Welcome to Rumble to Rumble Strip, Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman. Our show today is Prisoners of War, the Battle of the Bulge.

In 2003, just at the onset of the Iraqi war, my friend Greg Sherrow and I started a series of interviews with Vermont veterans

who had fought in World War II.

A handful of these men were captured during one of the bloodiest battles of the war, the Battle of the Bulge.

More than 50 years later, these men still were haunted daily by their memories at this time. It was December of 1944 and Adolf Hitler launched a surprise attack against the Allied troops who were heading east toward Germany through Belgium and northern France.

Hitler hoped that this massive assault would prove so demoralizing

that the Allies would seek a separate peace, leaving only the Russian army on the eastern front.

The German name for this counter-offensive was Operation Watch on the Rhine.

Americans called it the Battle of the Bulge.

19,000 Americans were killed in this battle.

About the same number were taken prisoner.

This is a story of four young soldiers from Vermont

who were captured in that battle

and sent to German prison camps for the remainder of the war.

Here is their story.

We were told that you're going to be relieving the second division and they're going to leave their

howitzers in place, they're going to leave their huts in place and so forth you're going to,

they're going to go some other place and you guys are going to occupy their area and

aren't you lucky because this is a very very quiet sector for people's first encounter in battle. It's perfect because it's occasionally

some harassing fire like the Germans will send some shells over on you guys occasionally and but nothing

nothing real bad very quiet sector and it was going getting near Christmas and we were kind of we

were kind of happy about happy about that but it turned out to be anything but a quiet sector.

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