Cecil Wax and the Night He Faced Death in the Battle of the Bulge
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, Allied forces fought through one of the most dangerous stretches of World War II in Europe. Cecil Wax, a young American soldier, was ordered to drive a supply truck loaded with fuel and ammunition down a frozen mountain road in the dark. But when the truck began to slide toward disaster, Cecil turned to prayer. What followed became the defining moment of his life.
Marilyn Jensen shares the story of that night, when her father believed God intervened and guided him to safety.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.1 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:17.6 | And we spent some time at our great flagship station, W.H.O. in Des Moines, Iowa, a giant stick in the |
| 0:25.5 | middle of this great country. And we decided to have a storytelling contest, asked folks to send in |
| 0:31.1 | their stories. We drove up to Des Moines and, well, we did it in a beautiful restaurant with a few |
| 0:37.0 | hundred people. |
| 0:38.4 | We feature right now one of the women who submitted her story to that event |
| 0:42.7 | about her father, Thiesel Wax, who had a surreal encounter during World War II. |
| 0:49.7 | Here is Marilyn Jensen. |
| 0:53.9 | My dad, Cecil Wax, was the family storyteller. My dad, Cecil Wax, was the family storyteller. |
| 0:58.0 | He had an endless supply of stories |
| 1:00.5 | about scratching life from the muddy hills |
| 1:03.1 | of Southwest Iowa. |
| 1:05.5 | He passed on to my brother, Bill, and me, |
| 1:07.6 | the wisdom and laughter |
| 1:08.6 | that can improve almost any situation. |
| 1:11.6 | He sprinkled humor like salt throughout his tails. |
| 1:15.6 | Dad rummaged through his memory for any scrap of wit from his months of service in World War II. |
| 1:22.6 | He tagged that bleak era as Uncle Sam's all-expense-paid trip to Europe. |
| 1:29.3 | His blue eyes would twinkle and his dimples dance as he shared memories of times when he and his war brothers laughed together. |
| 1:37.3 | Like the night a delayed fuse bomb went off. |
... |
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