WITNESS TO WAR

The harrowing story of a woman journalist during the epic days of World War II and how the war is unveiled through the eyes of an innocent.

Anna Krieg finally gets her chance to do first hand journalism from the front. But instead of chronicling the road to Berlin for the allies, she finds herself immersed in the terrible situation known as the Battle of the Bulge. Here, all organization was lost and small pockets of American troops were isolated as the onslaught of the German counter-offensive ripped through the countryside.

And Anna was right in the middle of it. Confusion and desperation reigned and she was there to tell the stories of the American G.I….and it was their shining moment in the European theater.

By later 1944, the armed forces of the Third Reich were in retreat on all fronts, hammered by allied armies which were posed to strike deep into Nazi Germany

But in a desperate move by Hitler to stave off what seemed to be sure defeat, a massive counterattack was ordered on the Western Front. The aim of Operation "Watch on the Rhine" (referred to the allies as Battle of the Bulge" was to drive a wedge between the British and US troops in Belgium and cut the two armies off from each other.

The "lightening storm" known as the Blitzkrieg, broke over the Ardennes on December 16 and aided by poor weather which kept allied aircraft on the ground, the German army swiftly cut through the thinly defended lines.

It left many American troops cut off and in small units. Some carried out tremendous defenses such as at Bastogne, or suffered horrible defeats such as the massacre at Malmedy, and others fought with ingenuity such as the engineers that thwarted Battlegroup Peiper.

But for most of the soldiers, it was a battle of a few men against other few men…and this is what Anna witnessed.

She tells the story of three friends she made during this time…but it is also her story.

Brief Description: A chronicle from the point of view of a female reporter who is assigned a simple job but finds herself fighting for her life in the frozen forests of the Ardennes as the Germans make their final desperate attempt to stop the Allies in what is known as The Battle of the Bulge.

Key Elements: warfare, heroism, watching the tremendous struggles of the ordinary soldier unfolding from the eyes of an innocent.

Association: Captures much of the war weariness and straight-forthness of Saving Private Ryan.

Format: Witness to War is a graphic novel from Caliber Comics.

 

A note from Anna Krieg

I began my journey, both literary and literal, on December 14, 1944. That was the day I officially open my journal on my three subjects…the soldiers whose lives I meant to chronicle until the end of the war, or God forbid, their deaths…whichever came first.

At this point, I still believed these men could in some measure, influence their own fate by their actions and their conduct as they, and the Allied Armies, pushed headlong into Germany. I had yet to understand the nature of War (with a capital "W"), especially THIS War, and its tendency towards randomness and inexplicable chaos, as far as the lives of individual soldiers are concerned.

Perhaps there are some ponderables and predictables on the War maps of a general’s headquarters, some strategies that make sense in the Big Picture, but down on the charred ground of the frontline lives spin in a whirlwind of chance that is neither predictable nor understandable. Starting on December 14, I was to be taught this lesson.

Obtaining clearance to begin this project was no easy task, my gender having nearly precluded my becoming a journalist of any sort at all, lets a lone a War correspondent. Thankfully, I have been blessed with some luck, including being an acquaintance of General Omar Bradley, who, after I had bludgeoned his own objections to ruins, pulled the proper string to not only allow access, but to provide unprecedented proximity to the front line and its prime movers, the GI’s who did the dirty work. This is their story in its undiluted form, thankfully uncensored by the daring publisher. I would not think of doing these men the disservice of altering their words and/or experience for a soft public or overwrought standards board. This is what they said. This is what they did. They lived it.

Don’t deny them their accounting of it.

Anna Krieg
Washington D.C.