Battle of the Bulge; Stavelot, Krinkelt and Rocherath on Dec 19, 1944

Local Battle of the Bulge survivor recalls that day  Video:   "Barely an hour out of Denver, there is a hidden treasure of information from World War Two.

The invaluable history lesson is not in a museum. Instead, the lesson comes from a man who lives at an assisted living center in Strasburg.

"Ted Montgomery, 89, has a lot to teach about America's involvement in WWII. He loves to talk and he loves his country.

"Montgomery was 19 years old when he was inducted into the Army at Fort Logan in Denver." ...

Murdered civilians carried from building to common grave in Stavelot, Belgium.



Dec 19th, 1944  "1944 – At a meeting of senior Allied commanders, Eisenhower decides to appoint Field Marshal Montgomery, commanding British 21st Army Group, to lead all Allied forces to the north of ” the Bulge” in the line created by the German attack. General Bradley, commanding US 12th Army Group, is responsible for all Allied forces to the south. The arrangement is not made public at this time.
1944 – It is decided that the Japanese 35th Army on Leyte is no longer to be reinforced or supplied. Nonetheless, fighting continues to the north of Ormoc and throughout the northwest of the island.
1944 – Forces of the German 6th SS Panzer Army reach Stavelot in the north while elements of 5th Panzer Army approach Houffalize. Some US forces between these advance continue to defend positions around Gouvy and St. Vith.
1944 - During the Battle of the Bulge, American troops began pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army."

Krinkelt-Rocherath, December 17, 18 and 19, 1944    ..."As we moved through the snow everyone was quite as we all knew that in a short time we would be engaged with the enemy.  The column stopped and we wanted to move on.  Lieutenant Lahner, our Platoon Leader, was called to meet with the Company Commander and the other Platoons leaders.  We had hopes that, maybe something better was being planned for us.  We began to talk among ourselves guessing what our next move may be.  After 20 minutes Lieutenant Lahner returned.  He talked briefly to Sergeant Ward, our Platoon Sergeant.  I wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation.  Immediately our Company turned and started moving in almost the opposite direction.  We took the road that ran from Wahlerscheid to Rocherath and Krinkelt."
Source:  The official online home of Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge

The Battle of the Twin Villages   "The battle in and around the "Twin Villages" Krinkelt and Rocherath in December 1944.  This clip is dedicaded to the men of the 2nd US Infantry Division Indianhead. They fought a heavy battle during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes in Belgium."

 

standwheretheyfought

Supporting Repression and Torture in Cuba; a Reading List

 

http://terrellaftermath.com/

American Thinker    "There is a book our president should read. He might find the U.S. should “be better than that” when it comes to supporting torture. 

"It is the sort of book that once started, it can’t put it down. But the president might find he would want to put it down because the grisly tortures endured by the author for 22 years are almost too much to comprehend.

"The book is Armando Valladares’ Against All Hope, the account of his decades’ long imprisonment and torture by the regime of Fidel Castro. It makes for grim reading.  Arrested for not denying Christ and for not supporting Marxism, Valladares was tortured, starved and even thrown into a pit of human excrement.  At one point, rats were about to eat his genitals. A guard intervened at the last moment." ... More here.

James Longstreet; Beyonce now free to travel to Cuba ..."Who else off the radar was delighted with this move?  Who else in the inner circle of the President?  The Congressional Black Caucus, for another.  Recall the jaunt to Cuba by leaders of that caucus and their publicized praising of the Castro regime." ...

Leftists are drawn to dictators, but they come by that honestly.

Mona Charen: Cold War Replay: This Time We Lose  "Has there ever been a president more eager to make concessions to vicious regimes than Barack Obama? The opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba is the latest and, one fears, not the last in a string of preemptive concessions." ...  Full article

Elliott Abrams: Obama and Cuba: The Triumph of Ideology over U.S. National Interests 

... "The Obama White House conducted these negotiations itself, with no meddling from the State Department. The centralization of all activity in the White House continues, and in this case the American negotiator was Ben Rhodes. Rhodes is a speechwriter with a graduate degree (M.F.A.) in creative writing, so one might wonder if he struck the hardest bargain possible. But of course those would not have been his instructions anyway: The president didn’t want a hard bargain. He wanted to destroy 50 years of American policy toward the Castro regime." ...

