WWII in the Ardennes - Day 2
May. 19th, 2024 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smallhobbitAt our first stop we found a small building open with a display of paintings by Marie-Elise Meyers, a painting from Bastogne, who recalls the events of the Battle of the Bulge and sends out a plea for peace.
The penultimate paragraph of the letter, written by a German officer on 25 December 1944 says: Life is given us to love and esteem one another (my translation)
And it wasn't just the Allies who died, this is the German cemetery in Recogne
We went to Bastogne and visited a museum, which before the war had been a headquarters for the Belgian army. There were many different tableaux showing both life in the town and for the soldiers. In addition in the basement there was one room which was set up to give an idea of what it would have been like under air bombardment - pitch black, extremely loud, and had I not known that when it finished I would be walking out and into daylight and that I was quite safe, would have been quite terrifying.
Outside Bastogne there is a memorial to two Belgian nurses who had volunteered to help with the wounded American soldiers. One died in an air attack, the other, in a different building, survived.
We finished near the village of Foy, where there is a memorial to Easy Company (made famous by Band of Brothers)
Daughter in a shallow foxhole in Bois Jacques
The penultimate paragraph of the letter, written by a German officer on 25 December 1944 says: Life is given us to love and esteem one another (my translation)
And it wasn't just the Allies who died, this is the German cemetery in Recogne
We went to Bastogne and visited a museum, which before the war had been a headquarters for the Belgian army. There were many different tableaux showing both life in the town and for the soldiers. In addition in the basement there was one room which was set up to give an idea of what it would have been like under air bombardment - pitch black, extremely loud, and had I not known that when it finished I would be walking out and into daylight and that I was quite safe, would have been quite terrifying.
Outside Bastogne there is a memorial to two Belgian nurses who had volunteered to help with the wounded American soldiers. One died in an air attack, the other, in a different building, survived.
We finished near the village of Foy, where there is a memorial to Easy Company (made famous by Band of Brothers)
Daughter in a shallow foxhole in Bois Jacques
