Battle Of The Bulge: Nazi Germany's Last Gasp | World War II: The Last Heroes | Documentary Central

[Music] almost 70 years ago these men were boys just out of school in one Fell Swoop you ceased being a boy and you became a man [Music] so young to be caught up in the world's Darkest Hour the last year of the second World War [Music] now in old age these precious few survivors are all around us hidden in plain view this is the last chance to hear what really happened first hand [Music] German bodies Canadian bodies British bodies the smell the stents that's War that's War from The Landings on the D-Day beaches to fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in a freezing winter and storming through Europe uncovering the true horrors of Nazi Germany how can human people do that to other human people how can they do it it's their story in their words not the one written by generals and historians [Music] Tony Jesus still needs a metal where there's original film we'll see where they fought where archive doesn't exist we'll use real bombs and weapons to illustrate what our veterans went through [Music] [Music] this is the story of the final year of World War II in Europe As Told by the last war heroes [Music] the big thing about being an immatureman is the living conditions I spent most of my time in foxholes December 1944 deep in the Arden on the edge of the German border nineteen-year-old private Arnold Whittaker was dug into his Foxhole do keep busy we would improve on it we'd make it wider and deeper and then with our Ingenuity we'd always seem to find some kind of straw to put in the bottom we take our pictures of movie stars I.E Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth and we'd find a stick and stick them on the side walls we'd dig a hole in there to put our canteen in there and the irony of the whole thing it was typically an ideal size and depth for a casket from Michigan Arnold had never left the United States soon after basic training he was sent straight to the front line [Music] the first night I was caught in explosions tree bursts mortars nibble waffers 88s [Music] they would hit the trees and then explode and then come down like rain hot Cur hot metal ragged metal and hit you many of the guys were injured by splinters it hit them and explode and they come down like arrows one blew my helmet off and blew my M1 away I was a 19 year old kid reaching around on hands and knees in the dark because without your helmet without your M1 you're useless there's you're nothing you're just cannon fodder now after one day I'm a veteran [Laughter] the Allies had already fought across the beaches on D-Day survived bloody street battles at Arnhem and chased the retreating Germans all the way back to their border the front line now stretched from the tip of Holland as far south as Switzerland the General's new objective was to break through the entire Siegfried line 400 miles of heavily defended fortification the final barrier Into the Heart of Germany itself the fighting now concentrated in the densely forested region of the ardenne foreign ER was coming it starts with a very cold blowing wind and just snowflakes just here and there but the flakes aren't actually flakes they're in little balls like pellets it turned into the coldest winter on record getting supplies through to the men was often impossible we weren't properly equipped we didn't have Parkers all we had was that damn heavy overcoat and once that Overcoat got wet it weighed a ton so then they said well put your plastic raincoat over it you put your plastic raincoat over it then you're like a zombie you can't move your hands because it was so so tough but uh we were stealing not stealing we liberated the white Pockets from the Germans when we captured Germans we were taking their pockets now we found out parkas pile caps and everything had come up to the rear but the guy's in the rear kept them all this guy's up in the line never got him so needless to say especially the 82nd when they got relieved and went to the rear they beat the hell out of the red people anybody they saw wearing over shoes galoshes or a parka the Airborne just automatically beat the hell out of them the temperature was so bad our K rations are frozen so many times the little Wooden Spoons would break so we liberated Sterling spoons and carry them in our pockets and from a sanitation standpoint like a dishwasher we would always sanitize them by doing this and sticking them in our pocket that was filled with dirt well it caught up with us we ended up for the worst case of dysentery and when you have dysentery you don't say to Mother Nature let's postpone that for an ideal time to satisfy you if you had the gold and artillery shells were coming in if you head up to something in your pants or you wet your pants in other words the decision was based on life or death conditions were atrocious even digging foxholes and slit trenches proved useless as the German shells exploded in the trees above them lethal splinters shattered everywhere foreign most of the time Air Bursts cause multi multi-wounds in all sorts of places you'd get limbs being ripped parts of limbs being ripped bored working in a Munitions Factory at just 16 Bill Edwards lied about his age to join up he was now a stretcher Bearer with the first Battalion Worcestershire regiment I remember one guy I knew quite well and the entire back was skinless