A Christmas miracle during the Battle of the Bulge.
Fritz Vincken heard the cataclysmic fury of gunfire and bombings, and roaring planes, from his small cottage in the Hürtgen Forest, on the German-Belgian border. Then a 12-year-old boy, he and his mother were sent by his father from Aachen, the family’s hometown, after Allied Forces reached the city in early September 1944.
Despite fleeing to escape the war’s wrath, Fritz observed only miles away the “raging” Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive during World War II. Unlike the famous “Silent Night” truce in World War I, Christmas Eve 1944 was largely void of peace as the Luftwaffe bombed Bastogne—a vital road juncture held by the 101st Airborne Division—while Allied and Axis troops engaged in tank battles, among other skirmishes throughout the night.
The Battle of the Bulge had begun Dec. 16. More than 1.5 million men fought both the hail of bullets and the brutal winter conditions across 85 miles of the Ardennes Forest. By Jan. 25, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge would become the “deadliest single World War II battle” for the U.S. military, with 75,000 and 80–100,000 Allied and Axis casualties, respectively.
The chaos would arrive on Fritz’s doorstep; however, that Christmas Eve, the young boy witnessed a “quiet miracle.”
As he recalls in “Truce in the Forest,” published by Reader’s Digest (1973), U.S. soldiers carrying a wounded comrade “stood there” at the threshold and “asked for entrance with their eyes.” They had “lost their battalion and had wandered in the forest for three days,” while “hiding from the Germans.” Unkempt, the men “looked merely like big boys.” Fritz’s mother, seeing the dying man, beckoned them into the home even though sheltering non-German soldiers was considered treasonous, punishable by death. She was risking both her and Fritz’s lives if caught—yet the Christian woman could not let a young man die. He writes of the ensuing scene:
“None of them understood German. Mother tried French, and one of the soldiers could converse in that language. As Mother went to look after the wounded man, she said to me, ‘The fingers of those two are numb. Take off their jackets and boots, and bring in a bucket of snow.’ Soon I was rubbing their blue feet with that snow.”
Fritz was then ordered to fetch potatoes and prepare the rooster—who had been fattened for the family’s New Year’s Eve dinner and named after Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, “for whom Mother had little affection.” His mother, meanwhile, tended to the wounded U.S. soldier, fashioning her bed sheets as bandages.
As Fritz set the table for a meal, there was a knock at the door. The young boy assumed more Americans would be begging for a reprieve from the harsh elements. To his surprise, and fear, he was greeted by four German soldiers.
His mother was “white”—frightened by the new visitors. Nevertheless, she wished them a Merry Christmas. The German soldiers returned the season’s glad tidings. They too had been separated from their regiment and wished to “wait for daylight,” asking to stay the night. Fritz’s mother responded “with a calmness born of panic.” Instead of allowing the Germans to discover the other American guests on their own, she preempted their shock, saying, “We have three other guests, whom you may not consider friends,” adding, “This is Christmas Eve and there will be no shooting here.”
She even demanded that the Germans disarm and leave their weapons—three carbines, a light machine gun and two bazookas—on the woodpile near the door. The men obliged, and the Americans responded in kind.
Both the Germans and Americans, aside from the wounded soldier, gathered around the dinner table while Fritz’s mother cooked. Like their U.S. counterparts, the Germans were “very young”—two were 16 and the other, 23. They added a bottle of red wine and a loaf of rye bread to the makeshift meal. Meanwhile, to accommodate the number of people in the tight quarters, Fritz’s mother let several sit on her bed.
Before the meal, one of the Germans inspected the wounded soldier after hearing him groan. As Fritz describes:
“‘Do you belong to the medical corps?’ Mother asked him. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘But I studied medicine at Heidelberg until a few months ago.’ Thanks to the cold, he told the Americans in what sounded like fairly good English, Harry’s wound hadn’t become infected. ‘He is suffering from a severe loss of blood,’ he explained to Mother. ‘What he needs is rest and nourishment.’”
Fritz was surprised, but now felt relaxed as the Germans expressed concerns over the shot man. After saying grace before dinner, the young boy—not much younger than those fighting in the war—saw tears in “the eyes of the battle-weary soldiers.” The night’s matriarch then asked the soldiers, prior to midnight, to “join her to look up at the Star of Bethlehem,” ushering in Christmas Day. At that moment, to Fritz, the “war was a distant, almost-forgotten thing.”
On Christmas morning, the “private armistice” carried on over breakfast oatmeal. Then, in a final gracious act during the truce, the Germans “advised the Americans how to find their way back to their lines.” They even gifted the U.S. soldiers a compass.
After the soldiers left, heading in opposite directions, Fritz’s mother could not help but emphasize the gospel passage concerning the Magi who, after being warned in a dream not to return to King Herod after discussing the Messiah’s birth, left for their home country by another way. Fritz ends his tale lavishing praise on his mother who acted heroically for “asking both enemies to not hate but to give love and peace.”
Meanwhile, on Christmas, the Allies received a gift of their own. As the weather cleared, the hunkered-down Allied troops finally received air support, which could now provide intelligence and supplies and eliminate Nazi positions. Reinvigorated and joined by Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, the Allies pushed back the German counteroffensive and achieved victory a few weeks later. Christmas Day marked the turning point in the Battle of the Bulge.
The defeat of Nazi Germany was a miracle in its own right—but for Americans and Germans to share a meal, coexist, and even sympathize with their enemy in an intimate environment is a miracle on another, yet important scale. Perhaps the most important: person-to-person, face-to-face. How often do we hold animus toward those whom we once called father, mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends, and so on? How often do we forget the inherent dignity of each person, all of whom are beloved by God?
The truce in Fritz’s cabin, on that Christmas Eve 80 years ago, exemplifies the best of the human spirit: compassion, charity, kindness, evoking the Christmas message angels sang on high to shepherds in Bethlehem, “Peace on Earth and good will toward men.”
May we lay down our arms and grudges against those once in our lives, and get to imbibing and sharing the Christmas spirit.
Merry Christmas!
