The Other Battle of the Bulge - The Colmar Pocket in WW2
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- The Other Battle of the Bulge - The Colmar Pocket in WW2
The Colmar Pocket grew out the advance of the US 6th Army Group in late 1944. With their backs to the Rhine River, the German Forces in the area consolidated and held fim agains the US 7th and French 1st Armies.
One small battle among many was the fight for Sigolsheim Village just West of Colmar. Captain Marty Higgins and his patrol would fight a desperate action for the village in December 1944.
#ww2 #thenandnow #war #colmar #frencharmy #france #m4sherman #tankdestroyer #texas #frencharmy #m1garand #garand #willysjeep #ww2history #ww2history #ww2documentary
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If you’ve visited the Colmar Pocket or had a relative who fought there let me know in the comments below!👇
Grandfather fought there, Bravo Company, 1/15, 3rd Infantry Division. Was invited there when they dedicated the monuments on Hill 351 and refused to go. Was wounded and awarded the Bronze Star w/ Valor on January 26, 1945 and was with Audey Murphy when his actions merited the MOH.
@@AndySteanson thank you for sharing your grandfathers story! That’s an incredible family history. My next video will actually feature the 15th Infantry and their attack on the village of Sigolsheim, so keep an eye out for that.
If you ever get the chance to visit the area let me know if you need advice on hotels/places to eat etc as I’ve been a few times.
@@WW2Wayfinder No problem, my pleasure. He joined the Third just before the landing in France on June 6th. Fought through the Colmar all the way through to the end of hostilities. Three purple hearts, Bronze Star w/ Valor on January 26, 1945, and a Silver Star on March 28th in Huttenfeld.
My family has been discussing going to France and following his trek through France with the 3rd ID.
@@AndySteanson wow! That’s an incredible set of awards, truly The Greatest Generation!!
Like I say if you want any advice/help with locations etc and you want to reach out just let me know via my email or the Wayfinder Facebook page as I’d be more than happy to help.
Great video. Many thanks. My grandfather John M.Shoemaker,Pfc. fought with 2nd platoon,G co.,2nd battalion, 253rd regiment, 63rd Division attached to the 44th Div. for Operation Norwind, U.S. 7th Army, ETO. He earned CIB,Bronze star for valor, bronze star for service, purple heart and presidential unit citation ribbon among other medals. I think the 255th regiment of the 63rd fought at Jebsheim in the Colmar pocket, especially the late Col. Fred Clinton-63rd Div. Website director and historian. My grandfather fought against the 17th SS Panzer grenadiers at Sarreguemines,France during Norwind beginning on 12-31-44. Thanks again, J.R.S.,Jr.,Esq.
My father, he was over there. He was a combat engineer in patents, third army.
My father was in 36 ID 141st Infantry, 2nd battalion E company. He was assigned to E company just after . The lost battalion (1st) was rescued by the 442nd. He was exactly there until January 3rd when he was captured. Daddy spent the rest of the war , after getting there, at 4B and the work sub camp 4Z . My best friend left us 9.11.07.
Thank you for watching and I hope it gave you a reasonable idea of where your Father was serving during the war.
Thanks for this. My grandfather was with A company! He was wounded late on December 9 or early on the 10th. He was not with them when they surrendered. I do remember him telling me that he thought until years after the war that Marty Higgins had been killed.
Oh wow! Thank you for sharing that about your Grandfather! I can’t imagine what he and his friends endured in that area during that December and it’s a shame they receive so little attention as the Ardennes and Battle of the Bulge takes most of it!
Thanks for watching!
Something that makes your videos so great is the original footage you use and the narrative from you. And that music is spectacular. Your knowledge of WW2 is amazing. Learning so much from you
Thank you! Hopefully this gives the men who fought in that area of France some well deserved recognition as they went through hell on those hills!
