This special edition Christmas Eve show is brought to you by the International Fellowship

of Christians and Jews. Welcome and thanks for joining us for a special Christmas Eve edition

of Clay and Buck. As so many of us prepare to celebrate the Christmas season, presents under

the tree, hugs and laughs with loved ones, family, friends.

It is worth taking a moment to look back in time at some of the great challenges,

struggles, and battles that were fought over Christmas,

and one that immediately comes to mind takes us to World War II,

the Battle of the Bulge.

Now, before I get into what happened and how it stretched over the Christmas holiday in 1944, and in fact, that was a major turning point.

You can imagine being deep in the snow, fighting in the dense forest of Europe against Nazis, SS, right there on the front lines.

We'll dive into that in a moment.

But let's just talk about what led up to the Battle of the Bulge and the turning point on Christmas.

It was a summer of 1944, and the entire war was at a marked change.

The Allied invasion of Normandy in June had broken through Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall, and by August,

Paris was liberated. The German army was in retreat across most of Western Europe,

and the Allies were advancing rapidly toward the borders of the Third Reich.

By September, the situation seemed grim for Nazi Germany, but beneath the surface,

their high command was already planning a bold counter-strike against the Allies. In early

September, Allied forces had surged across Belgium and Luxembourg. Key cities like Brussels and Antwerp fell quickly.

The rapid advance led to optimism that the war in Europe might end by Christmas.

However, logistical challenges soon slowed the allied momentum.

Advancing armies had to outrun their supply lines leading to shortages of fuel,

...