Posted on 01/25/2025 12:07:51 PM PST by Borges
WASHINGTON — Paul Goffin has spent much of his adult life solemnly remembering the American Army Soldiers who fought to free his home country, Belgium, during World War II.
Yet, it wasn’t until Goffin retired in 1990 from the World Bank in the Washington, D.C., area that he could dedicate serious time to help recognize the men who fought during the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and deadliest conflict of the war.
“They represented everything,” said Goffin, now 100, during an interview at his northern Virginia home. "They brought back the freedom which we didn't have, the hope for life, for a better life.”
The battle began on the morning of Dec. 16, 1944, when more than 200,000 German troops launched Adolf Hitler's last bid to salvage the war. This counterattack was meant to reverse several German military defeats following the Allied troops landing in German-occupied France in the summer of 1944.
The United States and its allies had moved quickly across France during the second half of 1944 on the way to Berlin, and some hoped the war in Europe might be over by Christmas.
The Germans had another idea, and they struck back in the Ardennes Forest along a 75-mile-long remote front line held by four American Army divisions stationed there.
Many U.S. Army units were overrun in the unexpected onslaught. German troops surged 50 miles toward the Meuse River in Belgium but failed to split the allies before being subdued and defeated.
Life under the Nazi reign The Belgians had spent several years under Nazi domination, Goffin said. He was 15 years old when the Germans invaded his homeland in 1940.
Goffin’s family had a farm not far from the German and Dutch border. They used about 10 horses on the farm, and the German military also used horses to haul implements of war. It wasn’t long before the Germans came by the farm, Goffin remembered.
“They took the horses and left,” he said.
A few hours later, the German soldiers came back. They had seen the garage, Goffin said. They opened the garage doors, saw the car, and ordered Goffin’s father to give them the keys.
The younger Goffin was aghast. He said he didn’t understand why the invaders could come into his family’s home and demand things. His mother stepped in and took him aside. She told his father to give them the keys. He did so, and they drove away.
Goffin said he never forgot what his mother then said: “Did you see on their buckles? 'Gott mit uns’ - ‘God is with us.'”
She said the Germans had worn the same buckles in World War I.
Goffin said he wondered why God was with them and not with the Belgians, but he knew the answer.
“We are objects. We belong to them,” he said. “If they don't like us, they discard us. That became the way of life.”
“We couldn't travel more than three or four miles in the area where we lived,” he explained. “When I was 18, they arrested my cousin with whom I had grown up, and he got shot.”
The family never knew why the cousin was killed.
Goffin was arrested and forced to do labor at a nearby airfield when the Germans were preparing their winter 1944 counterattack.
Americans were wonderful When the Germans struck during the Battle of the Bulge, Goffin, who was 20, joined the 21st Fusiliers Battalion of the Belgian reconstructed army. His unit served with American and British troops in patrolling and securing territories in the Rhine area on the Belgian German border.
Because the U.S. Army had rapidly advanced in 1944, reaching and crossing the Rhine River, Goffin said the area become a no man's land. Cities were destroyed and there were no functioning institutions, no transportation, no shops, he said.
Farms were abandoned, and liberated political prisoners and forced laborers were roaming around. The local population tried to stay sheltered. Through it all, Goffin was interacting with the U.S. Army Soldiers, a bunch of young men who came from the four corners of America. He was amazed by them, he said. They were all around his age; some younger. He said the Army troops were wonderful guys full of compassion and understanding.
He said he looks back on that time and realizes they were spending critically formative years of their lives fighting tooth-and-nail to save Europe.
Medics with Company A, 110th Medical Battalion, evacuate wounded during the Battle of the Bulge near Lutrebois, Belgium, in January 1945. U.S. casualties in the Battle of the Bulge were staggering, with 19,000 killed, 47,000 wounded, and 23,000 either captured or missing. It was the bloodiest battle American Soldiers have ever fought on foreign soil.
A few months after the battle, Germany surrendered. Those same American GIs wanted to go home and forget about everything they had seen, Goffin said.
But they couldn't forget.
Decades passed, but the American veterans couldn’t forget the Ardennes, the cold weather, the horror of the fight. They couldn't forget the Belgians.
By 1990, Goffin, who had earned his master’s degree in agricultural economics from Iowa State College, retired from the World Bank after a 25-year career dealing with agricultural development projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
He said he had heard that World War II Army veterans were showing up at the embassy in Belgium, ready to acknowledge their war experiences and revisit the Ardennes.
Active in the Belgian community and vice president of the Belgian American Association, Goffin became their colleague and partner.
The veterans united in their goal of leaving a legacy of their service in the Ardennes Forest. They formalized their reunions and established the Battle of the Bulge Historical Foundation.
After years of deliberations, the veterans reached a consensus to build a conference table out of Ardennes Forest wood to honor and memorialize not only the American Soldiers who fought there in the winter of 1944-45, but also those who were executed by the Nazis during the battle.
‘They fought against tyranny’ Army veterans traveled to Belgium to select the oak trees for the effort, and a Belgian cabinetmaker agreed to make the table.
The Battle of the Bulge Table, designed by veterans in the Battle of the Bulge Historical Foundation and completed in 1994, is made of oak harvested from the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. The table is housed in the Pentagon. That project was completed in 1994 in Stavelot, Belgium. It displays the insignia of the 45 Army divisions who fought during the battle and includes designs honoring those executed by the Nazis.
