Europe prepares to celebrate 75 years

of freedom from Nazi occupation

Alan Wooding visited the snow-covered forests of the Belgian Ardennes back in February 2019 to learn about one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War,

Back in November 2018, Europe marked the First World War armistice with numerous Centenary celebrations in and around Flanders Fields. Twelve months on, there will be further celebrations in both Belgium and the Netherlands as towns and villages mark the 75th anniversary of liberation from Nazi German occupation.

      I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Liberation Route Europe Foundation to view some of the sites that culminated in the Ardennes Offensive which history now refers to as the Battle of the Bulge. Fought primarily in the area around the Ardennes Forests and the strategic Belgian town of Bastogne, both sides were to suffer enormous casualties in a six week battle that started in December 1944.

  Having transferred from Brussels where I had attended a special Liberation Route conference, I arrived in Bastogne with five fellow guests and stayed overnight at the Melba Hotel.

      The following morning we transferred to the Bastogne Barracks run by the War Heritage Institute where we had a guided tour and presentation courtesy of Bruno Lacluyse.

      It's a truly amazing museum, displaying simply dozens of British, US, Russian and German tanks together with all manner of military vehicles and weaponry.

      And it's no wonder that the barracks will feature strongly in the 75th celebrations later this year when it is expected to be visited by some of the surviving veterans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge who will be accompanied by their families.

       "I love it when you see Battle of the Bulge veterans greet each other like old friends," said Bruno. "I remember watching these two," he said, pointing to one particular picture on a wall lined by thousands of veteran's portraits.

       "It's Frank Hartzell of the US 11th Armoured Division greeting Gunther Fiehl of 15 Panzer Grenadier Division and it went something like 'I remember it was bitterly cold' with the German's reply being exactly the same. They were referring to the nighttime temperature which during the battle dropped as low as minus 20C degrees."

       Bruno also gave us a tour of the whole barracks area including the restoration workshops where hundreds of military vehicles are being readied for a special parade this November when thousands of visitors are expected to join in the 75th anniversary celebrations.

      Making the short trip north accompanied by tour guide Joël Lamberty, snow still covered the ground as we entered the Ardennes Forest to see the foxholes dug by the US Army after they were hurriedly driven in open trucks all the way from Paris to Bastogne.

      With minimum weaponry and totally inappropriate clothing, the men were marched ten kilometres in freezing conditions and told to dig in alongside a road opposite the German front line.

      The rapid Allied advance from Normandy had finally stalled in the Belgian Ardennes due to heavy German resistance and while the south of Limburg had been liberated, the weather played a huge part in what was to come.

     Following Bastogne Barracks and Ardennes Forest encounter, we visited Bastogne War Museum where several hundred children were actively involved in school projects. My American colleague was intrigued and messaged her 22-year-old daughter back in the States asking: "What do you know about the Battle of the Bulge?" to which the response was: "It was a war, but it's no longer relevant to life!" Naturally my colleague was dumbstruck!

     However she asked the same question of her two sons (aged 14 and 18) when she returned to Colorado and they also knew absolutely nothing about what had been a key battle for the American troops.

     The museum has three multi-dimensional stage settings in which visitors relive the lives of four main characters – a child, a Belgian 

housewife, a German officer and an American soldier – all having been at the heart of the action.

      Just a stone's throw from the museum is the huge Mardasson Memorial which the Belgian's erected in a four year period after the hostilities had ended to commemorate the sacrifices made by the Allied troops.

      From Bastogne we travelled east into the Netherlands to the town of Norbeek, having stopped en route to visit the Mesch Memorial. The village of Mesch was the first in the Netherlands to be liberated on 12th September 1944 by the 30th American Infantry Division which was affectionately nicknamed 'Old Hickory'.

     Staying at the delightful family-run Herberg Sint Brigida Hotel, our hosts were Brigitte and Frans van Wissen while we learned about the history of the enormous US War Cemetery at nearby Margraten where more than 20,000 Allied and German bodies were laid to rest.

      Then almost three years later, more than 10,000 US soldiers and over 3,000 Germans were exhumed by prisoners of war and repatriated back to America and to Germany.

      That night Mieke Kirkels, a Dutch author and public historian, gave a talk about the establishment of Margraten where she discovered hundreds of African-American liberators were not officially recognised as they had only been used as transport drivers or for digging graves.

      The following morning we visited Margraten itself werecemetery superintendant Shane Williams explained that following the exhumations, there are now just 8,301 American military graves remaining.

      Our Battle of the Bulge trip ended with a short visit to the Eyewitness War Museum at Beek (pronounced 'Back') where there are 13 dioramas depicting different war scenes thanks to 150 lifelike mannequins all correctly dressed in salvaged uniforms.

      Guided round by the knowledgeable Merijn Bevers, the fictional main character of the museum is German parachutist August Segel who takes visitors along the most important fronts in Europe, one of them being the Battle of the Bulge.

      You can follow his story through letters back to this family at home. These letters are based on true stories and thanks to the German angle, it gave us another perspective on the Battle of the Bulge.