I recently discovered a wordpress blog that relates the experiences of Milton Schober, a member of the US 106th Infantry Division who fought during the Battle of the Bulge in December and January 1944-45. The inexperienced 106th had been on the frontline only days before it received the full blow of Field Marshal Hasso von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army on the first day of what the Germans call the Ardennes offensive. Two of the division’s three regiments were surrounded and within days almost 7,000 men, surrounded and low of ammunition and food, surrendered – the largest American defeat in the European Theater of Operations. Mr Schober was a member of the 424th Infantry Regiment, the unit that fought off the initial German assault and participated in many of the Ardennes engagements that followed.

Mr Schober passed away in 2013 at age 93, but his son has collected 122 letters written during the war and other items written by his father and recorded them on a blog.

If you are interested in what it was like to be an average GI – as if any WW II GI was average – read his reminiscences at https://dadswwiiletters.wordpress.com/