I forgot to mention, I popped into Ypres on my way to Wizernes and stayed near the town centre with the view of attending the nightly playing of the Last Post at the Menin Gate. I got there too late on the first night and, on balance, didn't particularly want to be pushed around by the bus-loads of tourists on the second night, so I went on to St-Omer. Another time, maybe with Ben. However, I did have time to visit Kemmel and my mother's uncle Alfred, who died on 29 November 1914. His grave is just south of Ypres - see previous posts. That evening I popped up to the Canadian front line at Hill 62 near Sanctuary Wood and took in the sunset over Ypres in the distance. A good place to reflect...
After Mons, I drove for the rest of the day to St-Omer and spent the night in the small town of Wizernes. The plan was to visit La Coupole the next day but unfortunately my mains inverter had packed up so I couldn't charge my camera battery - so no photos! Anyway, I did visit La Coupole and enjoyed every minute. It was basically a huge concrete bunker built into the hillside of a forest in 1943, designed to manufacture and launch V2 rockets on London. Thousands of German, French and slave workers built the complex including a vast concrete dome and miles of underground tunnels. This was like something out of a science fiction film but frighteningly real. The allies knew it was there but didn't know what it was for. However, because of its size and location, they knew it must be destroyed. It was therefore bombed and finally destroyed by the Tall Boy bomb that undermined its foundations. The dome is fully accessible with fascinating exhibits and the visitor centre includes a 3-D film; all very interesting, especially the post war stories of how the Americans 'encouraged' the top German rocket scientists to go over to the US to help build their space rockets in advance of the Russians. Again, it was all a bit 'James Bond' but true. This is a 'must see' place. For the background see http://www.lacoupole-france.co.uk/
The recently refurbished Mons Museum on the edge of the town centre has certainly had a good deal of money spent on it but I was a little disappointed. The interior is very dark and the English text on the exhibits is very small. I guess this is done to add atmosphere to the place but much of the information is hard to read and therefore the meaning is lost. Never mind, I could still look at the pictures.
OK, this is something we all learn about at school, but until you've been there, I don't think you can have any idea what was involved. The main battle was fought on 18 June 1815 and we all know that the Duke of Wellington's army beat Napolian's, but did you know:
The battle was waged three miles south of the town of Waterloo in the villages of Braine-l’Alleud and Plancenoit along the Mont Saint Jean Ridge. While the French referred to the military clash as the “Battle of Mont Saint-Jean,” it became known in most of the world as the “Battle of Waterloo” because the Duke of Wellington, who led the victorious forces, made his headquarters in the village of Waterloo. Napoleon never set a foot in Waterloo.
This was the coaching house Wellington stayed in the night before the battle. It's now a museum and has many interesting artifacts inside though it's not very big and when I was there the builders were in doing some restoration work.
Napolian stayed at a farm house about 8 km to the south. It is also a museum and is even smaller than Wellington's museum but still worth seeing if you want to get an overall view of the battle.
The most impressive museum is the new underground one at the Lion's Mound to the south of Waterloo, where the actual battle took place. The mound was built a few years after the battle and is well worth walk up to see the surrounding landscape.
The round building is the Panorama and contains a 360 degree painting of the battle field. Very impressive...
The main museum, as I said is underground and is vast, containing more than you can hope to take in. So, give it a go but get there early to avoid the bus loads of tourists and try to work out how to use the audio tape before you start!
Did you know heavy rain fell upon the region around Waterloo on the night before the battle. Napoleon’s artillery was among his greatest strengths, but the French emperor feared that the soggy and muddy conditions would bog down the advance of his men, horses and heavy guns. Hoping that the ground would dry, Napoleon waited until midday to launch his attack. The delay would prove costly as it ultimately allowed Blucher’s Prussian army to join the fight before the French could defeat Wellington’s forces.
You probably know, the Duke of Wellington was British, but the army he led into battle was a multi-national force. British troops represented only one-third of Wellington’s army, and the majority of those soldiers were Irish, Welsh and Scottish. (Wellington himself was born in Ireland and of Anglo-Irish ancestry.) Approximately half of Wellington’s forces hailed from German states, and Dutch and Belgian soldiers fought in sizable numbers as well. In addition to Wellington’s army, more than 50,000 Prussians under Marshal Blucher arrived at the battlefield in the late afternoon and turned the tide of the fight.