from neck to waist and he was in a lot of trouble a lot of agony and I gave him morphine there's no chance of covering the wound it was too big I gave him morphine and a couple of Doses and he was pleading with me to to shoot him so I had to say to him sorry mate that I haven't got a weapon I can't do that in any case I couldn't do it because you're going to be all right are you lying through your teeth because you knew he wasn't going to be all right [Music] 17 years old when he too lied about his age private Carl Beck from Missouri had joined the 101st Airborne Division I was a slick sleeve private machine gunner and I'll let you know and it wouldn't hardly let anybody carry that machine gun in fact I had a stencil made and I have potentialed the side of that machine gun along the receiver I called it jiving Joan and that was a little lady that I knew back in my high school days Carl with his machine gun had fought all the way from the Normandy beaches with no airdrops he was now bogged down in a freezing cold Forest we were in this Hall I'd set up drive and Joan and had this kid as an assistant Gunner word came that the mail had come in I told him okay you stay here and I'll go back and get the mail well this kid had a package and by this time getting all the way from the states it was pretty beat up to begin with and I had all this mail and stuff heading back for the hole group came in and when it did I hit the ground and when I did that package came the rest of the way open in this pecan bar to make them here in South Georgia they're very high calorie they're just delicious came flipping out of it and you see you just lose all sense of morality because I knew my instinct told me that that kid was dead so I picked up that bar and ate it and sure enough when I got back to the hole he was dead that I can't even remember his name and don't remember that's what combat does to you you live like an animal and you react like an animal yes then you know you get over it when you get back to civilization and uh you know I used to wake up in the night and say here they come here they come in you know I'd catch myself but I've sort of outgrown it by now and uh you never forget it you don't want to do it again but you just never forget it [Music] fighting through the coldest winter in decades the Allies were still advancing towards the secret line from the west and the Russians closing in from the East Leigh's armies were losing on both fronts remarkably Hitler took one last Gamble and secretly amassed troops and armor behind his Western Front Line then on December the 16th 1944 he launched a massive counter-attack through the Arden pushing Allied lines back into Belgium this was the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge [Music] instead of chasing a retreating Army suddenly exhausted Allied soldiers were up against Germany's most experienced and reinvigorated units when an Allied division was overrun young veteran Arnold Whitaker and his Battalion were sent in to help when we got there it was covered with snow and then when you got closer there would be a hand sticking out here or an M1 there we were concerned that with all the snow we were getting that the quartermaster wouldn't find him wouldn't find him until spring so what we did we took the the M1 and and put the bayonet on it and stuck it in the ground so the soil would stand up that high so the quartermaster would know that there's a dead GI there because after a while with enough snow there weren't Mounds foreign [Music] the counter-attack had caught the Allies completely by surprise the Germans were now racing to control the small Market town of Bastone with seven major highways passing through its Center it was a vital Crossroads Allied generals knew the Germans had to be stopped all leave was canceled 22 year old Lieutenant Frank Gregg of the 101st Airborne Division was on a three-day pass in reams the runner came down and it says the colonel wants to see you right away so I took off rubbed the road I knew something was serious and he says we are moving out as soon as we can load the trucks which are coming in now and going to a town called Bastone because we got to get there before the Germans do these are the men of the U.S 101st preparing to set off for Bastone with easy company was 20 year old at shames cigar and trucks with the equipment that we did not have nothing we had almost nothing I mean absolutely nothing we had no overcoats we had no overshoes we had no gloves I didn't know where we were going well what we were going to do there we drove all night up the French Highway the Belgian Highway we pulled into a big barnyard clemences get your troops off and come daylight I want you to get up this road here you run into the Germans and stop them say yes sir they were attacking with divisions the Germans were and I had one rifle company with about a hundred men we were encycled the minute we got there and our whole medical company that was on the tail end of the command was cut off they were captured the whole command the whole medical unit the Germans were all around everywhere 180 000 Germans and that's where we fought the German Army began to close in on the troops defending bastard [Music] Refuge G's were coming in to Bastille from the way I was going and I knew what that meant the Germans worked very far behind [Music] and there come the Germans over the hill so we ran