SWARTZ CREEK, Michigan -- Clifford VanAuken remembers it being 20 degrees below zero that winter -- so cold that men froze to death.
He can still see the trucks, the ones hauling loads of frozen bodies to graves.
"Never a night goes by in my life that I'm not back in the Ardennes," said VanAuken, 84, of Swartz Creek.
It was 64 years today that the Nazis launched a massive attack against the Allies in World War II. What's now known as the Battle of the Bulge became the bloodiest battle U.S. forces experienced in the war.
But veterans such as VanAuken say it's an anniversary that many seem to have forgotten.
"Not very many people know that this was the biggest single battle in the history of the United States," he said. "They make a great deal of Pearl Harbor because it was the start of the war but we had a little over 2,000 killed in Pearl Harbor.
"Thousands and thousands of men died in this battle."
The war was near a close at the end of 1944 when Adolf Hitler surprised his enemies by sending units into the Ardennes, heavily-forested areas in eastern Belgium and Luxembourg. It was a last-ditch effort to make a comeback.
In just under five weeks from Dec. 16, 1944, through January of 1945, nearly 20,000 Americans were killed in the German counteroffensive.
What is the Battle of the Bulge?
• It was the largest single battle of World War II, killing some 20,000 Americans, along with tens of thousands of British, German and other soldiers.
• It was fought in late 1944 and early 1945.
Another 20,000 Americans were captured and nearly 40,000 were wounded.
Hundreds of thousands of troops were filtered into the area for the battle and the United States lost 800 tanks -- more tanks than the whole U.S. Army had in 1941.
VanAuken, then a 19-year-old combat medic, was sleeping on the kitchen floor of a farmhouse near Nancy, France, when he was woken up at 2 a.m. to travel to Belgium.
"We thought the war was about over and then the Germans launched this horrendous attack," he said. "It was a battle that surprised all ally commanders."
Then came the rainy, muddy day VanAuken and three other medics were helping wounded Army artillery observers. As the medics bandaged the men and administered morphine in a bomb crater, a German artillery shell directly hit them.
VanAuken lost hearing in his left ear and suffered serious shrapnel wounds in his legs that required seven months in a hospital and several surgeries. But his friend James Wyland, of Detroit, was among the men who didn't survive the explosion.
He watched his close friend died in a barn.
"It was a very, very sad thing, but it happened everyday," VanAuken said. "(Wyland) was buried in Luxembourg and I've been to his grave three times."
VanAuken -- who retired as an Army Colonel in 1976 -- still has the black and white picture of himself next to his medic truck taken three days before the incident.
And he has turned down offers to buy his steel helmet with the red cross that he still displays in his home.
"It's a shame that all these men were killed and that there isn't more recognition given," he said.