Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge
The driving rain that greeted us when we arrived in Bastogne, Belgium did nothing to obscure the kind welcome we received there. The identity of this city has been shaped by the suffering they endured in the winter of 1944, when Hitler’s army pressed through the Ardennes, encircling the city and the Allied troops there to defend it. This is the site of the Battle of the Bulge and the courage the Americans showed in helping free Bastogne from the Nazi grip is still honored today. When shopkeepers and waitstaff learn you’re an American, they smile with a particular warmth and let you know they’re glad you’ve come.
US Army Sherman tank in McAuliffe Square, Bastogne, Belgium. Note the Liberation Route marker in the foreground.
In the center of Bastogne, you might be surprised to find McAuliffe Square, named for American General Anthony McAuliffe. In December 1944, the Brigadier General was in command while Major General Maxwell Taylor was back in the States for a conference. McAuliffe received a demand from the German commander, General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, that he surrender, given that his soldiers were surrounded. The Allied troops needed ammunition. They were hungry and cold, the US Army Air Corps unable to resupply them because of weather. Yet, McAullife offered this reply to the German’s demand: “Nuts!”
His response earned him wide approbation from his men and today, a bronze statue of him sits on the town square. Restaurants nearby offer a variety nut-themed items in homage to his resolve. Souvenir shops that line the main thoroughfare sell shirts, hats, signs, playing cards, bandanas, and other knickknacks with “Nuts! proudly inscribed.
There is almost too much to see in this Low Country hamlet, where Hitler’s forces made their last, brutal push to fend off the Allied advance. There are two stunning museums you’ll want to carve out plenty of time to visit. The 101st Airborne Museum offers displays, personal accounts, and artifacts of the paratroopers who fought here. The battle map located on the museum’s main floor starkly illustrates the dire position the Allies found themselves in that cold December. That black ring you see looks something like a big-city highway bypass. But it’s actually the front they were deployed to defend.
The Bastogne War Museum offers incredibly jarring and realistic simulations. A variety of exhibits place visitors amid the danger and disruption the townspeople endured during the relentless bombing, the harrowing days and nights they were forced to endure in their dark cellars. A separate site, The Bastogne War Rooms, offers a step-by-step recounting of General McAuliffe’s infamous interaction with his German counterpart.
Outside Bastogne lies the Bois Jacques, the pine tree farm where Easy Company paratroopers withstood the siege. Still visible today are the foxholes they scrambled into when German mortar fire shredded and felled the immense trees around them. Make sure you tour the battlefield with an experienced guide so you can differentiate the authentic foxholes from those dug by re-enactors in more recent years.
An Easy Company fox hole, 80 years later.
The Bois Jacques, or “Jack’s Woods” remains a working forest, having been replanted and harvested for timber several times since the war. The forest overlooks the town of Foy, Easy Company’s next objective.
Episode Six of Band of Brothers is perhaps the most wrenching in the series, as we follow medics and nurses in Bastogne, tending to the wounded without the supplies they need, unable to evacuate them to a proper field hospital. In the town cemetery are the graves of two of those nurses, where they are remembered every day as visitors leave candles, flowers and other keepsakes. Nurse Renee Lemaire was killed inside a makeshift hospital in bombing on Christmas Eve 1944. She was thirty years old. In the miniseries, she’s identified by the light blue bandana she wears. Congolese nurse Augusta Chiwy, who is also depicted in the series, had traveled from Africa to serve. She was fortunate to survive the war and lived into old age in Bastogne.
A final note: This building, with its curved stone entranceway, is just down the street from the 101st Airborne Museum. Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, installed his HQ here after the successful Nazi invasion of France and the Low Countries. He’s the officer who issued the “Halt Order” that led to the miracle evacuation at Dunkirk. Above, Hitler pays a visit to Von Rundstedt, who was with him in Poland in 1939, and whom he later sends to the Russian front. Hitler goes on to dismiss von Runstedt after the German failure at Normandy. The Generalfeldmarschall was later charged with war crimes.
We’ll soon make our final stop with the Band of Brothers: The Eagle’s Nest—Hitler’s Tea Room where the Führer gazed at a breathtaking Alpine vista even as he laid laid his ruinous plans for Germany.
