Sipsey Street Irregulars: Anniversary: The opening of the "Battle of the Bulge" and Eric Fisher Wood's Private War .

Monday, December 16, 2013

Anniversary: The opening of the "Battle of the Bulge" and Eric Fisher Wood's Private War .

The monument marking the last, desperate fight of Lieutenant Eric Fisher Wood, Jr. outside Meyerode, Belgium.

As I wrote four years ago:

Consider the difference one indomitable man made in this battle --

The three guns he saved (the only ones of his division that made it out) were critical in the "Battle for Parker's Crossroads," a delaying action on the northern shoulder of the Bulge that allowed the 82nd Airborne and other units to defend the Elsenborn Ridge. Unable to break out to the north or the south, the Germans were channeled into the delaying actions at St. Vith and Bastogne. With the holding of the shoulders, the German offensive was doomed.

Second, we can only speculate what effect his little guerrilla war had on German logistics, but if the Belgian witnesses are correct, it was enough to make Sepp Dietrich half-crazy with frustration. Of course, it was poor logistics that, as much as being channeled between the shoulders, was the reason the offensive failed.

Finally, there is the butcher's bill reckoning of the effectiveness of a soldier. How many Germans did he kill before he went down outside Meyerode? Whatever it was, it was a uneven trade for the Germans.

So take a few moments and ponder the incredible fight and sacrifice of Lt. Eric Fisher Wood, Jr. His story is an American inspiration for the ages. We are coming into another dark moment of American history. Let us hope the next Eric Woods are getting ready for the fight.

2 comments:

SWIFT said...: You are never more effective in combat than when you believe you are going to die anyway. You let go of all of life's petty worries and every part of your mind and body concentrates on the job at hand. It's like having tunnel vision in some respects, but with a clarity of mind, few will ever know. I believe Lt. Wood knew that experience. God bless him and his sacrifice.; December 16, 2013 at 5:56 AM
FedUp said...: This link says that when he was missing in battle on December 17, that's the day the Army picked for his official date of death.

http://webapps.chesco.org/heroes/wood/wood_ef.htm; December 16, 2013 at 12:46 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, December 16, 2013

Anniversary: The opening of the "Battle of the Bulge" and Eric Fisher Wood's Private War .

2 comments:

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