The New York Times Book Review
Combines a historian's detachment and precision with the personal feeling of a man who was there.


Book Description

On December 16, 1944, the vanguard of three German armies, totaling half a million men, attacked U.S. forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, achieveing what had been considered impossible -- total surprise. In the most abysmal failure of battlefield intelligence in the history of the U.S. Army, 600,000 American soldiers found themselves facing Hitler's last desperate effort of the war.

The brutal confrontation that ensued became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the greatest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army -- a triumph of American ingenuity and dedication over an egregious failure in strategic intelligence. A Time for Trumpets is the definitive account of this dramatic victory, told by one of America's most respected military historians, who was also an eyewitness: MacDonald commanded a rifle company in the Battle of the Bulge. His account of this unique battle is exhaustively researched, honestly recounted, and movingly authentic in its depiction of hand-to-hand combat.

Mingling firsthand experience with the insights of a distinguished historian, MacDonald places this profound human drama unforgettably on the landscape of history.


From the Publisher
The definitive account of the battle that determined the Allied victory in World War II in Europe


About the Author
The late Charles B. MacDonald served in four European campaigns and received the Purple Heart and the Silver Star. After the war, he wrote Company Commander regarded as a World War II classic. After retiring in 1979 as Deputy Chief Historian, U.S. Army, he devoted the next five years to writing A Time for Trumpets.


Excerpted from A Time for Trumpets by Charles B. MacDonald. Copyright (c) 1985. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
After leaving Bullingen, Colonel Peiper halted his leading vehicles at a crossroads so that the column could close up. During the pause, a half track reconnoitered a dirt track that led more directly than the main road to the next point on Peiper's route, the village of Moderscheid. Since the road appeared to be serviceable, Peiper took it and from Moderscheid proceeded northwest toward the village of Schoppen. On the way, the Germans captured the two-man crews of two ambulances, plus Staff Sgt. Henry R. Zach, two junior officers (1st Lt. Thomas E. McDermott and 2d Lt. Lloyd A. Iames), and six other Americans in a four-jeep convoy. They loaded some of the prisoners on their vehicles but made the four jeeps join the column. About midway between Schoppen and the village of Faymonville at a little chapel, St. Hubert, Peiper found another side road that appeared promising and would enable him to avoid Faymonville and the adjacent fair-sized town of Waimes, where he might well run into opposition. It was little more than a country lane, but Peiper risked it, and his vehicles made it. The lead tank was approaching the village of Ondenval when an American 6 x 6 truck appeared. The machine gunner in the tank fired, hitting the truck and sending it careening into a ditch, where it turned over on one side. As the tank passed by, the German gunner gave the truck another burst of fire, as did the gunners in several other tanks that followed. Inside the cab of the truck, two American engineers huddled. Miraculously, the German fire hit neither man. When the noise of the German vehicles had passed, the two scrambled out, raced to a nearby railroad embankment, clambered to the other side, and began to run back south in the direction from which they had come. That little episode marked the beginning of what was to prove a series of fateful encounters between Kampfgruppe Peiper and Americans of the 1111th Engineer Combat Group.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

On December 16, 1944, the vanguard of three German armies, totaling half a million men, attacked U.S. forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, achieving what had been considered impossible - total surprise. In the most abysmal failure of battlefield intelligence in the history of the U.S. Army, 600,000 American soldiers found themselves facing Hitler's last desperate effort of the war.