I'm new, but hope you do not mind my entering in a family member here:
Tech Sgt. Dennis M. Catoire, Jr. 67'th Armored Regiment, 2'nd Armor Division
Enlisted in December of 1941.
Killed in Action in the Ardennes Forest, Belgium, Christmas Day, 1944
Dennis trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and in Patton's big domestic tank training war games in South Carolina and Louisiana during early 1942 after basic.
In either late 1942 or early 1943, Dennis and his tank unit was shipped out to North Africa to fight Rommel's Afrika Corps (Rommel was Hitler's greatest general, if you recall, and was killed himself not long before Dennis died, when he was involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler).
After Rommel's forces were defeated in North Africa, Dennis unit was sent to fight the Germans and Italians as General Patton's forces liberated Italy from the Fascists.
After Italy was liberated, Dennis' unit was sent to England to await the D-Day invasion.
Dennis' unit was sent onto the beachhead right between the Omaha and Utah beaches the day after D-Day (7 June 1944), assigned the task of breaking down the cement hedgerows and getting tanks past Rommel's awesome coastal barriers at Normandy. I am not sure how long he personally was on that beach, using his tank as a battering ram, only that his unit had some presence on that beach for the next two weeks.
After he got off that beach, he was part of the force that liberated France, and then Holland, and then Belgium.
The boys hoped that the war would be won by Christmas, and they could all get home shortly thereafter. But Hitler had other plans.
Just when it looked like the Allies were unstoppable in their assault against the Germans, Hitler mustered up every last tank he could get his hands on, as many trained tank crews as he could get his hands on (and sent alot of other tank crews in without hardly any training at all), and gathered every drop of gasoline he could get his hands on -- for one last, great, counter offensive, designed to divide the Allied forces in half and eventually to drive them off of the continent.
History calls this last great German counteroffensive The Battle of the Bulge, and most of it took place in Belgium, primarily in the thick Ardennes Forest, between 16 Dec 1944 and about 15 January 1944.
Dennis' unit was far south of the fighting when it began on 16 Dec 1944. But when it looked like the Germans could take a key city in the region called Bastogne, and they just might reach the American fuel dump on the Meuse River and be able to replenish their tanks to continue the fight -- it was at that moment of desperation that General George Patton told Eisenhower that his crack armor division -- 2'nd Armored -- the tank boys he trained himself in Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina -- he was sure that those boys could move up from where they were, though the ice, blizzard, zero visibility, and narrow forest roads too narrow for tanks to drive -- and he could get them up to the Bastogne/Meuse River area in just 4 days!
Only General Patton would have ever been daring enough to try a manuever like that, and only his crack 2'nd Armored Division could have ever pulled it off.
But they did it, somehow -- and because it was considered to be an impossible task, they caught the Germans totally off guard.
2'nd Armored Division was not the only key unit in this fight -- the 101'st Airborne Division was parachuted into Bastogne to hold it until relief could arrive, and they did hold it under impossible odds. 82'nd Airborne also shone brightly in this fight, as did a few other British and American units.
But there is no doubt that Hitler could not have been stopped, had it not been for the miraculous breakthrough of 2nd Armored and a few other units of the 3'rd Army. They made it up there in just four days, and managed to stop the German forces JUST ONE SINGLE MILE from the American gasoline depot on the Meuse River.
It was on the 26'th of December, that day when 2'nd Armored stood on the defense of that gasoline depot and stopped the mechanically superior 2nd Panzer Division's Tiger tanks.
As it happened, that was the day the war was effectively won. This is because the Germans were so low on fuel that if they could not get the American gasoline, their tanks were not going to be able to fight. 2nd Armored kept them from getting that gasoline. And the 101'st Airborne kept them from capturing the key city of Bastogne, which they had to have. It was the 26'th of December, the day that the 101'st was finally sent reinforcements (their ranks were significantly thinned by days of almost no rations, heavy losses, and rapidly dwindling ammo supplies) So that is the day that Bastogne's fate was secured as well.
There were four more months of fighting, but they were mostly mop up work. The was was effectively won on 26 Dec. 1944, the day that Hitler lost too many men and too many tanks to continue a real fight.
But my great uncle, Tech Sgt. Dennis Catoire, DIED THE DAY BEFORE THE WAR WAS EFFECTIVELY WON. To make his death more tragic, he DIED ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
Dennis joined up right after Pearl Harbor, and actively fought that ruthless, bloody war against Hitler through pretty much all the campaigns until his death on Christmas Day.
It just always seemed to me so tragic that, after sacrificing so much for so long, he had the misfortune of being killed in action by the Germans in the last 24 hours before the outcome of the war was effectively decided.