Two G.I. riflemen who fought and won in the Battle of the Bulge

I love history and military history is right at the top of my list. Reading about the G.I. riflemen who stopped the last gasp of the Nazi war machine at the Battle of the Bulge starting just before Christmas 1944 and extending into January 1945 has always been fascinating to me.

Gen. George Patton, who was billed as one of the heroes of that battle for leading his tanks to rescue the surrounded paratroopers at Bastogne, knew who the real heroes of the battle were when he said a G.I. armed with an M1 Garand was the most potent weapon on the battlefield.

From the current issue of American Rifleman, here's the story of two of those now-forgotten riflemen in The Men & Guns of the Battle of the Bulge.

The first G.I. took part in a bayonet charge in the fog, the second one started a battle with his Garand and finished it with an MP40 submachine pistol captured from a dead German soldier. Neither would quit until the job was done.

In early January 1945, an Allied counter-offensive struck the salient and produced still more intense combat in the bitter cold. At this time, the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion was attached to the 82nd Airborne Division fighting on the north shoulder of the “Bulge” near Trois Ponts. Pvt. Joe M. Cicchinelli of A Company, 551st was one of those cold, shivering paratroopers, and he looked on as the men of B Company began an attack on the village of Dairomont on Jan. 4, 1945. When that attack ran into enemy machine guns concealed by heavy mist and fog, it began to stall. Cicchinelli’s platoon leader quickly realized that blindly firing into the mist might result in friendly fire casualties, so he gave the only command that made sense: “Fix bayonets!” Cicchinelli obediently drew his bayonet from its scabbard and mounted it on the lug at the muzzle of his M1 Garand rifle. At the command of “Charge,” they all rushed toward the Germans yelling and shouting. “We reached the enemy position, and leaped from foxhole to foxhole, thrusting our bayonets into the startled Germans,” Cicchinelli recalled. It was over in minutes and 64 enemies lay dead on the battlefield. Dairomont had been captured by a handful of determined American riflemen at the point of the bayonet.

Meanwhile on the opposite side of the “Bulge” salient, the 80th Infantry Division attacked the left flank of the German Seventh Army near Ettlebruck, Luxembourg. On Jan. 8, the 1st Battalion, 394th Infantry advanced to a plateau three miles southeast of the city of Wiltz with B Company occupying the tiny farming village of Dahl. As the company moved in, a nine-man squad lead by Staff Sgt. Day G. Turner was sent to establish a flank outpost at Am Aastert, a farm on the northeastern edge of the village. There, Turner’s men dug foxholes in the frozen pasture facing north toward the neighboring village of Nocher, less than a mile away across a gently sloping ravine.

Shortly before noon, German artillery began to fall on Am Aastert and enemy infantry advanced from Nocher into a stand of pine trees in the ravine. When the enemy emerged from the tree line and charged uphill toward the farm, Turner’s men began to drop them with accurate fire from their M1 rifles at 300 yards. Having failed with the first attack, the Germans pounded the farm again with a mortar and rocket barrage that drove the nine Americans from their foxholes and into the farm house.

Under the cover of the renewed barrage, enemy infantry attempted to cross the ravine and overrun Am Aastert again. This time, Turner and his men directed accurate rifle fire on them from open windows on the second floor—repulsing the second assault with heavy German losses. Undeterred, the Germans sent forward a third assault, this time with tank support. The enemy quickly stampeded toward Am Aastert as accurate mortar fire rained down around the house, killing one of Turner’s men. When German infantry finally reached the farm, the mortar fire lifted, and they closed in on the eight surviving Americans.

From his position on the second floor, Turner heard a German voice order some of the troops to charge the building. Determined to keep them out, he rushed to the top of the stairs and fired into a mass of five Germans as they attempted to climb them. But his Garand only gave him two shots and then locked open with a ping as the empty en bloc clip ejected from the rifle. The survivors pushed the bodies of the two dead aside and continued climbing the stairs toward Turner with his now-empty rifle. Out of ammunition, the 24-year-old staff sergeant reached for the closest object that could be used as a weapon: a nearby oil lamp. Turner hurled the lamp down the stairs at his antagonists, and when it shattered it engulfed them in flames. They immediately fled the building on fire, but then a second wave of attackers rushed in.

Turner tossed a grenade down the stairs toward them and dashed into another room to shelter himself from the explosion. After the blast, Germans stormed into the hallway of the second floor and Turner met them in the doorway where he bayoneted two of them before they could raise their weapons. Turner then grabbed an MP40 from one of the dead Germans and used it as he fought from room to room. Although five of his men had been wounded, he refused to surrender and led the remaining two unwounded soldiers as they mopped up what was left of the German assault force.

When they emerged from the house, they found dazed and wounded Germans anxious to surrender—25 in all. The bodies of 11 German dead littered the farm—most killed by Turner himself. His exceptional actions ultimately resulted in Turner being awarded the Medal of Honor on June 28, 1945, but he never wore it or knew he had received it. One month to the day after his heroic actions at Am Aastert, Turner was killed in action.

