Visits in Belgium

  Liège, Belgium
Sunday, April 13, 2008

This morning I was up early and on the road out of Paris by 7:00 for the three-and-a-half hour drive to the Belgian province of Luxembourg. On the way there I had to pass the city of Sedan, where the Prussian Army defeated and captured Emperor Napoleon III in 1870, marking the key German victory in the Franco-Prussian War. In May of 1940 it was also the site of the German panzer breakthrough that marked the beginning of the end for the French defense against the German invasion of WWII.
 
We have a church member who lives just across the border in Belgium; we had a pleasant visit together. Due to various circumstances, this was the first time I had been able to visit him and his son in their village home. We discussed plans for the Feast of Tabernacles among other things. He is quite isolated and doesn't see others of like mind more than a few times a year, so he anticipates the festival even a bit more than the rest of us.  From there I drove about 90 minutes north for a further visit with other church members living just south of Liège (or Luik in Flemish). Belgium has two main language zones: Wallonia where a dialect of French is spoken, and Flanders, where a dialect of Dutch is spoken (there is also a small percentage of Belgians along the German border that primarily speaks German). Road signs are given in one language in one zone and may change considerably in the other, so one has to get used to both versions when driving in Belgium. When moving from French to Flemish, Liège becomes Luik, Anvers becomes Antwerpen, and Courtrai becomes Kortrijk to name just three.
 
Several of our members in Belgium live south of Liège, just a few miles further down the road from Neuville-en-Condroz, one of the major US WWII military cemeteries in Europe.

The memorial building at Neuville-en-Condroz

Over 5300 US servicemen are buried here, many of them from the Battle of the Bulge which happened through this region in December 1944-January 1945.

US military cemetery at Neuville-en-Condroz

There is another US cemetery with over 7000 graves just 20 miles East of Liège. Much blood has been shed in this area, in many wars.
 
I had a very pleasant visit with three Church members here. Mr. François is a retired Belgian airborne commando officer who has boyhood memories of being shot at by German soldiers and strafed by fighter aircraft as he and his father tried unsuccessfully to reach England when the Germans overran Belgium. He was about 10 years old at the time. He met the future Mrs. François, born in Germany, during the postwar occupation period. Now we can sit peacefully beside the François' wood stove in their beautiful old stone house, and talk about happier times to come.
 
Following that visit, I took to the road once again, driving several more hours, this time to the West for the continuation of the trip tomorrow. At one point I stopped to fuel up and winced when I had to pay about nine dollars US per gallon for unleaded!  Suddenly three dollars didn't seem quite so bad....