Charles Cassells contacted me because he had seen my various posts and the article about GIs in Brussels, and he had his own research he wanted to share.
I was very excited about this. Charles has been digging into the traces of the US 6th Armored Division. After a very long tour from Normandy, Brittany, through France, the Ardennes, Alsace and Germany, the troops visited Brussels for R&R.
One of the leave centers they visited was the George-Henri Club. This was the Royal Institute for the deaf and blind, very close to where Charles used to live in Brussels. The archivist from the Brothers of Charity confirmed this and were kind to send some photographs. The building on avenue Georges Henri, place de Groof, has not changed a lot, but the Brothers are no longer there.
A bit of an unfamiliar theatre of the Battle of the Bulge is the area of Saint-Vith, right near the German border. As I needed to be in Gouvy, which is nearby, I decided to do a small battlefield tour, tracing the path of the 106th.
The 106th Infantry Division – the “Golden Lions” – were an inexperienced unit who had just arrived in the Schnee-Eiffel and Sain-Vith area at the German border, relieving the 2nd Infantry Division.
What soon followed is one of the most heroic delaying actions by American forces in the Bulge. Two regiments were soon surrounded at Schönberg and had to surrender. This was the second largest Allied surrender in the whole of the ETO: 4.000 men (of whom 200 would die in captivity).
The remaining force dug in at the Prümerberg, just East of Saint-Vith, and successfully held up the Germans for a few more days. Until they too risked being surrounded and were forced to withdraw in the direction of Vielsalm.
Only on 23 January 1945 did the Allies manage to recapture the town, after the so-called “Second battle of Saint-Vith”. The town was completely in ruins, which is why and then-and-now comparison photos are impossible.
That’s the really short version. I won’t attempt to go into all the details here. Below, I have listed some websites that have been helpful in preparing my visit.
The East Cantons of Belgium are the most beautiful and quiet parts of the country. You won’t meet nearly as many tourists as around Bastogne, Houffalize, Vielsalm, etc. One of the sources I found was a university paper of a land survey conducted at the Prümerberg site in 2008. Sadly, now 17 years later, the prediction of the academics that the traces would quickly disappear due to mechanized forestry proved to have come true. You can still clearly see a pockmarked forest with many dips, but they are generally quite shallow. Still, walking the ground will always give you a better appreciation of the battlefield you are studying.
Photos are from top to bottom: Monument US POW’s 106th Infantry Division – Schönberg, Memorial 168th Engineer Combat Battalion – Saint-Vith, Memorial Lt. Eric Fisher Wood – Meyerode, Memorial 106th Infantry Division – Saint-Vith – TracesOfWar.com, Memorial 2nd Infantry Division – Sankt Vith, plaques at the park at the Pulverstrasse in Saint-Vith, and craftsman-made monument at Burg Reuland.
I finally finished the first volume of the Battle of the Bulge series from Stackpole that I bought in June.
After a tour of the Northern flank of the Bulge in May 2024, I wanted to learn more about this part of the battle. The Losheim Gap is actually where the main thrust of the German force occurred. It is here that the ‘Battle Babies’ from the 99th Infantry Division, and also the 2nd Infantry Division held the American defensive line against the Kampfgruppe Peiper, with the 1st and 12th SS Panzer Divisions.
In this book, the author Hans Wijers goes into incredible detail about the events that lead up to the initial German invasion of the 16th of December 1944, and what’s really only a few days until the panzer armies were stopped. But these were days of hard fighting by inexperienced troops. They fought valiantly in the bitter cold and against a much stronger enemy. Thanks to them, the Germans were held up long enough, and prevented from reaching their objective of the Meuse river. Reinforcements would finally arrive, and the battle was to last for more than another month until the Germans had surrendered, died or retreated.
Operation Greif is explained in more detail and personal accounts than I have yet read in other books. The confusion of running into enemy troops wearing American uniforms, speaking English, and driving American jeeps and Sherman tanks had a profound effect on the course of the battle. The scale of the operation was widely exaggerated, as one could no longer be sure of who was a real GI.
The role of the German Fallschirmjäger and Operation Stösser are explained well, which is an aspect of the battle that really speaks to ones imagination.
I enjoyed this book. It has everything you would want to know about this under-credited part of the battle, but it’s a bit hard to follow. The maps are tiny and scant. I actually bought another book in Dutch about the Battle of the Bulge that has good color maps of how the battle evolved.
Next up: Vol. 2: Hell at Bütgenbach / Seize the Bridges
I received a signed copy of this book as a gift from a friend. The author Michel Reins is his colleague.
The book is in French, so a bit more difficult for me than English, but I am very glad now to have read it during the Christmas holidays.
Márton Angeli, the main character of the book, is a Hungarian boy from Veszprém who is lifted from the streets in his home town and drafted into the Wehrmacht. After basic training, he ends up at the front in the South of Holland, near Venlo, facing British and Canadian troops.
He has a very hard time of it, and looses a number of his comrades, but he survives and ends up as a POW in Belgium. After the war, German soldiers get to return to their country, but Márton is warned by his mother that he cannot return home because the Soviets have occupied Hungary, and that they send anyone who served in the German army to the gulag or a firing squad.
So he ends up staying in Belgium, working in the coal mines near Charleroi. Márton actually existed and experienced most of what happens in the book, but it’s a novel, not a diary or history book.
The book is very well written, and captivating. You can really see yourself in his shoes.