You can continue to embargo tyrants; period

"Sen. Ted Cruz on Obama’s Castro Bailout: Obama “does Not Understand the Difference between our Friends and our Enemies".
"After Handing Victory to the Castros, Obama Admits No Indication Castros are Changing their Ways on Human Rights.
"Krauthammer on Obama Castro Bailout: “Is there No Tyrant that Obama will not Appease for Nothing in Return?' ”...

From RedState: Engaging Cuba Is the Right Move "For too long the United States’ only policy toward Cuba consisted of sanctions and non-engagement. Engaging Cuba is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama is doing it the wrong way." ...

legalinsurrection.com/

Did Obama’s new Cuba policy just launch Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign?

Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself

Dry Bones Blog

Commentary Magazine   "While the West’s enemies become ever more unrestrained in the barbaric nature of their attacks, Islamist militants are increasingly pursuing tactics aimed at limiting what the West can do in its own defense. As a recent case in Britain has demonstrated, jihadists and their supporters are more than happy to fabricate the most outlandish allegations in an often successful attempt to hinder the fight against them. This is the kind of thing that Israel has been having to deal with for decades, and at some point other Western states need to comprehend that they are all up against the same enemy, one which is willing to employ the same underhanded tactics against all of us." ....

Bonus Rich Terrell cartoon; too good to not use

 

 http://terrellaftermath.com/

Australia’s Cafe Jihadist:Known To CIA & Obama Too. Apologists Galore…

Adina Kutnicki

"ASIDE from the perennially deluded (read:leftists and surrogates), few are unaware that Islam incites/serves as the inspiration for Islamic jihad. G-d have mercy, but not on them. Besides, they deserve whatever blow back wends their way.

"HOWEVER, despite all the slaughters invoked under the banner of Allah – via exhorting, Allahu Akbar – some still require remedial education. Slaps too. Regardless, check the mindless drivel out, almost immediately after the jihad ended in Sydney, Australia:

“ 'That Sydney Sheikh, he’s a phony Muslim cleric. He just wants to kill people. That’s not what, you know, Islam is calling for – to kill people at the cafe.' ”

Ignorance kills.

Why Liberals Really, Really Hate Us

 
Red State

David P. Goldman   "They really, really hate us. George Orwell wrote a morning “Two Minutes Hate” session into the daily life of his dystopia in 1984. One blogger notes that 2,000 of Rachel Maddow’s facebook fans wished that Ted Cruz would fall into an open elevator shaft. What would he have made of the hyperventilating hatred that liberals display against conservatives? Over at National Review, Katherine Timpf reports on a hate manifesto published by the chair of University of Michigan’s Department of Communications. Republicans “crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all.” wrote Prof. Susan Douglas. “So now we hate them back,” she explains. “And with good reason.' ”

...

 "The antics of the “small and arrogant oligarchy” that controls the temples of liberal orthodoxy have turned into comic material that Monty Python couldn’t have dreamed up a generation ago. There are now dozens of prospective genders, at least according to the gender studies departments at elite universities. What do the feminists of Wellesley College do, for example, when its women become men? The problem is that no-one quite knows what they have become, as a recent New York Times Magazine feature complained:"    Full article

Monty Python's The life of Brian - I want to be a woman

Lena Dunham, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and the New Barbarism

Truth Revolt

"Rioting. Slander. The wanton personal destruction of people known by their accusers to be innocent. In his latest Firewall, Bill Whittle shows how events like the rioting in Ferguson do not occur in a vacuum, and how Progressives not only tolerate this lawlessness, this New Barbarism -- they teach it." ...

