THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160592
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY MADDRY
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
The Battle of the Bulge, fought 50 years ago in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, was the greatest pitched battle between Germans and Americans in World War II. It began on Dec. 16, 1944, in fog and snow, when three German armies totaling 25 divisions broke through positions of six divisions of the U.S. Army.
U.S. Army Maj. Reid A. Dunn, a Richmonder, was in the Ardennes and wrote a poignant letter to his wife and children about what he saw in the sky on Dec. 23, 1944. The day was a turning point in the Battle of the Bulge because clearing weather enabled Allied planes to join the fight being waged by the U.S. Third Army under Lt. Gen. George S. Patton.
Here is Major Dunn's letter:
December 23, 1944 Somewhere in Belgium
I have seen the most tremendous and awe inspiring thing in the world - the concentration of the air power of the United Nations in battle.
For an hour, I watched the haze and fog dissipate in a sparkling, ice-blue sky. And then it began. From the whole semi-circle of the horizon behind rose the sharp and pointed fingers of vapor trails - thicker and thicker, higher and higher they climbed.
When the first planes had reached the zenith, the horizon behind them was a solid white wall from which thousands of tiny streamers traced inexorably forward, to the north and south. The steady drone of motors increased and swelled to a chorus of power. Their organ tones were drumming, vibrating the very earth below, with a feeling of unspeakable volume, as if this was a mighty symphony, sounding only faintly in human ears.
The sounds, as impressive as they were, were only the superficial high notes of the symphony - human beings could only sense, or feel, the unutterable vastness of the beat of drums.
But as the mighty organ swelled, I could still see the solid mass of vapor trails rising upward from the horizon, from the west, from the north, from the south, from the three corners of the earth, moving, all across the sky to the east, funneling in a single mass over the black hills of the Ardennes. For over an hour, this pattern held in the sky.
When the first trails dissipated, they were replaced with new ones; the drumming, felt a thousand times more than it was heard, swelled and subsided indescribably.
Now I could see the silhouettes of the planes against the solid white mass of vapor trails. I could see them all . . . graceful Fortresses in tight and shining formations, masses of Liberators, Thunderbolts and Lightnings, the square wing tips of Mustangs and below, the Marauders, the Havocs and the Avengers. Then came the RAF . . . great Lancasters and Halifaxes, not in groups or formations . . . in swarms spreading half across the sky, their black bodies contrasting strangely with the gleaming silver of the day bombers, moving slowly, ponderously, pregnant with power.
Then lines of Spitfires stretched across the sky, tracing their paths in parallel trails, as if a giant, many-toothed rake was being dragged over the blue. They were all there . . . the dark, vicious Black Widows, the Mosquitoes, the Typhoons, the Hurricanes, the slow, twin-motored Wellingtons, night fighters and night bombers, strange and sinister in the sunlight . . . in tight formations, in great loose swarms, in groups of threes and fours, in lines and columns, singly, in pairs, in hundreds, in thousands, and yet all in a vast pattern, covering three-quarters of the sky, converging to a single point in the East.
Now, as they passed, came another sound, faint at first, felt before it could be heard - a trembling of the earth, a pressing on the eardrums, and finally, a continuous, barely audible rumble, punctuated by louder beats. This was the whole orchestra in symphony. If the planes were the unearthly woodwinds, then these were the tympani, in an orchestra such as the world had never heard, playing a symphony beyond the ken of the mortal composer.
And still they come - hundreds, thousands, in lines direct and true, from two-thirds of the horizon to a single point in the East. The power of it is unbelievable, men are shaken by just the seeing of it. It staggers comprehension; it is not to be defined in normal language, in normal thought.
It is not man-made . . . it is the power of nations, of whole peoples, of races of men. It is the force of destiny, the force causing the earth to turn, the force of the tides. Man, men, individuals, they do not exist . . . this is the terrible elementary force of the universe, immutable, unchanging, irresistible.
And still they come! MEMO: Maj. Dunn, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, died in
1990 after a career in construction engineering. His widow, Norma T.
Dunn, lives in Deltavile, Va. His daughter, Mary Reid Barrow, lives in
Virginia Beach. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
U.S. Army Maj. Reid A. Dunn watched the massive array of Allied
bombers and fighters in the Belgian skies on Dec. 23, 1944,
describing the sound as ``a mighty symphony.''
by CNB