Holding at Bastogne

The paratroopers who went into the Ardennes in December 1944 had been pulled off the line in Holland only weeks before. They were sent forward in open trucks with whatever they had — many without winter clothing, some without helmets or full ammunition loads — to plug the hole the German offensive had torn in the American front.

At Bastogne the 101st Airborne held a perimeter around the town for a week against elements of several German divisions. Foxholes were chipped out of frozen ground. Wounded men lay in cellars because there was nowhere else. The temperature dropped below zero at night.

When the weather broke on December 23 the resupply parachutes came down, and the men in the holes could finally do what they had been asked to do — hold.

Five men in a hole, and only one of them is fighting. He is the figure at the back, rifle up, face turned away from the viewer. The others are doing what soldiers actually do most of the time: pouring coffee from a canteen cup, nursing a bandaged arm, sleeping under a blanket, or simply sitting with a cigarette and looking at nothing. Snow dusts every helmet. Far off, the parachutes and the burning village are so small they could be missed — which is the point.