“We thought the war would be over by Christmas,” Sokay said. The front lines generally stretched from the North Sea in Holland along the German border past Switzerland and into Italy.
‘Nuts!’Īfter storming ashore at Normandy on D-Day, the Allied Forces pushed steadily forward, through France, into Belgium and Luxembourg and even into parts of Germany. The series examines how World War II shaped the "Greatest Generation" and our home and is supported by the U-T's video partner, Media Arts Center San Diego. "The Legacy of WWII: How the war shaped a generation and San Diego" is a monthly series, published over the course of a year, by U-T San Diego writers Peter Rowe and John Wilkens. Walked out and eventually came home to the United States, to a life of marriage and children and work as a hotel owner - a life that had its ups and downs, of course, but also one that others who were at the Battle of the Bulge never got.Īsk him now about the battle and that’s what he remembers most deeply, the ones who never came home. Somehow he talked them out of it, got blood flowing again, and walked out under his own power. He remembers how a medic saw him limping, checked his feet, and sent him to a hospital, where surgeons made plans to amputate toes turning black from frostbite, a common injury during the battle. View the Video The Legacy of WWII - Norman Sokay He remembers the day he ran 50 yards across an open field to a house full of German soldiers and ordered them to surrender - and they did, 15 of them. He says his memory isn’t what it used to be, but he remembers how confusing it was to wake up one cold morning and find that the war they thought was almost over had flared back up with a hellish fury, German tanks crashing through the trees, giant searchlights blinding the Americans, rifle shots snapping everywhere. He’s almost 90, a resident of Rancho Bernardo. “I’m just lucky to be alive,” said Norman Sokay. In 40 days of fighting across 75 miles of the snowy Ardennes, 19,000 Americans lost their lives - about three times as many as the number killed in the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
It was one of the biggest, bloodiest battles in U.S. Friday was a World War II anniversary that not many people remember, the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last, desperate roll of the dice.
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