“We crawled a quarter mile up to the woods and that’s where we were pinned down.

My instructions were — I remember clearly what it was: We were to go with marching fire, which means you stand up, just keep shooting, to keep them down.

If you are a veteran or family member of a veteran who fought in France during World War II in one of four main campaigns — Normandy, Southern France, Northern France and the Ardennes (the Battle of the Bulge) — the French government wants to express its gratitude.

7) A 22-year-old man known to have frequented the neo-Nazi, white supremacist Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho, was arrested Monday and charged in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on three counts of bombing and one count of attempted bombing.

It’s work at which he excelled and work that he’s most proud of: maintaining the Red Ball Express, a famed truck convey system that supplied Allied forces throughout Europe. American GIs, says Janine, were far sexier than their French counterparts. They dated (“hot and heavy,” Lytle said) until he got notice that he had to return to the United States in May.

She presented it to him in a ceremony two months ago. She lives and teaches in Paris.“I kind of reproduced the same pattern (as my parents),” she says.

But Applequist said Lytle deserves the recognition for helping France. She went to France after she graduated and, not quite proficient in French, met her future husband.

I was numb to the waist.” Much of what Lytle knows today about the Battle of the Bulge he learned later from research and reunions with his unit.

His platoon was sent to Manhay, a little town in Belgium, and all they knew then was what they were supposed to do.