BC HISTORY
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1 OF 15:

BATTLE OF THE BULGE DAY 3: DECEMBER 18, 1944

Battling Bastards of Bastogne

~2:15 AM, Major General Matthew Ridgway, unaware of the fighting in Ardennes, and sleeping in his HQ, is awakened by a call from Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, commander of First Army.

 2 of 15:

Hodges, calling from the town of Spa in Belgium, tells Ridgway that the Germans are smashing through the Ardennes & the XVIII Airborne Corps had been released from theater reserve and assigned to First Army to help push back the offensive.
3 of 15:

Until just recently, with the creation of the 18th Airborne Corps, there was no traditional "reserve" in the European Theater. Now, the 18th was the reserve.
4 of 15:

Ridgway sends the 101st and 82nd into the teeth of the ferocious German attack.

Here’s Jim Gavin, 82nd commander, who would push east to Werbomont, Belgium.

The 101st would drive into the wood chipper outside of Bastogne, Belgium.
5 of 15:

The 101st, in particular, was in no shape to go back into the fight.
6 of 15:

Several hundred paratroopers from the Screaming Eagles were in field hospitals for treatment of wounds suffered in Operation Market Garden at the time the call came in. These paratroopers could not go back out to the fight.
7 of 15:

So, the 101st was already at a manpower deficit.

Platoon sergeants walked through the troop barracks, they gave no instructions other than “You ain’t reserve no more, get in the trucks.” They had no additional information to provide.
8 of 15:

About a thousand of the men of the 101st who piled into trucks to drive more than 100 miles to get into the fight were “replacement troopers.” These men received only a week of field training in France.
9 of 15:

They then were moved over to the 101st to replace the Paratroopers killed in Operation Market Garden. Many of these new paratroopers had no helmets or rifles.

So, the 101st also had a training deficit.
10 of 15:

Many of the 101st Paratroopers had never received cold weather equipment. They were about to get tossed into a numbing sub-zero glacial blast without the right gear.
11 of 15:

As the men approached Bastogne, they could hear ferocious artillery fire and knew they were going to be in a hell of a fight.
12 of 15:

Their commander, Maxwell Taylor, was in DC at a staff conference (hell of a time to go TDY). All the better, the men didn't like Taylor...he wasn't a Soldier's leader and he didn't live and fight with the boys.

The men LOVED the acting commander, Tony McAuliffe.
13 of 15:

Upon arrival in Bastogne at the end of the day on December 18th, General McAuliffe placed his headquarters in the Hotel de Commerce. As he watched the men disembark the trucks, McAuliffe knew he was in trouble.
14 of 15:

He was an acting commander leading outnumbered ill-equipped replacement troops fighting the best-trained, best-resourced Panzer forces in the Germany Army.
FINAL:

McAuliffe knew that if they could win against these odds, the 101st Airborne Division, newly formed for this war, would become legendary.

More from XVIII Airborne Corps🐉

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1 of 11:

DECEMBER 20, 1944

BATTLE OF THE BULGE, DAY 5

At this point, the reserve forces (the 82nd and the 101st and the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne) are in sector and in their fighting positions. For the first time ever, the XVIII Airborne Corps is operating in combat.


2 of 11:

On this day 76 years ago, the 82nd Airborne establishes a defense against the 6th SS Panzer Army in the small Belgian town of Werbemont. This was the northern shoulder of the German bulge.


3 of 11:

It was freezing cold in Werbemont, as temperatures dropped to around 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Light snow covered most of the ground.


4 of 11:

Meanwhile, the 82nd's sister Airborne division, the 101st, is now assigned to the VIII Corps. The Screaming Eagles are deployed to a crossroads town named Bastogne, trying to push back the southern shoulder of the German Bulge against the 5th Panzer Army.


5 of 11:

So, the XVIII Airborne Corps starts the day with the 82nd Airborne as its only unit. But, General Ridgway was looking for units to pick up (remember, back then a corps was a loosely organized HQ that picked up units as needed).
WAR
XVIII Airborne Corps
XVIII Airborne Corps
@18airbornecorps
[1 of 25]

By Jan 13, 1945, the Allies entered the final (and most historically overlooked) phase of the Battle of the Bulge


[2 of 25]

By midday 75 years ago, all final Allied offensive actions were in motion.


[3 of 25]

So, to set the table, let's remember who is who here.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

In the South, Patton's 3rd Army is still slowly making its way northeast to Houffalize (remember, they've been making progress that way since Jan 3rd).


