Paris and into Belgium

General LeClerc, led his French 2nd Armored Division into Paris on the evening of August 24 and the bells of the Notre-Dame, silent for more than four years, rang out announcing his arrival. LeClerc and his troops fought their way into the heart of the city. The next day would bring the formal surrender by German General Choltitz.

Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944 after more than four years of German occupation and hardships. Even with sniper activity in parts of the city, there was much celebration as the liberation forces marched through the streets. Thousands of loyal Parisians lined the streets cheering and offering wine, cognac, flowers, vegetables and affections to their liberators.

On August 25, Charles de Gaulle made his famous speech from England. "Paris! Paris outrage! Paris Brise! Libere par lui meme, libere par son pouple avec le concours de armies de le France. (Paris! Paris raped! Paris broken! Liberated by her people with the help of the armies of France.)" Among the first to arrive in Paris was the American author Ernest Hemingway. He visited his friend Pablo Picasso and offered him a gift - a case of hand grenades.

The 300th moved through Paris on August 25. Thousands of people filled the streets and great celebrations began to take place. The 300th however, were under orders to move directly through Paris thus denying them the opportunity to enjoy the "Parisian hospitality." Their orders were to continue the pursuit of the retreating Germans.

Commanding General Dwight Eisenhower of the Allied forces set up headquarters for the European Campaign in Paris. Soon after the liberation, Charles de Gaulle returned to Paris from England to take control as President of the Provisional French Government. He was greeted with more parades and celebrations along with a welcome by General Eisenhower in a ceremony in the center of Paris.

Don Ross wrote describing the people and environment he experienced while in France and Belgium before the Battle of the Bulge:

August 18, 1944 [Belgium] - Well, now I can say I've seen Paris, that is, what one can see of it passing thru in a convoy of GI trucks, rather the trailer hauling my water equipment was hitched on behind and being flat on top three of us rode on top of the trailer thru the streets of Paris.

August 25, 1944 [Belgium] - Remember, I told you we saw Dinah Shore one evening. The show itself was swell, besides Dinah Shore, Edward G. Robinson was there and they both went over big. It was an outdoor show, the place was packed and the boys were climbing high into nearby trees in order to see. So many of them would get on a branch and eventually the strain would prove too much, the branch broke and the boys came down. Nobody was hurt though and it gave us a good laugh.

The 300th continued on to Meaux and bivouacked in nearby Crecy. They continued north through Soissons and on to La Capelle on September 5 and operated the Transportation Control Office there. They worked at Engineer Deport E5 until September 15 when the battalion traveled northeast across the Belgian border and moved Depot E5 with them establishing Depot E6 near Modave. Headquarters was established in the Chateau de Modave. Depot E6 would become a massive engineer dump with mostly bridging equipment that stretched for almost a mile from the chateau to the highway.

Chateau de Modave dated back in history to the 1200s. The Lords from the House of de Modave held the Modave name from 1233 to 1558. The exact date of the early building was not recorded but the chateau evolved over several centuries. Although it had some older architectural elements, including a medieval keep, it owed its 1944 appearance to Count Jean-Gaspard-Ferinand de Marchin who restored it between 1652 and 1673.

Maastricht, an historic Dutch city, was still securely in the hands of German occupation after the Normandy invasion. A British attempt to liberate southern Holland in Operation Market Garden began on September 17, 1944. The British troops were supported by U.S. troops but as they attempted to take several bridges over the Rhine River, they suffered devastating losses. The bridge at Arnhem, Holland, north of Maastricht, proved to be the "Bridge Too Far." After ten days of bitter fighting, Operation Market Garden ended with the withdrawal of British and U.S. troops out of southern Holland.

