In September 2024 my friend Joe and I spent a week along the French-Belgian border visiting WW1 sites, primarily Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, and Meuse-Argonne, a trip about which I did three posts, Left Behind, Lochnagar Crater, and Butte de Vauquios.
This year we traveled to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands spending three days each on the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Market Garden. We also spent an afternoon in Amsterdam which I didn't care for being overrun by tourists, somewhat shabby, and reeking of weed everywhere. The rest of the trip was memorable.
I'm writing of the Bulge and Market Garden separately but something we were impressed with in both areas was the extent to which these battles are still remembered today and the Allied participants honored. We saw many American flags, not only at museums and major combat sites, but in small towns and the countryside where small American units fought. These include memorials to individual soldiers and units, maintained by local volunteer groups or municipalities eight decades after the events. And the same can be said for the way British and Polish airborne are honored in the Arnhem area.
The Ardennes, the forested and hilly area of Belgium and Luxembourg, is beautiful country filled with small towns and villages, narrow scenic roads, narrow valleys and rolling countryside. At the same time you see constant reminders of the terrible events that occurred between December 16, 1944 and January 28, 1945, in which 80,000 Americans were killed, wounded, missing, or captured.
Growing up most of what I knew about the Battle of the Bulge was centered around Bastogne, the 101st Airborne and its acting commander, General Anthony McAuliffe, responding "Nuts" to the German demand he surrender his forces. The prominence of Bastogne and the 101st has been heightened further by the popular series Band of Brothers which includes several episodes on Easy Company of the 101st at Bastogne.
In recent years as I've done more reading and listening to the 8-part series on the battle on the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast, I've come to a better understanding of the battle and we designed our tour to reflect this. We only spent the last of our three days in the Bastogne area, instead focusing on the northern sector where the Germans planned their breakthrough only to be thwarted by outnumbered and outgunned American forces and the central front where the 28th Infantry Division and Combat Commands from the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions fought desperately and successfully to delay the German timetable enough for the 101st to reach Bastogne. The four American infantry divisions on the front line on December 16 (south to north: 4th, 28th, 106th, and 99th) were outnumbered 5-1 in infantry and 10-1 in tanks.
Our first day we initially traced in reverse the route taken by Kampfgruppe Peiper which broke through American lines until finally stopped at the village of La Gleize in the town of Stoumont. We then traveled through Stavelot and Malmedy (the site of the notorious massacre of American prisoners by the SS troops under Peiper's command, and on towards the German border. We then visited St Vith, Lanzereth, and the Elsenborn Ridge where the green 99th Infantry Division, quickly reinforced by other American units, stopped the main German thrust towards Antwerp.
Our second day was primarily in Luxembourg where we stayed in Clervaux, HQ of the 110th Regiment of the 28th Division, the unit which bore the brunt of the German attack in the center, losing 85% of its strength, but gaining precious time by disrupting the German timetable. Clervaux today is a lovely little town set in a bowl and surrounded by forests. In 1944 it gained the nickname of Alamo in the Ardennes. We also visited the country's National Military Museum in Diekirch, a town initially captured by the Germans in the offensive. Finally, we visited the Schumannseck Memorial Path, where Patton's troops fought the Germans for three weeks in early January.
At the December '44 Museum in La Gleize, the little village where a collection of American units, including the 82nd American (Joe served in the 82nd during the 1980s) stopped Peiper. That's me in front of a German Tiger Tank abandoned by Peiper's attack group. The museum contains a large collection of artifacts, most of which were left behind by the Germans. Also below is a memorial to the 82nd in the nearby town of Werbomont.
Stavelot. This little town saw fierce fighting with the Germans occupying parts of the town for over three weeks. Peiper's SS Panzer troops executed more than 130 Belgian civilians during the occupation. Photos below are from the Memorial Park along the River. Second photo is memorial to the civilians murdered. It took us a couple of minutes to realize what we were looking at in the picture in the third photo. It shows a German tank and if you look beyond the picture you will see that still standing today is the building in front of which the tank was emplaced.
The next town was Malmedy, today a very pleasant market town. A little over two miles outside town is a field where, on December 17, Peiper's SS troops killed 84 American prisoners from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. The prisoners were machine gunned and then German soldiers shot any survivors. However, in the chaos a number of Americans were able to escape and reached American lines. Peiper's unit had murdered other American POWs earlier that day but this remained unknown for some time but with the Malmedy survivors carrying the news within hours, the military publicized the event and it was quickly picked up by newspapers. News of Malmedy helped stiffen American resistance and created a desire for revenge. For the remainder of the war German SS troops would find it difficult to surrender to Americans and survive. Investigations after the war concluded that between 300 and 700 American soldiers were executed by Peiper's column.
The photos below are from the Memorial. Many American family members of those killed have placed photos and other remembrances at the memorial and the names of each of those killed is engraved on the wall. An American flag flies over it.
On the 45 minute drive to Bastogne we stopped at the Schummanseck Memorial Path just before entering Belgium, site of the deadliest concentrated fighting of the battle. Patton's Third Army reached Bastogne on December 26, breaking the siege, but only had a narrow corridor open to supply the town, which remained mostly surrounded by the Germans. Patton proposed attacking the Germans from both north and south at the base of the salient created by the Bulge attack, believing the enemy would be unable to defend at strength and forcing a withdrawal. However, he was overruled by Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley, who ordered an attack from the south closer to Bastogne, only ten miles east.
