Battle of the Bulge

 December 17, 2021

On this day in 1944, the German Wehrmacht unleashed an all-out assault along an 80 mile front in the Ardennes forest in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Launched in the bitter cold of one of the severest winters on record, before it ended on January 25, 1945, the US forces in the area suffered some 75,000 casualties, including nearly 20,000 dead and 23,000 missing in action. The Germans lost almost a quarter of the troops involved, with almost 100,000 killed.

For anyone like myself who has never experienced the terror and horror of combat, it is hard to imagine such destruction of human life, let alone that of property. Although my father was a WWII vet, he remained stateside due to a heart murmur discovered in a pre-deployment physical, but some years ago, I had an interesting conversation with one of my wife’s uncles shortly before he died. 

Unbeknownst to me because he never talked about it, he was in that battle. We tend to think of such matters in terms of heroism and valor, but sometimes it’s just a matter of survival. He told me of walking stealthily down the street of a particular village as a young infantryman, eyes scanning every opening, every potential hiding place for an enemy soldier. At one point, he passed an alley, and as he looked down it, saw a young German soldier at the other end, walking in the opposite direction. They each stopped and looked at each other for a moment before quietly continuing to walk down their respective streets. Whatever became of that German boy, uncle Bob never knew, but at the end of the war, he got to come home safely to his family. 

Sometimes as we fight life’s battles, we stare the enemy in the face, and instead of taking aim and firing, it turns out the better part of valor is to just keep walking. The best fight is the one you are never in. Whether it’s a Facebook argument or a face-to-face confrontation we don’t have to show up at every fight we’re invited to. Some cannot be avoided if we are to maintain our integrity, but others are just decoys by the Enemy of our souls, intended to steer us off track from God’s purposes in our lives. Knowing when to walk away is just as important as knowing when to stand fast.