 asanova Restaurant Book: Denise's Story
Chapter 4
December 17, 1944, started out as a typical Sunday. We started the day by attending mass, and then returned home. Zita, a 19-year-old German girl with beautiful long blonde hair, was living with us then. She helped with the household chores so my mother, who was pregnant again, could tend the store. Zita spent most of her time taking care of Gaston, who she loved, but she was very good to all of us.
Our mother had cooked a large Sunday lunch, as usual. We passed steaming bowls of peas and carrots, mashed potatoes and meatballs, and filled our plates high. Of course, after we had cleaned our plates, we had our favorite pudding for desert. We were excited about Christmas coming, only a week away.
Soon after lunch, a man came by our house on a bicycle. He said to my father, "The Germans are a mile away from here."
"You must be crazy," said my father.
"I'm not kidding you. They're here." The man took off down the road, to warn the others in the village.
He was right, the Germans were returning. No one expected this. Least of all the Americans.
* * *
The Americans had believed that the Germans were too worn down to counter-attack. If the Germans could muster up enough men and weapons, the most unlikely place for them to attack would be the Ardennes, our area of Belgium. Our countryside is rugged with hills and thick forests, and there were no important military resources here. The winters in the Ardennes are wet and brutal. The rains usually start in November, filling the roads with mud, followed by freezing temperatures and deep snow. However, a strategy that seemed illogical to the Americans, was the perfect strategy for Hitler. He intended for his army to break through the American's weak 80-mile front and march 100 miles to the Belgian port city of Antwerp, where they could capture the gasoline that his army so desperately needed.
Earlier, in the first weeks of December 1944, some villagers near the battlefront said they heard tanks rumbling across on the German side. These reports were dismissed by the Americans. The officers said, "It's just the Germans trying to trick us into believing they can still attack. You probably just heard a phonograph recording of tanks."
By this point in the war, Hitler had lost over three million men, but he still had resources. He drafted men who had been exempted before: students, men with less-serious handicaps, and convicts. He extended the draft age to include boys as young as 16, and men as old as 60.
Even though the German economy was in deep trouble, Hitler made sure that the German factories were producing weapons as fast as ever - rifles, ammunition, machine guns, and tanks. All they needed was gasoline.
By mid-December, 500,000 German soldiers quietly waited along the 80-mile stretch of the Belgium and Luxemburg borders, waiting for orders to attack. In some areas, the Germans outnumbered Americans 10 to 1. The German troops were made up of the elite Panzer SS units, backed up by the Volksgrenadier, or "People's Infantry," young, inexperienced soldiers who fanatically believed Hitler's promises of a sweeping victory.
Hitler had called Gerd von Rundstedt, a veteran German commander who was highly respected, to be the top commander of the troops. The German soldiers, fully armed with tanks and trucks, waited at the border for the damp, cold winter fog and rains that would keep the Allied bombers on the ground. At dawn on Saturday, December 16, they received the command to attack. The Americans and the villagers were totally unprepared.
* * *
The next day, Sunday, the Germans had advanced across the German border within a few miles of Ligneuville when they were spotted by our father's friend as he rode his bicycle near the edge of town. We later learned that this same battalion surprised a troop of about 130 American soldiers at a cross-road between Ligneuville and Malmedy. There was a small café there, and the owner, Madame Bodarwé, watched as some of the American GIs were gunned down as they tried to escape into the woods. The remaining Americans were rounded up in a field. The Germans searched the Americans for cigarettes, weapons and gloves. The Americans did not resist and expected that they would be taken to Germany as POWs. Instead of carrying the men back behind the German line as prisoners, the Germans started shooting. While it seemed like forever, the machine gun fire lasted about 15 minutes. The Americans who were not killed immediately, pretended to be dead. Any that made the slightest movement were shot. For hours after that, Germans passing by in tanks and trucks would shoot at the bodies in the field, laughing as they rode by. Finally, the 25 or so Americans that still survived tried to escape. Some ran, as best they could, to the woods. Twelve headed to the café. Germans saw them enter and set the café on fire. When the Americans ran out, they were gunned down.
