A Story About Liege, Belgium

Running This Great Walloon City ... And a Soulful Visit To A WWII Cemetary in the Beautiful Rolling Hills of Eastern Belgium ...

Crosses Across Liège©

©Julie M. Moran, 2001

It must be an anyday rolling, bouncing and bumping, these trains through the more idyllic, up-and-down peacefulness, rails that wander through the green light and dark patches of forests and farms, this Ardenne land of eastern Belgium. This would the ideal time to find solace underneath my warm, humming laptop. Hopefully, some thoughts. Here's what I wrote...

So, now, I haven't written in a couple of days. This cold of late unexpectedly sapped my strength. When I arrived in Liège, two days ago, I think I had reached a breaking point, pushing myself too hard, struggling with my luggage all across Belgium, a long train from Antwerp to Wallonia, and a jostling cab ride to my hotel in Herstal, north of Liège.

Liège had been an understudy of my journey planning. On my bumpy ride from the train station, my cab driver was a small man with a mysteriously obscure accent -- usually I could peg these guys, but this one ...

And where was I, really? It wasn't Germany, though this industrious section of the Meuse River we followed would soon lead straight on into the industrial heart of Germany. I could readily see, that I wasn't but 50 miles from Aachen, Maastricht, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonn. That's why, significantly, this was Battle of the Bulge country. Everyone's heard of Malmedy. Alsace? Of course, a half-timbered Germanic pocket of France (once a beloved province of Germany) I would soon visit, and it's jewel of the Rhein, Strasbourg ...

But Liège? Thinking, as the ride up the river lengthened and the meter began racking up a hefty payable, this was not good. I became less convinced this stop would offer much to write home about. The guide books didn't say too much -- what to do?

Worse ... the hotel was, relatively speaking, terrible – here in Herstal, where the mighty cross-European E40 highway met the pan--European E-25 in a symphonic marvel of bridges, tunnels and a spider-webbed cable-stayed bridge across the Meuse ...

... but to me it was very much the essence of No Where, a $20 cab ride from downtown, no restaurants or stores anywhere near -- but lots of sad, dirty row houses up a hollow, surrounded with little penned in yards full of roosters and chickens.

Four star hotel? REALLY! No room service and no in-room mini-bar. And me, tired and sick as a dog, forced to limp down to the restaurant to eat a mealy meal, sharing elbow space with a couple of Americans from New Jersey of all places, who gave solace in supporting my argument that the noisy, misplaced hotel was a poor choice ... complain, complain, complain ...

It's my virus "talking," I reasoned, amidst the soft, cold rain of recent days. Yet now, streaming through, a dirty glimmer of hopeful sun rays. Perhaps the last few days of cold drizzly rain were abating?

Now, an afternoon run. This was a running stop, a running journey -- and hey, this is a running web site!

Down the hollow and into the Meuse River valley, then south to Liège, then back. No brainer. It was not easy, however. The streets wiggling down through Herstal were surprisingly narrow and jaggedly undirect. I misjudged the distance -- even shortened as I decided to do mid-way, it still turned out to be a good 13-14 miles or so (later that night I could not even sleep with the strange fatigue and soreness I felt).

First, along the tight streets that snaked through a sliver of rivertown ... past doorways made grimy with time.

I remember wanting to imagine WWII stories, running fast on past ... these battle weary faces sucking the last of dirty cigarettes ... smoke wafting in my face from tiny, recessed doorways. I ran on. Tiny shops of all sorts, most of which were mysterious dark places with tenebrous signs written in French ...

... a little church here, a mechanic's shop there, all blanketed in a pale brown palour of vague industry. The churches here in this Christian world bore sweet memorials, "Potales," I think they were called, with little Virgin Mary icons inside, remembering and giving hope with prayer to these mysterious People of the Skinny Sidewalk"... at least watching over the darkened streets.

I kept me World War daydreams inside. These people were, in reality, glaring at me as I ran past – imagine running with full "running-garb regalia," and in one 2¼-hour session, seeing not a single runner anywhere. Was it dumb luck? There seemed to be so many older people ambling in front of me on these narrow sidewalks, oblivious to me running fast up behind, shouting, "Ta droite! Ta Gauche! Ta droite! Ta Gauche!"

