December 19th, 1944. The 101st Airborne is surrounded at Bastogne, the German line
is pushing deeper by the hour, and Eisenhower has one question for his generals: how
fast can you turn your tanks north? Patton's answer sounds like a fantasy — three
divisions, attacking in 48 hours, across a hundred miles of frozen road.
The unit he puts at the tip of that spear is the 4th Armored Division: short 713 men
and 19 officers, running on mechanically depleted tanks, commanded by two generals
who had never led it in combat. By one battalion's own count, 33 tanks died on the
road before a single German fired a shot.
This is the story of how a battle-worn, hollowed-out division drove through the
worst Ardennes winter on record and punched through a reinforced German encirclement
— and how Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams gambled everything on one road so
exposed the Germans left it open. At 4:50 PM on December 26th, a single Sherman
rolled through a blown gap at Assenois, and the siege of Bastogne broke.
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