It sounded at first like a thunderstorm, distant, rumbling. Then the ground began to shake as grinding columns of tanks and tracked transports finally emerged from the dense woods.
It was December 16, 1944, and what the Germans named operation Watch on the Rhine, and what the Americans would later call the Battle of the Bulge, had just exploded along three roads across an 85-mile front in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest.
Caught by complete surprise, a thin defense of poorly equipped, exhausted Americans was quickly overwhelmed.
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