The Highway

Summer Soft

It's been a while since we've featured Stevie Wonder.  Time to remedy that.  Summer Soft is from his 1976 double album Songs In The Key of Life, the capstone of the remarkable five album run Stevie had in the 1970s; Music Of My Mind and Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), and Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974), containing tunes like Superstition, You Are The Sunshine of My Life, I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will be Forever, Living For The City, Higher Ground, Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, Boogie On Raggae Woman, and You Haven't Done Nothin', being the predecessors.  Songs In The Key of Life also contained Sir Duke, Isn't She Lovely, I Wish, and Pastime Paradise.

Summer Soft, one of the album's lesser known songs is simply amazing.  From the gorgeous piano opening, multiple and complex chord, key, and rhythmic changes, layered intricate instrumentation, topped by one of Stevie's finest vocal performances (which is really saying something!), this is a masterpiece.  And from what I could find out that's Stevie on piano, synthesizer, bass, and drums.

Nuts

Bastogne is surrounded by monuments, memorials, and museums. of which we visited two.  The Bastogne War Rooms museum was disappointing.  Located in the downtown barracks that served as General McAuliffe's HQ it seemed rather thin on materials.  However, the Bastogne War Museum, located just outside the town was well worth a visit.  Artifacts, displays, and explanatory materials were all outstanding.  The audiophones also present a coherent and well-designed explanation of the events from four perspectives; American and German soldiers, a young schoolteacher who is part of the Resistance, and a young boy of 10 sent by his family in a small village to find shelter in Bastogne.

North of the town we visited Bois Jacques and the village of Foy, scene of two memorable episodes in Band of Brothers.  The Bois Jacques is where Easy Company was stationed for three weeks.  You can still see the foxholes in the forest.  Foy was the village just downhill from the forest attacked by Easy on January 13, 1945.  You can see the village from the edge of Easy's position.

Bois Jacques

 Foy from the edge of Easy Company position.

Memorials at the church in Foy.  The church was repaired after the war but still bares scars from the battle.  First photo is of church after the Americans took Foy.

 

  

 

This last photo tells the story of the return of treasured church artifacts returned by American soldiers many years after the war.

 

Grand Slam

It was Oct 13, 2013.  Things were looking grim for the Red Sox in their playoff series against the Detroit Tigers.  They'd lost 1-0 at Fenway the night before and tonight they were down 5-1 entering the bottom of the 8th.  If they lost, the Sox would be going to Detroit to play three games down 2-0 in a best of 7 series.

LDC and I had been in the Fenway bleachers the week before to see the Sox beat the Rays on their way to a 3-1 series win and I was watching the game that night and not feeling good about it. 

Detroit starter Max Scherzer was overpowering holding the Sox to two hits and one run while striking out 13 in seven innings but took himself out of the game at that point.

Jose Veras started the 8th for the Tigers, getting the first batter out on a grounder but Will Middlebrooks doubled to left.  Drew Smyly replaced Veras and walked Jacoby Ellsbury on a 3-2 count and was immediately replaced by Al Alburquerque who struck out Shane Victorino.  Two down!  But then Dustin Pedrioa singled, loading the bases.

Joaquin Benoit, the Tigers' closer, came in to face David Ortiz.  Big Papi had not had a good series so far going 0 for 6 with four strikeouts.  Scherzer had faced him three times that night, getting him to K twice while walking the slugger once.  Benoit's first pitch was a changeup which Ortiz hit on a line into the Red Sox bullpen giving us the immortal photo of Tiger center fielder Torii Hunter's legs after he plunged over the low wall in pursuit and behind him the upraised arms of a Boston policeman who was stationed in the bullpen.  The grand slam tied the game.  

  Big Papi's swing against Benoit.

 

The deflated Tigers went on to lose in the bottom of the 9th when the Sox pushed across the winning run.  Ortiz only went 1-15 in the next four games, one of his worst playoff performances, but he came through when it most counted and the Sox took 2 of 3 in Detroit and then won game 6 in Fenway, going on to beat the St Louis Cardinals in the World Series.  Big Papi hit .688 in the World Series and was on base 19 times in 24 plate appearances.  LDC and I were in the bleachers for the final game and experienced the Red Sox winning the World Series at Fenway for the first time since 1918.

I came across this interview with Torii Hunter in which he drops a few nuggets, most startingly that he and Ortiz had dinner the night before the game and Big Papi told him that Benoit was tipping his pitches so he knew what was coming. Hunter said Benoit was dismissive when he told him of Ortiz's claim, responding that he always got him out.  I checked and as of the playoff series, Big Papi was 6 for 22 off of Benoit, but had only 3 hits in his last 15 at bats, and he'd never had an extra base hit against Benoit.

