The US Army walked down a street of a Belgian town and surveyed the bodies of dead Germans lying in the snow, killed as they tried to keep the town from being recaptured by US army.

    The bodies of German soldiers killed during the Battle of the Bulge on the Western Front of World War II in Belgium in January 1945 against paratroopers of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division lie scattered on snow-covered streets. An American soldier walking down a snowy street in Belgium stared at the corpse of a German soldier lying in the snow, and Yenko. The German soldier was killed by a unit of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division in an attempt to prevent the town from being recaptured.

　On December 16, 1944, early in the foggy winter morning, more than 200,000 Germans and nearly 1,000 tanks launched the final bulge operation to reverse the German military decline that had begun when Allied forces landed in Normandy, France. The Germans launched their attack in the Ardennes Forest, a section of the battle line that stretched about 120 kilometers. Also known as Operation Ardennes Counteroffensive, the grueling battle lasted about six weeks from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945. Under extremely cold weather conditions and in the wooded Ardennes forest, some 30 German divisions attacked battle-weary American troops for about 137 kilometers. As the Germans invaded the Ardennes, the Allied front line took on the appearance of a great upheaval, hence the name of the Battle of the Bulge.

　Freezing rain, thick fog, deep snowdrifts, and record low temperatures brought atrocities on the American troops. More than 15,000 cold injuries, including trench foot, pneumonia, and frostbite, were reported that winter. The weather finally improved, and Allied air forces attacked on December 25, and by December 26, the German invasion was halted just before the Meuse River. The Germans began withdrawing from the Battle of the Bulge on January 8, 1945. Allied forces declared victory in the battle on January 25, 1945, and invaded toward Berlin. Within about five months the war ended with the German surrender on May 7. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, more than 1 million Allied troops fought in the Battle of the Bulge, including about 500,000 American soldiers, with about 19,000 killed in action, 47,500 wounded, and more than 23,000 missing. Approximately 100,000 German soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. It was the third deadliest battle in U.S. military history, after the Normandy landings and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of World War I.