Battle of the Bulge Veterans Honored

Belgium’s King Albert II lays a wreath at Mardasson War Memorial monument in Bastogne, Belgium, Saturday Dec. 18, 2004. Belgium and Luxembourg commemorate the Battle of the Bulge, a last-ditch German offensive on December 16, 1944, which was the bloodiest land battle of WWII involving US troops, who suffered some 80,000 casualties, of which 19,000 were killed.

Once there, they again enjoyed warm applause from crowds lining the main street to the town square and attended a sound and light show and a parade of World War II vehicles.

The day began with a parade of veterans, marching bands, World War II-era jeeps, trucks and ambulances through Bastogne. The vehicles rumbled past the town’s central square, named for Anthony MacAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101st Airborne division, whose paratroopers repulsed repeated attacks.

On Dec. 22, 1944, MacAuliffe was given two hours to surrender by the Germans or face “total annihilation.” His now famous reply: “Nuts!”

A commemorative throwing of nuts was also to take place at the square.

There were guided walks along the defensive perimeter south of Bastogne that was relieved by Patton’s Third Army, which rushed north from France to help defeat the Germans. The battle raged for six-weeks across the Ardennes hills of southern Belgium and Luxembourg, but the market town of 14,000 bore the brunt of the fighting.

“The American veterans who have returned 60 years later to the battle site represent those who gave their lives on our soil so that today we can live free,” Bastogne Mayor Philippe Collard said in French at a memorial honoring U.S. General George S. Patton.

He added in English: “we will never forget. You are home here.”

Rising out of the Champagne fields of northern France, the Ardennes highlands sweep across southeastern Belgium, cover much of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, then flow into western Germany’s Eiffel range.

Sixty years ago, their valleys, trout streams and rolling hills were the scene of Hitler’s last gamble. His panzer divisions smashed through the forests, catching the Allies by surprise and driving the front westward in a “bulge” that ran deep into Belgian territory.

There was so much destruction that its impossible to know exactly how many people were killed in action, how many went missing and how many were wounded. 

The battle drew in more than a million troops 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans and 55,000 Britons who fought in bitter cold from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945.

The Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge in Arlington, Va., says 19,000 American troops died in the battle.

The Mardasson Memorial on the edge of Bastogne is built on the spot where German artillery bombarded the Americans in the town below, honoring the U.S. forces killed and wounded during the Ardennes offensive.

The memorial bears the names of U.S. Army units that participated in the action as well as the names of the then 48 U.S. States in bronze letters. There is also a plaque bearing a Latin inscription saying: “Liberatoribus Americanis Populus Belgicus Memor,” or “The Belgian People Remember Their American liberators.”