We seem to have missed mentioning this particular event here at The Daily Brief. To be perfectly honest, for most of my life Dec 16 only meant I needed to send a birthday card to my uncle Jack.
But this year, especially, we should have marked the date, and mentioned Germany’s Ardennes Offensive. This year marked 60 anniversaries of that coldest winter in memory, when over 1 million soldiers froze and fought together over a small town that intersected several main highways.
The town is named Bastogne, and the Ardennes Offensive is more familiar to us as The Battle of the Bulge.
The Cassandra Page posted about it, and I just got around to his blog today to read his commentary. On following the links he posted, I found one survivor has posted his war diary online. John Kline was a member of the 106th Infantry Division in Dec 1944.
In his words:
On 16 December 1944, the day the battle started, I was a 19 year old Sergeant, heavy machine gun squad leader (30 cal water cooled) turning twenty on January 10, 1945.
The 106th Infantry Division, my division, was spread over a 21 mile front. Normally a division covers five miles. We received the initial thrust of the German counter-offensive. I was captured on 19 December, 1944. I spent four months as a Prisoner of War, walking over 525 miles, with a loss of 50 pounds of “fighting” body weight. I was only in a sheltered camp for one month and one week..
I’ll be reading his war diary shortly.
My own memories of Bastogne are of a much more peaceful time. In 1988, Uncle Sam saw fit to reassign me to Florennes AB, Belgium, not far from the Meuse river that the Germans were trying to reach. Bastogne was just a name on a map to me. I had heard of the Battle of the Bulge, but only vaguely, because my high school history classes rarely made it much past the Great Depression, and spent very little time on the history of WWII. And my own personal interest in history stopped with the invention of the automobile. I thought anything after that was very mechanized, and lacked human interest (ah, the folly of youth). This impression was furthered by my friends who were boys, who were only interested in planes and tanks and army trucks as their playtoys. I was far more interested in horses than in tanks or airplanes, so I closed my mind to the marvels of our 20th century.
Until Belgium.
In Dinant, Belgium, there is a cathedral topped with an onion dome. Above the cathedral, on the cliff overlooking the River Meuse, is a citadel. Behind the citadel is a cemetery filled with American and Canadian soldiers, who lost their lives there during WWI.
In Namur, Belgium, also on the River Meuse, there is a fortress that was impregnable, until Hitler’s soldiers parachuted into it. It was taken over by the German commanders, and the underground rooms and tunnels were sealed and pumped full of pressurized air to protect them from gas attacks.
In Sugny, Belgium, there is a railroad bridge that stops halfway across the river. The residents of Sugny blew up the bridge, because the Germans were using it to send supplies to their troops. After the war, they chose to leave it destroyed.
If you drove out what used to be the main gate at Florennes, you passed a farmer’s field with cows grazing in it. The cows would shelter in old airplane bunkers left over from WWII.
In Hastiere, Belgium, where some good friends lived off-base, there is a church on the banks of the River Meuse. On the side of the church, facing the river, is a memorial. It’s written in French (the language of southern Belgium), and tells the story of German reprisals on the populace of the town.
In Diekirch, Luxembourg, mere blocks from a small building that has a Roman mosaic being excavated in its basement, is Musee’ d’Armes, dedicated to the Americans who liberated the town (and the country) in 1944-45.
WWII came alive to me in 1988, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s travel agency.
I first saw the town of Bastogne on a gorgeous September day, as friends and I were driving to Luxembourg to find a spot for our young-adult group to go camping. We wandered around the town square, climbed on the US Army tank that was there, and ate pastries at the local patisserie. It was not a big deal to me, as I was still mostly ignorant of its history. (I had not yet been to Musee d’Armes, and seen the dioramas of what our soldiers endured), We might have gone out to the memorial as well, I don’t recall. I was much more taken with the beautiful town of Vianden, and Bastogne was but a mark on a map, that day.
But I drove back through Bastogne on Nov 11, 1988, on my way home from NCO Leadership School in Germany. I was alone, and had time to spare, so I headed off to find the war memorial. It was a cold, foggy Belgian day. If you’ve ever been there in winter, you’ll understand the kind of day I mean. Visibility was extremely limited; you could see the row of trees that lined the road, but nothing beyond them.
As I wandered around the memorial, I kept looking at the fog-shrouded trees, expecting to see soldiers appear. It just felt like they could. I was on sacred ground that day, on a day that I consider to be sacred, as well.
The Bastogne Memorial was built by the Belgians in gratitude to the Americans that they credit with their liberation. It is designed in the shape of a 5-pointed star, with a circle in the center of it, which was the emblem they saw on our planes and tanks. Along the facing edge of the stars, they engraved the names of the 48 states. If you can climb a wrought-iron spiral staircase, you can walk along the top of the memorial, gazing over the field of battle. My vertigo prevented that, but I had no problem walking around the inside of the memorial, reading the words engraved on the 10 pillars there.
I cannot quote it word for word, this tale that begins with “On Dec 16, 1944….” But I can tell you part of what’s inscribed on the final panel.
“The Americans fought for this land as if it were their own.”
I tear up everytime I write those words. Everytime I tell them to someone when I’m describing that day. We fought for their country like it was our own.
That’s what we do, we American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. We give our all, so others won’t have to.
The spirit of those Bastogne fighters lives on today, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Bosnia, and on countless posts and bases and ships around the globe. I am grateful for that, and for those who have picked up the challenge, and are fighting on my behalf, and on behalf of freedom-loving people everywhere.
One time at my dad’s VFW post, I was talking to an old veteran sitting next to Dad, and the conversation of wars came up. We established that I had missed all of our wars, even during my active duty time. Then I asked him what he had seen. I knew he was most likely a WWII vet, simply because of his age.
“I was in the Battle of the Bulge,” he said to me.
And civilian though I was, I snapped to attention, and saluted him, as with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, I thanked him for protecting our country and theirs.
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Update: I’m thinking I might have meant Kosovo rather than Bosnia, in that 4th paragraph from the end. Or are we still in both countries?
And here’s a photo of Dinant, on the River Meuse.
Another update, to correct the name of the page where I found the links, and the gender of the author there. *embarassed smile*
