Battle of the Bulge, 16 DEC 2017

[Amer-team]

Anyone doing Bastogne this year? If you are out and about, I will be helping with a 17th Airborne display at Flamerige. That is a small village on the outskirts of Bastogne, on 16 - 18 DEC. We will be set up in the small church. Stop by and say hi. If you haven't made this event before, it is one heck of a place to see a variety of WW2 vehicles. I have heard estimates in the past of 500 plus WW2 vehicles in the area. Not as many as D-Day, but a really neat event to take in.

 

[Crapgame]

"Bastion of the Battered Bastards of the 101st." >502nd Widowmakers Vet

 

[Amer-team]

We did a display in Longchamps about 4 years ago. That was the area held by the 502. The villagers invited us for dinner on Sunday evening. One of the men left and came back with a worn Garand. He had picked that rifle up from the battlefield when he was a youth. What an experience to hold the rifle that fairly surely belonged to a 502 trooper. It was worn, but still fully functional. What a piece of history that will someday be destroyed due to current rules in both Belgium and the US.

 

[bigbe5678]

The Greatest Generation

 

[Crapgame]

I always screw with the Easy Co 506th PIR reenactors, have to correct them that the German Fallschirmjaegers fled Carentan not because Easy moved in, but because Lt Col Robert G Cole lead a 3/502nd PIR bayonet charge across the causeways and directed an intense artillery barrage that caused FJR6 to flee during the night, leaving only a small rear guard for Easy Co to deal with. LTC Cole was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, 2 weeks after he was killed in Best, Holland, during Operation Market-Garden.