Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412290028
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: HARRY D. TEMPLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We set up our headquarters in the Aachen courthouse, and locked our 200 German prisoners of war in the Aachen Jail.
By December, winter had settled into northern Europe, and the Allied sweep from Normandy across France and Belgium had stretched its supply line 350 miles from the French port of Cherbourg.
Although the port of Antwerp was in Allied hands, its use had been delayed while the Canadians cleared the channel ports. The American advance had been slowed by a shortage of fuel. We had to wait for deliveries by "Red Ball Express" trucks driving in from Cherbourg. The spectacular Allied offensive was slowing down as it reached the German border.
The Germans were planning a massive counterattack through the dense forests of the Ardennes region in an effort to split the Allied armies. Antwerp was its objective. Secretly, the Germans assembled 25 divisions, 10 of them armored, for the campaign.
In a heavy snowfall and freezing weather, only a little more than a week before Christmas, a German force of 250,000 men, a heavy concentration of artillery and approximately 1,000 tanks and armored vehicles, along with 1,500 aircraft, suddenly struck 83,000 American troops on Dec. 16, in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The old aphorism, "the fog of war," was a vivid description of the battle. Aachen was part of the northern hinge of the bulge, and all hell broke loose immediately south of the city. The battle line continued west for another 60 miles.
Our unit was ordered to stay off the roads. All night and day, American armored and infantry divisions were moved back west through Aachen as they were withdrawn from the concentration east of the city, to be redeployed west and south to contain the bulge. To those of us in Aachen it appeared to be a wholesale American retreat.
In our efforts to learn something of what was going on, we turned on the German radio and heard the Germans announce that Field Marshal von Rundstedt was going to present Aachen to der Fhrer as a Christmas present. There we sat as what seemed a retreat went on around us, with our orders to stay off the roads. We had a tense and dreary prospect, particularly being saddled with 200 hostile German prisoners.
The Aachen Jail with its German prisoners of war was built with stories of cells that opened out onto balconies around an open center courtyard, with a large skylight above the center court. The skylight had been blown out during the siege of the city, and the courtyard was open to the sky.
During the early days of the German counteroffensive, cloudy weather and fog mingled with a heavy snowfall and galling freezes had plagued the Americans.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, a German major, the senior prisoner, asked for an audience with our commanding officer. He said the prisoners had gotten together a chorus of 16 voices, and he asked for permission to have the group sing Christmas carols to its fellow prisoners that evening, from the center of the courtyard.
It seemed a reasonable request, but we could not be sure that there was not some deception involved. Permission was granted for the concert, but two machine guns were set up to cover the courtyard and cells.
By Christmas Eve night, the snow stopped falling and the fog and clouds cleared. A bright moon filled the jail courtyard with its kingly light, and the air was cold and crisp. The 16-man chorus took its place in the center of the courtyard, in a spotlight halo of soft moonlight. We were out in armed force, ready for any emergency.
There was no disturbance, however, other than outlying artillery fire and an occasional aircraft overhead.
As the choir sang its traditional carols in German, many familiar and some unfamiliar to us Americans, voices from choirboy tenor to basso profundo gently permeated our little world, and a great peace settled over the scene. There we were, deadly bitter enemies, all far from home and homesick for Christmas with our families, worshipping the same God together for a brief moment in dreams of home and loved ones. In the spell of the moment, the war faded away and a wave of the glorious magic of Christmas poured into our souls. The kind gloaming of moonlight hid the tears of those present.
As long as life gives me breath, I shall never forget that Christmas Eve night half a century ago at the Aachen Jail. ``As long as life gives me breath, I shall never forget that Christmas Eve...''
by CNB