together on the side of this hill and I deployed my men on both sides of the road the Germans deployed them in on both sides of the road and we fired at each other for the rest of that afternoon foreign had now been under siege for days [Music] the weather prevented any possibility of air support or supply drops [Music] the 101st was surrounded and cut off one of them dug into a foxhole with jiving Joan his trusty machine gun was Private Carl Beck we were 17 or 18 years old and the thing that you feel of course is a little bit of fear pretty much of the unknown but the greatest fear to me and I'm sure I expressed this for my comrades the greatest fear for me was to let my friends down [Music] when the company Commander was named Hilton he said get your machine gun to get up there and fire this what we call a final protective line an FPL it's got a different name nowadays forward into the battle area or something the idea of an FPL is to get interlocking machine gun fire and let the infantry walk through it I looked out to the next morning and the Germans hanging over the barbed wire fence you know trying to get get through and that those guys next to me did a good job of stopping them oh gosh they must have killed I must have been 25 people hanging over those fences the next morning [Music] when we kill these dramas it was no need to to do anything with them because they froze up like a block of ice heart is as granted and if we uh they came up to us we we dropped them wrote then Frank in front of our foxholes we came we couldn't sure as hell wasn't going to move them so we used them as a table what the hell or something to sit down on they were warmer than the damn snow with temperatures dropping to well below freezing and thick fog the Americans were still unable to send in supplies we were hurt you're cold and hungry and wet but you still go and go and go [Music] oh it was brutal we ran out of food and we all we were just about out of ammunition [Music] when we got a break in the weather in some c-47s came in and threw out buckles one of my squad leaders came to me and said Lieutenant you have a package and at that time I had burlap On My Feet and I had nothing I had a pair of gloves that was taken off of a German soldier that had no fingers in it and I had no hat uh I had my helmet of course had no scarf and certainly no coat I said my God somebody sent me a scarf or a hat or pair of gloves I couldn't wait for the package and when he gave me the package it was about two inches by two inches and about eight inches long and I opened it up and that was a fountain pen just what I needed [Music] finally on December the 26th the U.S third Army broke through to relieve Bastone [Music] greatly outnumbered for a week Ed Frank and Carl had been part of the U.S forces who'd successfully held off the German army [Music] for those who fought at the siege of Bastone they never felt they were rescued we were glad to get relieved believe me but rescued we were not because we were still full of fight and to prove it we moved on into the Bojack wood and took them on again [Music] a week into the Battle of the Bulge the Allies were losing hundreds of men a day as the dead and injured were taken away young inexperienced Replacements were rushed to the front to take their place [Music] ments to Norm by their first name two days later they're dead they were talking about 70 percent turnover all the time if we had an eight-man Squad which is supposed to be 12. we thought that was a big deal they just killed us all the time [Music] 18 years old from Boston USA Bill Ryan saw many of these green troops join his unit they sent in so many new Replacements and they didn't know nothing I can remember the first sergeant coming around asking hey remember this guy to come in last night you know what his name is they didn't even know what his name was crying out loud that's how these casualties was The Replacements were killed so quick in the Battle of the Bulge because you got to pick them up in the morning reporters signed and joined and the first side just pulling his hair out because he didn't even know the names of these guys new to the front line 19 year old Gil Nelson was sent out with his company and what he thought was a training exercise suddenly a single rifle bullet went over my head and the next thing German machine guns we had never heard a German machine gun before we had lots of practice in under American machine guns which went boom boom boom boom boom boom and uh but there's absolutely no comparison between what the German machine gun sounds like in ours it's like a string of Chinese firecrackers that wrapped very rapid and and their their snaps over your head thank you the sound was deafening it made me very very frightened there was so so many bullets going over our heads so much Mayhem sound the sight of blood the death of people the screams not long after arriving on the battlefield many of Gill's troop were either killed or wounded baptism of fire was a major thing and it forced me to uh think what life was all about foreign with so many inexperienced soldiers coming forward the front line descended into disarray Hitler issued orders to create fear and Terror and cause chaos amongst the allies Germans dressed in American uniforms misdirected traffic changed road signs and cut telephone lines foreign had lived in the United States at one time they knew about Lou