The Bulge and Beyond: The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA Free online reading

Volume six of The Things Our Fathers Saw World War II oral history series. In The Bulge and Beyond, you will be with the soldiers going into the heart of the bloodiest single battle fought by the US Army in American history, the so-called "Battle of the Bulge". You will be with them as they feel the sense the fear of the unknown, the crush of impending doom, the scale of being amongst the columns of young, tired men slogging into a forest, medieval and dark, with the complete inability to ever get warm again.19,000 American GIs never saw their mothers again.

“Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was. His legs were blown off-he bled to death in my arms”. Maybe our veterans did not volunteer to tell us their stories; perhaps we were too busy with our own lives to ask. But they opened up to a younger generation, when a history teacher taught his students to engage. As we forge ahead as a nation, do we owe it to ourselves to become reacquainted with a generation that is fast leaving us, who asked for nothing but gave everything, to attune ourselves as Americans to a broader appreciation of what we stand for? This is the sixth audiobook in the masterful WWII oral history series, but you can listen to them in any order. It's time to listen to them.

Remember how a generation of young Americans truly saved the world. Or maybe it was all for nothing? Dying for freedom isn’t the worst that could happen. Being forgotten is.

A must-read in every high school in America. It is a very poignant look back at our greatest generation; maybe it will inspire the next one.