Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 25, 2020

LUXEMBOURG After returning from the war, Manuel Gomes had this habit. Every afternoon he'd put on his military hat and sit on the front porch of his house in New Bedford remembering the days of combat.

"He had a very tough time at the Battle of the Bulge," says his grandson, Eric, a 32-year-old history teacher. "He kept saying those were the worst days of his life. But at the same time, he was proud of it fighting to defeat Hitlers troops and free entire countries from the Nazi yoke."

It's been 75 years since Gomes took part in the battle that liberated Troisvirges in northern Luxembourg one of the last German bastions in the country. He was a soldier in the 75th Infantry Division, which liberated Colmar in France and a large part of the border area between Belgium and Luxembourg, before moving on to the Rhine.

"He rarely talked about the fights, but once he told us how they had to go looking for bodies of Americans who had fallen in the snow and then separate them with shovels, because they had frozen together," said Eric.

D-Day killed hundreds of lives, but it was in the Ardennes Forest that the United States lost more troops.

"At 5:30 on Dec. 16, 1944, Hitler made his last move, taking everyone by surprise," said Philippe Victor, historian at the Diekirch Museum of Military History. Columns of Nazi soldiers took the North of Luxembourg and headed for Belgium. "For 10 days, the fog prevented the planes from counter-attacking so it was a real killing." Fights lasted until the end of January 1945, killing 75,000 Americans and 80,000 Germans. Hitler's plan failed, but left a trail of destruction.

In Luxembourg, one of the centers of the fighting, the men of the 26th Infantry Division took the first hit. The Yankee Division, as it was known, had been mobilized in Massachusetts and its ranks included thousands of Portuguese-Americans named Silva, Santos or Oliveira.

It was mostly them who liberated this small European nation, the last Grand-Duchy in the world, where curiously 20% of the population is now Portuguese.

"At this time, the United States was a society where segregation was legal. By enlisting in the Armed Forces, the Portuguese had an opportunity to obtain or cement citizenship in the country. That's also why they went to the recruitment centers en masse," said Deolinda Ado, director of the Portuguese Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

The communities established on the West Coast and in Hawaii were mainly incorporated into the battalions fighting in the Pacific. Portuguese-Americans from the East Coast Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut traveled to Europe.

"In WWII, every Portuguese family had one of their children in the military, as a sign of support for the host country. The censuses are unclear and do not allow us to state accurately the number of boys who have enlisted. At least 100,000, for sure," Adao said.

Forgotten Heroes

Among the 5,073 soldiers buried in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, there are at least 20 Portuguese-American graves.

On Jan. 9, 1945, John E. Santos, of the 101st Infantry Regiment, died in the fight to recover Vianden. Born on the island of Faial, in the Azores, Santos arrived at Fall River when he was four. He volunteered for the Army and in the report of his regiment's campaign in the Ardennes, it is stated that Santos used his body to block the detonation of a German grenade and thus protect his comrades in battle. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Arthur M. Encarnacao is buried in Row 13 of Sector E of the same cemetery. He died four days before Santos, in the fight for the liberation of Wallendorf, in the east of Luxembourg.

Registered in New Bedford, he was the first of his family to be born on American soil, his parents were Azoreans from So Miguel.

Everett Seixas sleeps two rows above. He was a descendant of Sephardic Jews who fled Portugal in 1709 and who opened a very successful retail business in the Bronx, New York. He died on Dec. 27, 1944 in the fight for Goesdorf.

There are four Silvas. Ernest and Jule came from Massachusetts, Lawrence and Raymond from California. They all died in the woods of the Ardennes, Ernest and Lawrence near the Luxembourgish town of Echternach, Jule and Raymond on the Belgian-German border.

George Bruno participated in the liberation of much of northern Luxembourg in the service of the 26th Infantry Division. He fought to expel the Nazis from Asdorf, Wahl, Brattert, Kuborn, Neunhausen, Eschdorf, Isendorf, eventually falling to Bonnal on Jan. 7, 1945.

Anton Botelho, Amos Cabral, Arthur Cordeiro, Manuel Faria, James Oliveira, Antohny Medeiros, Joseph Mendona, Amrico Alves are a few more names of Portuguese soldiers fallen in the fight for a free Europe.

They all came from the Bay State.

In a war, casualties are never counted only by those who die and this is what one of the most prominent Lusodescendents fighting in the Grand Duchy, the writer Charles Reis Flix, realized. Born in New Bedford in 1923 under the name Carlos, he was the author of Crossing the Sauer, an autobiographical account of the Battle of the Bulge. There's a very vivid report of the fight for Wiltz.

