 |
| World War II vet Hugh Sonner, 83, originally of Walden, was a private in the 4th Armored Division of the 3rd Army who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He recollects what it was like so many years ago during the Christmas he was under fire from the Germans. |
"You wanted to get warm, you know? So you'd put your hands on the gun barrels. So hot, you couldn't touch them with your bare hands. You'd put your gloves on, put your hands on the barrel and that's how you'd warm up.
"You might have a lull in the firing, until the next fire mission came. Maybe half an hour. If you slept, you slept two men together. I'd have my back to you and after two hours, I'd say 'turn over.' You couldn't sleep by yourself. You'd freeze to death.
"If you had a little lull, you'd try to have a can of food. You'd keep a can of food up here (under your armpit). You'd have some food on you all the time. So it didn't freeze.
"We had a 155 mm gun. Ninety-five-pound shells. Four of us. Everybody did everything. Each man knew every job. Firing, loading. The way you're supposed to do it is: Two men lift a shell, and load it on a tray. Two more men with a ramrod load the powder charge and ram it in.
"In Bastogne we didn't do it like that. You'd pick up one of those shells yourself and ram it in as good you can. Two guys, all the time. One putting it in, one holding the next shell. We were the number one gun. We had 12 guns in our battery. Think about this: In some places, there were 26 batteries.