We were still in the same torn uniforms, short of food, ammo and everything else."īut orders were orders. "We were exhausted and we'd had no time to refurbish," says Vicari. They were still recovering from three months of combat in Operation Market Garden, the failed British-led invasion of Germany via Holland. ![]() Vicari and the rest of his unit didn't welcome it. The six-week battle to come would be the largest of the war in western Europe. Those units couldn't know it then, but they would soon be spending Christmas fending off Hitler's last desperate attempt to turn the Allied tide that had been advancing since D-Day, six months earlier. Don't move." And he remembers the call an hour or so later, instructing him to alert all units to "get ready to move out, immediately." He recalls that as McAuliffe went out the door, he turned and said, "Lieutenant, stay by that phone. ![]() Anthony McAuliffe, and have him report immediately to HQ. 16, 1944, when the field phone rang in the command post of the 101st Airborne Division's artillery regiment near Reims, in eastern France, and a voice told him to wake his boss, Brig. Vincent Vicari knows about the Battle of the Bulge - not from books, movies or a TV mini-series, but because he was there.
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