This summer, I was sorting “memories” my mother saved. There was a basket of postcards—pictures of places other people visited, backed with short notes that read like prehistoric social media posts. Among these I found one that was very uncommon.

The card was in good shape. Plain white but you could tell it had been frequently handled. The cursive writing in pencil had faded. It said:

Dear Charlie and Teen,
I recv’d the package you sent thanks a lot it
was very glad to get
will try to write you a letter when I get time
Uncle Russel

Charlie was my father, just three years old at the start of WWII, and Teen was his sister, older by six years. They lived in Galeton, and Uncle Russel, known as Rut to family, had been the oldest son at home in Gaines. Not yet twenty, with dark clouds growing over Europe and Britain, he volunteered for the National Guard sometime in 1940. From the card’s appearance, I knew it had been important to the little boy who would become my father.

Dad respected Uncle Rut—that was obvious to me even as child. My parents’ first house was around the corner from Uncle Rut, his wife, Dorothy (Aunt Dot, a lifelong nurse), and their kids. We visited often—my brother and I would play on the floor with matchbox cars while the grownups talked. Rut’s father, Herbert Ingham, a coal miner immigrant from Britain, had died when he was just eighteen. My grandfather, John Weir, died when Dad was a senior in high school. A favorite uncle often replaces a father lost when you’re young.

As I turned the card over, I hoped I would find something that would connect it to a specific time or place. When had Dad and Teen sent the package? When and where did Rut write this thank you? The first thing I noticed was a Christmas tree, small, simple, with candles on the boughs. There was a poem, speaking of remembrance at Christmas time and wishes for a “Bright New Year.” “Grand Duchy of Luxembourg” was printed where the stamp would normally be.

I never liked history class, or remembering dates. But a few have stuck with me, like December 16, 1944. The Battle of the Bulge began as Germans shelled the American front lines in Luxembourg. I knew GIs spent Christmas 1944 in foxholes dug in the Ardennes. I knew the story of the 101st Airborne and Bastogne in Belgium. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is between Germany and Belgium. What I did not know was Uncle Rut, the strong but kind man I remembered from my own youth, the man I saw my father go to for advice and approval, was there. I did not know about his unit, what he did, or where he most likely was when he wrote this note.

That’s how I learned of the 28th Division, its deep connection with Pennsylvania, the courageous devotion to others shown by men from Tioga County as they served in the Division’s Medical Battalion, and how my own father’s favorite uncle came to send a Christmas postcard from Luxembourg to a couple of little kids back home.

This year marks the eightieth anniversary of what has been called America’s bloodiest battle—the Battle of the Bulge. Stories of tenacity, determination, and heroism in the second half of December 1944 are easy to find. As the battle began, the Army’s 28th Infantry Division stopped seven German divisions from taking Bastogne and St. Vith on the first day as planned. For three days, east of Wiltz and Clairvaux in Luxembourg, the 28th’s strong resistance allowed the 101st Airborne to reach Bastogne and prevent its capture. In the middle of this fierce fighting was Uncle Rut’s unit, Company B of the 103rd Medical Battalion, attached to the 110th Infantry Regiment. Company B was a Collecting Company of about 100 men. Enlisted men were litter bearers, ambulance orderlies and drivers, and rifle company aid men. Three years of training, drills, and exercises made them the US Army Medical Corps’ first responders. Bandages, tourniquets, sulfa, and morphine were carried instead of grenades or land mines. Officers served as surgeons at a battalion aid station just behind the front lines. All of the men in Company B wore the Red Cross on their arms, and walked through battles without guns.

The Division was federalized and activated February 17, 1941. This began a year (subject to extension) of training for the nation’s defense, ten months before Pearl Harbor. Initially composed entirely of the members of the Pennsylvania National Guard, changes came quickly once they were activated. By the time they returned, less than ten percent were from Pennsylvania. Known officially as the Keystone Division, they wore a red keystone patch. Its resemblance to a bucket quickly earned them the nickname “The Bloody Bucket” from the Wehrmacht (Nazi Germany’s unified forces). They landed on a quiet(er) Omaha Beach, seven weeks after D-Day in July 1944. From this point, until they returned home to the US, they were what the Army refers to as “under canvas.”

Within forty-eight hours of reaching France, they were involved in action outside Saint-Lô. They received campaign ribbons for the Normandy Campaign and were prepared to enter Paris. Instead, they became short-lived movie stars as the 28th was selected to march in the Liberation of Paris parade. Newsreel footage shows Jeeps with Red Cross flags flying and large Dodge ambulances being driven down the Champs-Élyssées and under the Arc d’ Triomphe, past Charles de Gaulle, Omar Bradley, and Bernard Montgomery on the viewing stand. Soon enough, the Division found itself on the famed Siegfried Line, attacking the Fatherland itself. They began November 1944 in an area of rugged wooded hills known as the Hürtgen Forest, aka America’s Meat Grinder, the Green Hell, and Death Valley. Its geography might have reminded Rut of his home in Gaines. The 28th Division suffered over 6,000 casualties here in the first two weeks. The Company B men were pulled out of the Hürtgen and sent south in mid-November. They would have a chance to rest, receive replacements, and repair equipment. Division headquarters was set in Wiltz, about twelve miles east of the city of Bastogne. A rest center was set up in Clairvaux and movies were shown. Mail caught up with them. A GI dressed as St. Nick helped the resident children celebrate. There was a chance for a hot Thanksgiving meal and, hopefully, packages from nieces and nephews.

According to the Wellsboro Agitator, of the seventy-seven local National Guardsmen who began their service in February of 1941, all but one—who had died since coming home—returned to Wellsboro five years later.

They had set aside their own young lives during the preceding years in service of their fellow man. They captured no bridges, liberated no towns, and appear as if uncredited extras in the official histories. As it seems my own father did, I will hold and look at this small card from a kind man, and I will remember many men, and the example they have given—that to set aside your life, to give of your time, your care, and your concern for them, is the best way to show your love for your fellow man.