The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division had just finished the battle for the bridge too far, Field Marshal Montgomery's ill-fated Operation Market Garden. As Christmas 1944 approached, the division was settling in for some hard earned rest and recuperation. Despite its failure to hold the Rhine River bridgehead at Arnhem a few weeks earlier, Eisenhower's Allied juggernaut appeared unstoppable. Then, Hitler ordered a massive Nazi counterattack through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest. The overwhelming armor-heavy Wehrmacht forces cut through the thinly-manned Allied lines, racing for Antwerp and the coast. German victory in what is now known at the Battle of the Bulge would split the Allied armies, cripple their attack against the Reich, and lengthen the war, perhaps by years. The author and the rest of the Screaming Eagles were rushed to Bastogne, a small Belgian crossroads town where seven roads met. The lightly-armed paratrooper became 'the cork in the bottle' of the Nazi onslaught. Bastogne became the key to German victory. They immediately found themselves in close combat. Without enough ammunition or food, in freezing weather with deep snow, they even lacked winter clothing. Yet, for eleven days they held out against the best the Nazis could throw at them, buying the time needed for Patton's Third Army to redeploy form the south. Burgett's memoir (he was not yet twenty years old at the time of the battle) is an exciting and enduring testament to the Screaming Eagles and their epic defense of Bastogne. Donald R. Burgett is the author of three additional books; Currahee! a critically acclaimed memoir of the Normandy invasion, Road to Arnhem and Beyond the Rhine.
The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division had just finished the battle for the bridge too far, Field Marshal Montgomery's ill-fated Operation Market Garden. As Christmas 1944 approached, the division was settling in for some hard earned rest and recuperation. Despite its failure to hold the Rhine River bridgehead at Arnhem a few weeks earlier, Eisenhower's Allied juggernaut appeared unstoppable. Then, Hitler ordered a massive Nazi counterattack through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest. The overwhelming armor-heavy Wehrmacht forces cut through the thinly-manned Allied lines, racing for Antwerp and the coast. German victory in what is now known at the Battle of the Bulge would split the Allied armies, cripple their attack against the Reich, and lengthen the war, perhaps by years. The author and the rest of the Screaming Eagles were rushed to Bastogne, a small Belgian crossroads town where seven roads met. The lightly-armed paratrooper became 'the cork in the bottle' of the Nazi onslaught. Bastogne became the key to German victory. They immediately found themselves in close combat. Without enough ammunition or food, in freezing weather with deep snow, they even lacked winter clothing. Yet, for eleven days they held out against the best the Nazis could throw at them, buying the time needed for Patton's Third Army to redeploy form the south. Burgett's memoir (he was not yet twenty years old at the time of the battle) is an exciting and enduring testament to the Screaming Eagles and their epic defense of Bastogne. Donald R. Burgett is the author of three additional books; Currahee! a critically acclaimed memoir of the Normandy invasion, Road to Arnhem and Beyond the Rhine.