[4 of 25]

In the North, you've got
Robert Hasbrouck (commander of 7th Armored Division)


[5 of 25]

In the North, you've also got Leland Hobbs who commanded the 30th Infantry Division. Hobbs and Hasbrouck reported to...
HISTORY
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XVIII Airborne Corps
XVIII Airborne Corps
@18airbornecorps
Yesterday we announced the launch of The Doomsday Clock, an original 18th Airborne Corps podcast series telling the incredible story of the Corps' Cold War history.

Today we're going to tell you more about some of the guests who will appear on the program.

[1 of 10]


[2 of 10]

Of course, we'll have John Lewis Gaddis, the dean of Cold War historians about the start and end of American confrontation with the Soviets (Episode 16: April 27).


[3 of 10]

We'll also have the great H.W. Brands to talk about the Korean War and the stare down between Truman and MacArthur (Episode 7: February 23).


[4 of 10]

Podcast king Dan Carlin joins us for a deep, dark journey into the philosophy of the Soviet Union (Episode 9: March 9).


[5 of 10]

You know Sir Max Hastings as the great historian, but long before that he was a war reporter. That's him on the right in Vietnam in 1968.

He joins us to talk about American escalation in the Vietnam War (Episode 10: March 16).
ECONOMY
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1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.


2 of 16:

Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.


3 of 16:

The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.


4 of 16:

In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

[Jewish Soldiers were a minority within American units]


5 of 16:

Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.
SOCIETY
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XVIII Airborne Corps🐉...
@18airbornecorps
[1 of 9]

Back to the Battle of the Bulge.

He's late.

Thursday, December 28, 1944, ~ 2:30 PM.

Delayed by fog and snowbanks, Eisenhower's command train pulls into a rail siding in the Belgian town of Hasselt three hours behind schedule.


[2 of 9]

Ike is there to meet with Monty.

Ike needs to get the bellicose Brit on board with this plan [we're calling it the "middle option" plan] we showed you yesterday.


[3 of 9]

Monty is good with the plan, but he believes it's too early to counterattack.

Monty makes his case: intel suggests another (final) impending German attack, so we should build up our defenses & wait rather than attack.


[4 of 9]

Monty recommends a strategy of patience. He wants more divisions, he wants to set conditions before a strike. Wait for the moment to present itself, then pour it on.

[if you get the point of this GIF, we appreciate you]


[5 of 9]

Ike counters: If we remain stagnant, we may lose our gains. If we lose momentum, we allow the Panzers to slink back over the West Wall and this war might go on for years.
ALL

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“It was October 12, 1987, exactly 5:55 pm as I was… coming out of the cupola of my T-72 tank on a steamy evening in an unknown place called Kokkuvil in the Jaffna district of Northern Sri Lanka.+


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A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.


The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.


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This is incorrect.


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So. I loved #TheDig. Despite being set in the 30's it evoked a lot of my early fieldwork experience in the 80's and some of the things archaeologists were gushing about are still pay of the experience today. And it also evoked the fantasy that I became an archaeologist to chase>

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THREAD: With #silversqueeze trending on Twitter, it appears that this week's market spectacle may well be in the silver market.

A perfect moment for a thread on the Hunt Brothers and their alleged attempt to corner the silver market...


1/ First, let's set the stage.

The Hunt Brothers - Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt, and Lamar Hunt - were the sons of Texas tycoon H.L. Hunt.

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3/ But the 1970s were a turbulent time in America.

Following the oil crisis of the early 1970s, the U.S. had entered a period of stagflation - a dire macroeconomic condition characterized by high inflation, low growth, and high unemployment.


4/ The Hunt Brothers - particularly Nelson Bunker and William Herbert - believed that the inflationary environment would persist and destroy the value of their family's holdings.

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You think the Gamestop short squeeze is the greatest ever? Not. Even. Close.

This is the story of Piggly Wiggly and one man taking on Wall Street ALONE.

Buckle up, because this is one of the craziest stories in investment history.

It all started in 1919 when a man by the name of Clarence Saunders invented the first modern supermarket—Piggly Wiggly stores.

Before this time, people had to go into a store, give the clerk a shopping list, and then wait for their items to be gathered and brought out.

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People loved the idea so much that within 3 years there were over 1,200 Piggly Wiggly stores in the U.S.

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The robber with anger asked the villager "Is Guruvaurappan's coconut any different? Does it have horns ?".
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Below Picture is not original, as we cannot take photos inside temple.
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