Torii also talks about the longer term effects from hitting his head when falling into the bullpen. And, though not said directly, Hunter implies he did not like Scherzer's decision to take himself out of the game.  Torii Hunter had a distinguished career and was an outstanding outfielder and is in the Almost Good Enough, But Not Quite, To Get Into the Hall of Fame category.  

Luxembourg

My first time in this tiny country.  The northern part is very hilly and heavily forested, the central area more open with rolling countryside.  Quickly overrun by the Germans at the start of both world wars.

Clervaux, the small town where we stayed for the night, sits at the bottom of a bowl, surrounded by steep wooded  hillsides, with only narrow, twisting and steep roads providing access.  Within the town is a small hill upon which sits a castle, today the site of the history museum filled with artifacts of the Battle of the Bulge.

The town's significance is that on December 16 it sat about five miles from the German front lines and it is only 20 miles from Clervaux to Bastogne via a direct road.  The German timetable called for the attack to begin at dawn on the 16th, quickly seize Clervaux, and take Bastogne by noon on the 17th.  The importance of Bastogne lay in the road network centered on the town and it was to be the path for the German army to advance upon Brussels, protecting the flank of the main effort toward Antwerp.

Instead the last remnants of the 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division held out at Clervaux until the morning of the 19th, while Combat Commands from the 9th and 10th Armoured Divisions sacrificed themselves to slow down the Germans on the road to Bastogne.  The Germans did not approach Bastogne until the afternoon of the 19th, only beginning their attacks on the town on the 20th, by which time the 101st Airborne had arrived.

Near the gate to the castle is the restored Sherman tank which defended the castle during the German assault until it was damaged.  

 

Clervaux was rebuilt after the war and today is a quiet vacation town.

 

 

 

 From Clervaux we drove 45 minutes south to Dierkirch, another Luxembourg town occupied by the Germans, which houses the country's National Military Museum containing an impressive array of equipment and artifacts.

 

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.

 

The result was Patton's attack in the area of the Schumannseck, resulting in a grueling and bloody fight that lasted for the first three weeks of January, with thousands of casualties on both sides.  The Memorial Path is in a forested area taking you past foxholes and outposts used by Germans and Americans who fought at close quarters.  The eerie part is that life-sized portrayals of Germans and American soldiers are placed along the trail.

 

The Bulge: The Northern Shoulder

We continued our travels through the northern sector of the battle driving through the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt which saw house to house fighting as the 99th and 2nd Divisions delayed the 12th SS Panzer Division, allowing American reinforcements to reach the Elsenborn Ridge where they withstood further German attacks over the next week.  Much of the Elsenborn Ridge is today a training area for the Belgian Army and inaccessible to tourists.  A narrow one-lane road goes up the ridge where there is only one small monument marking this critical point in the American defense line.

From there we went about 10 miles southeast to the tiny village of Lanzareth only a couple of miles from the German border.  With the aid of Google maps we were able to find a small gravel road leading up a hill where we found a monument dedicated to the Intelligence & Recon Platoon, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Division.  On the morning of December 16, the 22 man platoon, commanded by 2nd Lt Lyle Bouck Jr, who would turn 21 the following day, found itself confronting a 500 man German battalion.  The German timetable called for the battalion to quickly seize the village and open a path for the Panzers to exploit the breakthrough.  Instead, Bouck's platoon, with the assistance of four forward artillery observers, held off the Germans for eighteen hours before surrendering after running out of ammo, completely disrupting the attack plan and delaying the advance of the panzers by a critical day.  

Because Bouck and his platoon were POWs for the rest of the war, the actions by the platoon were little known and not recognized for decorations until 1981.  Once a full review was made of the I&R Platoon's heroic conduct, it became the most decorated American platoon of the war.  The unit received a Presidential Unit Citation, Bouck and three others received the Distinguished Service Cross, five members received Silver Stars, with nine receiving Bronze Stars with V device for Heroism.  The four soldiers of the 371st Forward Artillery Observation Team (one of whom was killed on Dec. 16) each received the Distinguished Service Cross.

The photos show the position of the memorial.  Lanzareth is at the bottom of the hill.  The hills in the distance are in Germany.  The other photos show the memorial and the information on its panels. Standing on that hillside and imaging what those soldiers went through that day was a powerful moment.