Maastricht was a fortified city which endured many attacks in history. During these sieges, local residents used the caves of St. Pietersberg as a shelter from the enemy. The caves, just south of Maastricht, were a single system of tunnels, huge caverns and passages formed by the quarrying of local marlstone (limestone). The miners left columns of marl to secure the ceiling. Prior to WWII, there were 20,000 passages with a total length of 125 miles. The walls of the caverns were covered by artistic drawings, some of them centuries old.

During WWII, some of the passages were enlarged, a well dug, storerooms built, a bakery added and a chapel constructed. All this was accomplished before the German occupations. It was prepared to shelter 50,000 people, the entire population of Maastricht, for considerable period of time. It was never used to that capacity.

The 300th made a side trip to Maastricht on October 6, 1944 with truck loads of bridge materials only to be turned back by the Germans.

The 300th worked out of "Mud Hill" in Modave from September 15 through late December. Christmas of 1944 didn't feel or look like Christmas for the 300th as headquarters began to move out of Chateau Modave on Christmas Eve on their way to Janee in the Bulge and its severe winter. Some of the men sent home cards with patriotic themes or one designed by one of their own, Archie Menard.

While in the Modave region, one of the major tasks of the 300th was operating saw mills near Liege, north and south of the Meuse River. These mills, up to 20 in all, had a daily production of 35,000 board feet. The engineers hand-cut the trees with two-man saws and then limbed them with adzes in the forests of the region. They then trucked the logs to the saw mills.

300th Engineer Chuck Bice describes the Belgium saw mill town:

There was a bar just three or four blocks from where we were staying in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. The town was small and of course it was cold there then. They had a fire in the bar so we would go down and staying as long as we could and they wanted us to. There was an old man about 80. He looked even older and he had a big old beard and mustache. He smoked a big old crooked pipe. I enjoyed talking to him. You know we would hit a word now and then to get the meaning. We got ready to leave and he gave me a pipe, an old pipe. I gave it to my son. Some of it was handmade.

We had a lot of fun and when we got ready to leave that little town, those women and some of the kids cried, like family was leaving.

The following letter dated November 1, 1944 from "Still-Somewhere in Belgium" from 300th Sgt. Donald Ross provides a view of the recently liberated Belgium from an engineer point of view just before everything changed for these men in the Battle of the Bulge:

Dear Mom-

Still in the same old location, maybe I'll spend the winter here - might just as well, it's warm and dry, we sleep in one house and eat in another. Doing just well for ourselves. Had to let a couple of the boys leave for a couple of days for another job, while they were gone I had to do the cooking again, done pretty well I guess, none of the boys had to hunt up their medics anyway. This noon we had sandwiches Vienna sausages, peas, French fried potatoes, tomato soup, applesauce, bread & butter, coffee, also some warmed up Italian spaghetti we had the day before. As long as we keep eating like this I guess we'll be O.K. We are eating off plates again (Thank God.) & using silverware. My own crew (only four of us) eat in a house over here with a civilian & his wife - namely Oscar & Marie. We pool our rations together, & therefore have quite a variety, using their big stove & cooking utensils. One of the boys helps her cook & clean up the dishes & pots & pans. The place is like a second home to us, has a radio, we are listening to the States constantly. We sit around the fire at night, when we are not working, & talk - about things in general, & try to pick up a bit of French. You see, here in East Belgium the people speak French, & most of us have got so we can speak in French among ourselves as much as we can to facilitate matters. One of the boys speaks German so we will probably be talking a little bit of German when we get there. It seems as though we are kind of settling down for the winter now, although it won't take much to put us on the move again. The whole Battalion is living inside now, makes everything O.K., the rest of the boys are living in a chateau, (quite the stuff too they tell me) have beds & mattresses again (some of them) heated room & all. I don't care, we want to stay where we are, the people around here have adopted us practically, & we sure do get around.

At the house where we eat (Marie's) she managed to get some film for their camera, & the other day when the sun was out we snapped some pictures, they came back yesterday. I am enclosing one of them in this letter. Maybe it'll get by the censor. (I hope).

