Where's Bubba?

Where's Bubba?

The dense forest made operations in the countryside near Bastogne difficult, easy to get lost in the dark and keep track of your unit. Easy to run into a German out of his area or perhaps on patrol. Look closely and see if you can find Bubba out exploring for foxholes. Hint: He's wearing a starched white shirt, which would have been good camouflage in the winter, but works against him today. Good hunting.

Easy Company dug in for about 30 days around Christmas of 1944 during the 101st Airborne defense of Bastogne that left large parts of the town in rubble.

Every state in the USA is named in this star-shaped
testament to the resistance at Bastogne. The views
on top are magnificent, we charted the day's journey
from there.

But the stubborn defense held, the surrounded city was never taken. After the war, grateful townspeople, despite untold difficulties, gathered up bricks from ruined buildings and built a huge memorial and battlefield viewing platform, honoring every state in the USA. They dedicated this monument in 1947, an amazing feat under post-war circumstances.
About three stories high, we climbed the circular stair to look over the specific battleground detailed in The Band of Brothers, then came down and watched the pertinent video in the bus before we walked the ground and saw the forest where this epic defense took place.

Some foxholes have been preserved. They provided some, but often deadly cover from artillery bursts that shattered trees and sent wooden missiles in all directions. On this beautiful day in the Ardennes, we imagined  the dangerous conditions in the dark on the coldest winter in memory. 

Easy Company rose from these
frozen foxholes in a charge to a
farmstead below -- depicted in
Band of Brothers.

Members of our party moved on, demon-strating how easy it is to lose sight of a comrade, or get mixed in with the occasional German outpost.

We traced their attack through Foy and beyond, then stopped where Easy Company -- after the many skirmishes -- was finally able to rest in a church and have a real roof over their heads. They were treated to a concert by children across the street in their schoolhouse. It was heaven, one said. They thought they were done with their mission and would soon be pulled back to France.
That was not to be, there was more fighting to do immediately for this elite force. We'll continue on as well.
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Looking out the window, we're entering Luxembourg, a country so small it only says LUX on the maps.Perhaps for Luxury at the fine Novotel we stay in tonight. There's a Burger King on its border. Do they really love Americans that much?

The German dead from the Bastogne area fights with Easy Company are found in a large German cemetery nearby, containing thousands of German war dead. Each gothic stone marker indicates the burial place of six men, laid side by side. This efficient arrangement makes the message left there that we found today (above) particularly poignant..
This translation is from Stan's college German and therefore literally problematic, but the sentiment is universal:
Dead Soldiers are never alone
Always their faithful
Comrades stay beside them.

It is unusual in warfare for the victors to accord such respect to the vanquished. The U.S. Army stands
alone in this regard. Historically, mass graves and unmarked burials are the norm for the losing side.
The care of these dead was eventually turned over to the new German government, of course