Gehrig and they knew about the Yankees and the Giants and as that word got around that we were being infiltrated any little sound that you heard you just automatically assumed it was somebody sneaking up on you so the nervousness increased no one could be trusted security was tightened passwords issued password that night was Jingle Bells so I'm hollering you know I'm hollering jingle bells jingle bells and then there's shots come you know shots come over my head and I'm getting down and yelling all of them and for Christ's sake get down so I crawled a little bit forward and I knew it was British and I'm yelling jingle bell jingle bells and then I'm thanks for Christ's sake and finally some guy in a red beret got up from behind a a truck or something rather and said it's the bloody Canadians so I made I said to the sixth man I had with me come on follow me and we'll get up to the British lines and there was an officer there from the eighth Battalion he had a smile on his face and I said for Christ's sake what are you shooting at us for and he said you didn't give the right first password and I said it was changing and he said it was good and it was changed it was Jingle Bells was yesterday today it's Joe brook or something [Music] with everyone on edge looking over their shoulders stories spread of atrocities committed by German troops [Music] then on December the 17th in the Belgian town of malmadi an SS Panzer Division took a whole American Battery prisoner many were found lying in the snow shot in the back of the head what was it 800 was killed and it went down to about 80. to this day I don't think they really know how many actually because the body froze over and they had to wait till it thawed out to pick them all up but the word spread to the Infantry immediately that the SS had massacred these people in melmadi so the word went out unofficially don't take any prisoners if we were out on patrol to capture prisoners for interrogation yeah we didn't kill them but if they came in close and everything and they tore their rifle down we shot him [Music] Ed shames remembers when Easy Company captured a group of Germans we determined who was the leader of the group we asked him to give us the information we want to know where more of the Germans in American uniforms were because that was necessary to save our skins if you know what I mean and uh we said we will give him five seconds to answer the question and if he didn't we was going to blow his brains out and in some cases we blew his brains out I said you know after that we had no problem at all getting all the answers we wanted [Music] at 16 Harley Reynolds left his family to join the Army he'd seen action in the deserts of North Africa and fought his way through Europe with his company Harley was now deep in the hertken forest during the night the Germans called us by surprise and they had developed a flare gun but instead of a flare it shall it shot a grenade now this is Close Quarters you're talking about 20 to 30 yards but that was one Wicked thing and it's our first time to ever run up against it it sounded like buses or trucks or something being thrown or an explosion to go off that close to you it makes you like a piece of jelly it goes through you and you have to recover for this and everything has to settle back into place realign itself before you can even move and they just slaughtered us [Music] I was one of 13 men left standing from the battalion the rest of them were either captured wounded or lay dead in the forest snow scared or afraid that's not the word for it I wish I had a good description of fear it's uh I don't know if I could describe it as there's a good fear and bad fear is a good being that you become numb to where you're able to function under these threats of death having witnessed the massacre Harley was taken off the front line after two years of fighting he was eventually sent home I topped the rise where I could see the house and my dad had finished this house he had started it before I left home and he had finished this house I could see it and when I spotted the house there was one of my sisters that was on the front porch and she saw me top that rise and recognized me immediately and she let out a scream and I can hear all the way back in Virginia even now that Harley's home visit both parents and my three sisters were home they came running to meet me and my father's first words were well son maybe we can get a good night's sleep now foreign 1945 the Allies began to claw back the ground as they'd lost in the Battle of the Bulge thousands moved forward pushing the Germans back Foxhole by Foxhole [Music] deep in a forest dug in for the night with his regiment was 19 year old Clayton Byrd from Tennessee [Music] we woke up the next morning and the normal tactic is to check the people on your right check the people on your left to make sure they're still there and we did both of those things and there was nobody there and we realized that all of a sudden we were behind what had suddenly become the German front line all by ourselves Lonesome probably with a week with a day's supply of food water and ammunition we realized that we were cut off from any friendly Force no radio no way of communicating during the night their division had been attacked and forced to withdraw in the confusion Clayton was one of 26 men Left Behind forgotten by the others each of our families