THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160543
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines
Shortly before 5:30 a.m., in a clearing on the fringe of the Ardennes forest, Army Pvt. John Tabb crouched in a foxhole and peered into the German countryside.
It was a routine watch, on what was supposed to be a routine station. But this night something was wrong.
Hundreds of shadows moved against the blackened sky, and the muffled sounds of trucks carried across the rolling slopes. Tiny spots of light flashed on the horizon, followed by the screams of artillery.
Tabb was stunned. The Germans were attacking.
``They overran everybody, they came in such masses,'' Tabb said in a recent interview. ``They brought everything. The bombardment was devastating.
``We were in holes in the ground, but the ground was shaking like jelly.''
For the next 36 hours, Tabb and the other members of the Army's 99th Division traded rifle fire with German soldiers in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The battle, which began 50 years ago today, would last more than six weeks and cost more than 19,000 U.S. lives. About 60,000 American soldiers would be wounded as German tank divisions drove a wedge - a bulge - into an 85-mile line of Allied troops stretching from Holland to France.
It would be fought across 500 square miles and involve more than 1 million men. And, when it ended, no other World War II battle would match its brutal legacy.
``There were times when I felt I'd never see my 19th birthday, but I was very lucky,'' said William Boyd, a veteran. ``When the battle began, the Americans were outnumbered, outgunned, outtanked by the enemy.
``The American foot soldier out-fought the enemy and ended up winning the biggest battle ever fought by an American army.''
Yet controversy has surrounded why it ever began.
Questions remain as to how the German army was able to move more than 250,000 troops and more than 700 tanks within four miles of the Americans, without detection. How could such a massive attack, one that included five divisions of panzer tanks, go off without warning?
To Robert Phillips, a historian and veteran of the battle, the answer is simple: bad intelligence and a cocky U.S. command.
``They were so sure that the Germans were beaten and that things were quiet up there, they didn't expect anything like that,'' said Phillips. ``I think the whole Allied command was caught pretty well flat-footed. Most of them up there seemed to be sort of fat, dumb and happy thinking they had a fairly quiet zone.''
They underestimated Adolf Hitler and his desperation to win. Against the advice of his top generals, Hitler launched the attack, hoping to push forward to the port of Antwerp, Belgium, thereby dividing the American and British armies and cutting of their supply lines.
It would take more than three days before the Allies recovered from that initial onslaught.
The lines on the Northern Ridge were pushed back but held. Those to the south, in the center of the Ardennes, broke, allowing Hitler to push the Allies back, creating the bulge.
Six weeks later, at the end of January 1945, the Germans were pushed back and the bulge was erased. In February, the Allies pressed ahead to win the war.
Both Phillips and Boyd, interviewed in a nationwide teleconference call, credit the Allies' eventual victory to the foot soldier who didn't run, even though his communications were cut and he was at times surrounded by German forces.
``They set up shop and they went into business for themselves,'' said Phillips, who fought with the 28th Division.
``All along the front this happened. They decided to fight it out.''
For those who survived ``the Bulge,'' the memories have become like the war wounds many brought home from Europe. They have festered over the years and, in some cases, healed.
But, now, five decades later, they cannot be forgotten.
The images are still compelling:
Young soldiers digging into the frozen ground as waves of German troops approach steadily, incessantly through the thick pines.
Artillery shells breaking through the still of winter nights, pounding the lines of soldiers stretched far too thin.
The wet cold piercing the hearts and hands of those trapped in foxholes, a cold so fierce that it sends thousands to hospitals with severely damaged feet.
Tabb, 70, a professor emeritus of economics at Old Dominion University, can't talk about the killing or the gore of hand-to-hand combat. Or the friend, a private, who died in his arms.
But the nightmares used to keep him awake.
Tabb, like countless others, was 20 years old with no experience when he was sent to the front, arriving in late November 1944. Five months had passed since the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy and began their sweep across Europe.
A member of the 395th infantry regiment, Tabb was dispatched to the village of Hofen, on the border of Belgium and Germany. His regiment was supposed to wait there as the troops were reinforced and resupplied, before the final push into Germany.
But that all changed the morning of Dec. 16.
``All hell broke loose,'' Tabb said. ``Anybody who says they're not frightened is lying. Lying. They were out there to do you in.''
Two days after the fighting started, Tabb and five other privates pulled back from their foxhole to a house about 30 yards behind. That night, they watched as German soldiers overran the hole.
They sat in the house, isolated. There was no communication.
``What do you do? Do you start shooting blindly into the night and let them know where you are?'' Tabb asked. ``Do you sit quietly and wait?''
They decided to wait.
Hours later, they heard the Germans approach the front door of the house. Tabb ran to the attic and dropped a hand grenade.
Seconds later, a burst of machine-gun fire hit the house. Tabb ducked inside. He ran to the second floor where one of the privates lay, hit, dying.
Tabb held him.
The next morning, Tabb climbed back to the attic. The wall where he had stood was riddled with bullets.
Tabb and the others would go on to survive the Bulge and take part in the later march through Germany.
He was seriously injured on March 5, 1945, when an artillery shell exploded less than eight feet from him, spraying him with shrapnel. He returned to the United States for treatment. He would stay in a hospital for more than two years.
When he was released, he got married and went back to school, earning a doctoral degree in economics from Cornell. He moved to Norfolk and helped organize what would become Old Dominion University.
The war and Germany seemed far behind.
Tabb didn't speak much of what happened. Until the phone call from the brother of the soldier who had died in his arms.
In 1975, Tabb returned to the village where he'd fought, in Hofen, Germany. He found the foxhole he'd dug three decades before.
He couldn't believe how small it was.
``It was kind of a scary feeling,'' Tabb said. ``When I stood in my foxhole and looked out, I saw how close everything was.
``It was scary to see how much they could have seen.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JIM WALKER/Staff
Map
Photo
UPI/File photo
An infantry soldier crawls under a fence between U.S. forces and
German gun positions in Belgium.
by CNB