Us & Then. . .
( Us & Them. . .) Hope everybody had a Merry Christmas, or whatever tradition one observes. Hope everyone enjoyed all their gifts and all that food and one can only imagine that post-season antacid consumption is at healthy levels. Anyhow, December 26th. aside from being the day after Christmas, it is also the anniversary of the U.S. Third Army under the command of General Patton, broke through to the besieged garrison of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne that had been surrounded for ten days with no re-supply. At some point, the troopers were down to one round apiece. Now, some two years earlier, and about the same time of year, another garrison was also surrounded, the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, but its relief force, namely the German Fourth Panzer Army. had been stopped before its divisions even approached Sixth Army's outer perimeter. Now, Third Army's relief of Bastogne and Fourth Panzer's failure at the gates of Stalingrad are not exactly apples...