Of the 130 American soldiers in the battalion, about 15 men survived what was to be later known as the Malmedy Massacre.
* * *
My father called us all into the house after his conversation with the man on the bike. He sat down at the kitchen table, facing the window that looked out over the hills on the other side of the village. The road to the village Montenau twisted between these hills. Gaston climbed into his lap. We could feel the tension and confusion growing among the adults, even though we didn't understand what was happening. Soon, we could see the convoy of gray German tanks moving slowly west up the road toward Ligneuville. Not only were the Germans coming in from the north, they were also advancing from the east. Our village was caught in the middle.
My father said, "Now is the time to go to the cellar." We all left the warm kitchen and hurried down the steps into the cold and dark. There was a small window in the cellar where we could see across to Uncle Nicolas' bakery, which was in the basement of his house. A stone wall bordered the driveway that went down to the bakery door where trucks delivered the flour. Gilbert saw a German with a bazooka crawling along the side of the wall. He shot into the American tank down the street. The Americans inside jumped out and took off running. There were gas cans beside the tank, and the explosion rattled our windows.
American soldiers were running everywhere, looking for places to hide. Three soldiers - our friends Jason, Sidney, and Flory -- ran into our house and hid in the attic. Within minutes, German SS soldiers were standing in our doorway demanding to know where the Americans were hiding. My mother went to meet them; since she was German she would be less likely to be harmed. "We have no Americans here," my mother told them. They searched the house anyway, and our friends escaped through an upstairs window and ran across the fields. Unfortunately, there were Germans waiting outside, too. I know at least one of our friends was shot, but I don't know which one. I didn't want to know.
* * *
We spent the rest of that day and night in our cellar, listening to the gunfire and grenades exploding outside. Zita made a bed for Gaston in the wooden bin where we stored our winter's supply of potatoes. She smoothed out the lumpy potatoes as best she could and covered them with a wool blanket. It was just the right size for a small child.
No one was able to sleep that night. Just before dawn, our parents woke us and told us we were moving to another town about six miles away where we would be safer. We carried blankets and took an old bicycle with us as we hurried across the fields to a barn that was owned by my parents' friends. I remember sleeping between the cows for protection, in case a bullet came through the walls. We all wanted to go home, and since this place did not seem any safer than Ligneuville, we headed back home after about a week.
On the trip back to Ligneuville, our father disappeared into the woods with the bicycle when we were not looking. He knew the Germans would be looking for him, because he was known to be a supporter of the Americans. He would have been shot if he had been caught, so he decided that it would be best to leave. Later, our mother told us that he was dead. That sounds cruel, but I'm sure she meant to protect our father and us. If we knew he was still alive and hiding, we may have accidentally told the Germans if we had been questioned.
The Germans took control of our village and continued to push westward, deeper into Belgium, while the Americans were fighting to hold them back. Thousands of grenades and mines were detonated in the area around our village.
Whenever the bomb attack alarms sounded - which was almost every day -- we headed to the nearest shelter. Often there would be 15 or 20 people in our cellar, usually women, old people and children. We stayed wherever it seemed safest. The farmers in our village were not able to take care of their animals, so they released them to fend for themselves. With all the bombs going off, there were hundreds of dead cows, horses and chickens in the streets and ditches. And not only animals, there were dead people too. When a tank passed by, it wouldn't stop for a body in the road. It would just drive over it, whether it was an animal or human. To this day, I remember the smell of the war. It was the smell of death.
At night we could hear the bomber planes, flying so low. We were just shaking, holding on to each other. Gaston would not let my mother go; he would cling to her neck, crying and trembling. She could hardly move her head.
