Drew Middleton covered the Battle of the Bulge for The New York Times. He was the newspaper's military-affairs correspondent for many years and is now a columnist for The Times's news syndicate.
Shortly before dawn on Dec. 16, 1944, the G.I.'s of an American intelligence and reconnaissance platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment at Lanzerath saw the sky to the east lighted by the flashes of more than 100 guns. Silhouetted against the flashes were scores of German tanks and artillery which, as dawn broke, rumbled through the snow toward the Americans' positions.
The movement, 40 years ago, was the start of the German offensive on an 80-mile front through the Ardennes region of Belgium that has come to be called the Battle of the Bulge, after the triangular wedge in which it was fought. This was Hitler's last great throw of the dice. As Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the German commander in the field, wrote in an order of the day: ''WE GAMBLE EVERYTHING.''
Read Full Article »