t3003 In January 1945, American forces in the Ardennes began advancing with a ferocity that puzzled German commanders. The change was not explained by better equipment or superior numbers. It came from something the Germans could sense but not fully name. A captured American soldier east of Bastogne told his German interrogators that General George S. … Read more
At 3:00 a.m. on October 25, 1944, the USS West Virginia sat in the darkness of Surigao Strait, her guns trained out into nothing. The black water ran between the islands of the Southern Philippines. Every man on deck knew where his ship had been two years and ten months earlier. She had been on … Read more
The briefing room held about 30 people, and not one of them wanted to be the man who had just spoken. Corporal Daniel Kowack was 22 years old, the lowest-ranking soldier in a space filled with colonels, majors, and lieutenant colonels. They had all been staring at the same map for 15 minutes while General … Read more
Mi chiamo Elena Rinaldi e il giorno in cui seppellii mio marito Matteo pensai che il dolore più grande della mia vita fosse già arrivato. Avevo trentotto anni, due figli piccoli stretti alle mie mani e davanti a me una tomba ancora coperta di fiori. Non immaginavo che proprio davanti a quella tomba mia suocera, … Read more
Mi chiamo Giovanni Ferri e quel giorno pensavo che avrei accompagnato mia figlia Sofia verso l’uomo che aveva scelto per costruire il resto della sua vita. Avevamo preparato tutto per mesi, dalla chiesa decorata con fiori bianchi alla grande festa nella nostra fattoria di famiglia. Sofia era radiosa, emozionata e convinta di aver finalmente trovato … Read more
In March 1945, with the Rhine River behind them and the German collapse accelerating, George S. Patton's Third Army was pushing east faster than its supply lines could follow. Town after town, bridge after bridge, the advance was making Berlin nervous. On a cold Tuesday morning, a patrol from the Sixth Armored Division stopped a … Read more
THIONVILLE, France — The order came in the fog of November 1944, and the reckoning came in the cold light of a February morning three months later, when Gen. George S. Patton Jr. walked into a prisoner processing camp and confronted the German officer accused of ordering his men to shoot wounded American soldiers on … Read more
American military authorities have formally documented what survivors and eyewitnesses describe as a deliberate German war crime committed against a clearly marked United States Army field hospital in the opening hours of the Ardennes Offensive, and General George S. Patton has ordered that the evidence be preserved for prosecution while witnesses remain alive to testify. … Read more
Winston Churchill refused a direct demand from Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to have General George S. Patton relieved of command, a decision made aboard his command aircraft and on a German airfield on March 23, 1945, that would expose the raw political fault lines inside the Allied coalition and quietly confirm that Britain was no … Read more
LUXEMBOURG — In the frozen pre-dawn hours of December 24, 1944, as German panzers punched through the Ardennes and the 101st Airborne lay encircled at Bastogne, Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. walked into the Third Army headquarters operations room and issued an order that would shatter seven decades of military protocol in a single … Read more