Following the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon returned to Paris, where he was forced to abdicate on June 22, 1815. He fled to the coastal city of Rochefort, from where he likely intended to sail to the United States, which had just concluded its own war with Great Britain. “You must have heard of the new misfortune of the emperor,” wrote one of Napoleon’s relatives to another in the wake of his abdication. “He’s going to the United States, where we shall all join him.” British ships, however, had blockaded Rochefort, and the former emperor did not want to risk the potential embarrassment of being caught hiding on board a vessel. With his passage to the United States blocked, Napoleon surrendered to a British warship on July 15, 1815, and three months later he was exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he lived out his final six years until his death in 1821. Napoleon’s brother Joseph, the deposed king of Spain, was able to make safe passage to the United States from another French port and lived in New Jersey for 15 years. Fleeing Bonapartists also established the short-lived Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama as a safe haven.
Within hours of the battle’s end, locals employing pliers as well as small hammers and chisels began to remove the front teeth from tens of thousands of soldiers lying dead on the battlefield. With demand for human teeth high, the looters sold the pilfered teeth to dethem into dentures. According to England’s National Army Museum, English dentists did nothing to conceal their sources, advertising the dentures as “Waterloo teeth” or “Waterloo ivory.” Even by the time of the Civil War, English dentists continued to do a brisk trade importing the teeth of fallen soldiers, still referred to as “Waterloo teeth.”Napoleon Bonaparhe peace treaty agreed to between France and the European powers in November 1815 reduced the size of French territory and required the defeated country to pay an enormous indemnity over the course of five years. In recognition of his servic,eParliament awarded the Duke of Wellington 200,000 British pounds, equivalent to 15 million British pounds today, according to the Royal Engineers Museum.
Dinant has a small but dominant citadel perched high above the town. This is well worth a visit as it's got quite and interesting history especially during the first few months of the First World War when German troops attacked the town and killed hundreds of civilians.
I parked at the top, walked around the museum then took the steps down to the town. There is a cable car (it's just by the trees at the top). The walk back up the hill was good exercise but I constantly thought how well defended this side of the citadel was - I would not have wanted to make that approach if there were people chucking stuff down at me!
Namur also has a citadel but it is much larger than Dinant. I only stopped her for a lunch and coffee break so didn't spend much time exploring. Maybe this is something for another trip.
I mentioned in my last post how good the main museum is in Bastogne. It really is well worth a visit. It's informative, interesting and enjoyable - and it's free. You just have to remember, you can't show yourself around unguided but, to be honest, the guide we had was fantastic and we had a much better visit as a result.
The tank museum on the site was crammed full of vehicles of every shape and size.
And the canteen building is being added to each year - quite a remarkable achievement for the Belgium army and its staff although many of the exhibits are very much tinged with sadness.
The American Memorial and Museum is another 'must see' place. It's a tad bigger than most other places you might see in the vicinity and, on the day we visited, the car park and paths were being used as a go-cart race track for some sort of youth organisation. I'm not sure this would have been allowed in the UK but then...when in Rome...
Now just a small item I should have mentioned in my post about the Vught Concentration Camp. Apparently a young woman called Rosie Glaser was held captive there during the war (along with thousands of others) and she decided to use her many skills and attributes to stay alive, including teaching some of her German guards how to dance. Her diary was found by a family member and he wrote about her life there. I have ordered a copy and look forward to reading it.
Paul Glaser was an adult when he learned the truth about his heritage. Raised in a devout Roman Catholic home in the Netherlands, he had never known his father was Jewish and that their family had suffered great losses during the World War II. When Paul inquired, his father refused to provide details about the war, the camps, and especially Rosie, Paul’s estranged aunt.
Shortly after this discovery, Paul started an investigation into his family’s past, desperate to get to the bottom of the long-standing rift between his father and Rosie. His research led him to a collection of Rosie’s wartime diaries, photographs, and letters, which told the dramatic story of a woman who was caught up in the tragic sweep of World War II. Rosie Glaser was a magnificent woman; despite everything, she remained hopeful, exuberant, and, most importantly, cunning. When the Nazis seized power, Rosie, a nonpracticing Jew, entered dangerous territory, managing a hidden dance school and participating in whispered conversations and secret rendezvous. She was eventually caught and sent to a series of concentration camps.
She survived, though, in part by giving dance and etiquette lessons to her captors, who favored her and looked out for her in return. Of the twelve hundred people who arrived with her in Auschwitz, only eight survived.
