World War II in this area – the so-called Battle of the Bulge – is a bonus for many visitors. There are some excellent museums, as well as memorabilia including tanks and artillery pieces popping up all over the place.
Geography
Typical Ardennes upland near Trois Points (Walk 21)
The Ardennes lies within the Belgian region of Wallonia and its constituent provinces of Liège, Namur and Luxembourg. This latter province is easily confused with the country of the same name, so for clarification the country will be referred to in this book as the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (or simply Grand Duchy) – its formal title. Except for two brief incursions, the walks in this guidebook do not include the French département of Ardennes just to the south.
Belgium is one and a half times larger than Wales and about the size of Maryland in the United States. It is very much a country with two principal identities, although it is politically divided into three autonomous regions with four languages. The densely populated northern half of the country is Flanders, where the majority of people are Flemish and speak a language very similar to Dutch, albeit in a number of dialects. (Although Flemish is closely related to Dutch it is distinct enough for some Dutch films to have Flemish subtitles – although that may be more political statement than linguistic necessity.) This region is urban Belgium with some beautiful towns but a rather bland landscape, and little in the way of hills.
The southern half of Belgium is Wallonia where, in the main, French is spoken. The people refer to themselves as Belgian rather than Walloon. Walloon, a language similar to French, was the norm until the mid-20th century, but fewer and fewer young people speak it now, preferring French. A survey in 1989 suggested only 17 per cent of people in the region spoke the language well and only 10 per cent used it exclusively. The only other places where it’s possible to hear Walloon spoken are around the French town of Givet (close to the Belgian border) and, extraordinarily, in some villages in the US state of Wisconsin.
Belgium’s third region is the so-called and very small Brussels Capital Region, which is officially bilingual but where French predominates. Finally, there are German-speaking communities in the part of Wallonia known as the Cantons de l’Est – an area ceded to Belgium from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, including the towns of Malmedy, Sankt Vith and Eupen. Outside the main cities it is uncommon to find much English spoken, although larger hotels are an exception.
Geology
Stunning stalactite, Grotte de Lorette at Rochefort (Walk 27)
Many areas of the Ardennes consist of karst, porous limestone, often tunnelled by streams and dissolved by rain and any acidic components it may contain. This has created large cavern systems that often contain lakes, underground streams and extraordinary formations of stalagmites and stalactites – which have become major tourist attractions throughout the area. Perhaps the most famous is the one at Han-sur-Lesse which, together with its close neighbour the Grotte de Lorette at Rochefort, attracts vast numbers of visitors, particularly at peak holiday times (see Walk 27).
The Hautes Fagnes is an elevated marsh and bog-covered area in the northeast of Belgium. It’s beyond the scope of this book to discuss at length the origins of this incredible ecosystem and its almost lunar appearance when seen from the air, but its many circular depressions known as lithalsas, originally thought to be the result of human activity over 2000 years ago, are now accepted as a natural phenomenon caused by a geological process about 12,000 years ago at the end of the last glaciation. They are very unusual in Belgium – or anywhere else at this latitude – and are best seen on Malchamps Fagne, south of Spa (see Walk 14).
World War II and the Ardennes
A Sherman tank outside the military museum in Diekirch (Sentier du Nord, Stage 6)
All was peaceful; farmers in the fields along the road were ploughing for the winter fallow, and some were taking in the winter harvest, cattle were grazing lazily…
So wrote Robert E Merriam in December 1944, just before the Battle of the Bulge (in The Battle of the Ardennes, Souvenir Press, 1958). No account of the Ardennes would be complete without some discussion of the events of December 1944 and January 1945.
German forces attacked through the Ardennes in World War I and again during the 1940 invasion of France. But the wholesale destruction of villages and towns in parts of the Ardennes belonged almost exclusively to the time of the German offensive of December 1944, and the operation named Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Operation Guard on the Rhine, suggesting a defensive posture and used to mislead Allied intelligence) – a name that was changed just before the start date of 16 December to Unternehmen Herbstnebel (Operation Autumn Mist). To most British and US readers it is known as the Battle of the Bulge.
At that point of the war the Ardennes was considered a backwater by Allied commanders at all levels; a place to rest exhausted US combat units and to provide untried US recruits with a relatively gentle introduction to the Western Front. After all, Germany was on its last legs, with apparently insufficient troops for further offensive operations; Allied air support was overwhelming and the thickly forested and hilly Ardennes was considered an outrageously unlikely place for an attack. Historically this was poor thinking: in 1914, and again in 1940, the German army had attacked through the ‘impenetrable’ Ardennes.
The aim of the German counteroffensive was to drive a wedge between the largely British forces to the north and US forces to the south, cross the river Meuse at Huy and Andenne and ultimately capture the pivotal port of Antwerp. This might also have had the effect of encircling and capturing large numbers of Allied troops. However, besides delaying the inevitable and regaining the initiative for a while, it was totally implausible to expect that the operation would radically change the outcome of the war. In the event, even with temporary local manpower and tank superiority – as well as complete surprise – the attack never achieved its objectives. Partly this was due, in some places, to truly heroic resistance by elements of the US forces, on whom the might of the attack fell, but it was also down to significant resupply problems (notably of fuel for the armour), the Allied air superiority that came with improving weather and the awful condition of the snow-covered tracks and roads for non-tracked vehicles.
RAF war grave and remains of a Lockheed Hudson near Maulusmühle (Sentier du Nord, Stage 2)
By mid-January the German forces were retiring in disarray, almost back to their start points. The Ardennes had been fought over twice in about four weeks and the devastation, as well as loss of life both civilian and military, was considerable. So in most cases the villages and towns you see today are post-war in origin, although in many cases restored in an attractive and faithful manner.
Many places – notably La Roche-en-Ardenne, Bastogne and Diekirch (in Luxembourg) – have well-developed and informative military museums dedicated to the events of the winter campaign of 1944–45, and all over the region there are tanks, smaller museums and other memorabilia to supplement the all-too inevitable and poignant war memorials. La Gleize is a good example with a museum that is very focussed on the events leading up to the pitched battle in and around the village – the furthest penetration of the Kampfgruppe commanded by Lt Col Joachim Peiper, part of the 1st SS Panzer Division.
Plants and wildlife