From the rioters on the street stealing car rims under the Progressively-sanctioned cover of so-called social justice; to inhuman attention-junkies who are perfectly happy to ruin the lives of people they perceive as political enemies, knowing full well they are innocent; through Leftist college professors who teach them that the truth and the law do not matter so long as the Progressive goals of identity politics are advanced; and right on up to the President and Attorney General, who use IRS intimidation of political enemies and simply dictate laws they cannot get passed – Progressivism is a philosophy of lawlessness, disregard for truth, contempt for individual lives and individual freedom. It is utter, total barbarism.

Obama rescues communism in Cuba

 

http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/731063

Thomas Lifson    "A perfect storm was brewing that could have meant the end of communism in Cuba.  The more than half century of hemispheric Cold War was about to pay off.

"And now President Obama has short-circuited this historic opportunity.  The regime is no doubt already telling its people that the Yanquis have capitulated and accepted the legitimacy of the regime. There is no point holding out the hope of change that has been so carefully nurtured for decades."  Read more:

The Castros Finally Hit the Jackpot  "Candidate Barack Obama said that, as president, he would talk to anti-American dictators without precondition. He didn’t mention that he would also give them historic policy concessions without precondition.

"His surprise unilateral change in the U.S. posture toward the Castro dictatorship came without even the pretense of serious promises by the Cubans to reform their kleptocratic, totalitarian rule."  Read more:  RICH LOWRY

NRO: Obama Acts on Cuba   "Here are four names, long forgotten, that should be noted today: Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, and Mario de la Peña. They were three U.S. citizens and one permanent resident. They were pilots with Brothers to the Rescue, the outfit that looks for Cuban refugees, as they are stranded or desperate on the sea.

"On February 24, 1996, the four pilots were shot out of the sky by the Cuban dictatorship’s forces. The planes were in international airspace at the time. The Castro government killed the men simply because they were trying to help innocent Cubans." ...

Don't wish for Hillary to do better at running the country:

• Hillary Praises Obama's Cuba Deal
• Hillary Decries ‘Excessive’ Law Enforcement, ‘Brutal’ CIA

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro Pictures In Alan Gross' Lawyer's Office

 Now this makes sense: From 2008: "Barack Obama won’t wear an American flag on his lapel, but on the wall of his Houston campaign office: a Cuban flag with a picture of Communist mass murderer Che Guevara."

The Battle of the Bulge: Dec 1944-January 1945

 

 How stuff works

The Malmedy Massacre On Sunday, December 17, 1944, shortly after the Germans launched their great offensive in the Ardennes, a number of American prisoners were shot by soldiers of the First SS-Panzer Regiment at Baugnez crossroads, close to the Belgian town of Malmedy. The true scale and circumstances of the Malmedy massacre remain controversial to this day. What is known is that of the 113 prisoners assembled in the field at Baugnez, 67 died there. Forty-six of them, some of whom were wounded, managed to escape the scene.

The massacre began when some of the Germans opened fire. Several survivors claim to have heard an order given. A storm of machine gun and rifle fire lasted for 15 minutes, and was followed by deliberate shots to finish off anyone still showing signs of life. These final murderous coups de grace turned a possible "battle incident" into an indisputable atrocity that resonated throughout the American forces in Northwest Europe. It immediately prompted orders in some U.S. Army units to summarily shoot any SS prisoners they might capture.
Although those believed responsible for the massacre were later tried by a U.S. military tribunal, serious coercive and procedural irregularities by the prosecution eventually resulted in the commutation of all of the many death sentences. Those who had been imprisoned received early releases, and by 1960, all had been released.
"A bullet went through the head of the man next to me. I lay tensely still, expecting the end. Could he see me breathing? Could I take a kick in the groin without wincing?...He was standing at my head. What was he doing? Time seemed to stand still. And then I heard him reloading his pistol in a deliberate manner...laughing and talking. A few odd steps before the reloading was finished and he was no longer so close to my head, then another shot a little farther away, and he had passed me up. "
--U.S. Army first lieutenant Virgil T. Lary, describing the incident at Malmedy

Below: the 1st Panzer SS on the road to their encounter with the Americans at Malmedy-Baugnez

 

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_11.HTM

Malmedy Massacre Trial

1st. Lt. Virgil Lary points out Sturmmann Georg Fleps, May of 1946

The Siege of Bastogne; A Personal Perspective of Bill Hale.
  ..."The first eight days, known as the Siege of Bastogne, was the most crucial defense to prevent the Germans from capturing vital transportation lines and cutting off Allied supply routes.   The Battle of the Bulge raged until January 25, 1945 finally concluding the largest and deadliest battle fought by US forces during the war." ...

