Day 7

Day 7

We’ve just arrived in Liege, Belgium after leaving Paris this morning and have visited several sites associated with the Battle of the Bulge near Bastogne, Belgium.

Our guide, Robby, was an older gentleman, probably my age :-) that worked with the local community promoting visitation of the battle site and was an amateur historian as it relates to the fighting in this area. He was very engaging and informative.

We visited what is called the “Jack Forest” which is where the American 506th Army met the German forces in the Ardennes Forest. We walked through the forest and smelled the freshly cut spruce trees there before arriving at the site of a line of fox holes that date back to December 1944 when the battle took place. If you’re a little rusty on your history this battle was very well portrayed in the HBO movie “Band of Brothers” which our tour director has been showing on the bus as we traveled today.




We had lunch in Bastogne at a number of different places on the square and most of us enjoyed the local speciality of Belgium fries which are very similar to American fries with the exception that they are fried twice and as a result are hot and soft on the inside and crunchy on the out, tres bien!

We’ve visited several memorials to specific American groups including the 101st Airborne Group as well as a German cemetery where the dead were buried 3 to 6 to a grave but all noted on the head stone. The headstones were a cross but not the white of the American Cemetery at Normandy but a darker, smaller grante headstone. Nicely done but very somber looking in comparison to other cemeteries that we’ve visited.

We’ve finished dinner by 8:00 PM and were checked into our rooms in the local Best Western Hotel here and most are settling down to a slower evening with a later start tomorrow. Breakfast is at 9:00 AM with the bus loading at 10:00 AM for our trip to Berlin. We drive for about an hour and pick up a bullet train for the remainder of the trip with speeds up to 180 mph, I’m looking forward to that trip. We eat lunch before the train and will bring a sandwich for dinner on the train. We arrive late in Berlin at about midnight, so a late start but also a late arrival.

Bonne nuit!

Well as I reviewed this post I notice that I've not included any of the group and perhaps you'd like to see them as well. :-)

Here we are leaving the German Cemetery towards the bus before heading to the Jack Forest.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And below you can see the fox holes that have filled in significantly from 1944.

And below we are in front of the American Memorial at Bastogne.

And then of course the obligatory bus shots! :-)

 

Well that will cover today pretty well. If time goes well this evening I'll try and go back and fill in some shots from day 5 & 6, so you might want to review those days, but first a shower and clean up prior to going to bed and then we'll see. It's now 10:30 PM but . . .