On Dec. 22, four German couriers approached American lines under a flag of truce, carrying a message "from the German commander to the American commander."
Asserting that Bastogne was "encircled," the note gave McAuliffe, who was acting commander of the 101st in the absence of Maj. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, two hours to surrender or face "total annihilation." It offered "the privileges of the Geneva Convention" to the would-be POWs.
What came next would be one of World War II's seminal moments. As [Vincent] Vicari, McAuliffe's personal aide, recalls it 60 years later, "General Mac read the note and said, 'Aw, nuts.' Then he asked, 'What should I tell them?' "
Lt. Col. Harry W. O. Kinnard, the division operations officer, said, "Why not tell them what you just said?"
"What did I just say?"
"You said, 'Nuts,' " Kinnard replied.
McAuliffe scribbled a reply: "To the German commander. Nuts!From the American commander."He handed the message to Lt. Col. Joseph Harper, who had escorted the couriers. To the Germans who didn't understand the Yankee colloquialism, Harper explained: "It means the same thing as 'Go to hell.' "
While World War II historian Barry Turner says McAuliffe's one-word riposte "lost something in translation," others have speculated that "nuts" might be a sanitized version of what the tough paratroop general actually said. Not so, Vicari says. "General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language," he said in a telephone interview. " 'Nuts' was part of his normal vocabulary."
Richard Pyle, Los Angeles Times 2004
