{"id":77165,"date":"2018-01-15T16:18:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T21:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=77165"},"modified":"2018-01-15T16:20:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T21:20:15","slug":"92-year-old-bulge-vet-reunited-with-dogtag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=77165","title":{"rendered":"92-year-old Bulge vet reunited with dogtag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Boris Stern got a package from Jean Paul Mandier of France recently – it contained a dogtag that he had lost in the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944 according to Fox13<\/a>;<\/p>\n

A collector of relics, Mandier bought the dog tag from a friend. Searching for Stern online, he discovered he lived in the United States.<\/p>\n

Mandier contacted another friend in Cincinnati to help him locate Stern. She came across a newspaper article, found out he lived in Tampa, and was able to track down a phone number. <\/p>\n

“I was a very lucky guy to get this,” said a humble Stern. “I’m even more lucky because everybody seems to think it’s a big deal. I’m just happy I got it. It just brings back a lot of memories.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last Year, Mr Stern told the Tampa Bay Times<\/a>;<\/p>\n

“I was right on the line when the [Battle of the Bulge] attack first happened,” Stern said, talking over the noise of the annual Veterans Day parade at the James A. Haley Veterans\u2019 Hospital.<\/p>\n

Two days after the attack, he was sent to a town called Winterspelt, where he was assigned to take charge of the regimental food and ammo dumps.<\/p>\n

“I did that during a war game in Indiana before I went overseas and got an award for it, so they sent me to Winterspelt,” he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where he was on the morning of Dec. 16 when more than 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 tanks launched Adolf Hitler\u2019s last-ditch effort to win the war. Stern was in the Ardennes, a 75-mile stretch of the front marked by dense woods and few roads, held by four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions stationed there for rest and seasoning.<\/p>\n

Stern was sleeping in the basement of a “dump hotel with my clothes on, obviously” when there were “tremendous explosions.<\/p>\n

“We didn\u2019t have any idea of what was happening. I went up to the second floor with field glasses, looked around and saw Germans setting up mortars.”<\/p>\n

Stern said he called down to a lieutenant on the first floor and told him about the Germans.<\/p>\n

“He called in an artillery strike and wiped them out,” said Stern, who later wound up in the town of St. Vith, a key target of German forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to HMC Ret for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boris Stern got a package from Jean Paul Mandier of France recently – it contained a … 92-year-old Bulge vet reunited with dogtag<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}