@WW2Wayfinder Thanks to you they are. I think you honored them very well
This is a surprise for me, I’m 58 now and retired from the US Army where I served as an Infantryman in two wars. In 1985 my unit (E co. 1-7 INF, 3rd ID) was sent to Colmar for a week visit with the French Army. We slept in their barracks, ate at their dining facility, checked out their vehicles and toured the museums and a casemate. E company was an Anti-Armor Company where we used the TOW2 missile system so we were paired with our French counterpart where they used the VAB and HOT missile system which was amazing. Colmar is a tank destroyer heaven given the wide open terrain so if we can get on higher ground we can rain hell on them from air and artillery support until they’re within 4,000 meters which is when we let loose our attacks. Being a Tank Killer isn’t just a simple task of staying in one place and safely firing multiple missiles. The enemy knows how effective we are so they seek us out and use artillery fire to blindly fire at suspected positions we might likely be at waiting for them so we have to function like playing a game of chess, we don’t set up in a wonderful firing position, we lay back a few hundred meters and have one or two men in a forward position watching the battlefield and once we see vehicles about to enter our sector, we call the vehicle forward from its hide position. Camouflage is our best protection in close engagements and you’d be surprised how easy it is to mask most, but not all of our thermal signature from enemy observation.
Another interesting fact about our job is when we either run out of TOW missiles or the tanks are mixed in with our lines we dismount our vehicles and use AT4’s or LAW’s to engage enemy vehicles at close quarter ranges. Our job is to defend the Infantry among us from tanks and armored vehicles and we take that duty seriously. A TOW system can be damaged or our vehicle may go tits up so if that happens we place a couple thermite grenades on them and go hunting on foot. Once we run out of things to kill tanks with, we try to link up with our own company but if that’s impossible (often platoons are spread out by nearly a kilometer so then we link up with the nearest Infantry company and become a rifle squad until told otherwise. In the US Army we’re first trained and qualified as standard Infantrymen then we spend a couple weeks mastering the TOW system, our Mortar crews go through similar additional training like we had. If a Grunt hears TOW missiles firing, they know the enemy is dead set on reach and breaching our lines since they managed to make it through the Air Force bombing runs, A-10 runs, napalm and WP attacks then long range heavy artillery, then shorter range artillery, our own AH-64 helicopter attacks with Hellfire missiles, then our Bn mortars which is usually 4.2” gimlets that’re damn nasty on a battlefield and THEN it’s our turn to fight and usually the enemy is pretty decimated and shaken up mentally since they just lost most of their buddies, haven’t gotten much sleep in the past couple days and running low on fuel and ammunition. We always target command vehicles first (if possible) and those damned ZSU-23-4 “Shilka’s” that can mow us down in a heartbeat if we’re detected.
Oh wow! That sound like training there was epic! Would be great to tour the area with that level of professional knowledge! Thank you
@@WW2Wayfinder apologies for the rambling, lol. I suppose we all have our unique experiences and I was grateful for what I experienced in the Army. I’m guessing you were in the Military as well judging by the terms you use in your discussions. One of my Dutch friends invited me up to visit him in Oosterbeck where the British fought during Market-Garden, he drove me around in his Willy’s MB Jeep, we folded down the windshield since it was a beautiful day and toured the perimeter and the cemeteries. If you recall, during the battle the aid station at the pub that was staffed with both British and German medical personnel was a critical place that’s still well preserved today. Ask the owner to take you to the large private room at the end of the hall, last door on the right. In the room there’s a huge mural of the battle that takes up most of the wall (I could be off on the exact size) and it’s an amazing painting! If you could use some help getting doors to open, Richard Nevo and Ben Van Dyjk are the friends that live there and took me around. Ben and I met online before I PCSed to Germany in 2002 because we both restore and own vintage military vehicles and Ben is a very well regarded expert on the Willy’s, M-151 and now HMMWV. Richard owns a couple military museums in the Neatherlands but I’ve never been to them, he may have closed them by now. The BMVT shipped our Halftrack and M4 Sherman to Bastogne in 2004 for the anniversary event since the Army didn’t want to support us. Both vehicles were in full operating condition and still owned by the US Army but signed over to the museum. I was pretty nervous about signing for both those things but all went well.
Not sure if you were in Bastogne when they did the night vehicle “parade” through downtown Bastogne, it was pretty eery to say the least. They set up a large sound system around the perimeter of the city and piped in battlefield sounds, then they had search lights also around the area that slowly scanned the night sky and lastly, they shut off the entire power grid for Bastogne proper so the only light was from the headlights on our vehicles. At the time the men in our group had returned from 15 months in Iraq about 5 months before so it made the hair on our neck stand up. Along with that, when the parade spectators learned that we were actual Americans and American Infantrymen (and two tankers) they went bananas as if we were rock stars, we didn’t know what to do but thank them. We stayed at the Bastogne exposition building and pitched our cots there. The vehicles ran perfectly during the weekend and it was cold as hell, we were all wearing WWII uniforms and could barely keep warm.
