Putting History in Its Place

While we have no ability to travel back to an earlier time, we do have opportunities to visit historical sites. Because I grew up in Texas, I was drilled in the history of that state and its special status. I was able to make multiple pilgrimages to the Alamo and San Jacinto. Throughout my childhood, Texas history was more real than anything that ever happened in Washington or Paris or Africa because I was able to go to the actual places where important events happened.

I have written about my recent trip to the Normandy beaches and the battlefields of Crécy, Agincourt, and Waterloo. The trip culminated with a self-guided driving tour through the Ardennes in Belgium and Luxembourg to experience some aspects of the 1944 Battle of the Bulge. As a life-long reader of military history, this was a route I long hoped to follow, and for the same reasons that resonated with me in childhood.

Military historians often study the ground on which a battle occurred. I have no special expertise in military tactics or terrain, but I do know the difference between walking uphill and downhill and the difference between dry ground and mud. I can walk across an open field at Gettysburg and grasp how exposed Pickett’s men were and how impossible their task must have seemed. I can go through the gullies at Little Big Horn and understand why Custer could not see far enough to get an accurate read on just how many Indians he faced.

Some battlefields are fairly easy to understand. I put Crécy and Little Big Horn in that category. The Battle of the Bulge however stretched over an 80-mile front and lasted approximately 40 days. You can’t take it all in, and any effort to synthesize it into a single story requires some heavy editing. Accounts tend to focus on the strategic failures of an overly ambitious German goal achieving limited surprise over an unsuspecting and thinly dispersed Allied defense. The Allies were unsuspecting specifically because of the place—the harsh terrain of dense woods, deep ravines, and the difficulty of maneuver. (Never mind that they had previously been surprised in the same place.) Driving a car through the narrow passages, up and down steep slopes, and across numerous streams is difficult enough. The woods are too dense for tanks to pass through, not to mention towed artillery pieces, so the German advance had to stick to these same winding roads, traveling single file.

Along my route I saw beautiful landscapes with striking vistas around each bend, not overly dramatic but bucolic and always inviting. Myriad little hamlets dot the countryside, each boasting its own church steeple and whitewashed facades, perfectly tailored for travel brochures and postcards. But driving through the region on a bright summer day presents an absolutely false picture of the earth-shattering events that took place here.

In December 1944, the Germans counted on, and mostly received, the help of snow, ice, and dense fog. Although I have no desire to drive icy mountain roads, I had to ask myself many times to reimagine everything I was seeing, if I wanted to get an accurate picture.

The difficulty of pulling it all together may explain why we focus on certain specific events, in particular the siege of Bastogne on the southern end of the bulge. Bastogne in itself makes a great story with the nick-of-time arrival of the 101st Airborne Division, General McAuliffe’s terse reply of “Nuts” to the German surrender demand, and General Patton’s dash to relieve the city (my own 4th Armored Division being the first to break through).

I also had to bypass many important sites to make the best use of my limited time. So I spent some time in Bastogne and the surrounding area. I have always had a special interest in Clervaux, one of the key defensive points 17 miles east of Bastogne. Once (and once again) a picturesque tourist spot in a bend of the Our River, it has been referred to as the “Alamo” of the Battle of the Bulge. It too makes a compelling story all on its own.

But I saved a full day to drive the route of Kampfgruppe Peiper, the tip of the German spear through the center of the front. With 117 tanks under his command, the 29-year-old Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper was tasked with traversing 70 miles to seize bridges over the Meuse River by the end of the second day of the offensive. He complained rightly that the route assigned was more suitable for bicycles than tanks.

Off I went, starting at what is now the Calypso Disco in Lanzerath, Belgium and driving over some roads comically narrow for a passenger car. Peiper frequently left his assigned route, sometimes backtracking, to look for roads and bridges that would support his tanks. Fortunately I carried along Charles MacDonald’s book A Time for Trumpets (1997) with enough detail to help me make the same detours. I occasionally left Peiper’s route to discover the route of some American units unfortunate enough to clash with Peiper. At three points in particular, I stopped to reflect on the wanton massacre of American POWs and Belgian civilians, the “Malmedy Massacre” at the Baugnez crossroads being the most famous. While there is a memorial on the opposite side of the road, the actual field in which 84 American prisoners were executed is unmarked, and several car dealerships now encroach on the area. Still, it is a sobering experience to survey the field.

(Peiper and others involved in the Malmedy Massacre would be sentenced to hang for war crimes, although all of those sentences were later commuted.)

Peiper missed his 48-hour deadline to reach the Meuse. After a week of trying, he had made it only about 40 miles to the edge of the Ardennes near Stoumont where better terrain awaited, but by then he was out of gas and surrounded. And there his trek ended, as did mine.

In addition to gaining a sense of place, this route gave me a clearer sense of distance and of the difficulties and uncertainties encountered by both sides. Also clear was the role of luck both good and bad, of futility and hubris and missed opportunities that now go under the heading “had they only known.” Those involved might say yes, you learned some of what we experienced, but you left out the snow, the bitter cold, and the terror.

Travel may be unmatched in its ability to convey history, but we have limited possibilities to undertake such extensive expeditions. The arts, though, are readily available to us. When sought out, they can contribute, in myriad ways, to our understanding of virtually any historical event. The visual arts put flesh on the bones. They bring long-dead personalities to life. The music that sounded in those years, whether a simple ballad, a military march, or a popular grand opera popular, also brings events to life. Through our eyes and ears, we can sear historical events into our memories.

Of course, the arts can also distort history, sometimes deliberately and sometimes through benign neglect. During my journey I thought multiple times of a wretched 1960s movie The Battle of the Bulge that boasted a star-studded Hollywood cast, but was so laden with misinformation that Eisenhower himself panned it. The best approach is to turn to art that was created at the time, in the places of interest, by the people whose story history tells. Once, finding such art meant searching through old volumes or scouring through footnotes in scholarly articles. Today, an array of resources abound, many posted by the museums, historical societies, and foundations that oversee the actual sites.

I doubt I will ever stand on the summit of Mount Suribachi or the site of the first moon landing, although I would gladly sign up for either trip. But history is everywhere. And while visiting Normandy Beach was a landmark experience, especially for someone of my generation, the best experiences often come from exploring local history, where small events have powerful lessons to teach as well.

Whenever we investigate history, whether we visit actual sites or not, we do well to look for relevant songs, poems, engravings or other artistic renditions that connect with the events under study. For example, two things beyond its military significance caused me to make the drive to Agincourt on this trip: the powerful Agincourt Carol which is highlighted in most studies of medieval music, and the popularly known “Band of Brothers” speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V.  These artistic expressions speak powerfully to every new generation. Do not be surprised if such artistic renditions open more doors to the imagination than any textbook description ever could. For the arts long have, and always will, supply tangible connections to a silent, intangible past.