A Command Ops Christmas Special No. 1 – Opening Moves
December 16, 1944 It’s several hours before sunrise in the Belgian Ardennes, on the eve of the Third Reich’s last desperate offensive: Split seconds before 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 16, an...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 2 – Crossing the Clerve
December 17th, 1944 As the second morning of the Battle of the Bulge dawned, the 110th Infantry Regiment stood firm along the Skyline Drive. The 112th and 109th Regiments to the north and south had...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 3 – The Race for Bastogne
December 18, 1944 By dawn on the 18th, the Germans had eliminated the last pockets of American resistance east of the Clerve and captured the crossings at both Drauffelt and Clervaux. With the 110th...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 4 – Digging In
December 19, 1944 On the night of the 18th and into the morning of the 19th, Colonel Gilbreth’s headquarters at Longvilly drew the remains of Task Force Harper, Company G, and what remained of Seely’s...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 6 –
December 21, 1944 Around Bastogne, the 21st was neither a calm nor a quiet day, but it was a largely uneventful one. The action played out mainly to the south and west of the town, as kampfgruppen from...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 7 – Patton’s Favorite
December 22, 1944 George Patton requires little introduction. I’ll let MacDonald do so anyway: By late 1944, George Smith Patton, Jr., at fifty-nine years of age, was already something of a legend in...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 8 – Resupply from the Sky
December 23rd, 1944 The 4th Armored Division continued its charge toward Bastogne on the 23rd. CCA didn’t make it into the fight until late in the evening, and CCB bore the brunt of the fighting that...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 9 – To Relieve Bastogne
December 24, 1944 On the 24th, Patton sent McAuliffe a radio message: “Xmas Eve present coming up. Hold on.” This was an example of Patton’s grandstanding more than his success as a commander: it took...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 10 – Christmas Day
25 December 1944 General Anthony McAuliffe wrote: What’s Merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting – it’s cold – we aren’t home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its...
View ArticleA Command Ops Christmas Special No. 11 – Breaking the Siege
December 26th, 1944 On December 26th, CCR of the 4th Armored Division pushed along the road toward Remichampagne, and by 3:00pm they had reached Clochimont. The plan at that point called for turning...
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