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94-year-old veteran survived Battle of the Bulge
Lloyd Sowers reports
TAMPA, Fla. - The holidays were anything but festive for thousands of American soldiers deployed to Europe in December 1944. The German army launched a surprise attack on U.S. soldiers in Belgium.
The fighting that followed would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. It began on December 16, 1944.
"And they came -- bang, bang, bang! And I feel them on the inside of my left leg," recalled Boris Stern of Tampa.
The 94-year-old retired executive still carries a small scar from the wound left by a mortar round. He also carries the memories of the bloody battle that followed Hitler's last-ditch offensive in Europe.
Christmas came nine days into the battle.
A photograph of soldiers of an infantry division moving into the mist toward their objective over a snow-covered field near Krinkelter, Belgium, December 20, 1944. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)
"Christmas Eve, we could hear the Germans singing Christmas carols," continued Stern.
But, he said, the day that followed was not like any Christmas he's seen before or since.
"It wasn't a holiday, it was a killing day," he said.
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His unit attacked German troops that evening. Part of his job was to pick up the killed and wounded from the battlefield.
Nearly 20,000 Americans were killed in the battle that raged on through late January in the fields and forests of Belgium and France. People there still remember how the U.S. soldiers finally defeated the Germans.
Stern read from a note he has hanging in his apartment: "The words ‘thank you’ do not begin to express the gratitude we have for you."
I asked him how he survived. "I keep telling people, I think we were luckier than hell, and I mean just exactly that," he responded
He’s lucky, he says, to be here to tell the story of that cold, dangerous Christmas 75 years ago at the Battle of the Bulge.