I haven’t been able to find any footage of that parade but it would be interesting for someone to talk about it because it was incredible for us to experience. And trying to dig a foxhole in frozen ground is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, it’s like chipping away cement. You can find some of the articles I posted in Stars and Stripes for the events we held on Baumholder, type in; “Baumholder WWII” and you’ll see about 3 or 4 articles. I’m SFC DeVos, I just did the coordination and Stars and Stripes was essentially free advertising and it worked great. I kicked off a German TV crew because they always like to twist German military history into something that discredits their history. No SS symbols were allowed on base but we did have one group portraying the SS Viking Division and they didn’t use the SS symbols.
Thanks for your time, I wish you well from Texas.
Thank You. That was excellent. Esp. having visited the Alsace recently. It's another one of those that makes me think "What have I done with my life?"
Glad you enjoyed it! It's an incredible area isn't it but hard to imagine what they endured fighting there in the winter of 44/45. Also sad that it receives such little coverage comapared to the Ardennes fight but at least you've been able to visit there and see the area and terrain for yourself!
Thanks for doing this video. My grandfather was in the 30th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division and he was there at Colmar - I've never really had a good grasp of the situation there, but your video has given me a better understanding of the battle, so thanks again!
Thank you. I hope it was able to give you a better understanding of the terrain in that area. It's a beautfil place in the summer time but I can't begin to imagine how brutual it was during that winter of 44/45 and what the men had to endure there.
Hi John
It’s 9.22am here in Perth Australia, and I’ve decided to have a documentary marathon trying to catch up on all of your bloody great pieces of work and editing!
I’m armed up with a bottle of Jack Daniels and ready to rock 😂
I really love and appreciate your work brother!
It seems to be a bit boring here in Australia, we just don’t have the rich historical WW2 material that you guys do.
Keep up the fantastic work mate ❤😊
🍻 thanks mate! Crazy to think my videos are being watch down under!
Enjoy the JD and might help make my earlier work when I didn’t really know what I was doing a bit easier to watch 😉
nice, did you get that at the bottle-o lol
Australian soldiers fought bravely against the Japanese during world war 2.they deserve recognition equally as their allies received.thank you!
this is where Audie murphy fought and received the medal of honor in the 3rd division in early 1945
It's close by. Around a ten minute drive to Holtzwhir where his MoH action took place.
My grandfather was wounded while taking hill 216. But he always said his biggest fear was the phosphorus grenades on trip wires in the grape vineyards
2:32 why did the chicken cross the road? 😂
Thank you for making these videos, great history lessions!
Just glad people enjoy them especially as this one and the other Colmar videos are from a time/place in the war that gets so little media attention.
Thanks again for watching!
Keep pushing Man, your UA-cam channel will grow
Thank you!!!
Just found your channel. Great work.
Thank you for taking the time to watch And I hope you enjoy the rest of my content, and there’s still lots more to come!
Great channel. Great lack of bs.
Thank you!
Always so interesting. I enjoy watching your videos it makes me think of my late uncle who was in the fighting during the battle of the bulge. He was in Battery C, 143rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion. I wish I would of be able to ask him more about his time during the war but he didn’t like talking about it very often.
Thank you and I’m not sure if you’ve seen this website but it may be of interest
143rdaaagunbnww2.com/index.html
@@WW2Wayfinder Thank you very much. I actually found his name listed in the roster.
Oui des vignes !!!
I feel like I'm spamming your channel with comments today but this was the first video I watched. I'm reading Peter Caddick-Adams' Victory In The West and searched YT for Colmar and found your channel.
Peter Caddick Adam’s is a great author and I’ve got his books on my shelf (had to reinforce the shelf!!!)
Hope you enjoyed it and it’s something not often covered on UA-cam.
Like that red tshirt. Where did you get it?
It’s from one of my favourite companies; 30 Seconds Out, a U.S. based Veteran owned business and I’ve got loads of their t-shirts as their design work is amazing!
2:33 chicken outwits GI
🤣
Hundred 87th airborne
hola no has estado en la granja brecourt manor?
I’ve walked the ground many times but there are too many videos about that one battle so I like to cover the lesser known stories 😃
@@WW2Wayfinder vas hacer algun video de la linea maginot ?
Chicken soup tastes good.
Do your channels amazing my father was 187 are born in Korea
Thank you!!!