So very quickly, before I tell you about the crazy day we had yesterday, I need to tell you about one other place we saw the day before that I forgot to mention. On the way to the site of the Malmedy Massacre, we stopped off at another small memorial for eight American soldiers who were executed by the Germans. Yes, another set of cold-blooded murders.
It was at a town called Ligneuville, and eight American POWS were executed off the side of the road by the same Panzer division that perpetrataed the Malmedy Massacre. Joachim Peiper's group committed all the atrocities that occurred during December in this same area of the Battle of the Bulge. They were responsible for killing civilians as well as POWs. This is the memorial put up by the local community at Lingueville. It's just so beautiful to see all the commemorative things that small towns have put in place for the slain Allied soldiers across Normandy and Belgium.
(FYI - I'm writing all of this while we're in the car driving to Verdun today. We'll be in Verdun for three nights.)
OK, so now let's move on to yesterday's craziness! I think both Tammy and I can truthfully say that yesterday's adventure wasn't like anything we've done before in all of our traveling. We literally spent all day driving around the gigantic Ardennes Forest, following narrow dirt roads only wide enough for one car, looking for three memorials that are out in the middle of nowhere, trying not to be run over by crazy Belgian drivers, and trying not to run over the hundreds of bicyclists that were out on the roads yesterday, and on top of all of that . . . having our GPS lose its mind a little bit! (We had to switch to a different GPS unit when we got into Belgium last week, and Tammy has named her Agnes. She thinks that name fits someone who's a little temperamental! Sorry grandma!) :-) It was a little crazy and a lot stressful, but we succeeded in finding all the spots we wanted to see and not getting ourselves or anyone else killed! Great big kudos to Tammy for being such an amazing driver! (Mom, aren't glad you didn't know about these dangers ahead of time?!) :-)
So where to start . . . we headed off yesterday morning to find a little town called La Roche. This was not on our itinerary, but we had a spontaneous idea to go there after seeing the ruins of a castle on a postcard for La Roche. So we programmed Agnes and started up into the mountains. We were driving down into canyons and up over ridges, through dark tree tunnels, and on narrow, winding roads that were so tightly curving that I couldn't even type as Tammy drove. I never get motion sick, but I felt close to it all day yesterday. The forest was absolutely beautiful, but it was so dense and so close to the road that we often weren't able to see sky or grass until we'd randomly open up onto a clearing where there was some small town with about 20 houses. We'd drive through that and then back into the forest until we hit the next small town a few miles down the road. It was just a little too eerie for me. Some of you are probably thinking that it sounds cool, but I'm really not much of an outdoorsy girl! I'm a city girl, through and through. All I could think of was the car breaking down and us being stranded in the middle of the Deliverance movie! (Cue the banjos playing in the background!) :-) OK, a little extreme, I know, but you get my point. It was just too much nature and not enough civiliazation for me!
Also, we ran into this problem of the GPS, Agnes, trying to send us off through fields and woods on nothing more than a dirt path just wide enough for a motorcycle. Agnes literally told us a few times to turn on "the road"! These little dirt trails didn't even have names! Several times Tammy just refused to do what she said, and we just continued down the wider, paved road while the GPS spent its time "recalculating"! Agnes was not happy with us, and the feeling was definitely mutual! :-)
So anyway, we finally got to La Roche and found a teeny, tiny town full of people everywhere! Turns out they were having some sort of flower festival (at least we think that's what it was after we sort of read a few signs in French), and we showed up right before the big parade was supposed to start. So we were stuck! We couldn't get up to the castle, we could barely get through town and out the other side. And to top it all off, it was a Saturday, and it seems Saturday is the day that every man in this country puts on his little spandex Tour de France biking suit, jumps on his bicycle with about 20 of his buddies, and rides down every curvy one lane road in the forest! Over the course of the day, we seriously got stuck behind about ten big groups of 15+ bikers and probably 30-40 individual bikers spread out all over. It was so frustrating and dangerous. The roads were so curvy and tight that it took forever to find a straight away to pass each of them. And let me tell you, in Belgium, bikers rule the road! There was no way they were going to squeeze over to the edge of the road or go single file instead of three abreast to let a car pass. I thought the few bikers we have in Wenatchee are sometimes annoying, but I will never complain about them again. They are angels compared to these guys! (My apologies to any of you bike-loving people out there reading this!) :-)
So La Roche was a bust, we were trapped in biker hell, but we headed off to find the first memorial we wanted to see. It was about another hour away near St. Vith, and I'm so glad we toughed it out and found this place. It was so touching to be there. The small memorial is for a soldier named Eric Fisher Wood. He was an American officer who, rather than surrender to the Germans like the other men in his company, escaped into the forest and began to wage a guerrilla war against German patrols in the area.
