Dad never went into too much detail of how this led his squad to actually reach Bastogne just in time to get surrounded there with the 101st. “Well,” he said, “I figured the best way to avoid getting killed was to be the best soldier I could be, and have the other best soldiers around me.” If you read Steven Ambrose’s Band of Brothers about one company of the 101st Airborne, you’ll find that those soldiers expressed nearly the exact same sentiments.Īccording to records I found of the 5th Rangers, they’d been attached to an armored division headed for Bastogne and were serving, more or less, as a vanguard that would make first contact with the enemy and then call up the big guns. I once asked Dad why he’d volunteered for the Rangers, if he knew they would always be in the worst of it. As you might know, the Rangers and the Airborne were given all the hardest jobs that could be handled by small units. My father was a member of the 5th Ranger Battalion. It was only later, when I took an interest in the history of World War II, that I learned about it, and what it meant to have been there on Christmas 1944. I had no idea what he was talking about, and had no idea what or where Bastogne was. When I was very young, I first heard my father mention Bastogne. This photo was taken in Belgium, just before the Battle of the Bulge. Three of the Battling Bastards, Dave Richter, George Bartel, and Zel Rice.
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