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Then there was the strange assaultive sound of a rifle shot nearby, and a bullet hit the ground a few feet behind me, plowing the dirt … I looked ahead from my squatting position, shielding my eyes with the flat of my hand. I could see a German soldier, visible from the waist up … a couple of hundred yards away … he was laughing. All this was very clear to me: his laughter, the details of his clothing, the padded shoulders, the high collar, the bare head. I even thought that I could see his teeth … Then there was another shot and another clear miss. The dirt flew again. But this time I was on my feet, holding onto my pants, and in another second was in our foxhole … I believe the son of a bitch deliberately chose to miss me … he just wanted a little afternoon sport to relieve the general tedium, and I happened to be it.

Vastly worse indignities were visited on those who suffered intestinal wounds. US Army nurse Dorothy Beavers noted that some patients in her field hospital bore the loss of limbs with outward stoicism, while those who had undergone colostomies often ‘burst into tears at the sight of their own faeces in a bag’. There were no limits to the miseries imposed by bullets, high explosives, sickness and vulnerability to the elements.

In the winter of 1944, Hitler knew he faced another looming Soviet offensive. Dismissing the constraints imposed by the weather and his shrunken resources, he determined to make a crippling thrust at Eisenhower’s armies before turning to meet this. Against the impassioned opposition of his generals, he launched a western offensive in the worst season of the year, at the place the Allies least expected it – the Ardennes forest, on the frontiers of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The objective was to reach Antwerp, splitting the Allied front. To execute it, two new panzer armies were created, thirty divisions assembled, reserves of precious fuel stockpiled. ‘If you are brave, diligent and resourceful,’ an order of the day told shivering Volksgrenadiers on 16 December, ‘you will ride in American vehicles and eat good American food. If, however, you are stupid, cowardly and supine, you will walk cold and hungry all the way to the Channel.’

Two days later, on the 18th, Operation Autumn Mist was launched against the weakest sector of Hodges’ First US Army. It achieved absolute tactical and strategic surprise, a breakthrough on a forty-mile-wide front as panic-stricken American troops broke and fled in disarray in the path of the SS panzers; because of thick fog, the Allied air forces were impotent to intervene. Within two days, German troops were pouring through a gaping hole – ‘the bulge’ – in the American line. Eisenhower’s British chief of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Strong, bore a substantial share of responsibility for failing to recognise the significance of the German build-up in the Ardennes, flagged by Ultra. Strong told the Supreme Commander that German formations identified in the area were merely resting and refitting. The fundamental failure, in which many senior American and British officers were complicit, was that they were convinced of their own mastery of the campaign, and thus discounted the possibility of a major German thrust.

Lt. Tony Moody was one of a host of young Americans who found themselves overwhelmed by the experience of retreat. ‘I wasn’t scared at the beginning – I got more scared: it was the uncertainty; we had no mission, we didn’t know where the Germans were. We were so tired, out of rations, low on ammo. There was panic, there was chaos. If you feel you’re surrounded by overwhelming forces, you get the hell out of it. I was demoralized, sick as a dog. I had frostbite. I felt pretty bad about it. I kept thinking “oh my God, what I have got into? How much of this can I take?” I suddenly found myself quite alone, and wandered off. I stumbled into a battalion aid station and I just collapsed … slept twenty-four hours. The mind washes out a lot of images,