Nuts Poem by gershon hepner

Nuts



Hedging our bets with ours ifs, ans and buts
provides us, we think, with protection,
but when Harry Kinnard to Germans said “Nuts! ”
he showed them he had an objection
to sending a message that readers could muddy
by vagueness that might send them whiffs
of the flavor of fudging that most fuddy-duddies
apply with their buts, ans and ifs.
The Battle in which Kinnard did not surrender
is known as the one of the Bulge,
where he proved that he wasn’t a nutty contender,
concisely, as I here divulge.

Richard Goldstein writes an obituary for Harry W.O. Kinnard, the man who told the Germanss “Nuts! ” when asked to surrender in Bastogne. During the Battle of the Bulge, on December 22,1944 (“Harry W. O. Kinnard,93; Said One Word Would do, ” January 11,2009) :
Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, who inspired the storied retort “nuts” to a German surrender ultimatum during the Battle of the Bulge, died Monday in Arlington, Va. He was 93. His death was announced by his family.General Kinnard parachuted into Normandy in the first hours of D-Day. He received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism during Operation Market Garden, the airborne attack in the German-occupied Netherlands. And he helped pioneer the airmobile concept, sending troops into combat aboard helicopters during the Vietnam War. But he was perhaps best remembered for what happened in December 1944 at the Belgian town of Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne Division, short on clothing and boots in a snowstorm and bitter cold, was surrounded by German troops. Bastogne, at the intersection of important roads, was a crucial objective for the Germans in their surprise attack in the Ardennes region of Belgium, an offensive that had created a “bulge” in Allied lines. On Dec.22, two German officers approached the American lines in Bastogne carrying a demand that the American commander surrender his troops within two hours or face annihilation from an artillery barrage. The message was passed on to Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting as division commander while Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor was in Washington.General Kinnard, a lieutenant colonel at the time and the division’s operations officer, would recall that General McAuliffe “laughed and said: ‘Us surrender? Aw, nuts.’ ” As General Kinnard related it long afterward in an interview with Patrick O’Donnell, a military historian: “He pondered for a few minutes and then told the staff, ‘Well, I don’t know what to tell them.’ He then asked the staff what they thought, and I spoke up, saying, ‘That first remark of yours would be hard to beat.’“McAuliffe said, ‘What do you mean? ’ I answered, ‘Sir, you said, ‘Nuts.’ All members of the staff enthusiastically agreed. McAuliffe then wrote down: ‘To the German Commander, Nuts! The American Commander.’ ” The note was carried back to the German officers by Col. Joseph Harper, a regimental commander. The officers did not seem to understand it, so Colonel Harper told them, “If you don’t know what ‘nuts’ means, in plain English it is the same as ‘go to hell.’ ” The 101st held out, and four days later an American column broke through the German lines, lifting the siege. That response of “nuts” came to epitomize the grit of American soldiers in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds…. General McAuliffe became famed for the “nuts” reply, but sometimes grew weary of hearing the story retold. On one occasion, he thought he had a respite. “One evening a dear old Southern lady invited me to dinner, ” he recalled. “I had a delightful time talking to her and her charming guests. I was pleased because no mention was made the entire evening of the ‘nuts’ incident. As I prepared to depart and thanked my hostess for an enjoyable evening, she replied, ‘Thank you and good night, General McNut.’ ”


1/11/09

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