Dancing with the Enemy recalls an extraordinary life marked by love, betrayal, and fierce determination.
I've just returned from 10 days away in France and Belgium - not in the boat (obviously) but in the new Land Rover. The first 4 days were spent with my younger son Ben exploring the museums and battle sites of the Normandy Beaches. Not much has changed since I was there at the end of last year (see previous posts), but it was a first for Ben so, just for the record, a picture of Ben standing next to Pegasus Bridge.
Editors note: I can now see where he gets his good looks from!
Once I had dropped Ben back at Calais on Friday, I sped off to Bastogne in eastern Belgium to meet my other son, Matt. Now, this was a new area for both of us so I had lots of places on the satnav to visit. Just a reminder about what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. During December 1944 all was quiet on the western front. Both sides had been fighting hard; the Allies pushing further inland from the beaches, the Axis forces being pushed back in to Germany. However, everyone was feeling the pressure, experienced and war-weary soldiers were resting, the weather was poor, supplies were thin on the ground, and the limited reinforcements and replacements were settling into their new roles during the worst winter for years. However, Hitler decided to take advantage of this lull in the fighting and make a final push for the coastal post of Antwerp, thus dividing the British and American armies and capturing their nearest resupply port. In this way, Hitler hoped to negotiate a conditional settlement rather than the unconditional surrender he was facing. On the 16th December a massive German force comprising mainly Panzers, artillery and infantry took the Allies by surprise and pushed through the mountainous Ardennes region creating what was to become a bulge in the front - hence the name. Over the following 6 weeks, the Allies regrouped and were reinforced to finally push the hard pressed German forces back to the Rhine. Thousands of soldiers on both sides were killed, wounded or lost. The 2001 film Band of Brothers depicts the battle in a very realistic way especially how the American 81st and 101st regiments held Bastogne as a pocket of resistance despite the heavy odds against them. A cordon of strong points were set up around the town to hold back the Germans and Bastogne Barracks was the Central Control Point for most of the operations. It is now at the center of most visits to the town if you are interested to get a feel for what happened.
I learnt you can't just walk around by yourself but you get a professional guide - in fact, a professional soldier (in our case an ex-commando) who transferred to the museum to build exhibits and guide visitors. What was expected to be 2 hour tour turned out to be 3 hours and very informative and enjoyable. For instance, we saw the basement room where General McAuliffe received the German deputation offering the Americans the chance to surrender and where he replied with the now famous words N U T S.
After a tour that vastly exceeded our expectations, we visited the nearby American museum and memorial then traveled to Matt's home near Maastricht for the night. On Sunday, we went further north to Camp Vught. It was built in 1943 as a concentration camp for Jews, political prisoners, gypsies, etc and housed 31,000 people in very poor conditions. While much of the site is now redeveloped, we saw the remaining barracks and crematorium used during the war and it was a very moving experience to see what people went through.
This camp was a relatively small operation compared to the ones in eastern Germany and Poland but it must still have been an horrendous place to be during the war. We also saw a tranquil site nearby, in the woods, where at least 330 prisoners were shot over a couple of months and is now a national monument. Tranquil now but can you imagine the horror of being taken here under armed guard and being lined up in front of a firing squad? Doesn't bear thinking about...
However, if that wasn't bad enough, the torment didn't stop at the end of the war. In the 30 or so years after the war Vught was used as a detention camp for Nazi war criminals and collaborators, and even Malayan troops and their families. These proud people were shipped from Malaya and once they landed in Holland they were stripped of all status and reduced to penniless prisoners confined within the fences of the concentration camp. Crime and all sorts of abuse developed, making the place a site of continued horror. If you get the chance, you should visit it. A few short words and some photos can't do it justice.
I returned to Bastogne on Sunday to visit the 101st American museum on Monday, only to find it closed. So, I spent time visiting the remaining foxholes used by the infantry in the woods near Foy and chatting to an Ex German soldier at the 101st memorial nearby. Meet Leander... now setting up his own survival business in Berlin. What a nice bloke.
By the way, the foxholes nearest the Foy road are deep and well-formed mainly because they are often used by re-enactment groups each year but the ones further into the wood appear to be in their original state. I recommend taking a walk in the peace and quiet; again a tad different to how it would have been 70 years ago.
I left Bastogne on Monday and headed west, back towards Calais, aiming to visit many of the towns and other historic places along the way. See my next post if you're still interested!