And I remember thinking, arriving finally into the wide open sun of Quai Lèonard and the wall of river buildings hugging the Meuse comprising northern Liège, this river route was THE ideal runner's path. In truth I might as well have been from Mars.

Into Downtown Liège, things became more bright and engaging. Here my planned route took me into the riverbend, a sandbar feature of a downtown with hillsides hugging round. I meandered wide-eyed across the great plazas, the Place du Marché and its Palais des Princes-Evêques; Place St-Lambert and the Royal Theater ...

...and this curious faux-facade cathedral front, the Choeur de Liège ... Immediately, you think, what an odd looking thing! A fabric Cathedral front. Is it a cathedral fronting a cathedral to be built ... or, my WWII wonders think, a glorious cathedral that once was but now only a wispy white facade of its once greatness?

I never found out. It was very much never-never element amidst a great municipal square, seemingly meant forever to be a wisp of religous meaning ... or a sylph-like symbol to the permanence of human purity, despite what may have happened there to vaporise the greatness of once was ...

... Atilla the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Dr. Strangelove ... they come and go, horrible manifestations of the human psyche. Love peace and hope remain. Even if only a mere framed white tarp.

The next day, Getting down to breakfast seemed an unworthy struggle. And anyway, here in Herstal and its barren Walloon suburban landscape, it wouldn't likely be anything as like the rich spread put out in a lovely downtown Antwerp hotel. Of course I attacked the stacks of bread, fruit, milk and liverwurst with an adventurer's great appetite, mulling over what to do for the day while "enjoying" this plateful of calories.

Looking over my guidebooks, there was only one museum I was interested in visiting in Liège. But I was feeling a bit "museum'd out." Looking for something different to do, I decided to search out Henri-Chapelle, the WWII military cemetery and memorial to nearly 8,000 American soldiers.

Blindly striking out without a guidebook, I hopped on a train to Welkenraedt, toward the direction of a frontier, land of the Battle of the Bulge; and of the front lines, the direction of Maastrich, Germany's industrial heart.

Once off the train, I had thought I'd just walk the remaining 5 kilometer or so to the cemetery. But that morning, as bad as I felt and given the miserable weather – plus the chafing on my tired running legs – this was seeming less and less likely.

Upon arriving the station master asked me, was I looking to go to the American cemetery? Yes, and so he said, "I will call them and they will send a car ..." Cost? "Not a thing," he beamed proudly. I was impressed!

My driver spoke almost no English. But he made it known, he was a cemetery maintenance man whose duties certainly included digging graves but mostly keeping the careful rows, delicate grass and hedgerows tidy.

We drove fast, around tiny poorly marked curves, up and down, occasionally high enough to get the broad sweep of Liège the Province, just north of the Ardennes, really.

Quick enough, we arrived, here at this solid Memorial facing four-square this brave and hallowed landscape. I came to know that there is little else more moving than a cemetery of nearly 8,000 crosses marking the graves of nearly teenagers, killed there in the middle of the Belgian countryside.

I remember just staring, as what seemed somehow the only proper, or respectful, thing ... thinking, when I became sick, there were times when I felt edgy or panic-stricken, as in the middle of the night feeling nauseous and not knowing what tomorrow will bring, here in such a faraway country. Here in Francophone Belgium, the locals love their language too much, to compel to use or even consider learning another, it seemed – most do not speak anything else but French ...

And these very young guys, 8,000 of them, were all right here. They faced and accepted death, here in this faraway, strange place. And as they indeed die here, that would tell something important about the sacrifice, to their families ... and so, these men would be laid below this foreign ground, their bodies would remain buried where they had fallen ... here in this beautiful rolling countryside of Belgium, yet so near to the (then) homeland of the wicked German enemy.

It is interesting, too, to see how (a giant battle wall mural explained) after the Americans arrived in Normandy, with the British and also the Canadian's help (and the Russians from the East, too) we defeated the Germans very, very fast -- it was just under year, in fact, the German army surrendered.

