75 years on, Battle of the Bulge memories bring people together
THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium — As a schoolboy three quarters of a century ago, Marcel Schmetz would regularly see open trucks rumble past to a makeshift American cemetery — filled with bodies, some headless, some limbless, blood seeping from the vehicles onto the roads that the U.S. soldiers had given their lives to liberate.
Sometimes, Schmetz said, there were over 200 bodies a day, casualties of one of the bloodiest and most important battles in World War II: The Battle of the Bulge, which started 75 years ago today and effectively sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany.
“It gave me nightmares,” Schmetz said. It also gave the 11-year-old the resolve that, one day, he would give something back.
“I had to do something,” he said. Fast forward to 2019, when memories are fading and relations between Europe and the United States deteriorating.
There’s a rambling house and converted warehouse in the bucolic, verdant hills that were once among the worst killing grounds of World War II. Zoom in to the living-room table, where Marcel, 86, sits with his wife, Mathilde, and one of the many World War II veterans that have shared coffee and cake — and often a nip of something stronger — with them, telling stories that span generations.
“Well, I don’t share them very often,” said Arthur Jacobson, who was just 20 when he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. “Once in a while, somebody is interested and I tell them a little bit.”
In Marcel and Mathilde’s home, which also serves as the Remember Museum 39-45, “a little bit” doesn’t count. Soon the former Bazooka operator was sharing stories of friends lost, ties gained, all between a chuckle and a moist eye.
For M&M, as the couple is known to fans from across the United States, remembering has become a mission in life, since memory brings understanding and friendship. They are not alone. From the shores of Normandy, where the allies first landed on D-Day, to the forests deep in the Belgian Ardennes, there remains a deep appreciation for what the soldiers did.
Yet, those people live on the scar tissue of war, where battlefields, memorials and cemeteries lie just a few miles away. That memory fades quickly the more one moves from the old front lines to European cities, where peace and prosperity has reigned for the best part of a century. The voices of the last witnesses of the war’s fighting, mostly in their 90s now, are also becoming frailer by the day.
And with the growing questioning of trans-Atlantic ties and trust, the challenge to keep those bonds across the ocean intact has increased.
It makes Marcel and Mathilde’s mission to connect all the more vital.
“Whoever is your president, whoever runs the show, the boys who were on the front lines, who still go out and fight for our freedoms, they need to know we appreciate them,” Mathilde said.