Bulge veteran tells his story
Children need to learn about the sacrifices, former Army private says
Knight-Ridder News Service

   For almost 50 years, John Hodge wouldn't talk about what he saw on the wintry front lines of the Battle of the Bulge.
   The former private with the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division stored away the sight of his combat buddy's chest opened wide by machine gun fire. Home safe in Charlotte, N.C., Hodge tried to bury memories of playing dead on a Belgian field and feeling a German bullet rip into his face.
   This week, on the 50th anniversary of the largest Army battle in history, Hodge explained why he's thrown off the silence. The 70-year-old wants young Americans to learn more about World War II and to acknowledge the sacrifices and terror U.S. soldiers endured in the fight for Europe's freedom. forces sacrificed for their country." By Dec. 16, 1944, German troops had secretly amassed tanks, guns and 25 assault divisions near the forested Ardennes region of Belgium, near the borders of France and Germany. Seeking to push Allied troops off German soil and seize the Belgian port of Antwerp, Hitler's army that night surprised thinly spread U.S. divisions with thunderous firepower. Hodge was one of the "Red Devils," the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne stationed at a camp in France. The day the Germans.
   To a lot of our children, it's just words," he said. began their 34-day attack, he had just returned from a The unsuccessful German effort to punch through hospital where he was recovering from a shrapnel to Antwerp, Belgium, and trap Allied troops become the largest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army. The battle took its name from the huge indentation the Germans would make in the American lines before being pushed back.
   It was the bloodiest conflict in American history. In six weeks of fighting, 19,000 American soldiers were killed, 20,000 captured and 40,000 wounded.

   On a trip to Europe this summer, Hodge and his wife Mary returned to the scenes of the war. He visited the Belgian town of Erria where at age 20 he helped fire mortar shells at the German soldiers. He looked over the field where Germans shot him, walked inside the white stone house where he was taken prisoner.
   When Hodge and his fellow American soldiers passed through towns, French schoolchildren waved flags and pushed forward to touch their uniforms. "It's not words to them," he said from his brick home in Charlotte. "They know what the Allied forces sacrificed for their country.
   By Dec. 16 1944. German troops had secretly amassed tanks, guns and 25 assault divisions near the forested Ardennes region of Belgium, near the borders of France and Germany.  Seeking to push Allied troops off German soil and seize the Belgian port of Antwerp, Hitler's army that night surprised thinly spread U.S. divisions with thunderous firepower.
   Hodge was one of the "Red Devils": the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, stationed at a camp in France.  The day the Germans began their 34-day attack, he had just returned from a hospital where he was recovering from a shrapnel wound on his hand. His division was ordered to Belgium immediately.
   "Everybody was drawing their ammunition, getting their rifles," he said. "The camp was just buzzing."
   Hodge's regiment traveled a day and a half in roofless tractor trailers to the town of Werbomont, Belgium. As army commanders realized how many Germans were in the area, Hodge's group was ordered 8 miles north to the more protected town of Erria on the night of Christmas Eve.
   Everyone was on tiptoes, trying to avoid alerting the enemy.
   "This was probably the longest Christmas Eve of my life," he said.
   Hodge, a private first class, pulled guard duty from 10 p.m. to midnight at the camp on Dec. 26. Thirty minutes after his shift ended, he was pulling off his boots to go to sleep when "all hell broke loose."
 

   After more than two hours, the mortars ran out. Hodge and his friend Robert Lindsey were running back to a second line of troops when they were spotted by German soldiers.
   "Something from within told me to hit the ground and play dead," Hodge said. "As I was falling I glanced at Robert ... it looked like fire was coming out of his chest."
   From the ground, Hodge saw a German soldier aiming a rifle at his head. Next thing, he felt a blaze of heat as a bullet entered his cheek, knocked out his front teeth and exited his chin.
   After telling this part of the story, Hodge goes silent and his eyes tear up. His wife Mary, sitting on a sofa nearby, cries quietly.
   "They turned him over," she said. "That's when he thought they were going to kill him."
   Instead, the Germans dragged him into a nearby house. Hodge's company later recaptured the house and carried him to an ambulance.
   Hodge said he's no hero, just grateful he got home.
   He decided in the last couple years that he should talk about his ordeal, so at least his five children and 12 grandchildren would know. He's gathered records, diaries and maps to Reconstruct his regiment's part in the battle, and typed a four-page story [see following pages] of his days in Belgium so he doesn't always have to say it aloud.
   "It brings back memories you'd prefer not to recall," he said.
   In the years since, Hodge moved from his native Laurinburg, N.C., worked in textiles and started a few of his own businesses. He retired last year and spends time working on his garden and lawn and plays golf occasionally.
   His thoughts return to his children and young people in general who know so little of the Battle of the Bulge.
   "I hope they'll look back and see that freedom has cost something," he said, "and it's worth something because it cost so much."

[The Times-News, Twin Falls, ID, 24 Dec 1994, Sat, Page 7]