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The offensive began on December 16th 1944 and, initially, everything went the Germans’ way and was in their favour. The Allied troops were exhausted, the element of surprise complete and even the weather was on their side, low cloud keeping the vastly superior Allied air forces on the ground. Air reconnaissance was impossible . By December 20^th, the Germans were threatening the Belgian city of Bastogne, strategically vital because it controlled access to roads leading to Antwerp. The Germans heavily outnumbered the Allies who had a small number of armoured units and US troops from the legendary 101^st Airborne defending the city.

The defenders fought courageously for six days in the most foul conditions; bitter winds, snow, ice and sub zero temperatures before being relieved by armoured units of Patton’s Third US Army. Although the campaign dragged on until the end of January, it effectively ended with the raising of the siege of Bastogne.

The Battle of the Bulge was the toughest campaign fought by US troops during the European War. Eight thousand were killed to go alongside ten thousand Germans and three thousand non-combatants. The Germans committed war crimes, including the murder of eighty four US soldiers by members of the Waffen SS who were later tracked down and tried at Dachau. Seventy three former SS members were found guilty of what became known as the Malmedy Massacre. Forty three death sentences were later commuted to long spells in prison.

The Battle of the Bulge is remembered in word and film. Antony Beevor’s book Ardennes 1944 is a superb recounting of the campaign while I remember with fondness Ken Annakin’s 1965 film The Battle of the Bulge which starred Henry Fonda (amongst others!). More recently the world has been treated to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks inspired Band of Brothers, a superlative television series which followed the fortunes of Easy Company of the 101^st Airborne. Episode Six tells of the Siege of Bastogne.

NEXT MONTH

I’ll be remembering the soldiers who had the ghastly task of liberating the German Concentration Camp of Belsen. The post will be up in the middle of the month at about the time thoughts will be turning to the 80^th. Anniversary of the event.

Their tasks included the burial of the dead, the care of the dying and the saving of the lives of those who could be saved. A huge task force of medical personnel, doctors and nurses, arrived soon after and began to tackle their gruesome responsibilities. Disease was rampant; typhus, TB and dysentery. Starvation had already taken many additional lives. It was a race against time to save as many lives as possible.

The burial of the dead was carried out, under the supervision of the British soldiers, by the captured SS guards. Amongst these were the Commandant, Joseph Kramer and the evil SS Guard Irma Grese whose favourite hobby seemed to be firing pot shots at prisoners. These two were amongst eleven SS personnel hanged for war crimes in December 1945.

Belsen was not an extermination camp, although tens of thousands did die there, some murdered with their corpses burned in ovens. There was a substantial Jewish population, many of whom had been force marched from the death camps of Poland; Auschwitz, Sobibor, Majdanek and others, when the Russians were closing in at the end of 1944. Anne Frank was perhaps the best known of the Belsen victims.

The world first heard of Belsen from the BBC when Richard Dimbleby reported from the camp in a landmark broadcast on April 19^th 1945. Had any UK citizens ever questioned why  they had been asked to go war with Germany, here was their answer. The British soldiers rounded up the local population and forced them to visit the camp. Many locals claimed they had no idea of what was going on at the camp.  At about the same time, US forces liberated Buchenwald camp near Weimar. This was filmed by the legendary Hollywood director Billy Wilder (Some Like it Hot) and the entire local adult population was forced to attend one the many screenings in cinemas.

My book LIBERATING BELSEN Remembering the soldiers of the DURHAM LIGHTINFANTRY is a brief resume of the events of April and May 1945 and incudes extracts from Richard Dimbleby’s broadcast as well as transcripts of audio recollections of the soldiers recorded by the Imperial War Museum . It can be bought from Sacristy Press (PO Box 612 Durham DH1 9HT – www.sacristy.co.uk) or ordered from bookshops. The book is also available on eBook platforms.