From Sand and Ash(102)
But God didn’t work that way. He didn’t deal and he didn’t yell. He didn’t always make himself known. In fact, he rarely did. Angelo had had to faithfully look to find evidence of his existence. God was still quiet. Impossibly quiet. Just like the snow and the fog and the skies. He’d been quiet as Angelo had wandered, following the 20th Armored Division up through France, to the outskirts of Metz, where France, Luxembourg, and Germany came together, hoping against hope that they would continue up into Germany, forcing a cessation to war and a chance to make his way to the camp where Eva was held. But though Metz had been a victory for the Allies, it had not been enough to punch through and deliver a deathblow to the Reich. He and Mario had waited, Mario needing to go home, Angelo needing to press forward. And God had been endlessly quiet.
The Ardennes Forest was quiet too. Eerily so. It was known as the Ghost Front for the cold white mist that clung to the ground and for the silence that hadn’t been penetrated by war. The troops had been talking about going home. The Ardennes front was the place divisions were sent when they’d taken too many casualties or they needed to rest up. It was eighty-five miles of forest, and the Americans were taken completely by surprise.
Just before dawn, on December 16, all that changed, as the sky was illuminated with floodlights and the silence was decimated by an artillery barrage. Behind it, a massive force of German troops poured across the eighty-five-mile front into Belgium under the cover of fog and foul weather.
Angelo’s detachment had passed through Luxembourg, believing they were to be quartered there. But instead of stopping, like they’d initially thought, they’d been sent on to a town called Noville, in Belgium, with no idea of what their orders truly were. Angelo had discovered that that was army life for the men in uniform—the chaplains, the medics, and the soldiers. Someone pointed, and you marched. Maybe it was better that way, not knowing what you were in for, not knowing what was around the bend. Maybe sometimes it was better when God was quiet.
In Noville, the company they were assigned to had been told to keep the German 2nd Panzer Division from progressing. Nobody knew they were outmanned ten to one and way outgunned. Maybe that was better too, fighting without knowing the odds. Every man who could fire a gun, did, and the town was caught in a small-arms fight that lasted until the Tiger tanks were breathing down their necks, and everyone was told to retreat to Bastogne, three miles down the road.
“Bastogne is where everything intersects, boys,” their commander told them. “It’s the hub of a wheel, seven main roads converge there, and the Germans know they’ve got to have it if they want to control the area and keep pushing on into Antwerp, the biggest supply base for the Allied troops on the Western Front.”
It wasn’t an easy three-mile march. Instead, they’d been pinned down in ditches, taking fire from behind and stemming blood on injured soldiers with bullets whizzing over their heads, until the 101st Airborne had arrived, parachuting in to save them all at the last minute, helping the team stumble into Bastogne, only to fight again.
“It’s gonna be bloody,” their commander said. “We can’t get any air support with the weather. It’s gonna be man to man. Or Tiger tank to pop gun. Son of a bitch! It’s like fighting in a freezer.”
“We just gotta slow ’em down. Just make life hell for them until the weather clears and our boys in the sky can blow ’em away,” the commander from the 101st had encouraged, and everyone had nodded and hunkered down.
Thankfully, the people of Bastogne had run from the town as word of the approaching Panzer Divisions started to spread through the countryside. They abandoned their sleepy village, pushing hastily packed carts loaded with all they could gather, most likely wondering who would be in charge when they returned. Some of the residents had already rehung their Nazi flags above their doors, just to hedge their bets. The evacuation made it easier to establish an aid station of sorts, and the unit assembled a makeshift hospital in the basement of a three-story building on the Rue Neufchateau. A store sat on the main level with living quarters above, which the medics commandeered, while their frazzled unit billeted in an apartment house a few buildings down and across the street.
Constant shelling accompanied their days. Angelo and Mario made their way among the injured, along with the two volunteer nurses from the area and Jack Prior, the American doctor assigned to the division. They did the best they could with almost nothing—a few bandages, very little morphine, some sulfa pills, and plasma. The aid station in some old Belgian barracks a ways down the road, organized by the 101st Airborne Division, didn’t have it any better. Gangrene was the biggest problem, and Dr. Prior wasn’t a surgeon. The best hope was keeping the wounded alive long enough to evacuate them, which hadn’t happened yet, and wouldn’t happen unless the enemy could be pushed back.
By December 21, the town of Bastogne was completely surrounded by the Germans with the 101st and much of the 20th trapped inside. The soldiers started joking, “They’ve got us surrounded, poor bastards. No matter where we shoot, we’re bound to hit one.” “Poor bastards” became a rallying cry in the days to come.
On December 22, a German commander sent a letter to General McAuliffe threatening annihilation if Bastogne was not surrendered, to which a terse “Nuts!” was the only answer he received. The soldiers were laughing about it, and Angelo puzzled about the response for all of ten minutes, then shook his head and laughed too, supposing it was simply slang he didn’t understand. He’d discovered he liked Americans and was proud to be one, if only by birth.