Patton's Third Army turns north to liberate Bastogne   "On 19 December, during a crisis meeting of the American generals, PATTON decided to turn three of his divisions, established in Lorraine, ninety-degrees to the north and to push ahead rapidly towards the besieged town of Bastogne." ...

The Battle for Stavelot      

 

Stavelot monuments

"During the night of Dec. 17-18, First Army ordered a platoon of 3-inch towed tank destroyers from the 526 Armored Inf. Bn. to outpost Stavelot; two platoons on the south bank of the river (with a section of tank destroyers at the old roadblock); one platoon with three 57 MM antitank guns and the second section of tank destroyers in reserve around the town square north of the river. ...The troops began to move into position just before daybreak on Mon., Dec. 18, but before the riflemen could organize a defense the German infantry attacked, captured the tank destroyers and drove the two platoons back across the bridge. Taken by surprise, the Americans failed to destroy the bridge and a Panther [Panzer?] made a dash about 0800 which carried it onto the north bank. More tanks followed. For some while the Germans were held in the houses next to the river; an anti aircraft artillery battery of the 7 Armored Div. wandered into the firefight and did considerable damage before it went on its way. A Co. from the 202 Eng. Combat Bn. joined in the fray. By the end of the morning however, the German firing line had built up to the point where the Americans could no longer hold inside the village proper, particularly since the hostile tanks were roving at will in the streets.

This African-American turns on Obama, Sharpton, Farrakhan and the Democrats

 Apparently a townhall meeting went poorly for Sharpton.*  This man expresses his thoughts about it simply, straightforward and -sadly - without fear of how he will be treated by the left.

Youtube

 *"...McKinley called on President Obama to help the grassroots by discontinuing aid and government grants that go through Chicago’s political machine to “name-brand-blue-ribbon-negro-organizations” such as the NAACP and Urban League. McKinley told Breitbart News those groups “are poverty pimps, and are part of the problem and not the solution.”

International Emissions Idiocy

Alan Caruba

 

"Most of the people of the world have concluded that the decades of warnings about “global warming” and its successor, “climate change”, is just idiotic nonsense. Few believe that humans ever had or ever will have any role in what the weather will be tomorrow or a thousand years from now. They are right.

"One of the most distinguishing factors about the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory has been the way its advocates have always predicted major changes decades into the future. When the future arrived, as it has since the first doomsday predictions were made in the late 1980s, they simply push off the next arrival date for another couple of decades. A classic example is the prediction that that Arctic and Antarctic sea ice would have all melted by now. Instead the global cold weather have been making new records of late." ...More...

 

Did a compliant Congress empower this petulant, defiant president?

Red State claims: The GOP Emboldened Barack Obama on Cuba
... "The United States Congress just declared Barack Obama’s actions on amnesty unconstitutional, then promptly funded them.
"I said just a few weeks ago that if the congress did that, it would embolden Barack Obama on a host of other foreign and economic policy matters."  Erick Erickson

December Surprise: Obama normalizes relations with Cuba
 "Just as Congress left town, and everyone is focused on Christmas and New Year’s holidays."

Ted Cruz: Obama Is Unilateral President – Exhibiting Anger & Defiance Towards American People (Video)

 “Listen, there’s no doubt that this is a unilateral president who is exhibiting right now anger and defiance towards the American people. He’s angry at this last election. He’s angry that there’s this tidal wave that retired Harry Reid. He is acting in defiance of that… It’s like Ronald Reagan said about the hard left. It’s not what they don’t know it’s that so much of what they do know just isn’t so. "”