Word: tankful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...order: hold Bastogne at all costs. The Americans (some 10,000) worked like devils to make some sort of defense. On a perimeter about two miles out of the town they set up a line of foxholes, manned by the 101st's paratroopers. Stationed nearby were groups of tanks and tank destroyers. Just outside the town was a last-gasp inner defense circle, manned largely by the stragglers. Slight (5 ft. 8 in., 135 lb.), salty Brigadier General Anthony Clement McAuliffe, the 101st's acting commander charged with holding Bastogne, called them his "Team Snafu." Inside the town...
...Breaks. On Tuesday, Dec. 19, the Germans rolled up from the east and collided with the American tanks, which had gone out to meet them at neighboring villages. A shuddering, small-scale battle developed and the Americans lost many a tank. But the Germans halted momentarily. Then the main weight of the enemy veered around the milling fight, probed at other entrances to Bastogne. Wherever the Germans poked there were Americans. The Germans kept on wheeling around the town, by the next day had it surrounded, a little island fortress in a swirling sea of gunfire. Headquarters, hoping...
...more attacks. A bomb hit a house used as an aid station. In it were more than 100 wounded. The house flamed into a furnace before more than a few of the wounded could be carried out. But there was vengeance on the perimeter: the wily paratroops let German tanks filter through to ambush by the tank destroyers. The day's score in tanks...
...achieve that objective lay the American opportunity. Lieut. General Omar Nelson Bradley fought to seize it, apparently had won enough time by this week to make the first moves in his countermeasures. Up from the Saar area came large forces of Lieut. General George S. Patton's tank-heavy Third Army to strike at the Germans' southernmost penetration at Arlon and to drive into the German flanks in northern Luxembourg. The Nazi drive slowed; Berlin said Patton's blow was in heavy force...
Their weapons are rifles, carbines, tommy guns, automatic pistols, hand grenades, and a simple antitank rifle called the Panzerfaust ("tank fist"). The oldsters train in their spare time, on Sundays and in the evenings; the youngsters, mainly Hitler-Youth, get intensive four-day courses at special camps. Basic unit of the Volkssturm is the four-company battalion, but brigades and divisions may be activated when it becomes capable of disposing bigger units. It has a core of experienced officers, some of them fanatical Nazis...