Remember the Heroes of Bastogne

Posted by Pat Kinney on Monday, December 9, 2024

WATERLOO - This photo was given to me a couple of years ago by one of our veterans coffee regulars at the Grout Museum. It was taken 80 years ago this Christmas.

It's a Dec. 25, 1944 photo of soldiers of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division celebrating Catholic Mass on Christmas Day at Bastogne, Belgium - even as they were surrounded by Nazi troops during the Battle of the Bulge. The battle began nine days earlier.

The very next day, soldiers of Gen. George S. Patton's U.S. Third Army broke through and relieved the 101st after a two-week siege in bitter winter conditions.

It was so cold that "if you were shot, you didn't bleed," one of Patton's soldiers, David Sandvold of Cedar Falls, told me in a Courier interview nearly 30 years ago.

The night before this service, on Christmas Eve, a Nazi shell hit a hospital in Bastogne, killing everyone inside, according to 101st soldier G.A. "Bud" Lauer of Waterloo. He had opted not to go to that hospital that evening for treatment of a minor injury.

More than 19,000 Americans were killed and 47,500 wounded in this weeks-long battle in the Ardennes Forest region. The 101st's stand at Bastogne helped break the Nazi counteroffensive.
The battle continued until late January. My dad was in northern France by then. He wrote in his war diary how he and his comrades bivouaced in the woods and cut timber for fuel. Dad helped bring wounded back from the front on a hospital train as the Allies advanced into the Rhineland.

He wrote my mom, "Some of these boys are so crippled up I don't think they'll ever be the same again."

As we all prepare for Christmas and bracke for the winter cold, keep in mind the heroes of Bastogne and all those who have stood the watch for freedom in any age.

And keep in mind their faith - whether they derive it from each other, a higher power, or the cause of liberty and justice for all. Or all of that.

As far as we're concerned at the Grout, providing vets a hot cup of coffee and place to meet with their brothers and sisters in arms once a week is the very least we can do.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Grout Museum District and the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum.