At dawn the following day German infantry and tanks counterat-tacked. The remainder of the platoon retreated, but Stark stayed with his machine gun, even when Wib took a bullet in the middle of his forehead. “Now I was alone and for the first time I was sure that I too was going to die. But I kept on firing, hoping to keep them off. By now three enemy tanks were very close and firing their machine guns and cannon directly at my position.” A German bullet ricocheted off his machine gun, broke into bits, and slammed into his cheek, blinding him in the left eye. He ran to the rear, over the hill, and back to where he had started three days ago on Christmas Eve. He had lost an eye and won a Silver Star.
ON CHRISTMAS Eve, Private Joe Tatman of the 9th Armoured found himself with his squad, hiding in a hayloft outside Bastogne, well within German lines. They had been trapped there five days and had run out of food, “but we talked about Christmas and home, never giving up our hopes.”
At 1600 the Germans found Tatman’s group and forced it to surrender. A captain took charge. He had been a lawyer in New York. He explained that he had returned to his homeland to settle his father’s estate and got caught up in the war. He took the prisoners into the kitchen of the farmhouse. His cooks were preparing for a Christmas party. He gave the GIs milk and doughnuts. He talked and joked about the war. He hoped it would end soon so that everyone could go home.
After they ate, the captain gave the Americans hot water, towels, and shaving materials. He told them to wash up as he was inviting them to join the Christmas party. The elderly Belgian farm couple had set a large, beautiful table in a decorated dining room, covered with all kinds of food and drinks, including meats. There were plates holding “all brands of American cigarettes.” After eating, the captain offered a toast of good luck to the prisoners. He explained he and his men wanted to have the party because they realized that in the morning, Christmas Day, the GIs “would begin their journey to Hell.”
Hell was a German POW camp. By late December they were growing rapidly, as the GIs captured in the first days of the Bulge began to come in. The trip from Belgium to the camps in eastern Germany was purgatory. Private Kurt Vonnegut of the 106th had a typical experience. After his group was forced to surrender, the Germans marched the POWs 60 miles to Limburg. There was no water, food, or sleep. In Limburg they were loaded into railway cars designed to hold forty men or eight horses. Private Vonnegut’s car held sixty men. The cars were unventilated and unheated. There were no sanitary accommodations. Half the men had to stand so the other half could lie down to sleep. In every car there were any number of men with severe dysentery. There they stayed for four days.
Shortly after dark on Christmas Eve, in one of those cars, a man began singing. “He obviously had a trained voice; he was a superb tenor,” Private George Zak recalled. He sang “Silent Night.” Soon the others in the car took it up. It spread to the cars up and down the line. The German guards joined in the singing.
Suddenly the air-raid sirens went off. Soon bombs from the RAF were dropping all around the railroad yard. “Let us out!” the POWs screamed as they pounded at the locked sliding doors. “For Christ’s sake, give us a chance!” But the guards had run off. The thinnest man in the car managed to squeeze through one of the vent windows and remove the wire locking the sliding door. The POWs poured out and ran up and down the track, opening the wire on the other cars. They saw a cavelike gully and ran to it. Some made it, but about 150 got killed or wounded.
When the all-clear sounded, the guards returned, rounded up the prisoners, and put them back in the cars. Slowly the excited talk died down as the adrenaline drained. Soon it was a silent night. “Hey,” someone called out. “Hey, tenor, give us some more.”