Ardenne tour

[StraightEight]

This year we saddled up in a '64 Citroen ID-19 and took a tour of the Bulge area of the Ardennes on the way to the War and Peace Show in the UK. Here are some pictures.

Sherman tank turrets indicate where the 101st Airborne stopped the advance of the 47th Panzer Lehr during its encirclement of Bastogne. This one is on the south approach to the ville.

Houffalize, where Montgomery and Patton linked up in the closing days of the Battle of the Bulge.

The Tiger II at La Glieze. After it was knocked out, the U.S. army used it for bazooka target practice and to see if the shells would piece the armor. They didn't. In July of '45, a Mrs. J. Geenen-Dewez suggested the Tiger be moved up in front of city hall for display, where it has remained ever since.

La Glieze in December, 1944. The Germans left 132 vehicles behind in this tiny hamlet.

The battle for Stoumont, where Kampfgruppe Peiper's advance was finally stopped, in part by the first use of AA guns by the U.S. in horizontal combat. On December 19, '44, the gun of Pvts Kenneth Humphry and Alfonso Marinaro took out the lead Panther from 100 yards where the road splits around the old church. A second AA gun down by the railroad station took out two more, blocking the road and turning back Peiper's advance. It was the beginning of the end for the northern German flank of the Bulge.

Here's the view that Humphry and Marinaro saw, well, minus the Citroen and a few other details.

Battle damage still visible in a building in Trois-Ponts, where a bridge was blown before Peiper could get across, forcing him north toward La Glieze and eventual doom.

 

[StraightEight]

The road taken by Peiper toward La Glieze.

Further south, Ft. Shoenenbourg in the Maginot Line. The battle for Schoenenbourg started on May 14, 1940. The fort fired 3840 shells in its own defense. The French government surrendered on June 25 but the fort was never taken and only handed over to the Germans by order of the French military command in July.

100 feet underground. Two miles of interconnected galleries. 46,000 cubic yards of concrete. 3.6 acres of floor space, 6 combat blocks, just one of the 45 large forts (grand ouvrages) in the Maginot Line.

Explosive chargers were packed into the wall here to be detonated and collapse the tunnel in case the fort was being taken.

Retracting gun turrets outside the fort.

Joe's Bridge near Lommel, Belgium, the site of the first bridge captured during Operation Market Garden in September, 1944. It was so named for Joe Vandeleur, commander of the Irish Guards (played by Michael Caine in A Bridge Too Far), the lead unit in the British advance up Hell's Highway.

The largest WW2 cemetery in western Europe is the German cemetery at Lommel. More than 39,000 are here.

A Sherman at Leopoldsburg, from which XXX Corps launched the ground offensive. Across the street is the site of the former Cinema Splendid, where Gen. Horrocks famously said: "This will be a tale you will tell your grandchildren, and mightily bored they will be!"

 

[Story]

Nice travelogue, thanks for sharing.

 

[TomS]

Awesome, thanks!

 

[Metatron]

Thanks, good thread! 'The Tiger II at La Glieze. After it was knocked out, the U.S. army used it for bazooka target practice and to see if the shells would piece the armor. They didn't.' The armour on that thing is unreal.

 

[too much coffee]

StraightEight............Thank you so much for posting those wonderful pics and providing us with a most interesting narrative. Great stuff! Neat car too.

Regards,
coffee