Frank Denius was a 19-year-old staff sergeant when he and 700 other men of the U.S. Army's 30th Infantry Division – "Old Hickory" – found themselves on a hill in Mortain, Normandy, France, in August 1944 surrounded by four German Panzer divisions, including hundreds of tanks and heavy guns, and 40,000 Nazi troops, among them members of Hitler's elite SS forces.
