Europe by van day 32

Today we toured some of the Ardennes WW2 sites. We turned right at the crossroads at Foy and our first stop was at the memorial to Easy Company, after which we paid €38 plus €5 to park at the war museum at Bastogne. There was a huge monument, erected in 1950, depicting all the US states but access was denied, as it is awaiting repair which the US government has agreed to do sometime. The museum itself was a waste of money. They had masses of stuff from tanks to diaries but the lighting was so low it was difficult to see. My headset stopped working but the commentary was really geared for children or maybe people who had not heard of WW2. It was that basic. There was one picture of some black soldiers who had been part of this. C P Moore wrote in his book, Fighting for America: Black Soldiers—The Unsung Heroes of World War II, “Black Americans carrying weapons, either as infantry, tank corps, or as pilots, was simply an unthinkable notion…More acceptable to southern politicians and much of the military command was the use of black soldiers in support positions, as noncombatants or labourers”. They were fighting for democracy in Europe but did not have it at home.

However our ticket did gain us access to a fenced off area of the woods between Bastogne and Foy where E company had endured weeks of freezing conditions with little proper clothing or ammunition as they were surrounded and the weather was too foggy to get any provisions airdropped. We entered by a turnstile and could walk in the forest and look at the foxholes used by E company. That was much more effective for empathy than the museum.

We ate a sandwich then went back over the Foy crossroads to see the huge German cemetery with so many unknown soldiers buried there. Further up the road was a plaque indicating where the US soldiers had been buried before either being removed to USA or Luxembourg.

One thing we didn’t know about till we saw it on google maps was a memorial to the Native American soldiers. We headed there next but the road was private so we left the van to walk. Apart from the memorial there were a lot of ribbons and dream-catchers tied to nearby trees. Interestingly, and perhaps fittingly, in the nearby fields were herds of bison.

We searched for a free P4N within striking distance for tomorrow’s ferry from IJmuiden and found one at a water park just near the Dutch border. Nearby is another lake feature shut behind the gated gulag that is Center Parcs.

We are sitting in the sun finishing off our last gin and tonic. This trip has been eventful and not always in a good way, certainly for a week of it. Maybe we were too ambitious in our expectations of what could be seen. On the other hand, had we not had the accident we’d have been on track for more of Serbia and Croatia. Also we seemed to have a bit too much time in the north at the end. We made the most of that by spending time in Trier and exploring today’s WW2 sites. The Battle of the Bulge is as far in time for someone born today as the Austro-Prussian war and the US civil war is to me! There’s a thought I’ll leave you with.

This collage shows clockwise from top left -
Memorial to Easy Company, German cemetery, an Easy company foxhole in the Bastogne forest, memorial to Native American soldiers, and a bison from the nearby field.