received telegrams from the war department that we would either have been captured annihilated or in any event no longer there we were missing in action [Music] we wondered what do we do now [Music] and we saw a number of American soldiers last to trees your body slashed the trees and they were had been abused used as target practice and we realized that would be our lot if we had surrendered two of them and we decided that because of that we would fight to the last man [Music] there's a sense of Peace about it we weren't having to make that decision again tomorrow we decided to damn it we were going to do what was necessary the next morning at daylight a platoon of German stumbled into us having no idea we were there we wiped them out then when they knew we were there they attacked us one day across a 500 yard area flat country which was a stupid tactical blunder we mowed them down then they tried to do the same thing at night and put up a flare just before they got to us so that they could see to wipe us out well by mistake they sent the flare up with him steal 7 500 yards or so out and we used the flare to mow them down [Applause] we hadn't eaten for a week every shot that we've fired had to have a specific Target because we didn't have ammunition to waste for seven days Clayton and his small group of men managed to hold off an overwhelming force of Germans when Allied troops finally Advanced through the forest Clayton and his men were discovered we got credit for so upsetting the Germans they didn't know where the front lines really were so they sure wasn't expecting front lines in our area we had trusted each other and we knew if we were all going to go down we'd go down together and I'm proud of that group of people by the 28th of January 1945 the Allies had recaptured all the territory lost to the Germans the Battle of the Bulge was over now they could concentrate on Breaking the Siegfried line Germany's final defense stretching nearly 400 miles the troops faced tank traps and barbed wire linked by a network of more than 18 000 heavily defended concrete bunkers [Music] after fighting their way back from Behind Enemy Lines Clayton Bird's company was sent to break through the line of pill boxes but it was a very difficult thing because what you wanted to do was to find some way to get Firepower through that slot that they used for shooting [Music] at first we'd take a flamethrower if there were any infantry there to get them out of the way with the soldiers came Engineers like Frank cam experts in blowing up even the biggest concrete structures we'd have a soldier run down with a 40 pound Satchel charge of explosives swinging against the door with a Time fuse on it run back around the corner and then it explode and when it would the back door would blow in and the concussion would be such it would knock out everybody that was inside good then our men would run in grabbed the place and that was it [Music] when Clayton Bird's company was ordered to destroy four pillboxes something unexpected happened there was a white flag hanging out that opening and we had conversation with the German he says if you will put on a display of force I will surrender the people in this pillbox and what we did we shot hundreds of thousands maybe thousands of rounds of ammunition up into the sky and we really had a fireworks display [Music] well he gave up well when all that happened two of the other pill boxes they decided they would give up as well the next morning the men in the fourth pill box also surrendered so we got four pill boxes without a single casualty that's a hundred over 120 people that came out as prisoners of War once the pill boxes were cleared the engineers filled them with explosives and blew them up with the Siegfried line in ruins the Allies could now Advance towards the Rhine the last obstacle before the heart of Germany [Music] Clayton bird carried on into Germany for holding off the Germans after finding themselves trapped Behind Enemy Lines Clayton and his troop were all decorated with the Silver Star having survived the horrors of his first combat Gil Nelson eventually became a sergeant in charge of replacements [Music] injured by mortified during the siege of Bastone private Carl Beck continued on into Germany with his beloved machine gun jiving Jones [Music] in the Final Chapter the Allies crossed the river Rhine while desperate Germans try to stop them so you were killed by the artillery you just drowned across Europe the Allies discover the reality of Nazi Germany what we could smell and see were Rags all over the place Rags the wet rag they were dead bodies and the RAF fly into bomb Berlin the most heavily defended city in Europe the wing Commander is pointed to Berlin and in one voice 150 voices would say oh [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]

Channel: Documentary Central

Views: 66,500

Keywords: Doco, Documentaries, Documentary, Episode, Movie, Movies, Online, Series, TV, battle of the bulge, unternehmen wacht am rhein, operation watch on the rhine, ardennes offensive, ww2, 1945, ardennes counteroffensive, operation bodenplatte, sepp dietrich, battle of bastogne, second world war, Documentary 2023, ardennes offesnive, ardenes offensive, battle of the bugle, War Stories, WWII, World War two, World War, World war 2, Warzone

Id: yPhlj7kzdto

Length: 49min 8sec (2948 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023