Late one night, I held Gaston as we looked out the cellar window into the back yard. We could see the silhouette of a German soldier shaking our small plum tree. The sky behind him was bright red with flames. Our mother saw us standing there and made us move away from the window where we'd be safer. "You never know if something will break that glass," she'd say. She arranged a bed of blankets for Rita, Gilbert and me underneath the stairs where we'd be safer if the windows broke. We used our school bags as pillows. My mother was very matter-of-fact. She said, "If a bomb falls straight on us, that's the end of us, but if a bomb falls close by, we will be safe."
Some mornings, I couldn't open my eyes because of all the dust and cement that was coming down the stairway from the damage to our house. This gray grit covered my whole face. There was no running water anymore and no electricity. We had little votive candles that we could light in case of an emergency, but mostly we sat in the dark and prayed. When we ran out of candles, my mother brought down boxes filled with tins of black shoe polish from her store. Gilbert would stick a small piece of rope into the polish and light it, like a candle. The smell of the smoking polish, like gasoline, filled the air, so we used these as little as possible.
This was a brutal, cold winter, the coldest in fifty years. The freezing temperatures kept the dead animals and human bodies from rotting right away, which was a small blessing. During breaks in the bombing, my mother sent Gilbert out to look for water. He would bring in buckets of snow to be melted. He had to be careful to scrape away the top layer of snow that was black from gun powder released by the grenades.
As soon as the immediate danger from the bombs stopped, Rita, Gilbert and I would go outside with the other children. Most parents today would never let their children out under these conditions, but the risk seemed minor compared to the bombing attacks that killed dozens of people. During such a brutal war, the fact that there may be some dead bodies or unexploded grenades around was not a major concern to the adults.
In the early days of the battle, we ate the canned goods my mother had put away, but they did not last long. Everyone shared whatever food they had, but soon there was very little left. I don't remember being hungry, but I must have been, or I would not have so carefully watched two German soldiers eating from a can, hoping they would leave something behind. When they threw the can away, I found it. It was a sardine can, and all that was left was a bit of oil. I rubbed my finger around the bottom, and licked the fishy oil from my finger. To this day, I still love the taste of sardines in olive oil.
Some days Uncle Nicolas was able to bake bread. His bread was so much better than the bread the German soldiers gave us. My mother said the Germans mixed sawdust in the dough to make the flour go further. We were grateful when we could get a loaf of our uncle's good bread.
One day, as Rita was walking out his bakery door with a still-warm loaf, she saw eight American prisoners lined up with their hands raised in surrender to the German soldiers. Aunt Anna grabbed Rita and pushed her back inside the bakery just as the first man was executed. She could hear the young men begging for their lives, as they were shot one by one. Later, Anna found the dog tags the Germans had removed from the GIs, and Rita found one young man's wallet. Rita wrote a letter to the soldier's family, but she never received a response. The letter probably never made it to them. After the war, Aunt Anna was called to testify against the Germans in the war trials. Unfortunately, she was not able to identify which of the German officers ordered the execution of the Americans in our village.
Soon the SS troops - the elite forces - moved on, and our village was occupied by the regular German army. These soldiers were as tired of the war as we were. They didn't want to fight anymore. One night, two German soldiers were separated from their battalion and were left behind. Looking for shelter from the bombs, they tried to come down the stairway to our basement, which was already full of our neighbors and relatives. My mother called out, in German, "Don't come down! Don't come down!" The Germans respected her, and left. Within seconds, we heard a bomb fall close by, then silence. Gilbert peeked upstairs to see what had happened. He returned to the cellar and told my mother, "Mom, those two soldiers are dying. They were hit by shrapnel. Let's take them a blanket. They are bleeding." So Gilbert propped their heads up and came back to the cellar. "One guy is a teenager, maybe 15, and the other one is older than Dad," Gilbert said. We could hear the soldiers crying and moaning on into the night, until they died.
Later, someone buried these Germans in our vegetable garden. Because the ground was frozen solid, they couldn't dig deeper than eight inches in the ground. The tips of the German soldiers' boots stuck out of the dirt, and their helmets, hanging on wooden sticks, marked their grave. Snow soon covered the graves. My mother promised she would never grow vegetable in that garden again. Only flowers.
