My great uncle John McGovern was part of the 42nd Infantry/Rainbow division in WW2, they landed by amphibious craft in Marseilles, France. He was in the Battle of the Bulge, his unit saw heavy action but was surrounded eventually in Sessenheim, on the border of France, and were captured.

His account was one of those featured in the book Hold At All Cost, which is a collection of personal accounts of soldiers from 42nd Rainbow who were taken prisoner, most of which occurred during the Battle of the Bulge.

The excerpt with his account is pretty amazing, they were holed up with a heavy machine gun in a small house on one side of the village they occupied on the French side of the border very near Stuttgart. Their comms were dead/cut off from the rest of their unit as they were being captured. They were attacked on two sides of the house by columns of tanks and by that point had nothing that could penetrate tank armor, and the Germans were trying to get in, grenades-first. He had no idea why the machine gun seemed to keep the tanks at bay, and I have none except to say the tanks may have been out of ammo, they were missing trains of resupply at that point is my understanding of the battle. They may also have been in the mood to take as many prisoners as possible to secure exchanges - both sides were bleeding POWs left and right.

To give you an idea of how chaotic things were, his unit took perhaps 10 German prisoners just a few days prior to being captured themselves.

I love that he has his collection of German rank insignia and patches on him when he's captured but manages to ditch them before the Germans found them on his person - you can imagine how a machine gunner comes across German insignia and patches and why such scalps would be considered contraband in a German POW camp. I also love the guy who captured him calling him a "Chicago Gangster" in English

He lost 35 lbs in captivity over the course of a few months, he was only captured in late January 1945 so he didn't have long to go until V-Day