Chapter 4

Nicolas Feuillen

Sound Engineer

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
This marks the beginning of the Second World War and the ‘Phoney War’ in the west.
In May 1940, it’s the turn of Belgium, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France to be invaded by the army of the Third Reich.

June 6th 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy, liberating France, followed by Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in September. They push Nazi forces back to the borders of Germany.
It’s thought the country is on the brink of collapse.
However, the freedom that has been gradually regained cannot be taken for granted. Flying bombs fall on Liège and Antwerp as late as November.

December 16th 1944, Hitler surprises the allied forces and goes for broke with a major offensive through the Ardennes region, which had only been liberated a few weeks before.
Hitler aimed to divide the Allied armies and take the bridges over the river Meuse before advancing on the port of Antwerp with its fuel reserves.
In the north, German troops advanced towards Baugnez, Stavelot, La Gleize, Stoumont..
In the centre, Hitler’s tanks reached St-Vith and Houffalize, sped on torwards Clervaux, then Wiltz.
By December 22nd, Bastogne had been completely surrounded!

NUTS! US General McAuliffe refused to surrender and his soldiers pushed back daily German attacks on the town until General Patton’s reinforcements arrived. Hitler’s last big push was finally halted just outside Dinant.
The Ardennes region is liberated for the second time.

To be honest, war’s not really my thing…violence, misery, massacres…
I’m only here because Camille, my girlfriend, really wanted to go round the museums telling the story of the Battle of the Bulge
as part of our graduation project.

What’s more, the war is a sensitve subject in my family. That’s partly to do with my grandfather Desmond’s story. He was born in the Belgian Ardennes in 1945, just him and his mother.

A baby with no father around, bearing a name like that, that sets tongues wagging!
My grandfather never wanted to talk much about the circumstances of his birth. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thanks to Camille, at this occasion I discovered an amazing photo in a little museum in the Ardennes ot the Province of Liège. In it are depicted a farmyard, civilians and an American army doctor. So far, so normal.

Except that the farm belongs to the Feuillen family – my grandparents! And there was a striking family resemblance between my family and the woman standing closest to the American doctor.

Naturally, I wanted to find out more. I told my story to the staff at the museum, who were able to give me some more details about this photograph and about my family.

It’s crazy, they’d preserved an incredible number of eyewitness statements and documents.
And it was indeed my relative – she’d got a job in autumn 1944 as a cook in the American army.

Not to boast, but my family has had a real talent for cooking stretching back many generations!

Like everyone else, she was completely taken by surprise by the Germans’ December offensive in the Ardennes. She never thought that the Americans would have such a hard fight of it, even having to retreat as far as Bastogne.

They spent the entire winter of 44/45 there, but the inhabitants also stucked in the  encircled town. They took refuge in shelters and cellars, going to ground for weeks whilst they waited to be liberated from the invading forces by Patton’s troops.

As for the army doctor, he was called Desmond Thompson and he was in the 28th Infantry Division of the US Army.
Finally, I had an explanation for my grandfather’s first name!

But why did this doctor disappear?
Did he return to the USA, leaving behind him a pregnant woman?
Or was he killed during the Battle of the Bulge?

According to the archives I was able to view, it was here, in the place called Schumannseck, that army doctor Desmond Thompson went missing.

It’s true to say that the fighting was horrendous!

I can barely imagine the sheer awfulness of that experience for Desmond Thompson…

Next Chapter

Mattheo Weber