Another slightly bizarre church experience

Last week I tried to go to church in Tertre, the next village over. The schedule says Mass is at 9:15 there every week. I got there and saw only one other car in the parking lot, and the church was locked up tight. The lady from the other car was as perplexed as I, since she had actually called and was told there would be a Mass. Oh well. Another example of the mysterious Belgian Mass schedule.

I decided to give it another shot this week, figuring, what are the odds Mass would be cancelled or changed two weeks in a row. I guessed right; there was indeed a service. Today was the feast of Christ the King, so we celebrated that. In addition, for some reason I didn't catch, the offertory involved bringing baskets of rolls up to the altar. It was also the feast of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, so before Mass ended the congregation honored the organist and the cantor with small gifts. Before we were dismissed there was an announcement that they'd be giving out the rolls. And that the blessing of horses would follow immediately after the service.

Huh?

I thought maybe I'd misunderstood or they were going to go out to some farm to bless some guy's horses. But when I walked out of the church to the parking lot, there was a line of horses and riders waiting for their blessing. I then realized why the stable I'd passed on the way over there had been a beehive of activity at such an early hour: students from the riding school were preparing to ride their horses the short distance over to the church. So there they were, waiting patiently for their blessing. I wished I'd had a camera.

Bastogne

Saturday Mickey and I visited the Battle of the Bulge battlefield--or part of it. The thing was huge. You may have read that somewhere. In fact, our guide pointed that out as a feature of mechanized warfare: battlefields are bigger than they used to be--much bigger. Our "guide" was the commander of the unit Rita and I work in. He is a historian who has studied this battle extensively, and he served in the 101st Airborne, which was the US unit that defended the surrounded town of Bastogne, Belgium.

We stopped first at Elsenborn Ridge, where US forces really started to stop the attack. It diverted the German thrust aimed at Liège to the south and constricted the northern shoulder of the advance, basically keeping the bulge a bulge, instead of letting it become the second overrunning of Belgium that Hitler hoped for. This is a monument to the 26th of the 1st--the US 1st Infantry Division, 26th Regiment, which dug in and fought along a ridge line part of which you can see low on the horizon.

Next on the itinerary was a piece of the Siegfried line. These are the "dragon's teeth" tank traps that marked the German border. A two-lane highway runs along the border. Walk across the road, and you're in Belgium.

Third stop was a copse of woods where an isolated recon platoon (maybe that's redundant) fought a battle against a German battalion. As we traveled the battlefield, it started to become clear that the German advance was slowed to no small degree by individual actions by US units of various sizes that were outmanned and outgunned. But not outfought.

The positions from this action are still there--a little eroded, but still there. You could spot the machine gun pits and the foxholes the riflemen dug.

This is the view they had of the German battalion coming at them, only it was covered with snow.

And the little memorial to the men who fought here. It's in some farmer's back yard. A hand-lettered sign on the road points you to it. The farmer has left a corner of his yard for people to park in.

A slightly bigger memorial on which to end. This was erected at the point where the German attack on Bastogne stopped. They got no further. In the center is a stone inscribed, Liberatoribus Americanis populus Belgicus memor. The Belgian people remember the American liberators.