This went on for weeks, until the end of Jan. 1944 when he was found dead, surrounded by eight dead German soldiers. (It reminds me of the scene in the first Lord of the Rings movie when Boromir is fighting off the orcs single handedly to allow Frodo and Sam time to escape. Aragorn finds him dying but with the bodies of numerous orcs strewn around him.) Local villagers erected this memorial to Eric after the war. It's so tragic, but the story is mythical in nature! It's just amazing to read about how he did this. He seems larger than life somehow! (You can read the full story about him at this website: http://www.in-honored-glory.info/html/stories/ifwood.htm. It's really long, but it's beautifully told and absolutely worth reading.)
Next up was a town called Wereth to see a memorial to the Wereth 11, a group of African American soldiers who were murdered by members of the SS. This is another story of a massacre that took place completely outside the bounds of an actual battle. It is so sad and terrible, and it touched our hearts to see that there was a memorial to these men so they wouldn't be forgotten. The picture to the right is of the little hill the memorial is on.
This is what the memorial plaque says, "On Dec. 17, 1944 the German counter-offensive started, and the American soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion received the order to move to an alternate position. During the process, they came under attack and had to retreat on foot. 27 soldiers and one doctor succeeded in reaching the objective, but 11 African-Americans were separated from the rest of the group. After spending several hours in the woods of eastern Belgium, they arrived at the farm of Mathias Langer. They were exhausted, starving and wet. They rested and ate food offered by Maria Langer." (I found other info. that said Mathias Langer had also harbored Jews and fleeing German defectors at other times during the war. What a good man!)
"While they were eating, members of the SS arrived. These American soldiers, hands up, were lined up in front of the house and then forced to sit on the wet ground. When Mathias Langer suggested to the SS the shelter of his shed, one answered: 'They'll warm up when they run in front of our vehicle.'" (Now you already know that this ends tragically for the black soldiers, but can you also just imagine the danger that Mathias and his family were in for having helped these soldiers? It's amazing that people found the strength to do such good things in these types of situations.)
"A short time later, the SS went back to their vehicle and had the Americans run in front of them and took them to a trail, about 70 meters from the road. There, the 11 soldiers were savagely massacred. Because of the on-going fighting and the heavy snowfall, their bodies weren't discovered and taken until February 1945 by the U.S. Infantry. Autopsies revealed the victims' agony. Several of them had multiple wounds, including head wounds and bullet and bayonet wounds." (A website I read said the autopsies revealed torture: missing fingers, broken legs, skull fractures, etc. They weren't just lined up and executed quickly.)
"The fighting continued in the area. In fact, Mathias' sons Herman and Leo, and two daughters were wounded by a bomb dropped from a plane. For the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, the son, Herman Langer and some of his relatives erected a simple stone cross at the edge of their field where the 11 black soldiers were massacred. In 2002, a non-profit organization was created in order to acquire the land where the massacre was perpetrated to integrate the cross into a new memorial dedicated not only to the 11 men who were killed, but also for all the African-Americans who participated in the turmoil of WWII." They actually flew some of the surviving family members over for the ceremony. I think there's a youtube video of this moment but I'm in the car typing so I don't have the wireless to find it.
This is such a tragic story, and one that for African Americans, has sadly been repeated many times over ever since the time of slavery. It has always been so disturbing to read about the lynchings and violence against African Americans in the post-Civil War years when the KKK was surging, but it seems somehow more tragic here since these men were in the service of their country when this horrible violence happened. This was a hard memorial to visit because of the emotion it elicited, but it was an honor to stand here and remember these young men (as well as the honorable Mathias Langer who helped them at considerable risk to himself and his family).
After Wereth we were off to find a little town called Lanzerath, again, up in the middle of the mountains and forest. Lanzerath was only about an hour away, but it was very difficult to find the little memorial even after we found the town. GPS Agnes was very upset with our request to find these particular coordinates, and she did NOT have good directions for us! :-) She kept telling us to "go off-road"! Not a good suggestion for two girls in a rental car in a foreign country! :-) Luckily, we were able to see the American flag flying up on this little rise (in picture to the left), and we found the dirt road ourselves, without Agnes's help! :-)
This small monument is set at the place where the first contact was made between American and German forces at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. A small American company delayed the advance of the Germans for a whole day, significantly disrupting the initial German push through Allied lines. This gave the rest of the Americans in the Ardennes time to regroup and prepare for the final German surge.
This is the narrow gravel road that the memorial was located on. It was in the middle of someone's farmland near this beautiful little town out in the vast forest. It's really amazing to find all these small markers out in the middle of nowhere and to know that many tourists probably never even know they are there.
