After the beautiful, sunny afternoon in Trier on Friday, we woke up to a really chilly, rainy day on Saturday, which was actually perfect for where we were headed. Driving through the very rural Belgium countryside, it wasn't hard to envision soldiers walking the roads some seventy years ago during WWII. Our first stop once we got to the city of Bastogne was the 101st Airborne Museum.
Many residents of Bastogne took shelter in cellars during the the weeks of December 1944 and January 1945 while the Battle of the Bulge raged all around them. We got to experience about 5 minutes of what that might have been like for them when we went into the bomb shelter room in the basement of the museum. We sat in a dimly lit room where we watched, listened, and felt the room shake as bombers flew overhead, bombs exploded, gunfire rang out, and children cried. The noise was deafening and terrifying, to be quite honest. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those people who had to live through it for weeks. It was definitely an eye-opening experience to think about what WWII must have been like for the residents of the towns which saw heavy fighting.
After our time at the Airborne Museum, we headed over to the Bastogne War Museum and Mardasson Memorial, which honors the 76,890 American soldiers who were wounded or killed during the Battle of the Bulge.
Our last stop was honestly the highlight of the day for Don & Austin. Not far from the Bastogne War Museum lies a section of the Ardennes Forest known as the Jacques Woods. This is where Easy Company, 2nd Battalion,
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment led an assault to
capture the town of Foy in January, 1945. Anyone who has read Band of Brothers or seen the series will remember this battle which was fought from foxholes in extreme cold and snow. We had watched the entire series the prior weekend so it would be fresh on our minds. Many of the foxholes dug by those soldiers are still there today, and we set out to find some of them. The weather had been really chilly all day with snow on the ground from previous days, but just as we headed down the road toward the woods, a cold rain began to fall, and it became crystal clear what misery those soldiers must have endured while they were hunched down in their foxholes for weeks in the snow with very little to keep them warm.
These guys weren't called the Greatest Generation for no reason, and I
think it's safe to say that our gratitude for what they endured and
accomplished grew immensely on this cold and rainy afternoon.
