Beech Tree News Network

This and that-in small bites

Pretty near a truism: “If a secret is known among three people, and three people only, the secret is not safe until the third one is dead.” At the Potsdam Conference, 1945, President Harry Truman met with Britain’s Clement Attlee, Joe Stalin. President Truman shared with the other two that the U.S. was working on an atomic device. Russia’s Joseph Stalin already knew. 

Supposedly one of the most secret of secrets ever kept; it wasn’t kept. There was a leak. The Russian’s knew, Russia was supposed to have been our ally at the time. Now we know differently. 

History notes there were leaks of secrecy as far back as George Washington‘s and Abraham Lincoln’s presidencies. In the U.S. Navy, starting in World War II, just about every way you turned there were admonitions that warned: “Loose lips sink ships”.  It’s been said that, socially speaking, among all the other reasons, the disclosure of a secret appeals to man’s base nature of wanting to reveal something no one else knows. It gives a “high”, so to speak, a ONE-UP. It stems from PRIDE. It may have been Saint Augustine who said, PRIDE not only goeth before a fall, pride is a fall.” 

C.S. Lewis said, “All sins stem from the sin of pride.” The book of Proverbs tells me, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall”. Two great men in World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley dismissed the warning by the boots on the ground-the “dog-faced” soldiers, the guys eating the dirt and mud; that a very large contingent of German soldiers were massing along the Belgium border between Germany and Belgium. This was Hitler’s last roll of the dice. His go-for-broke. He had amassed virtually all of his troops and equipment for one big push across Belgium toward the port of Antwerp. If he could take Antwerp he could bring in supplies enabling him to hold-out a little longer. 

“This couldn’t possibly be,” Eisenhower and Bradley said, “Germany couldn’t put together that many troops-Germany was all but finished.” Patton went to check it out. He reported that it was true. But it was too late, the Germans burst across the border with eight panzer divisions. Their front lines formed a bulge into Belgium by passing the U.S. hold-out town of Bastogne, where our troops were badly outnumbered three to one-but would not surrender. The Germans sent a sentry to the U.S. headquarters, carrying a white flag. General Anthony McAuliffe’s reply to the demand to surrender was the famous answer, “Nuts McAuliffe”.  The siege of Bastogne lasted from December 16, 1944 until the 16th of January, 1945. Patton’s third armored division finally broke through and refined the troops at Bastogne, and began a sharp counter attack, causing the Germans to withdraw back inside Germany in January, 1945. 

The Battle of the Bulge turned out to be the largest and most devastating battle in Europe in World War II. The loss of life on both sides was staggering. Maybe here was a case on the part of Eisenhower and Bradley where rank and pride got in the way of listening to the men in the field. Sometimes even good men are blinded by pride. 

The Battle of the Bulge had Butler County connection. Sergeant Onva (Short) White of Morgantown, KY was in Patton’s tank column that relieved the men at Bastogne. Short White survived and came home. First Lieutenant Ollie Moore did not. Ollie was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. “They shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks, and men shall study was no more.” 

Kindest regards…..