Compare that to the 10 or more years we limped along in Vietnam, with a much smaller, less well equipped -- though much higher-tech -- army, America lost so much, yet still lost our campaign there. The will to fight, and the commitment to the cause was much less than with WWII. Was the enemy just absolutely evil? The Axis must be defeated at all cost. Here, this ground proved beyond doubt the essential meaning of that certainty.

Yet ... all those crosses, row upon row ... it would immediately bring anyone to tears to see it, I believed ...

Everyone was so amazingly kind to me. I was ushered into the office, where an older American military man from Salt Lake City was accompanied by an assistant, a young woman who tried so very hard to find my one relative (a great uncle) who died in WWII. It's funny that I knew so little about him. After learning that some 60 percent of WWII American GIs were, on request of their families, sent back to the U.S., how, I wondered, would a family member come to make such a difficult and painful decision?

The young woman's database could only search the names of the deceased buried there in Europe (but any American cemetery in Europe), and me not knowing where my relative had died, or buried, or the details of his death or anything made me feel very embarrassed. I vowed to learn more.

Just now I'm startled, a warning beep alerting that my warm, humming laptop has become nearly drained of battery power. Soon I would be able to do little but gazing out of the train window, watching the end of the day arrive, a washing rain just beginning to subside. And a rainbow, given to me by a grateful God. I returned it with a grateful prayer ...

... And I hear the conductor's (now familiar!) whistle – it's time for the train to get a move on! Wow, I thought I was moving, and looked up again and realized it was the train next to mine, very weird! The train is late leaving – very odd but ... apparently ...

We are bound for the time of the mountain. Here, the Belgians are still working on electrifying the line – delays are expected, we are told. Ah, here we go, about 11:24, just pulling out, a mere nine minutes late ...

... off for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, into hillier and quite rural regions of Belgium, now into the dark forested Ardennes, somewhat prettier but still very rainy ...

We passed Malmedy, at which this train apparently doesn't stop, passing a branch of the Amblev River and the heart of Battle of the Bulge. I'm getting tired, and I'm already missing my home and my Buster, wondering what's going on back home. But it's a good thing, too, just to feel lost for a while ...

... and now I am being told we must get off the train, and onto another one...

De plus quand nous arriver a Luxembourg. Au revoir, my Belgium.

