Voices from the Battle of the Bulge

In its early stages, the 1944 German offensive was one of the few engagements where Americans faced the enemy with inferior forces and had to resort to the gritty defensive fighting that is the stuff of military epic. This absorbing collection vividly coveys the panic and pathos of the battle. Historian de Lee gathers excerpts from oral histories and memoirs of Allied and German soldiers along with period letters and war reporting, supplementing it with his own spare narrative of the offensive. Selections from the German viewpoint are underrepresented, and there is an excess of material on the British, who played a minor role in the battle and whose memories consist mostly of deploying, waiting and eating (""captured German pork and biscuits--perfectly bloody!""). Also, the oral histories are entirely unedited and many are therefore incoherent and tedious. Fortunately, most of the selections are well chosen and convey both a harrowing view of combat and vivid period atmospherics. A soldier describes the terrified helplessness of a truckload of GI's brought suddenly under German fire; General McAuliffe issues his defiant ""Nuts!"" proclamation at the siege of Bastogne; a newspaper headline blares ""GIs Fight Nazi Tanks Till Ground into Earth""; Stars and Stripes articles teach soldiers the do's and don'ts of fighting ""trench foot"" and defeating mud; a German soldier writes home, vowing to throw ""the arrogant big-mouthed apes from the new world"" into the ocean; and an American Red Cross woman writes poignantly of watching troops leave for the front at Christmas. The result is an illuminating panorama of the conflict. 30 b&w photos.