The Crosses Row on Row - Bastogne and Luxembourg

Alright, so technically the crosses and the poppies in the poem are in Flanders, while these that I am going to show you are in fact not even in Wallonia, or in Belgium, but mostly in Luxembourg.

That’s right: I’ve seen a fourth country in my life, now! And by now I mean about two weeks ago.

There is an American war cemetery in Luxembourg, commemorating those who died in the Battle of the Bulge, the largest number of whom were Americans.  None less than General George S. Patton himself is buried here.

Patton, in his special spot.

Actually, there’s a bit of a funny story about that, despite the fact that it is a very moving, solemn place.  After the First World War, the American military and government for the first time faced the problem of what to do with the remains of thousands of soldiers who had died overseas.  Evidently, they eventually compromised by offering every next-of-kin a set of four choices, among which are to leave the dead where they lie, that is, in a protected American cemetery in a foreign country, or to have them shipped home in various ways.  After World War Two, many were buried here for holding purposes, and sometimes not sent along until years later.

 

Although Patton was not killed in action, he died in the area, and was buried accordingly.  Because the US Military follows a policy that all are equal in death, he was originally buried out with the rest of the men, marked with a simple cross.  However, within days of his funeral, visitors were coming by the thousands, and they began to wear such a path around his grave that they were damaging those next to him.  Accordingly, one soldier, an unknown, was set off somewhat alone on the left side of the cemetery, and Patton was to be moved to the right side, symmetrically.  While they resurfaced and rearranged the right side, he was temporarily entombed in the center, a bit away from all the others.  In this interim, his wife Beatrice happened to visit again, and is said to have declared something along the lines of, “Oh, how perfect!  You’ve got him leading his troops from the front, just as he always did in battle.”  No insult to Mrs. Patton’s intelligence, but, if you look at the direction of the crosses, he’s actually behind them all, at the top of the hill.  Oops.

Ah, but the question is, why is he still there?  When the cemetery respectfully told Mrs. Patton that he could not remain where he was, she first threatened to take him home to America, and then she drug her best friend into the mêlée.  Her best friend just so happened to be Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg.  They had been at school together in England.  Charlotte complicated the already messy matter by promising something along the lines of establishing a separate Patton shrine altogether if they dared to move him.  I take it the debate was still at something of a standstill when Beatrice died, in 1953.  Although is it illegal now, no doubt for precisely this sort of reason, Beatrice had part of her ashes sprinkled on where he lay, at the center back of his troops, which wasn’t even quite the center once they’d finished rearranging the others.  Now, they could move Patton, but they couldn’t be sure to move Beatrice with him, and therefore, there he lieth, forevermore.

Look closely at the front cross - it reads Nancy J. Leo.  She was a nurse.

 Intractable wives and fortunate friendships aside, though, it really is a very affecting sight.  The crosses spread over such a large slope of hillside, and their perfect radial rows make them seem to go on forever.  And these are only a fraction of the men who died for any ideology in World War II, just the Americans, who died in just one tiny country.  This place wasn’t like the amenable graveyards of Scotland, which have something so natural and organic and unintentional about them that you can hardly think of them as sad.  This place is beautiful, and peaceful, but it is the quiet and order of intentionality, of deliberate memory of intentional slaughter, perpetrated by something far harsher and far more voracious.  The graveyards of Scotland are living things, to be inhabited.  The war cemetery is indeed a memory, a memorial, to be seen and marked well, and never changed.

On a lighter note, how about some tanks?  Tanks are cool.

This guy is Russian. He won the war b/c...

This little guy is French-made. The Russian is behind him.

This one didn't do so well.

This one is just called the Fire Lady.

And there are mile markers, or rather, kilometer markers, along the “Road to Liberty,” or, the route that some troops travelled from Normandy all the way to Bastogne, crucial town in the Battle of the Bulge.

Two final things of interest, before I finish.  Ever seen the series Band of Brothers?  I haven’t, but it features the Easy Company, and we saw, and stood in, some of their real foxholes in the Ardennes forest.  The Battle of the Bulge took place from December through January, and, let me tell you, I stood still for ten minutes in the Ardennes on a January evening, and it was miserably cold.  In the time it took me to take the photographs, both my hands had gone numb, my right one without a glove so that I could press the shutter button, and my left hand with a glove, though it seemed to do little good.  I cannot believe that men survived in these for days and weeks under any circumstances, let alone under heavy shell fire.  The view up through the trees to the violet twilight sky was lovely, though.

And finally, did you know that there were German war cemeteries in the area as well, and that German cemeteries have grey crosses, rather than white?  I didn’t either, but it is so.

The man who has “Strm” before his name was S.S.  It’s rather gripping to stand in front of a physical cross and read a real name, with that infamous prefix before it.  It makes it not quite so far away, which is rather unnerving.  Incidentally, though, how apropos is it that I got these pictures in the creeping dusk, the half-light of night encroaching over a Nazi graveyard…

More to come, but for now, Roger Out.