You ought to see this house, the owner (Oscar) is a brick mason by trade, its beautifully built, only 3 years ago, in fact, all of it is made of quarried stone, beautiful masonry, plaster finished inside, except for wood trim & doors, floors are all ceramic tile & here's what makes me like it so well, all the windowsills are marble & the fireplaces are all made of marble, they are really beautiful. Today, this place would cost quite a piece of money, not so much in our eyes but in the way these people look at it, it costs about 5000 dollars. It's a swell place, though. On top of one of the fireplace, it happens to be the room I'm in now, there rests a beautiful clock, the case I mean, is made of marble, pink & black marble, set in together with white strafes running all through it, any which way. It's just another example of the results of patience of these people over here, they really turn out some beautiful jobs, & America, in spite of all its machines cannot equal it. It's mostly all hard-work over here, & these people are really skilled at it, they can do wonders.

Their dress is the same as ours back home practically, except for the fact that they wear wooden shoes, this is due to the Boche, the people here were only allowed wooden shoes, here as likewise in France. Here some of the people, quite a few of them, in fact, do have good leather shoes here, pre-war, I guess, & then they cost 40 dollars a pair.

Today isn't Sunday, it's Wednesday, I think, but you'd think it was Sunday, the way the people are all dressed up, today is a National Holiday to honor the dead here in Belgium, & everybody, today, is visiting the graves of their relatives, friends, & comrades, with flowers, some of them going many miles by bicycle to visit some distant graves.

I received the package with the ink in it, also the one with the cheese, had 2 from Wallie this past week, one with some sardines in it, also one full of cookies. Am waiting especially for the one containing the Plum Pudding & sauce, & also one from Wallie containing some "cough medicine." Wishing you all my best, hoping you are all well & making out O.K. Bye

Love, Don.

Don Richter recalled some of his time in Belgium:

There were five of us in the sawmill detail at Failon. Jack Greenhaw and Charles Olive had the duty of counting and inventorying lumber as it was produced. John Gentile, Ralph Medina and I had the duty of guarding the sawmill round the clock. This was great duty for all of us as we were accepted and loved the residents of the tiny village.

Louis Thomas lived in the small village of Failon, Belgium where the sawmill was that I guarded along with two other Company B fellows. He was constantly at the mill where his father and a brother worked. He was only about twelve years old at the time but he and I became very close friends. When he found out that I came from Texas he became so interested in everything about Texas he said that he wanted to go back home with me.

It seems that a tragic event occurred there just before our army cleared the Germans from the area. A group of the young men had become active partisans hitting the German Army in any way that they could. When a train loaded with German reinforcements was derailed, the German officer in charge of the area had a group of young men arrested and executed in a field outside the village. An older brother of Louis Thomas was one of the victims and his mother would not allow him to go outside the village with me. I recall very vividly the story told by one of the young men of the village of how he had escaped by diving into a sewer just as the gunfire began.

When the German offensive in Belgium began we were suddenly picked up and taken back to Chateau LeBois as the whole area was considered at risk. Company B went to the town of Ciny to set up road blocks and mine the bridges there where we stayed for some days manning the defensive positions. When Company C took over Ciny defense from us late one afternoon, we were ordered to take up a position towards the front.

Our Third Squad truck driver was not about to go out on this mission without a bottle of cognac and he knew where he could get it. Sgt. Jesse Ruffin agreed to take a detour to Failon where driver Roy Welchel knew a rich farm owner who would trade a can of gas for a fifth of cognac. When we arrived in Failon, most of the village crowded around our truck while Welchel made his deal with the farmer. Louis Thomas saw me and shouted "Donald, Bosh coming back! Bosh coming back!!" I assured Louis that I personally and the US Army as a whole would see to it that the Bosh (Germans) would never return to Failon. This was, I believe, the night of December 22, 1944. I have always hoped that our action in the Battle of the Bulge did keep the "Bosh" from returning to Failon.

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