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11th Regiment, 5th Division US Private Charles Preston, of Nicholasville, Kentucky, brushes snow from a M1917 Browning machine gun mounted on his jeep. His unit was moving in against the German counterattack in the Ardennes during the 'Battle of the Bulge' which was then barely a week old, in the frontline of Luxemburg. The phrase "Battle of the Bulge" was coined by contemporary press to describe the bulge in German front lines on wartime news maps, and it became the most widely used name for the battle. However, in almost every single language, this battle is now with the name of the woods it took place: “Bataille des Ardennes” in French, “Batalla de las Ardenas” in Spanish, “Offensiva delle Ardenne” in Italian, “Slag om de Ardennen” in Dutch, or even “Арденнская операция” in Russian. One of the reasons for these is the fact another battle took place in this area, back to World War One, when French and German troops clashed in 1914 with 50,000 casualties. In German, however, it is sometimes referred as “Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein” instead of “Ardennenoffensive”, which makes reference to the German patriotic anthem “Die Wacht am Rhein” (The Guard on the Rhine).

21/12/1944