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.

The Straight Story

David Lynch made some bizarre and strange movies, but he was not a cynic.  A cynic could not have made The Straight Story, the G-rated movie Lynch directed for Disney, which was released in 1999.  I saw it when it was in theaters and recently watched it again.

The movie is based on the story of Alvin Straight.  In 1994, the 73 year old Straight, living in western Iowa, learned that his brother Lyle, across the Mississippi in the hill country of Wisconsin, 240 miles away, had suffered a stroke.  Alvin had been estranged from his brother for a decade, during which they had no contact, but decided he needed to see him.  As he says "It's a hard swallow on my pride to do this trip.  I just hope I'm not too late". Not having a driver's license and refusing to travel by bus or have someone drive him, Alvin decided to ride a lawn mower the entire way - a journey which took five weeks.  The movie is about that journey.

It's a calm, reflective tale that Lynch spins.  The movie was filmed along the same route Alvin rode and captures the land and people of the region and its small towns. And Lynch clearly adores and admires the movie's characters.  There is no antagonist in the film, you saddle up and, with a bit of patience, enjoy the ride and Alvin's encounters along the way, including with a runaway pregnant teenager, a revealing conversation with a fellow WW2 veteran in a Wisconsin bar, and the legendary grabber scene. 

There are a couple moments of Lynch's patented weirdness, most notably with Alvin's encounter with a woman motorist who has just hit a deer and goes off on an extended and very odd lament about hitting several deer over the prior two weeks on her commute to work. 

The cast is impeccable.  Richard Farnsworth plays Alvin with quiet, restrained dignity, a role for which he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor.  What Farnsworth kept secret from Lynch and the rest of the cast was he was terminally ill with prostate cancer.  The canes you see Alvin use in the film for support were actually needed by Farnsworth at the time, but he made up an excuse as to why he needed them.  Farnsworth died a year after the film was released.  Farnsworth's manner of speaking and attitude reminded me of my late father in law who was born in Nebraska and lived his adult life in Iowa, adding additional poignancy as I watched.

Sissy Spacek plays Alvin's daughter.  Her back story, involving her children, is one of the few purely fictional aspects of the screenplay.  Harry Dean Stanton plays Alvin's brother and their reunion scene at the film's end is perfect.  There are also many smaller roles cast perfectly but one deserving highlighting is James Cada as Danny Riordan who helps Alvin when his lawn mower breaks down and develops a relationship with him.  Cada conveys that Midwestern decency and straight forwardness that I've seen over the years, having spent a lot of time in Iowa and Wisconsin.

The score by Angelo Badalamenti is subtle, lovely, and underlines the movie's mood. 

 

The Bulge

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.