arthur Jacobson was seeking cover in the snow behind a tank moving slowly through the wooded hills of Belgium’s Ardennes, German bullets whizzing by.
Out of the blue at dawn on Dec. 16, 1944, more than 200,000 German troops counterattacked across the front line in Belgium and Luxembourg, smashing into battle-weary U.S. soldiers positioned in terrain as foreign to them as it was familiar to the Germans. Among the fallen was Albert W. Duffer, Jacobson’s Bazooka team partner, shot in the neck by a German sniper on Jan. 6, 1945. Tuesday, Jacobson went to greet Duffer for the first time in 75 years — at the Henri-Chapelle U.S. cemetery in the northern part of the battle zone, where 7,987 U.S. soldiers lie buried. At dusk, Jacobson watched the U.S. flag being lowered and was presented with it in recognition of his valor.The Battle of the Bulge was one of the war’s least predictable campaigns.
The 120-mile dash seemed so fanciful that few of Hitler’s own generals believed in it, let alone the Allied command. Allied intelligence heard something might be afoot, but even on the eve of the attack the U.S. VIII Corps daily note said: “There is nothing to report.” Nowhere was that tipping point more visible than in the southern Ardennes town of Bastogne, where surrounded U.S. troops were cut off for days with little ammunition or food.
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