Somewhere in Belgium – Many miles to go.
December 25, 1944 – Christmas day – celebrating at home – fighting on the fronts.
No holidays where war concerned. Armored and infantry divisions of Lt. Gen. Patton’s Third Army were reported crashing into the southern flank of the German salient in Luxembourg today in a great counteroffensive aimed at cutting off the entire Nazi vanguard in the Ardennes. Striking at the blackest hour of the Ardennes battle, with Nazi panzer spearheads riding within 20 miles of the French border, Patton’s tanks and armored troop car* riers were said to be knifing squarely into the base of the enemy salient on the southeastern border of Luxembourg.
First word of the reported blow came in an alarmed German DNB news agency announcement that Patton had wheeled his operational reserves out of the Saar River line and sent them stabbing in a bold bid to break open the Nazi flank. Headquarters spokesmen did not confirm the German announce• ment, but they 1 pointed out that the only possible way to deal with the enemy offensive was by a quick and powerful counteroffensive. They pointed out that the nearest forces available for that job would be Patton’s divisions, whose front at one time extended up into critical area. If the report proved correct, and there seemed little reason to doubt it, Marshal Von Rundstedt’s gamble breakthrough hung on the verge failure.
Seven thousand Allied war planes–the mightiest display of crushing aerial power in the history of swarmed conflict–were hurled at the German Winter offensive in thousands of sorties that may exceed the 13,000 flown on D-Day. The German air force lost at least 125 planes trying to protect its ground forces and lifelines from the storm of explosives, running its two-day losses to 303 planes. British night bombers carried the all-out offensive into Christmas Eve, striking rail yards at Cologne and an enemy airfield at Bonn.
From other fronts: A force of perhaps a half-hundred Superfortresses set off explosions in military installations” in the latest strike at Iwo Jima. enemy island midway between Japan and Saipan, the Twentieth Air Force announced today. All of the B-29’s returned to their base in the Marianas after encountering only light and inaccurate antiaircraft fire and no fighter plane opposition, a communique said. This latter reference suggested that more than two weeks of air attacks on the island is reducing its defenses to the point where no serious opposition can be turned on army and navy planes visiting Iwo Jima. This latest attack carried well into the third week a continuing bombardment of the vitally strategic position by army and navy bombers and surface ships.
And massed Soviet tanks and infantry, in a 25-mile-deep breakthrough into enemy defenses west of Budapest, today captured the key bastions of Szekesfehervar and Bicske, cutting the Hungarian capital’s main communications with Vienna and leaving the enemy garrison only an 18-mile escape corridor. The capital was five-sixths encircled, the large Nazi-Hungarian force defending the city had only a secondary railroad and two highways–one a minor country retreat, and London observers believed the liberation of the long-besieged capital was imminent.
And that’s just a small portion of what went on, this Christmas Day in 1944 as reported by NBC News Of The World.