This one was sent to me in by Eileen Flohr. Her dad sent it to his mother (her grandmother) before he was married in 1960. So it’s postwar, but I thought it would be nice to included it, as it’s in the same style as the other ones. Variations of these pillow covers keep turning up.
It features a flying boat with paratroopers jumping from its tail gate. Very cool.
Thanks everyone for sending me pictures of new variations.
Saturday, I visited Bastogne and Manhay in the Ardennes, for the commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.
We arrived in Gouvy the night before. The B&B was great and our hosts were really friendly. The nearby restaurant at the Brasserie Lupulus serves delicious beers with steak and fries.
When we left for Bastogne in the morning, it had just started snowing. This would make for great pictures!
We were lucky to find a parking spot at the Bastogne Barracks lot. Tanks and other vehicles and reenactors were everywhere. The German group with the horse-drawn “Gulashkanon” field kitchen sure deserved the prize for the most elaborate display, but the others were great too. GIs from all over Europe had come to Bastogne to fraternize. The big attention grabber was the Tiger II tank from Saumur, the only one still driving. A unique experience.
In the afternoon, we drove on to Manhay, where many vehicles and reenactors had also gathered. The fields behind the MHM44 museum had been taken over by tanks, and even a Bailey bridge had been put up. The tank from “Fury” was the star of the show.
There were a lot of paratroopers, of course, but many reenactors also went for something different. A good time was had by all.
Actually, it was new last December. When I last visited the cemetery in November 2023, the building was finished, but it hadn’t been officially opened yet. That happened last year in December.
The cemetery itself is always worth a visit and is one of the most beautifully landscaped I have ever seen.
At the Visitor Center, the exhibition goes all around and at the center, there’s a small cinema. The displays around it show the various theatres of war where soldiers buried in Margraten were killed: the air war, Market Garden, Hürtgen Forest, the Bulge, Germany…
The texts and photos are really interesting. Not too long and not too short. The display cases are very nice and modern, but the items on display are often replicas, which I think is a pity for such a prestigious new building. A replica paratrooper helmet, even replica ration boxes and sweets. Surely, it wouldn’t break the bank to procure original items, and they would be very well protected here.
There certainly are some very interesting original period artefacts too, such as a pilot helmet display, parts of a glider, a tank commander’s M43 jacket etc.
Last weekend, I visited Valkenburg to hand over a gift of 9th Army secret maps and documents to the curator of the exhibition ‘Through Their Eyes’. I first visited the exhibit at Museum Valkenburg at the end of September. It is really well put together, with many large-size period photographs on the walls and artifacts from collectors in the area.
I bought this 9th Army lot 15 years ago, because it was from the area where I grew up. But it has remained in a box, as it didn’t really fit with the rest of my collection. After talking to David Loozen, the curator of the exhibition, I decided to offer the items on permanent loan. Hopefully, this exhibition will become permanent, for everyone to enjoy and learn from.
The items came from the 9th Army surgeon. As a member of General Simpson’s staff, he must have been on the circulation list of all these official documents and maps. The documents mostly cover logistics and operational issues and many South Limburg towns are mentioned in them. The 9th stayed in Limburg from October 1944 – March 1945. Other American troops remained in South Limburg until August 1945, and as a result, the region became the most ‘Americanized’ part of the country so their impact on the local community was strong (more on US Embassy website).
This book is a little gem. Not about a paratrooper this time, but about an 18 year old tank gunner at the end of the war. The author Jack Irwin recounts his experience with a tank crew. He arrived in the ETO in August 44, and the story is completely set in March and April 1945, when their unit slugs through Germany, all the way to Dessau near Berlin. The Germans still fight over each little town and Jack quickly learns the reality of combat.
I couldn’t help but see the similarities with the movie ‘Fury‘, which may have been partially based on this book. The author vividly brings to life some of the other crew and unit members, most notably the ever intoxicated tank driver.
At some point, their M4 Sherman is destroyed and their crew is issued the only M26 Super Pershing in the ETO at that time. Like the normal M26, it had the new 90mm cannon, but with a longer barrel. And more importantly, extra frontal armor. This extra protection did save the crew and tank in several engagements in the book.
At 170 pages, it’s a light read, and you will be absorbed by it, and sucked through it in no time. John Irwin is a gifted storyteller. In a short few months between arriving in Germany with no idea of anything, and the German capitulation, the author became a teenage seasoned combat veteran.
Next review: ‘Battle of the Bulge’ volumes 1-3 by Stackpole Books.
The third book on my summer reading list, again about the 82nd Airborne Division. Not the 508th PIR this time, but Division Headquarters. Written by Len Lebenson, who served with the division from the very beginning, but didn’t earn his jump wings until after D-Day. From North Africa, to Sicily, Italy, England, Normandy, Holland, all the way to the Elbe in Germany, we follow his story told from a very different point of view. In his capacity as a typist and draftsman with G-3 (Operations) Lebenson had many encounters with the great leaders of the time, such as generals Gavin, Ridgway and Patton. He was fully ‘bigoted’, so cleared on the operational details, but not a combat soldier like we see in most other books.
I can really recommend this book. Lebenson brings up some interesting details that I hadn’t seen in other books. Such as how after the German capitulation, the high-point men were transferred to the 17th Airborne (they would tear off those Talon patches as soon as they arrived back in the States). Some of them were leaving on a program callled “the Purple Project”. This would take them on a long detour back home via Africa, across the South Atlantic to Brazil and then North to the States.