* * *
We never had the Christmas celebration that we were looking forward to that year. By early January, many of the houses in our village had been totally destroyed. Upstairs, our windows had been blown out and there was a large hole in the roof where the snow blew in. My mother wanted us to move south to Crombach, where our distant cousins lived, close to the Luxemburg border. Crombach was in German-held territory too, but she had heard there wasn't a battle going on there. The problem was how to get there.
Zita had become friends with some of the Germans soldiers in our town. They told her that we'd better leave, that the bombing would be even worse soon. We were living right in the middle of the battlefield. One of the German soldiers said he could get a jeep - one left behind by the Americans - but he didn't have any gas. Gilbert said, "If I can get gas, will you drive us to our cousin's house?" The soldier was so infatuated with Zita, he would do anything for her, even risk his own life. "Sure," he said.
Gilbert dug the gas cans out of the snow behind Rita's chicken house. We would leave the next morning.
That night, a German officer came to our house with 12 soldiers. They called my mother outside to talk to them. The officer said, "Those are the 12 men who shot your husband yesterday." My mother believed them, but she had no time to morn; she was eight months pregnant and had to protect her three children. However, much to her surprise, my father appeared in the middle of the night at our cellar door. He was disguised in ragged clothes, long hair and a scraggly beard. Evidently, the Germans had killed another man that looked similar to my father. This was good for my father since it meant that the Germans would no longer be looking for him, but he still had to be careful to hide his true identity. Since our mother had told us that he had died months earlier, I didn't recognize him. By this point in the war, it wasn't unusual for strange people to be coming to our cellar, so I didn't pay any attention to this unkempt man.
The next morning, our mother told us, "Put all your clothes on that you can, and fill your school bag with some of your favorite things. We might not come back. Our house may be totally destroyed and there may not be anything left."
I put on layers and layers of clothes. First, pants over pants, then a pleated skirt. Two or three shirts and sweaters - so that I could hardly move. I carried my doll, Bobbe. She had a cloth body, stuffed with cotton, and porcelain head, arms and legs. She was very precious to me. We went everywhere together.
Zita's friend showed up with the jeep early in the morning. My father helped my mother into the back while she held Gaston tight. My grandmother and Aunt Anna, who was holding little Robert, climbed in beside her. Rita, Nicole and I fit in as best we could. My Uncle Nicolas threw on a 100-lb bag of flour that we leaned against. It would provide some protection from bullets, and we could use the flour later. Zita sat in front, and the German soldier drove as fast as he could across the roads that were almost impassible from holes left by the grenades and bombs.
It took several hours to reach our cousins' house, about 20 miles south. They lived on a farm outside of the village, surrounded by pine woods. Our cousins were surprised to see us, but welcomed us to their home. It was so peaceful and quiet compared to Ligneuville; we had finally found a place where we could feel safe. I looked at Bobbe, as I held her in my arms and noticed that most of her right arm was missing. It had been torn from her body, and I didn't even realize when it happened. Evidently, a grenade shard had hit her as we traveled.
As we unloaded the jeep, Gaston remembered he had left behind his favorite toy, a papier-mâché palomino horse that he slept with each night. He cried and cried inconsolably. Zita said, "Don't worry, Gaston. I will get your horse." As soon as we were safely in the cellar, Zita and her German friend went back to Ligneuville to get Gilbert and the others left behind. And, of course, she found the horse and returned it to Gaston's grateful arms. That night, my mother gave me a strip of cloth to tie around the bit of Bobbe's arm that remained. She was just another little war victim.
That night, the spacious cellar was dimly lit with candles. Khaki military blankets hung from the ceiling to create "rooms" providing a little privacy. The adults talked in calm, hushed voices as we drifted off to sleep. For the first time in weeks, we slept soundly.
* * *
On January 16, while we were still living in our cousin's cellar, our new baby brother arrived. Rita and I were disappointed; the baby was supposed to be a girl. In our family, we have a girl, boy, girl, boy - and now another boy!
