© Marc Hoscheid
On Saturday Weiswampach and Our in Belgium commemorated the shooting of two allied Lancaster machines as well as the intervention of the 112th Infantry Regiment of the US army.
For the past couple of weeks, Luxembourg has been remembering its liberation 80 years ago in numerous locations scattered around the country.
The good weather had encouraged quite a few people to attend the commemoration celebration in the North of Luxembourg. In the night of the 12 to 13 August 1944, the two military planes were targeted by the Germans. Although Nicolas Henrotte was only 12 years old back then, he still remembers the shoot-down of one of the machines.
"We were outside, we saw how the plane caught fire and started to move in circular motions, steadily lowering. Last minute it succeeds in turning around to a place 500 metres away from the village. It crashes into a tree on a hill. There it exploded and continued burning and detonating the whole night."
Inside the bombers, which were shot down in a timeframe of two hours, there were 14 soldiers from England, Canada, and New Zealand. Thirteen of them sacrificed their lives, one was imprisoned by Germans. The local people were told by the besiegers to collect the bodies. Then, it came to an event the German army could not have expected, according to Henri Rinnen, president of the tourist information office Weiswampach-Beiler-Leithum.
“When a bullock cart carrying the dead bodies of the two crews came down Ourenerweg into the village on Sunday, a procession started to follow the cart spontaneously, accompanying them into town.”To avoid that the allied soldiers would be buried like heroes in Weiswampach, their corpses were transported to Germany that same evening. To honour their commitment, the Lancaster memorial was inaugurated in 2004.
Afterwards, 12 soldiers of the 134th Infantry Regiment who had sacrificed their lives in the battles around Weiswampach were honoured at the town hall. Even though the battle only went on from the 24 to the 26 January 1945, it was intense and it had horrible repercussions for the civil population.
Erny Kohn, the president of the “Cercle d’Etudes Sur la Bataille des Ardennes” elaborates:
“During the battle of the 25 January the house of Nicolas Hoffmann’s house burns down around 4pm. He and his family were simultaneously hiding in the cellar. When they left the cellar, they ran around looking for another secure shelter while shots were still being fired. Madame Hoffmann suffers a severe injury to her arm, she is admitted to the hospital in Esch, where her right arm is amputated. Her son Josy is only lightly injured, yet her daughter Alice endures severe injuries.”
Apart from the battles, the extremely cold climate greatly affected the soldiers and the civilians. Weiswampach was a devastated village after the war, thus it is important to never forget the terrible events which occurred 80 years ago.