Running This Great Walloon City ... And a Soulful Visit To A WWII Cemetary in the Beautiful Rolling Hills of Eastern Belgium ... Crosses Across Liège© ©Julie M. Moran, 2001 It must be an anyday rolling, bouncing and bumping, these trains through the more idyllic, up-and-down peacefulness, rails that wander through the green light and dark patches of forests and farms, this Ardenne land of eastern Belgium. This would the ideal time to find solace underneath my warm, humming laptop. Hopefully, some thoughts. Here's what I wrote... So, now, I haven't written in a couple of days. This cold of late unexpectedly sapped my strength. When I arrived in Liège, two days ago, I think I had reached a breaking point, pushing myself too hard, struggling with my luggage all across Belgium, a long train from Antwerp to Wallonia, and a jostling cab ride to my hotel in Herstal, north of Liège. Liège had been an understudy of my journey planning. On my bumpy ride from the train station, my cab driver was a small man with a mysteriously obscure accent -- usually I could peg these guys, but this one ... And where was I, really? It wasn't Germany, though this industrious section of the Meuse River we followed would soon lead straight on into the industrial heart of Germany. I could readily see, that I wasn't but 50 miles from Aachen, Maastricht, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonn. That's why, significantly, this was Battle of the Bulge country. Everyone's heard of Malmedy. Alsace? Of course, a half-timbered Germanic pocket of France (once a beloved province of Germany) I would soon visit, and it's jewel of the Rhein, Strasbourg ... But Liège? Thinking, as the ride up the river lengthened and the meter began racking up a hefty payable, this was not good. I became less convinced this stop would offer much to write home about. The guide books didn't say too much -- what to do? Worse ... the hotel was, relatively speaking, terrible – here in Herstal, where the mighty cross-European E40 highway met the pan--European E-25 in a symphonic marvel of bridges, tunnels and a spider-webbed cable-stayed bridge across the Meuse ... ... but to me it was very much the essence of No Where, a $20 cab ride from downtown, no restaurants or stores anywhere near -- but lots of sad, dirty row houses up a hollow, surrounded with little penned in yards full of roosters and chickens. Four star hotel? REALLY! No room service and no in-room mini-bar. And me, tired and sick as a dog, forced to limp down to the restaurant to eat a mealy meal, sharing elbow space with a couple of Americans from New Jersey of all places, who gave solace in supporting my argument that the noisy, misplaced hotel was a poor choice ... complain, complain, complain ... It's my virus "talking," I reasoned, amidst the soft, cold rain of recent days. Yet now, streaming through, a dirty glimmer of hopeful sun rays. Perhaps the last few days of cold drizzly rain were abating? Now, an afternoon run. This was a running stop, a running journey -- and hey, this is a running web site! Down the hollow and into the Meuse River valley, then south to Liège, then back. No brainer. It was not easy, however. The streets wiggling down through Herstal were surprisingly narrow and jaggedly undirect. I misjudged the distance -- even shortened as I decided to do mid-way, it still turned out to be a good 13-14 miles or so (later that night I could not even sleep with the strange fatigue and soreness I felt). First, along the tight streets that snaked through a sliver of rivertown ... past doorways made grimy with time. I remember wanting to imagine WWII stories, running fast on past ... these battle weary faces sucking the last of dirty cigarettes ... smoke wafting in my face from tiny, recessed doorways. I ran on. Tiny shops of all sorts, most of which were mysterious dark places with tenebrous signs written in French ... ... a little church here, a mechanic's shop there, all blanketed in a pale brown palour of vague industry. The churches here in this Christian world bore sweet memorials, "Potales," I think they were called, with little Virgin Mary icons inside, remembering and giving hope with prayer to these mysterious People of the Skinny Sidewalk"... at least watching over the darkened streets. I kept me World War daydreams inside. These people were, in reality, glaring at me as I ran past – imagine running with full "running-garb regalia," and in one 2¼-hour session, seeing not a single runner anywhere. Was it dumb luck? There seemed to be so many older people ambling in front of me on these narrow sidewalks, oblivious to me running fast up behind, shouting, "Ta droite! Ta Gauche! Ta droite! Ta Gauche!" And I remember thinking, arriving finally into the wide open sun of Quai Lèonard and the wall of river buildings hugging the Meuse comprising northern Liège, this river route was THE ideal runner's path. In truth I might as well have been from Mars. Into Downtown Liège, things became more bright and engaging. Here my planned route took me into the riverbend, a sandbar feature of a downtown with hillsides hugging round. I meandered wide-eyed across the great plazas, the Place du Marché and its Palais des Princes-Evêques; Place St-Lambert and the Royal Theater ... ...and this curious faux-facade cathedral front, the Choeur de Liège ... Immediately, you think, what an odd looking thing! A fabric Cathedral front. Is it a cathedral fronting a cathedral to be built ... or, my WWII wonders think, a glorious cathedral that once was but now only a wispy white facade of its once greatness? I never found out. It was very much never-never element amidst a great municipal square, seemingly meant forever to be a wisp of religous meaning ... or a sylph-like symbol to the permanence of human purity, despite what may have happened there to vaporise the greatness of once was ... ... Atilla the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Dr. Strangelove ... they come and go, horrible manifestations of the human psyche. Love peace and hope remain. Even if only a mere framed white tarp. The next day, Getting down to breakfast