Holding the Line, 1944

At 5:30 on the morning of December 16, 1944, German artillery opened along eighty miles of the Ardennes front. Behind it came three armies — more than 200,000 men and close to a thousand tanks — aimed at a thinly held American sector.

The plan depended on speed. It failed because of men who did not move: the 2nd and 99th Divisions on Elsenborn Ridge, the 7th Armored at St. Vith, the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, and thousands of others in foxholes hacked into frozen ground, holding roads, bridges and crossroads until the reserves came up.

By the time the bulge was flattened at the end of January, some 19,000 Americans were dead — the costliest battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. Many of the men who held those lines were still in summer boots.

A single officer stands with his back to the viewer, overcoat to his shins, looking out over a line of men prone in the snow with rifles leveled toward a bare tree line. The low sun on the left throws every shadow long toward the foreground; the shadows are the strongest shapes on the picture. The palette is white, gray and pale gold, with the olive of the coats almost the only color. Nothing is moving. That is the point.