By the time we found this last memorial it was about 3:00 in the afternoon, but we spontaneously decided to drive a little further to the German border and see a stretch of the Siegfried Line that's close to the highway. The Siegfried Line was a series of barriers and bunkers erected by the Germans to protect their western border. (They called it the Westwall.) Part of these barriers included the "dragon's teeth," which were tank obstacles to prevent the Allies from crossing open borders. These dragon's teeth are triangular concrete blocks; part of the blocks are buried deep in the earth, and then there's about two to three feet of each concrete triangle that extends up above the ground to stop tanks from rolling through.
The "teeth" were very difficult to remove after the war, and it was cost-prohibitive for the government to deal with it. Some individuals or businesses have removed parts that infringed on their property, but a large portion of the line is still intact. We saw a section near Losheim. (Coincidentally, the Losheim Gap was where the Germans pushed "the bulge" through Allied lines. This gap wasn't well defended because the Allied units were spread very thin through this area.)
Seeing these remains of the "dragon's teeth" was as cool to me as seeing the remains of old abbeys in France. It's just amazing to pull off the road and discover these well preserved concrete obstacles from WWII. We absolutely loved it! The teeth were overgrown with trees and foliage from the last 70 years, so we couldn't really get in and explore very much, but we got enough of a look to be satisfied. This was a great impromptu stop! (FYI - I know I haven't included many pictures of either of us in the blog, but have you noticed the few pictures of me are always in this aqua rain jacket? I'm so glad I brought it because I've worn it every single day except two. Our tour guide at the next stop mentioned that the last three summers have been Belgium's wettest ever! Lucky us! I much prefer this cool drizzle to overwhelming heat.)
At this point we were pretty tired of driving, so we stopped just across the border near Losheim to stretch our legs. We had coffee at this cute little cafe called The Old Smuggler where the German ladies spoke absolutely no English and where all the pastries in the case looked definitively German instead of French or Belgian! Even if we hadn't seen the sign that told us we'd crossed the German border, we would've known because for the last several miles in Belgium all the towns had German names and the houses looked German instead of French. (We felt like we were driving through Leavenworth in many places!)
These were the two signs in front of the cafe because the parking lot straddled the border. Cool, huh?!
After this we had to get all the way back to Bastogne, about two hours away, and let me just say that Agnes had lost her mind at this point! She was certain we needed to 4-wheel across cow pastures that had no clear cut roads, and she really got us lost in a little town called Aldringen. There were so many switchbacks and tiny dead end roads in this area that she seemed to have no clue where we were! We just kept trying to follow the widest paved road possible until she finally kicked in and started giving us safe directions! We'd had enough backroad adventures all day long that by this point we were ready to swear off sightseeing! :-)
So that was our long and crazy day! It might not seem crazy when you read this, but trust me when I say that we were mentally drained from the driving by the time we got back to the hotel. But it all turned out ok, and we made it back safely! :-) Today is a new day and we're leaving Belgium, crossing a tiny corner of Luxembourg, and heading back into France to see a portion of the Maginot Line. I can't wait! (Plus, since we're heading back into France, we can switch back to Emma, our other GPS. We like her a lot better!) :-)
The Maginot Line is a long line of defensive systems (bunkers, gun emplacements, and other fortifications) that the French put in place after WWI to prevent another German Invasion. It runs from northern Africa and up along the French borders with Italy and Germany. However, they did not build the line along their border with Belgium because they were allies. Sadly, the Maginot Line didn't work at all since Hitler marched right into France through Belgium. In fact, the commander of the part of the line we're visiting received a phone call from Paris in June 1940 telling him to surrender the fort to the Germans because Paris had just surrendered. The men at the fort hadn't even seen any Germans because the invasion was through Belgium!
There are several parts of the Maginot Line that are open to tourists; other parts are on private property, some sections have been dismantled, and some have just deteriorated to the point where they're too dangerous and had to be sealed off. We're going to a section called Fort Hackenburg that is maintained by a private organization, and they give regular tours. I believe it's the largest of the Maginot forts, and this section was the most heavily fortified of the whole line. The tour is going to take about two to three hours because there are so many parts to see (kitchen, living quarters, a power plant, guns, etc.) . . . It's now three hours later; we just finished the tour and it was so fantastic! I know most people would probably not be excited about taking a 2.5 hour underground tour of a 70 year old cement fort, but we LOVED it!
Our tour guide was from Luxembourg and he was in charge of the English tour. (They also have French and German tours.) His real job is as a professor of American Literature at Luxembourg University, and he just does this for a few hours every weekend. He was talking to us about Spokane and the Native American author, Sherman Alexie who's from there. I guess that's one of his favorite authors to teach at the moment. That's so interesting! Out of all the American literature to choose from, I wouldn't put Sherman Alexie at the top. But he said that Native American culture, literature, etc. is very popular in Europe. Really interesting to two English teachers!
