Still on days 15-18th of my Excellent Adventure

Ken told us a story of the Leger Family I’m probably not spelling it correctly, but a lot of Bulge fighting was in the winter and in the small town 10 black soldiers came to knock at their door and beg for food and just to warm up, this was a German family. Their neighbor informed on the Leger Family and the Nazis came and took the 10 black soldiers away and put them in the field beside the house. They were told to run in front of the German trucks and as they ran for their lives they were mowed down.

Here is a memorial to them.

Ken was telling us a story about one of his helpers, a guy named Roland, who was at school as a kid and in the school walked a policeman and the principal and said to the kids open your desks and you’ll remember they the kind of desk that the top lifted up and inside the desk were all kinds of armaments that the kids had picked up when they go out of school and they traded these things as like playing cards today. Grenades, knives, shells and of course were all confiscated, but that was a thing that kids did in the 40s.

Forgot to include this picture of a gun at the war memorial

We stopped at a Museum filled, beyond filled with everything that mostly was left on the battlefields.

Probably this is the saddest sight so far on the trip. This is right in the middle of the Ardennes forest. Called Schumannseck one of the bloodiest battles of WW2 in Luxembourg. December 1944. US forces from the 26th Infantry. Close combat artillery bombardments and freezing winter. The Americans had to halt the German advance and trying to push them back to the Sigfrid line. It went on for weeks and there was hardly any movement so many dead thousands on both sides.

We walked through the forest there wasn’t a bird singing. It was eerie silent, and nobody said anything to anybody else. There was no chatting at this site by us. Pictures here that show the Fox holes that the American hid in. People fleeing for their lives into the forest bunkers built by Americans. Thousands of soldiers were lost there

It really is a place of remembrance for the suffering of our soldiers

General Anthony McAuliffe earned a spot in history when the Germans asked him to surrender and the Siege of Bastogne he said only one word the the Germans NUTS.

I can’t tell you how revered and loved the Americans and Canadians soldiers were received, especially in Luxembourg. There are statues everywhere. This was in behind our hotel. On the side of the hotel facing this statue of a soldier.

One of the craziest things is that SOB I mentioned earlier he, in order to try and cross MasRiver . He sent scouts ahead and the scout told him not to turn left to turn right cause the Americans had blown up the bridge. This part of the war was trying to get over the bridges to Antwerp. The Americans would blow part of the bridge up and the Germans would fix it at night the Americans would blow up another bridge and the Germans would try and put it back together. The German tanks took 1 gallon of gas for every half.

So this SOB took his troops of about 4800 men 600 armed vehicle armored vehicles and went down these winding twisting roads that would hold maybe a car and a half and this is of course in the winter so there was there was nowhere to maneuver and yet these German soldiers were able to take this King Tiger 2t down these crazy roads.

Here is a King tank. Look at its size.