06-20-25

One mile to the southwest is Bastogne. On December 22, 1944, the city of 4,000 was surrounded by the soldiers of German General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz. His note to the commander defending Bastogne said: "There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender."

General Anthony McAuliffe's formal reply of "Nuts," and his men holding on until General George Patton's army arrived was headline-generating morale-boosting stuff in America - a genuine holiday-season gift.

But as the news reached America, in Chenogne, five miles west of Bastogne, events were unfolding that made no headlines. In his war journal, Patton noted, "I hope we can conceal this." General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, called for an investigation. But subordinates, including Patton, delayed until the war was over and the men had returned home.

Husband Art and I came upon the story while researching the life of 1st Lieutenant Wilbur Fred Jones, the youngest of five siblings. His father abandoned the family before Fred was 2. His mother Rachel was unable to support them, so turned her children over to Wichita Children's Home. Childless couple Fred and Grace Jones adopted him. He was unaware of his adoption until he entered the service.

His military training began in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Kansas State Agricultural College, now Kansas State University. Before going overseas, he married Virginia Delano in Hutchinson. She was pregnant when he left for England.

He arrived in Europe in December 1944, a member of the 11th Armored Division, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, Company B - a mixture of foot soldiers, half-tracks and tanks. The surprise German offensive had begun December 16. Company B was green, but their help was needed immediately.

The 235 enlisted men and six officers began their part with an 80-mile forced march from Singly, France. They passed the large U.S. howitzers that delivered 300-pound shells from the relative safety of 12 miles behind the front. On December 29, they arrived near Jodenville, two miles south of Chenogne. Temperatures were below freezing. Wind whipped the light snow. The frozen bodies of German soldiers elevated their anxiety. Two nights of sleeping in foxholes took a toll.

By the last day of December, they were on the western edge of Chenogne, which lies about 60 feet below the surrounding ridges. Germans occupied the town and the woods immediately to the east. Burning U.S. tanks were a stark reminder that another unit had tried and failed to dislodge the enemy. Now it was Company B's turn.

By evening, the western edge of the village had been taken, but nighttime counterattacks by an enemy familiar with its layout would likely be deadly. Company B withdrew.

On New Year's Day, they mounted a new attack. Artillery demolished most of the buildings and weakened the enemy's situation. Near noon, the village was taken, except for a machine gun in the cellar of a large stone farm building. It was here a shot to the chest ended Jones' war.

A tank fired its cannon point blank into the building, quieting the gun and setting the building ablaze.

André Burnotte, a 15-year-old Chenogne boy who was in the farm cellar at the time, told Belgian historian Roger Marquet:

We were suffocated by the smoke, nearly deafened by the noise, almost paralyzed by fear, and the Germans didn't seem to be ready to surrender. ... Suddenly a woman took a piece of white sheet and fixed it on the gun of a German rifle and said: "Now stop it, it's enough, you surrender!"

Surprisingly, the Germans obeyed the woman's order and the soldier with the white flag began to climb the stairs to go outside. It was not a good move on his part as he was immediately killed by the Americans who were facing the cellar door. The same was done to the 20 other German soldiers! As soon as they came outside the house, the Sammies shot them. I remember very well having to climb some German bodies when my turn came to escape the burning house.

Later, when the village was secure, some 60 German POWs captured earlier were marched to a field selected so it could not be observed from the nearby forest. A machine gun ended their war.

Fifteen days earlier, 84 American POWs were executed by the Germans near Malmedy, Belgium. Some said Chenogne was "pay-back" ... except most of Company B's soldiers said they had never heard of Malmedy. Others suggest the unit's "take-no-prisoners" order as justification. But identical orders to German soldiers in Malmedy didn't protect them or their commander from later prosecution.

Marquet, more than anyone else, has documented what happened in the village where he lives. Yet his appreciation of the sacrifices the Americans made is clear in his remarks to a 2003 gathering of veterans from Chenogne:

Jim Sharp, a Manhattan Battle-of-the-Bulge veteran, has been asked frequently to speak about his experience. I often heard him remark, "War is not glorious. It's legalized murder."

Ben Ferencz, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, said on a January 2, 2021 "Reveal" news program, "Of course Americans committed crimes in war ... War is the supreme international crime. ... [war crimes are] the natural course of humanity's most destructive activity.

Today, no grand memorial attracts tourists to Chenogne, a hamlet of about 150. But the truth of Ferencz and Sharp's words are documented on a four-foot-by-eight-foot wood panel situated behind small piles of road-repair gravel across from the village church.