On 22 December 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, a German party under a white flag brought a demand for the surrender of encircled Bastogne, held by the US 101st Airborne Division and armored units. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe answered with one word: “Nuts!” Bastogne held until tanks of the 4th Armored Division broke through on 26 December.
A town surrounded
The German offensive in the Ardennes began on 16 December 1944. Bastogne was an important road hub, and Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division and then the 101st Airborne Division were rushed in to hold it. Within days the Germans had surrounded the town. Hugh Cole's official history notes that the 327th Glider Infantry's war diary dated the encirclement to 20 December, but concludes that McAuliffe's headquarters pieced together the picture of complete encirclement only during the 21st.1
The demand and the reply
Around noon on 22 December four Germans under a white flag entered the lines of the 327th Glider Infantry. They carried a typed demand for “the honorable surrender of the encircled town” within two hours, on threat of annihilation by the German artillery.2
McAuliffe's reaction was a scornful “Nuts!”, and the word became his answer. The typed reply, addressed to the German Commander and signed by the American Commander, said only “NUTS!”. Colonel Harper, commander of the 327th, took it back to the waiting Germans and, when they could not make sense of the slang, explained it as “Go to hell”.3
Cole calls the episode perhaps the biggest boost to morale of the siege, because the division's intelligence officer made sure the story went round the perimeter.4
Relief
The garrison held for four more days. On 26 December tanks of the 4th Armored Division, the spearhead of Patton's Third Army, broke through the German ring and made contact with the defenders. Our full account, The Battle of the Bulge, 1944, tells the story of the whole offensive, which began on 16 December.5
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22 December 1948 · 77 years ago
Israeli forces launched a large offensive on Egyptian troops in the western Negev late in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, aiming to trap the Egyptians in the Gaza Strip. It ended after Britain threatened to step in unless Israeli troops left Egyptian territory at once.
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