Holidays Remind Battle Of The Bulge Veteran Of The Gift Of Life

By Nancy K. Crevier

Not sweet voices lifted in “Silent Night,” but the uneven blast of artillery, coming closer. Not the rustling of paper peeled from presents, but the rumble of Panzer units shaking the snow covered earth. Not the twinkling of menorah candles, but the unsteady glow of shoelace-wick candles crafted from paraffin scraped off the tops of K-rations. Not the aroma of turkey roasting in the oven, but the smell of fear. Not smiles of gladness as relatives greet one another, but a few silent tears on the faces of young men, far, far from home.

These are the holiday memories Dr Irving Freedman of Sandy Hook carries with him of Christmas Eve, 1944. Dr Freedman was only 18 years old, and he was hunkered down in an abandoned farmhouse just outside of Bastogne, Belgium, with the five other men who made up the US Army 19th Ordinance Bomb Disposal Squad. Their job was to render harmless the bombs found in the area, a job they had been doing since landing in Normandy on June 6, then back to England and then working their way into Belgium. When called to duty, they would wrap themselves in white sheets as camouflage and make their way to the site where a bomb awaited their expertise.

What would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, the German’s final offensive drive to win World War II, was underway. The American troops in the Bastogne region had been caught off guard when the German attack began December 16. “We started getting reports from the locals of German troop movements, but at the time, it was a ‘quiet war,’ and nothing was supposed to be happening in Bastogne,” said Dr Freedman. Regarding it as a sort of “rest” area for troops, many of those stationed in Belgium were recuperating or were “green” troops with little to no combat experience.

When Dr Freedman, then a Tech 5, went to deliver the morning report to headquarters on the 16th of December, he found officers burning up papers. “They told me that the Germans were on the way and to be careful of Germans who could speak better English than I could, disguised in American uniforms,” he said. “We knew something big was up.”

The small bomb unit was in particular danger, as the Germans were anxious to get hold of those with knowledge of the American bombs. The six men tried to get out of Bastogne, but by then the Germans had cut off the area. The best they could do was finding shelter in a small town north of the city. There was certainly a sense of fear, not only in the work that they did, but as the weeks passed, in the rumors of a war going badly that circulated about the town, he said. As a Jew, he had an additional fear of being captured by the Germans. At one point, with German troops less than a mile away, he took off his own dog tags and began looking for some dog tags that said he was Catholic or Protestant. “I didn’t want to be identified as a Jew if I was caught,” he said.

It was hard for him to believe that just six months from the time the Allies had stepped ashore in Normandy that they were being pushed back. “It was a rout,” he said. “The new recruits panicked, and we were spread very thin everywhere. Supplies couldn’t get in. Cooks, mechanics, and anyone not too badly injured were given guns and put into service,” he recalled. “We had guns, too, of course, but they wanted the bomb squad available.”

By Christmas Eve, the bomb squad, secreted away in the farmhouse, was “Just trying to survive day to day,” said Dr Freedman. “We’d talk about what we’d do when the war was over, but it was just daydreaming. You become very fatalistic at a point,” he said. Warm boots that were supposed to arrive did not make it past the rear lines, so care of their feet became an important part of each day. “We were just trying to keep our feet from freezing, drying them and warming them in blankets and sheets we would get from some of the local farmhouses,” he said.

The other men in his unit reminisced sadly about what they would be doing on Christmas if they were home. In turn, he shared his holiday memories with the other men. His memories, however, were quite different, having been raised a Jew in Hartford’s north end. “A lot of the guys had never even met a Jew before,” he said. “I told them about our traditions, even though at the time I was not really very religious. And I joined in their celebration, although it wasn’t anything but some K-rations for Christmas dinner.”

The weather was severe and gray clouds hoarded the light. Christmas Day was no holiday for the small group of men, who were called out to diffuse bombs.

“We knew there were a lot of casualties and we had heard of the massacre at Malmedy, where 150 captured Americans were executed, but as ordinary soldiers, you don’t know the big picture. All we got were the rumors, some of which turned out to be true, some not. We just kept doing our job,” said Dr Freedman.

And then one day, it was over. “We knew we had won when General Patton’s army rolled in,” he said. Estimates of casualties in the one month that the Battle of the Bulge raged before the Allies were able to halt the German invasion number nearly 90,000, with more than 19,000 American lives lost.

Dr Freedman returned to America in 1945, before the end of the war, having come down with yellow jaundice. He used the GI Bill to get an education, and spent the next several decades practicing podiatry in Connecticut, and as a member of the National Guard where he attained the rank of full colonel. “The war was four or five years out of your whole life, but you just came home, and went on where you had left off,” he said.

He carries no visible scars of his time in Belgium, but does have a few habits that he knows carry over from those days. “I’m prepared. I always have extra food, extra candles, extra batteries, and a generator on hand. It’s a mental thing that I think a lot of guys who went through this do,” he said.

He has had a successful and happy life, said Dr Freedman. His office looks like that of many other men’s — a sturdy desk, a couple of comfortable chairs, and lots of family photos. But a large poster dominates one corner: It depicts a soldier dressed in white marching past a fallen Nazi flag on a field of snow, with the tattered but still flying American flag on the horizon. Across the top of the 50th anniversary commemorative poster it reads, “Battle of the Bulge, 19441994.” Next to the poster is a frame filled with a dozen medals, including one awarded for his service in the Battle of the Bulge. “It was the greatest experience of my life,” he said. “You never forget.”

It was a sad Christmas in 1944, but what he received that holiday season 65 years ago, said Dr Freedman, was the gift of life. “Don’t take anything for granted, and appreciate the country you are living in,” he said. “I know I am lucky to be here today.”