Welcome to Stories from the 28th Division Archives. I am Dr. Walter Zapotoczny. While working as the 28th Division Command Historian, I discovered stories in the archives that were not in the history books. In this episode, we are going to look at a January 19, 1945 radio Broadcast by Cedric Foster about the 28th during the first days of the Battle of the Bulge. Foster was the top news analyst for the Mutual Broadcasting System. His broadcast follows:

This is Cedric Foster speaking from the studios of WNAC in Boston, the key station of the Yankee Network in New England. Morley Cassidy of North American Newspaper Alliance, who is accredited to the United States 28th Infantry Division, has told today, for the first time, the story of the 28th Division's heroic stand in the German break-through of last December. He said that it is the 'merest justice to declare that the Keystone 28th Division, under the command of Major General Norman D. Cota, deserves equal credit with the gallant 101st Airborne for stemming the German drive. Three days before the l0lst began its stand, the men of the 28th Division were taking the full brunt of von Rundstedt's mightiest offensive in Luxembourg. They were fighting desperately in hundreds of scattered battles.

Cassidy revealed that on the 15th of December the 28th Division was 'stretched as tight as a fiddle string' along a twenty-mile front of the Our River. This front extended from the northeastern tip of Luxembourg to the area of Wellendorf at the mouth of the Our River. It was the widest front held by any division in Europe, five times the length of a normal division front and bigger than the front of some army corps. It was regarded as a rest area. The front was quiet and the 28th Division was recovering from its bitter battle in the Hurtgen forest in the north.

The Germans struck the rest camp of the 28th at Clervaux., twenty-four miles east and slightly north of Bastogne early on December 16. Doughboys were thrown out of bed by the shell fire. Three hours later, swarms of Germen Infantrymen struck the 28th Division lines in full power.

By nightfall the whole central sector of the front was a fluid mass of penetrations and encirclements. It was a day and a night of incredible heroism as the thinly scattered troops of the 28th fought to hold a paper-thin line, The Germans threw a total of eight divisions at the reeling men of the 28th Division.

Then come another panzer division. Fighting desperately on the American flanks, the 109th and 112th Regiments gave ground slowly, but they blocked every German attempt to widen the breakthrough, On the third day of fighting the 110th Regiment of the 28th Division fought as few men are ever called upon to fight. Cooks and clerks and chairborne officers at headquarters turned into infantrymen to hold off the attack.

"The 28th Division performed one of the greatest feats," Cassidy revealed, "in the history of the American Army, Against nine Germon divisions they had held so firmly that the German timetable had been thrown completely off." Bastogne was supposed to have been captured, according to German documents, the first day, It took days to surround it. The 101st Airborne was planted in Bastogne and the flanks had been held by the 28th Division in on immortal stand.”

If you like these stories, visit our website for more stories that were not in the history books and please consider becoming a veteran or associate member of the 28th Division Association. Your tax-deductible membership will help us support the men and women of the division and help us to tell their stories.

So, until next time, Roll On.