seemed an unworthy struggle. And anyway, here in Herstal and its barren Walloon suburban landscape, it wouldn't likely be anything as like the rich spread put out in a lovely downtown Antwerp hotel. Of course I attacked the stacks of bread, fruit, milk and liverwurst with an adventurer's great appetite, mulling over what to do for the day while "enjoying" this plateful of calories. Looking over my guidebooks, there was only one museum I was interested in visiting in Liège. But I was feeling a bit "museum'd out." Looking for something different to do, I decided to search out Henri-Chapelle, the WWII military cemetery and memorial to nearly 8,000 American soldiers. Blindly striking out without a guidebook, I hopped on a train to Welkenraedt, toward the direction of a frontier, land of the Battle of the Bulge; and of the front lines, the direction of Maastrich, Germany's industrial heart. Once off the train, I had thought I'd just walk the remaining 5 kilometer or so to the cemetery. But that morning, as bad as I felt and given the miserable weather – plus the chafing on my tired running legs – this was seeming less and less likely. Upon arriving the station master asked me, was I looking to go to the American cemetery? Yes, and so he said, "I will call them and they will send a car ..." Cost? "Not a thing," he beamed proudly. I was impressed! My driver spoke almost no English. But he made it known, he was a cemetery maintenance man whose duties certainly included digging graves but mostly keeping the careful rows, delicate grass and hedgerows tidy. We drove fast, around tiny poorly marked curves, up and down, occasionally high enough to get the broad sweep of Liège the Province, just north of the Ardennes, really. Quick enough, we arrived, here at this solid Memorial facing four-square this brave and hallowed landscape. I came to know that there is little else more moving than a cemetery of nearly 8,000 crosses marking the graves of nearly teenagers, killed there in the middle of the Belgian countryside. I remember just staring, as what seemed somehow the only proper, or respectful, thing ... thinking, when I became sick, there were times when I felt edgy or panic-stricken, as in the middle of the night feeling nauseous and not knowing what tomorrow will bring, here in such a faraway country. Here in Francophone Belgium, the locals love their language too much, to compel to use or even consider learning another, it seemed – most do not speak anything else but French ... And these very young guys, 8,000 of them, were all right here. They faced and accepted death, here in this faraway, strange place. And as they indeed die here, that would tell something important about the sacrifice, to their families ... and so, these men would be laid below this foreign ground, their bodies would remain buried where they had fallen ... here in this beautiful rolling countryside of Belgium, yet so near to the (then) homeland of the wicked German enemy. It is interesting, too, to see how (a giant battle wall mural explained) after the Americans arrived in Normandy, with the British and also the Canadian's help (and the Russians from the East, too) we defeated the Germans very, very fast -- it was just under year, in fact, the German army surrendered. Compare that to the 10 or more years we limped along in Vietnam, with a much smaller, less well equipped -- though much higher-tech -- army, America lost so much, yet still lost our campaign there. The will to fight, and the commitment to the cause was much less than with WWII. Was the enemy just absolutely evil? The Axis must be defeated at all cost. Here, this ground proved beyond doubt the essential meaning of that certainty. Yet ... all those crosses, row upon row ... it would immediately bring anyone to tears to see it, I believed ... Everyone was so amazingly kind to me. I was ushered into the office, where an older American military man from Salt Lake City was accompanied by an assistant, a young woman who tried so very hard to find my one relative (a great uncle) who died in WWII. It's funny that I knew so little about him. After learning that some 60 percent of WWII American GIs were, on request of their families, sent back to the U.S., how, I wondered, would a family member come to make such a difficult and painful decision? The young woman's database could only search the names of the deceased buried there in Europe (but any American cemetery in Europe), and me not knowing where my relative had died, or buried, or the details of his death or anything made me feel very embarrassed. I vowed to learn more. Just now I'm startled, a warning beep alerting that my warm, humming laptop has become nearly drained of battery power. Soon I would be able to do little but gazing out of the train window, watching the end of the day arrive, a washing rain just beginning to subside. And a rainbow, given to me by a grateful God. I returned it with a grateful prayer ... ... And I hear the conductor's (now familiar!) whistle – it's time for the train to get a move on! Wow, I thought I was moving, and looked up again and realized it was the train next to mine, very weird! The train is late leaving – very odd but ... apparently ... We are bound for the time of the mountain. Here, the Belgians are still working on electrifying the line – delays are expected, we are told. Ah, here we go, about 11:24, just pulling out, a mere nine minutes late ... ... off for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, into hillier and quite rural regions of Belgium, now into the dark forested Ardennes, somewhat prettier but still very rainy ... We passed Malmedy, at which this train apparently doesn't stop, passing a branch of the Amblev River and the heart of Battle of the Bulge. I'm getting tired, and I'm already missing my home and my Buster, wondering what's going on back home. But it's a good thing, too, just to feel lost for a while ... ... and now I am being told we must get off the train, and onto another one... De plus quand nous arriver a Luxembourg. Au revoir, my Belgium.



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