Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 12

1 12A COURIER-POST, Sunday, December 26, 1999 For Battle of the Bulge veterans, Christmas Day 1944 unforgettable Associated Press si a 1 fe was one of the soldiers given the task of picking up the dead. Drafted at age 18 from his hometown of Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pfc. William Leopold was eager to serve his country. Two years later in October 1944, Leopold was stationed in France, a rifleman arid scout in Company 1st Battalion, 291st Infantry Regiment. He remembers his last day of battle.

His company was advancing behind two others. When they reached the edge of town, one company went right. The other went left. His company headed toward the town, which was under heavy machine gun and artillery fire. He got hit by tracer fire and stalled to burn.

"I burst into flames," he said. wSome of the ammunition in my belt caught fire." He was taken back to a field hospital the next day, with body burns and bullet and shrapnel wounds to his stomach, hip and leg. When they took his boots off, his toes were black with gangrene. He was homebound after that. urn hi -b rU LJ neiy on it.

GAIL MAHOUCKAssooated Press Metro Sikorsky of Palmerton, looks at photographs in his scrapbook of the Battle of the Bulge. UP TO $200 PAMBODY HOFtlE GYfAS LEHIGHTON, Pa. It was dawn on Christmas Day, and Metro Sikorsky woke up in a bombed-out building. He tried to heat up some food. There were no presents, no phone calls from home.

Christmas Day for him brought only an overwhelming feeling of being glad he was alive. The Battle of the Bulge the last, unsuccessful effort by Hitler's Ger-; many to hold the Allied Forces at bay at the close of World War II had begun nine days earlier, on Dec. 16, 1944, at the Ardennes Forest as the Germans advanced along a 50-mile "bulge" in Belgium and Luxembourg, with the eventual aim of retaking the important port of Antwerp. By Christmas Eve, the Germans were at the farthest point of their drive. Sikorsky, who had fought along with tens of thousands of other American soldiers, still vividly remembers the Battle of the Bulge.

Those memories are shared by many elderly veterans who are thankful they survived the great battle, but mournful that many of their friends did not. Their story began 55 years ago in the thick fog, blinding sleet and knee-deep snow and freezing temperatures. Under cover of fog, 38 German divisions struck along the 50-mile front. Sikorsky, of Palmerton, remembers the numbing cold. The biting temperatures stung his young fingers and froze his toes.

"It was so cold you could feel your marrow freeze," said Sikorsky, now 81. He was a 25-year-old sergeant back then and away from home for the first time. "We saw people moving back, leaving the war zone. Oxen were pulling carts. People were pushing babies.

The scenes you see on television about Kosovo are similar," he said. The mission at the 7th Armored Division was to get to Saint Vith, but with no winter clothing supplies arriving, rough times were ahead. He said it was so cold that when someone was killed, in a short time the bodies were frozen where they lay. In an attempt to keep their feet warm, the soldiers cut blankets into strips and wound them around their rozenfeet. After the battle, Sikorsky said he Don't Trade Donate It! $300 OFF TllS NEW 3 VMS UP TO Uiimms a 5500 ELLIPTICAL OlOSSTItAMER if j) i usMMFitness See that car sitting in your driveway? You may think it has seen better take a closer look because when you donate 'hat car to The Salvation Army you can help lift someone from despair and give them hope for a better life.

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