BASTOGNE, Belgium – It wasn’t the thunderous booms of shelling or the acrid smell of smoke that filled the air on Saturday. It was the click of horses’ hooves on paved roads in a celebratory parade. The smell of churros coming from the Christmas Market on Rue Joseph-Renquin, the main stretch in downtown.
And, it was bursts of fireworks – harmless pink slivers in the night sky.
Thousands from around the world descended on Bastogne, a town of almost 50,000, to celebrate the country’s liberation.
Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, a bloody altercation with Hitler's Nazi war machine that began Dec. 16, 1944, and stretched into late January 1945. It was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front, but it was a costly one: An estimated 19,000 American soldiers died during the five-week battle.
The weekend's scenes were a distant cry from the snow-covered conflict that erupted in the Ardennes Forest three-quarters of a century ago as Germans, supported by powerful tanks and armored carriers, raced to stretch the advancing Allied front lines. A "bulge" was created in the American lines – but the units held and repelled the Nazi counterattack.
Within weeks, the Allies finished their sprint across Europe and took the fight to Hitler's backyard.
This weekend, each glass storefront in the quaint downtown row was painted with a scene of the war: Pictures of tanks, gun barrels and kissing sailors all looked out on streets full of reenactors dressed as American soldiers and Belgians waving paper American flags.
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