Zita allowed us to go behind the blankets where our mother was laying on a little cot with our baby brother Walter beside her. She looked so exhausted. In the corner were my mother's boots that she had worn continuously for the past month while we were always on the run, looking for shelter. When it was time for Walter to be born, Zita could not pull the boots from my mother's feet, they were so swollen. She had use a knife to cut the boots away.
Walter was very small and weak, and he developed an infection where his umbilical cord had been attached. After a few days, it was obvious that he and my mother needed medical attention. Gilbert and our cousin took a white sheet outside and waved it as an Allied reconnaissance plane flew overhead. A few minutes later, three American soldiers carrying machine guns appeared at the house, expecting to find German soldiers wanting to surrender. Gilbert took them to my mother and Walter. Then they realized the true situation, set their guns aside, and promised to send help.
An American Red Cross truck that served as an ambulance took us to the American army hospital in Malmedy, which they had set up in the orphanage. My mother and Walter rode in a hammock-like bed that hung from the ceiling; Gilbert, Rita and I sat on benches that lined the sides of the truck.
The doctor did not give us much hope that Walter would survive. He was very small, less than five pounds, and his infection had spread. The doctor operated on his stomach, and said that if he survived the next month, he would be okay.
While we were in Malmedy waiting for Walter to improve, we lived in the orphanage with the other refugees from the war. They told us horrible stories of their homes being bombed by the Americans. Two days before Christmas, American bombers headed for Germany got lost. By mistake, they dropped dozens of bombs into the center of Malmedy, which was in American-held territory. The next day, Christmas Eve, while the search for survivors was still going on, more American planes dropped bombs on the town, leveling the town center and setting the town on fire. Dead civilians were lined up, side by side, in the schoolyard. Then, unbelievably, on Christmas Day, around 2:30 in the afternoon, four more American bombers missed their German target and unloaded their bombs on what remained of the town. Over 100 Malmedy citizens and dozens of Americans were killed, and many more were homeless. Naturally, the citizens of Malmedy were upset and furious. They did not know which side was the enemy - the Americans or the Germans.
At the orphanage, my mother was busy taking care of Walter and Gaston, who refused to leave her side. Rita and I were left alone to share a small bed with an old woman who cried all night, talking about her lost sewing machine and her little dress. She sobbed and sobbed. I was so scared and lonely. All I wanted was to be home, safe and warm with my family.
In February, our father returned. Our mother told us not to be afraid of him - this was our father! With his shaggy beard and hair, he looked nothing like the man I remembered who was always so proud of his appearance. He stayed for a day or two before returning to Ligneuville, taking Gilbert with him. Only the stone walls of our house were intact, he told us. He and Gilbert would repair our home as best they could and he would return for us as soon as possible. A few weeks later, Walter's infection had finally cleared and my mother's strength had returned, and we all returned to Ligneuville to begin rebuilding our lives as a family.
Even with all the work that our father and Gilbert had done, our house was still in shambles. There were no windows and the staircase was gone. An American army blanket hung in the front door frame in place of the massive iron door our father had made before the war. Sheet metal salvaged from our father's blacksmith shop covered the holes in the roof - and many of the roofs in town.
The Germans had been defeated, and the American GIs were back. There was no place to buy food and our mother's supply of canned goods was long gone. We stood in line with others from our village while the American soldiers dished out food - beef stew, soup and bread. We kept touching the bread. It was so soft and white, we thought it was cake!
The Americans threw their garbage into a big hole that they dug behind the tents. It was awful how much they wasted! We would jump in the holes and take anything that looked usable - that wonderful white bread and other scraps of food - and take it home to our mother. We didn't waste anything.
Even though Germany would not surrender to the Allies until May, the war was finally over for us. We called this final European battle "Von Rundstedt's Offensive," after the German commander. In the United States, it was known as the "Battle of the Bulge," the bloodiest battle in American history. More than 76,000 Americans were killed or wounded, and the German losses were probably twice as heavy. But there were many other losses. All of us were deeply affected by this war.
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