By the end of January, the Bulge salient had been reduced, and American lines returned to where they had been before the Germans launched their offensive. It was the largest battle that the U.S. Army fought during the Second World War, and the cost was enormous, with 19,000 killed in action and almost 50,000 wounded. The German casualties were even worse: 91,000 killed, wounded and missing. But for all the enormity of it, the Bulge was very much a rifleman’s battle where soldiers such as Joe Cicchinelli and Day Turner marked the difference between defeat and victory.

As the Hebrews Chapter 11 says of the heroes of the faith, the world is not worthy of such men. One of them survived, Pvt. Joe M. Cicchinelli, and he will be at the NRA Annual Meeting in May in Charlotte and I hope to meet him there and thank him for his service to our nation.

The story untold about the U.S. Navy's Somali pirate rescue

What really happened in the hostage standoff with Somali pirates? One fact is crystal clear, the three U.S. Navy SEAL snipers are the obvious heroes for their life-saving shots that took out the three pirates who were holding their U.S. citizen hostage, commercial Capt. Richard Phillips.

If you believe the Noo Yawk Times (and all the rest of the unanimous praise chorus being spewed out by the so-called mainstream media) the biggest hero is their glorious leader, President Obama, who bravely showed he is master of the universe and not a raw rookie unable to handle an international crisis.

WASHINGTON — President Obama vowed Monday to “halt the rise of piracy” off the coast of Africa following the dramatic rescue of an American merchant captain, foreshadowing a longer and potentially more treacherous struggle ahead as he weighs a series of problematic options.

Of course, nobody in the MSM even reported that Obama vowed to fight "privacy" when he misread his teleprompter. They just corrected his pronunciation and smiled wisely. (Just like they did when President Bush said "nukulur" for nuclear. Not!)

In permitting members of the Navy Seals to shoot the pirates holding the captain, Richard Phillips, Mr. Obama navigated a crisis that played out in full view of the world.

Note the careful phrasing of the NYT writer, Obama permitted Navy SEALS to shoot. Which is true only in the reverse. Our rookie president first forbid the Navy commander on the scene from shooting at the pirates while he tried to micromanage the situation diplomatically from afar. That's what led to the ridiculous scene when Phillips jumped overboard from the lifeboat the first time and the Navy held its fire while the Somali pirates fired on him and recaptured him.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran and now a military writer and blogger, gives the whole story of the incident.

After four days of floating at sea on a raft shared with four Somali gunmen, Richard Phillips took matters into his own hands for a second time. With the small inflatable lifeboat in which he was being held captive being towed by the American missile destroyer USS Bainbridge, and Navy Special Warfare (NSWC) snipers on the fantail in position to take their shots at his captors as soon as the command was given, the captive captain of the M.V. Maersk-Alabama took his second leap in three days into the shark-infested waters of the Indian Ocean.

This diversion gave the Navy Special Warfare operators all the opening they needed. Snipers immediately took down the three Somali pirates still on board the life raft, SEAL operators hustled down the tow line connecting the two craft to confirm the kills, and a Navy RIB plucked Phillips from the water and sped him to safety aboard the Bainbridge, thus ending the four-day-and-counting hostage situation.

Phillips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Phillips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors — and none was taken. The guidance from National Command Authority — the president of the United States, Barack Obama — had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates — and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a “peaceful solution” would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on-scene commander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK-47 one captor had leveled at Phillips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Phillips was safe.

Emanuel then recaps the aftermath as Obama boldly steps up to take all the credit.

Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.

Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort.

What should have been a standoff lasting only hours — as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location — became an embarrassing four-day-and-counting standoff between a rag-tag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship...

However, instead of taking direct, decisive action against the rag-tag group of gunmen, the Obama administration dilly-dallied, dawdled, and eschewed any decisiveness whatsoever, even in the face of enemy fire, in hopes that the situation would somehow resolve itself without violence. Thus, the administration sent a clear message to all who would threaten U.S. interests abroad that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no idea how to respond to such situations — and no real willingness to use military force to resolve them.

So the real hero here -- in addition to the Navy snipers of course -- is not Obama, but the unnamed Navy commander who decided to ignore the stupidly restrictive no-firing rule from our alleged commander-in-chief and told the snipers to do the right thing. If the situation had turned out badly, that Navy officer would now be facing a court-martial and discharge. But since it turned out well, he will remain nameless and the rookie president will stand in the spotlight.

And how's our rookie president doing on those other international crises currently on the table?

Just this morning, the Noo Yawk Times reports Obama is sending signals to Iran they can go ahead with their uranium enrichment program toward building their first atomic weapons while talks continue. God help the nation of Israel because Obama certainly isn't. He's doing exactly what he promised during the campaign, talking with Iran "with no pre-conditions." So far as I've noticed, this is the first campaign promise Obama made that he's actually keeping.

And the NYT also reports North Korea has also decided the Obama administration is toothless.

North Korea said Tuesday it saw talks on ending its nuclear weapons program as "useless" and it planned to restart a plant that makes arms-grade plutonium, state media quoted its Foreign Ministry as saying.

Never thought I'd agree with anything North Korea says, but it's quite true that the talks are useless. Nutjob Kim in North Korea and the nutjobs in charge in Iran have quite accurately assessed the rookie president. They know he's all talk and no action. God save America and the world. The adults are out of power and the children are running amok.