As POWs, Bouck’s platoon began an ordeal far worse than combat-survive in captivity under trigger-happy German guards, Allied bombing raids, and a daily ration of only thin soup. Only when Bouck’s men had run out of ammunition did they surrender to the enemy. Vastly outnumbered, they repulsed three German assaults in a fierce day-long battle, killing over five hundred German soldiers and defending a strategically vital hill. Hitler had launched his bold and risky offensive against the Allies-his “last gamble”-and the small American platoon was facing the main thrust of the entire German assault. Suddenly, the early morning silence was broken by the roar of a huge artillery bombardment and the dreadful sound of approaching tanks. On a cold morning in December, 1944, deep in the Ardennes forest, a platoon of eighteen men under the command of twenty-year-old lieutenant Lyle Bouck were huddled in their foxholes trying desperately to keep warm. The epic story of the vastly outnumbered platoon that stopped Germany’s leading assault in the Ardennes forest and prevented Hitler’s most fearsome tanks from overtaking American positions
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