"Every day I thought I was going to die and that wasn't fair. I was so young. My parents always told me that I was very lucky to have been born in the United States and not in Portugal, but these days that didn't make any sense, he wrote. At one moment I see myself isolated behind some bushes, not knowing the enemy's location. All I heard around me were men moaning, dozens of them. And all I could think about was how many were going to die, how many were going to get hurt forever, physical and psychological. At that moment, the war became a very personal thing. No, I wasn't lucky I wasn't born in Portugal".

Charles Reis Flix died in 2017 at the age of 93. Of the 3.5 million American soldiers who fought in World War II, the Department of Defense estimates that there are no more than 300,000 left today all of them 90 years old, at least.

The memory of the great tragedy of humanity is slowly fading away. Like the fog that invaded the Ardennes 75 years ago.

Combat trails

There is a walking trail that crosses the woods between Troisvierges and Clerveaux for 17 kilometers. The route is one of the best ways to understand what happened in this landscape 75 years ago. In the spring and summer months, hundreds of Americans flock to this region of northern Luxembourg to perform the desolate procession their parents or grandparents made years earlier in the days of war.

On a January day, however, it is possible to go all the way without finding a soul.

These are leafy woods of firs, beeches and oaks, through which the clouds enter into waves, blurring the view. In December 1944, this same forest was covered with snow and the thermometers reached 10.4 Fahrenheit.

"It was precisely in meteorology that Hitler thought when he decided to attack the Ardennes," said Philippe Victor. "Fog prevented allied planes from raising fire and snow made it difficult to flank the Nazi columns."

Halfway there are still the wreckage of a British reconnaissance plane shot down by Whermacht in early 1945 and the graves of the six British and Belgian soldiers who lost their lives there.

"The Germans were losing momentum on the Eastern front and D-Day had occurred months earlier. Hitler thought that if he reached Antwerp, he would be able to stop the advance of the western front and turn the board of war," said the historian.

For 10 days, the Nazi columns advanced through northern Luxembourg and southern Belgium at full speed. But then the fog cleared. Not only could the Air Force finally attack the Reich's positions, but General George Patton brought the army stationed in Alsace and Lorraine up.

The war would eventually be resolved in Bastogne, Belgium. From then on, Nazi forces would always go backwards. The Battle of the Bulge marked the beginning of the end of the greatest conflict humanity has ever seen.

But it meant 39 days of atrocious suffering, not only for both sides of the barricade but also for the population, who was also taken by surprise.

Three thousand civilians would lose their lives here 500 of them Luxembourgers. The orders of the German troops were to set fire to the villages they passed through, in many cases arresting the inhabitants inside the buildings. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the allied counter-attack, the Americans would gain enormous support.

Fighting or guarding positions in forests like the one between Troisvirges and Clervaux was true hell. Manuel Gomes reported this to his grandson Eric.

"He told me that some great tragedies of war were that after a walk, soldiers needed to take their shoes off because otherwise the sweat on their feet would freeze during the night and cause gangrene, Eric said. The problem was that after they took off their boots, their feet swelled up and many people could no longer put on again, which created exactly the same effect."

In the 26th Division alone, says the book The History of The Yankee Division 1941-45, 750 amputations would be counted.

Manuel Gomes died two years ago. He was 96 and war never abandoned him. A few months before he succumbed, his grandson made him a guest of honor at New Bedford High on Veterans Day and, "I'll be damned if he didn't shake hands with over 400 people."

He always said the same thing. "I'm a Portuguese man who sold ice, then sold oil and then worked in a factory. Chance led me to participate in the most terrible of wars and I only thank God for surviving. I'm no hero."

But he was. Gomes was a hero, as were the two million American soldiers, and among them tens of thousands of Portuguese, who fought in the Bulge for freedom and humanity. And in Luxembourg, one of Europes smallest countries, these brave boys who came from the other side of the ocean to save the nation will hardly ever be forgotten.

Ricardo J. Rodrigues is a Portuguese journalist. He studied in the Committee of Concerned Journalists, in Washington DC, and has won the Portugal's Gazeta Journalism Prize and the UNESCO's Human Rights Award. Currently living in Luxembourg, he has reported from over 100 countries around the world.

Continue reading here:

Portuguese-American soldiers are an overlooked part of WWIIs horrific Battle of the Bulge - SouthCoastToday.com

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