The table was initially used in the Army Memorial Room at Fort Meade, Maryland, but today resides within the Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Plans and Policy at the Pentagon.
For years after the table’s completion, Goffin said he felt at home at Battle of the Bulge reunions. He also served as a trustee of the Battle of the Bulge Historical Foundation.
And after all the years, he still remembers the kindness and compassion the U.S. Army Soldiers had for Belgians like him, and how those young men saved Europe at high cost.
“They fought back against tyranny,” Goffin said. “They fought in the snow and the ice and the blood … and they want us to remember that we have to be ready to fight for it” if the need ever arises again.
It was the bloodiest battle American Soldiers have ever fought on foreign soil.
Hand Salute.
I knew a man who was there. He was in the quartermaster corps driving a truck through the area and got stuck there. He said he was saved because his mother taught him enough colloquial German that he was able to make the German soldiers calling out think he was a German. He had nightmares about that experience for years afterwards.
<>“We are objects. We belong to them,” he said. “If they don’t like us, they discard us. That became the way of life.”<>
At Disney World in the mid-90s, I had my first and last encounter with a group of Germans.
Arrogant a-holes. All of them.
Thank you for posting this. God bless all who fought against the tyranny that was the Nazis. Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another. Such love covers a multitude of sins.
Wish he’d told how and when he came to the US....his experience is interesting but missing those details.
My uncle, who would have been 105 this year, drove a tank in an armored division at the Bulge. The rest of his crew were killed but he survived and came home in one piece.
My father was shot in the leg and chin outside St Malo France, patched up and sent with the Big Red One and was cut off in the Ardennes Forest. Frost bite there. I’m lucky to be here. Thanked him for being hard to kill. Best man I’ve known in my life and I miss him.
“We’re paratroopers, we’re supposed to be surrounded.”
My grandfather served in the battle of the bulge and most of his unit was lost. He was wounded and had what at the time was called shell shock (probably would be severe PTSD today). He had amnesia and was not in his own uniform and missing dog tags. For several months my grandmother was told he was likely KIA but turned up in an army hospital in New York.
The army and VA did not know how to treat him so they used heavy sedation and anti psychotic drugs that ultimately lead to his death.
All have some, some gave all.
He was wounded and had what at the time was called shell shock (probably would be severe PTSD today). He had amnesia and was not in his own uniform and missing dog tags. For several months my grandmother was told he was likely KIA but turned up in an army hospital in New York.
The army and VA did not know how to treat him so they used heavy sedation and anti psychotic drugs that ultimately lead to his death.
If they still called it “Shell Shock”, he probably would have gotten better care.
My great-uncle (my grandma’s brother) died at the Battle of the Bulge, age 19. He was the youngest of 7, and the only son. Til the day she died, I don’t think my grandma ever got over it. Even my mother, who was about 10 when he died, would become tearful remembering that year’s Christmas, how every decoration was removed and nobody was allowed to celebrate anything. I still have the telegram sent to the family informing them of his death.
I had a distant cousin killed there. He was a cook. They ran out of hot food but needed more infantrymen for the front lines. So, he got the order to grab his rifle.....
One of my best friend’s had an uncle who fought in the battle that I met. He’d gotten a bad case of frostbite there. He said his feet were never really right again after the Bulge.
He settled in South Florida and refused to go anywhere where it got cold ever again.
My father, born 1920, an infantryman who carried a BAR, went into France in August 1944. He served in the 28th infantry division (the “bloody bucket”).
His unit marched under the Arc de’ triumphe and claims he and his BAR could be seen on the postage stamp memorializing that event. He then spent months engaged in hard fighting in the Huertgen forest (not an American victory), before his unit was rotated to the Ardennes as a rest assignment.
He led patrols reconnoitering the German lines, and warned HQ that there was a buildup, but the warnings were ignored. His unit was overrun on the first day of the battle.
With a small group of men, he tried to get back to American lines, but was captured on the third evening when, exhausted, his group went to sleep next to what they thought was a field of haystacks, but was in fact German tents.
He was sent to a POW camp deep in Germany. He and another soldier escaped for a several day period while being marched there, but were eventually recaptured.
He spent the next 5 months in the camp, where he caught and ate the occasional rat—his only source of protein. He returned home weighing half what he weighed when captured.
After being honorably discharged, he got himself educated at U. Cal-Berkeley, where he met, and married my mother. They eventually had six kids—all boys.
He spent the rest of his life as an insurance underwriter, keeping very fit, and passing away in 2004 at the ripe old age of 84. And for the rest of his life, if there was a loud noise at night, he would awake thinking he was being bombarded by German artillery.
Interestingly, he didn’t harbor a grudge against the German soldiers he fought against. He figured they were just being forced to do a dirty job.
But he did harbor a grudge against the French. When the French would approach the Americans to tell them the Germans were lurking nearby, the Americans would ask them to come along with them and show them exactly where the Germans were. But, he said, the French would invariably refuse and run away.
My uncle, my Mother’s middle brother was a.cook for the general’s staff after someone found out he could bake pies... everyone grabbed a rifle to fight off the assaults at the Bulge. Said he feet always felt frozen, but he survived it. His older brother laughed about the contrast with his service in No Africa...
I couldn't but a beer in any bar, once they found out that I was an American serviceman.
My uncle (at least 1) was there. I believe he was the only one of either side of my family (physically) wounded in WWII.
My Grandfather was wounded there.
My maternal grandfather fought there. Survived, came home, and shortly died in a car crash in Alabama.
Oh, one of the great lines.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.