So anyway, I took tons of notes on my iPhone as he was taking us on the tour and I'm going to tell you about a lot of it. If you get bored, just skip through the info and look at the pics! Although, the pics are not going to show you how cool this was! We were in tunnels almost the entire time and they'll probably all look the same to you in the pictures. In some places they have mannequins and authentic supplies, weapons, etc. set up, so there are a few pics of those scenes as well
OK, these are some of my notes . . . These bunkers and gun emplacements occur about every five to six kilometers. They are not connected, though. Each series of tunnels, bunkers, guns is a stand-alone fort. They had learned lessons about German artillery from WWI and that's why almost all of these are built underground. Only a small part, like you see here, is above ground. Everything else is underneath the hills. Each fort was built to be totally self-sufficient for two to three months in case of a surprise attack and seige by the Germans. That means every fort was stocked with enough food, water, ammo, etc. for at least two months. This particular fort housed 1070 men - about 150 officers and a little more than 900 soldiers. Because each fort was self-sufficient, each one had barracks, kitchens, a power plant, fighting blocks (artillery emplacements), etc. They were huge networks of underground tunnels, train tracks, rooms, etc. the walls are armored reinforced concrete of at least 3.5 meters. It's just amazing!
There were 75,000 shells (ammunition) in this fort alone at any given time. Because of all the ammunition, there were tons of safety precautions taken within the shelter. All supplemental pieces were made of wood if possible to prevent sparks from metal. Only artillery officers were allowed in the tunnels and rooms near the shells. No one else could even come close. The little train they used to transport things wasn't allowed in the tunnel close to the ammunition because of the sparks from the electric wire it ran on. In case the ammuniton exploded, there were smoke detectors, and the very first indoor sprinkler system in France was installed here - way back in the late 20s and early 30s. Isn't that cool? All the tunnels were designed so that if there was an explosion when the main doors were open, the fire would follow the large tunnel out to the main entrance and not down the side tunnels to where the soldiers were. If the explosion happened when the main doors were closed, then there were special doors installed between the ammunition tunnels and the barracks that would close automatically as the fire rushed down towards the barracks.
There were two kitchens here - one for the officers and one for the regular soldiers. All the men got as much wine (because this is France) as they wanted, but they had to pay for it themselves. The officers also had waiter service in their dining areas with their fancy food. But the 900+ regular soldiers had trains that brought them basic cafeteria style food, and then they had to find a place to eat on their own (usually their bunks). Every soldier was given 1/4 pint of rum every morning. He could drink it himself to keep warm, or trade it for other things.
Soldiers and tunnels had to be kept impeccably clean to prevent epidemics. The commanding officer was a stickler about this, and they scrubbed everything regularly. The soldiers were stationed here in two month shifts, originally without being able to go outside in the fresh air at all. But then they started seeing the men get "concrete illness" - basically a type of depression from being trapped underground 24 hours a day for two months. So then they changed things and required every man to work outside for three hours a day building the exterior defenses, camoflaging the tops of bunkers, etc. And they also added in four days off a month where the men could leave the bunkers completely. Can you imagine only a few hours a month out in the fresh air? Wow!
There were only 300 beds for the 900+ soldiers, which meant that each bed was shared by three men on a rotating basis. Each man's day was divided into three shifts. Eight hours of work, eight hours of "free time" and eight hours to sleep in the bunk. The free time hours are the ones that caused the depression because there was nothing for them to do except maybe play cards. Eventually the commander figured out that he needed to provide some entertainment. He imported the first Monopoly games for them to play, and he brought movie reels in from the neighboring town and projected films on the walls of a cement alcove. Snow White was the most popular movie. It played for three months straight at one point. It had just come out and the average age of the soldier here was only 19, and they LOVED it! Isn't that just awesome! Can you imagine our 19 year olds today watching Snow White? Not! :-)
The in-house power plant housed four engines (the big kind like on ships) that worked around the clock to produce enough power to run the lights, air system, etc. This plant could produce power for two months even if the Germans found and cut the external power lines.
When the fort was handed over to the Germans in 1940, they converted it from a military defense system to a factory that produced tank parts. This operated until Patton's army got here in Oct. 1944. Then the Germans evacuated and left only 50 men at the fort to hold off Patton. When they could no longer defend it, the 50 men detonated some explosives to destroy part of it and then they fled back into Germany.
After WWI ended, these Maginot forts were used until the mid 1960s in defense against an attack by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But when France pulled out of NATO in the 1960s, NATO pulled its funding of the forts and France started selling them off to the highest bidder. Some of the small forts were bought by private buyers, and some of the larger ones were sold to towns and cities.
Whew! So that's most of what we learned about the Maginot Line today! We were totally fascinated, and I hope you found some of it interesting as well!
We're now at our B&B outside Verdun, and it's beautiful! However, there's no Wi-Fi or cell service so it looks like I'll be posting from McDonald's every evening! Fun, fun! :-) We start exploring the battlefields of Verdun tomorrow. I can't wait!
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