Ardennuous reading: "Ardennes 1944" by Anthony Beevor

Over twenty years of living in Belgium have made the Ardennes familiar to me. Both the tedium of regular shuttling to and fro between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, and many a rainy randonnée through fields and woods have made places like Marche-en-Famenne, Houffalize, Ciney, Rochefort, La Roche en Ardenne and Bastogne literally and metaphorically part of the scenery. 

I confess that the Ardennes, when not playing the role of the over-familiar 150 km or so of southward-bound motorway, have often been for me a rather poor substitute for the British hills I always loved to tramp over. All a bit tame, too domesticated, too easy, with villages which seemed rather dour and same-ish (albeit populated by friendly folk partial to fine - but different - walker's beer). Nice, with some excellent detail, but let's say it, a bit boring. 

Of course, I was aware that these hills and villages were the scene of what most people call the Battle of the Bulge. On those walks around the wooded hills and valleys, I had encountered many small memorials, roadside plaques and even, in Bastogne for example, the odd bit of memorialised World War Two military hardware. Still, it never really sunk in; the mismatch is just too great: the Ardennes for me are a place of unpretentious charm, unreliable (but unextreme and generally varieties of wet) weather, portly day-trippers, grey stone villages, the odd rock valley, damp forests and rolling agriculture. 


So when, during my slightly guilty Monday morning perusal of the FT's Saturday Life and Arts section (given my employer pays for my daily FT, I should of course be reading earnest coverage of the Greek debt crisis, or delicate negotiations over UK membership of the EU, but 'twas ever thus), I noticed a small review of a new book by Anthony Beevor, Ardennes 1944, my curiosity was piqued. Here was  a history of places I knew, a book which would bridge the gap between those occasional hikes, with the celebratory glass of Ciney to finish, and the awareness that something rather important once happened here.

All this rather long preamble to say there is huge cognitive dissonance here. This Belgian backwater saw Hitler's last throw, the last meaningful counter-offensive against the armies bearing down on the Reich. It was an audacious plan, based on a recognition that the advancing Western allies had left the hilly, wooded terrain of the Ardennes poorly defended. The idea was to push back through the hills from the early December front line in the German-speaking cantons of Eastern Belgium, to cross the Meuse and progress to recapture Antwerp, a move which, in Hitler's thinking, would neutralise the attack in the West and allow him to concentrate on resisting the Red Army in the East. An audacious plan, and a doomed one, probably from the outset, by lack of fuel and the complete domination of the Allies in the air. Nonetheless, it gave the Americans in particular a mighty scare and turned into one of bitterest battles of the War, bringing the conditions of the Eastern Front to the West. 

Sherman tank in modern Bastogne

I already mentioned the weather. At the beginning of the battle, this was typical enough and would be familiar to anyone who knows Belgium: damp, drizzly, soft underfoot, with fog and low cloud which neutralised allied air forces, thus helping the Germans considerably. But the battle will be remembered for what came next: extreme winter conditions. Temperatures dropping to minus twenty, metre-deep snow. Soldiers suffered almost as much from frostbite as from the weapons of the enemy, bodies froze solid, as did the ground, which made it almost impossible to bury them. More urgently, defenders struggled to dig their foxholes, and, unequipped for the conditions, had to improvise warm clothes and winter camouflage, frequently at the expenses of dead comrades and enemies alike. How to put this? This doesn't happen in Belgium. This is a country of grey skies and soft rain. Extreme temperatures are rare, years can pass with barely a snowflake seen. And yet December 1944 saw conditions more reminiscent of Russia than bland North Western Europe.

Beevor does his usual magnificent job of describing all this. His research is mind-boggling, his eye for the telling detail unfailing. Some scenes stick in the mind: soldiers thawing out a dead enemy's body over a fire so as to be able to take his clothes, a cat perched on the back of a recently killed soldier "profiting from the last of the body's heat"... There are tales of disorganisation and chaos, but also of huge courage and selflessness. Many of the American soldiers defending the Ardennes were "green" replacements, not expected to last long by their more battle hardened comrades, and, true enough, there were scenes of panic and terrorised flight, as well as grave losses, under the initial German attack. But Beevor makes in very clear that, while the defenders could have been overwhelmed, they were not, and that  this is down to extraordinarily tenacious resistance from American units whom the German had frankly expected to be a pushover. 

The great symbol of this resistance is of course the town of Bastogne, which was completely encircled, yet held out through the entire battle, ultimately to be relieved by General Patton's forces diverted from the south. The famous story of General McAuliffe, the American commander's response to a invitation to an honourable surrender by the German commander is of course told. "Nuts" he replied, and the rest is history.

I have said before that I do get a bit lost in Beevor's narrative. The battalions, platoons, regiments and companies all start to get a bit mixed up, as do the umpteen villages, hamlets and crossroads that are so bitterly fought over. To be honest, it doesn't really matter. For me the power of Beevor's work is in his evocation of the situation, I trust him to get his facts right. At the same time, he also masters the broader picture well, depicting the overall strategy, the moves made by the generals, the strategic issues. The generals have varying fortunes in Beevor's account: with only a few emerging with much credit. Eisenhower keeps his head while others lose theirs, and manages the situation well. Patton, for all his impulsiveness and glory-hunting, also shows himself to be a reliable team player when the chips are down. Even Montgomery, utterly insufferable in his extraordinary self-centeredness, on this occasion makes the right calls, and contributes positively, even at one point taking over command of two American armies. 

Anthony Beevor; narrative historian

If there is one frustration with this book, it is one I have felt before with Beevor, in Stalingrad, in D Day and in Berlin: the Downfall 1945, namely his dogged refusal to step back and analyse. His last chapter, Conclusions, is a cursory affair of a few pages and does not in fact really attempt to draw conclusions at all. I suppose this is to be respected. Beevor sees it as his job to relate what happened, to record the events, albeit while at times getting inside the heads of his characters. He will not spend much time reflecting on what it all meant. 

What is does is of huge value, and I for one, on the next occasion I drive to Luxembourg or take a day to stalk around the leafy valleys of the Ardennes will certainly see the place rather differently. This was a huge and terrible battle. Conditions were appalling. Vast numbers of soldiers and civilians died and atrocities occurred on both sides, though with the SS, as usual, in a class of their own on this account. The sheer quantities of military hardware flung into this battle also beggar belief, and, in one of those telling details, Beevor notes that there are still forests whose timber cannot be sold because of the amount of steel shrapnel embedded to this day in the trees. Having read this book, I can even now see a kind of stoical genius in how this area has managed, in spite of it all, to rediscover its vocation as a boring Belgian backwater suitable for modest hiking expeditions and portly day-trippers.