The Back Wheel Goes South

Route: Valkenburg to Janhay, Belgium via Verviers. Distance, about 70 km

The rain again came in the night. What had been a perfectly clear day gave way to a rain soaked night as I woke at the first sounds and struggled barefoot into the storm trying to get the rainfly up as fast as possible. It was too wet to get the bike inside, so oh well. I did stop my stuff from getting soaked though. Small victories!
I had been sitting in Valkenburg, thinking about the past few days with Neik in The Netherlands, and trying to process through what I had just been given about Grandpa. I had found him mentioned in a letter, found people who had known him, found people who had seen him during the war, and stood in the same places he had. I found myself anxious to get home and start calling these guys. But, I also knew I had more trip in front of me.
As I pedaled out of Valkenburg, I found that I was traveling in a storybook land of rolling hills, trees and ancient castles. There were amazing little towns everywhere, each with a perfect little brook running through the middle of town. That and it was Saturday, so there were huge numbers of people biking. Tone of road riders out in full kit, another ton of mountain riders out, but strangely not one with mud on his bike and finally, groups of middle-aged tourists transiting these quiet lanes on two wheels. It was like a picture out my perfect vacation. That, and there were beer houses at every little intersection.
I couldn’t stop though, I was trying to get some mileage, maybe find a McDonalds to check my email, and find somewhere cheaper to settle down and write for a couple of days. Verviers, I was thinking. It’s a city mentioned in the Battle of the Bulge and Grandpa undoubtedly visited it during the war.
My rear wheel started making a small squeaking noise about halfway there. The country had become hilly, and I was pushing up the grades now more often. At every hill, the noise got louder. I must have been stupid at the time because I just pushed right on through with it squeaking. I was in and out of Verviers as fast as possible. Once back in Belgium, it became more like France. No bike lanes, everyone was a little ruder, and even the lady at the gas station yelled at me for reading through the map I was thinking of buying.
Wow. I thought, let’s just get out to the country as fast as possible. So, out I went after aquiring a map from a nice person. Up this huge hill. Up and up while the squeaking became worse and worse. I rode for several km like this until I got out of town enough to find camping near the little village of Janhay, A picturesque Belgian town near the German border. It stands up on a hill overlooking the Ardennes Forest below. I am one day’s ride from St. Vith, which is my next stop on the Grandpa’s War Stories Tour.
This morning, I decided to stay and extra day and finish some writing. Also, I thought, I would check the bike over and maybe see what that squeak was. So, I spent a lazy morning finishing some work, and decided to go get breakfast foods in town. The local Bakery had been helpful last night, and I needed to visit the butcher. The squeaking was much much worse than I remembered it.
To make this even better, a huge group of road cyclists decided to ride the exact stretch of road, at the exact same time, I did. Squeak Squeak Squeak went my bike as the German’s laughed at me. Dammit! As soon as I got back to camp, I pulled the rear wheel off, and found the bearings loose on the cog. I adjusted them tight, but they wouldn’t adjust correctly. The damage had been done. They were shot. I checked the front, also loose, but not shot. Thank God.
Now I’m sitting here wondering if there is a bike shop back in Verviers that I can ride to without my wheel falling off. Certainly, I can’t carry the weight of my gear back to the city on this bearing. I’ll have to take the bike into the city, around 10km, in the morning very carefully and hope that the wheel doesn’t crack on the way. I’ll have to do without taking my gear, which means I may have to stay another night here in Janhay that I wasn’t planning on.
These things happen right? That seems to be a mantra for this trip. I’m still waiting for a credit card from Bank Of America that they entered the wrong address on. Neik says he’ll deliver it to me when it arrives, but it hasn’t arrived yet. That, plus the wheel, plus my little power adaptor almost breaking today are adding up to some frustrating fun as I move forward.
Still, this place is amazingly beautiful. The green hills are filled with fruit orchards and horses. The church bells ring out through the little valleys, like they have for centuries. The modern world has made inroads in the form of an ATM and a laptop at the campground bar, but other than that it is as it was here.
The people are very nice. I’ve been into the local Bakery and Bucher’s shop a few times. The workers don’t speak English, but know a few words and laugh at me in a good natured way when I try to speak French. We generally communicate well, and have a good time in the process.
The large Belgian woman who runs the campground bar is seemingly always smoking Marlboro reds and sitting at the end of the bar at the laptop. She grins, only partly out of politeness, when I come in because she knows she’ll have to do something. I asked her if she speaks French in French. She doesn’t. Only German, Dutch and some English. This is so confusing to me. Belgium. Here they speak French, mostly or German, or Flemish, or Dutch, and sometimes English. Jesus. Growing up must have been hell. That’s four languages you have to know just to get by in this country.
Overall though, the feeling here is very French, except without the snootiness. People are all very nice, and go out of there way to help me. They even like practicing their English when they can. What a lifting change from France! All the good stuff, without the bad attitude.
Except for, of course, everything closes on Sunday. So, no bike shops, no food, no service today. I have to sit and wait until tomorrow to hope that a shop will be open in Verviers. Assuming that I can get the bearings replaced, and also that the hub isn’t coned out from all the damage I did to it going up that damn hill, I should be on the road by 1 or 2pm tomorrow, which puts me near St. Vith. It’s around 80km from here.
St. Vith was a major battle during the war. It was here that the German’s aimed their last major attack on December 16th 1944. They came in in the early morning, completely destroyed an entire US Army Infantry division, the 106th, for breakfast, and then descended on the little crossroads town. They were aiming at cutting the Allied Armies in half by running a quick armored attack force through between the American and British sectors. The eventual goal was to capture Antwerp and thus cut off allied supplies. If successful, this would have changes the course of history.
The whole plan for the battle that we came know as “The Battle of the Bulge”, was predicated on speed. The Germans only had a specific amount of fuel and supplies. They had to take the ground on schedule, or they would be in trouble. One of these little pockets of resistance that slowed then down long enough to make their drive for Antwerp impossible was the defense set up around St. Vith.
A lot has been written about this battle. More than I’ll ever be able to contribute to. The important thing for me is that Grandpa came into St. Vith on December 17th, along with the 7th Armored, and helped to slow the Germans down. The town was lost on December 23rd. They held against the most that Germany could throw at them for 5 days. This obviously cost a lot of lives.
In addition to all of this, it was the worst winter in 80 years. It was 20 degrees below freezing, feet of snow on the ground, and cloudy skies which meant that the Air Corps could not fly. A small wound became fatal if the man wasn’t treated and removed from the battle area within 15 minutes. Men used to go to sleep in their foxholes, and wake up with their legs encased in ice that had frozen during the night. A lot of men simply went to sleep and never woke up.
The area where grandpa was is actually a small town called Poteau. It sits just to northwest of St. Vith. His unit was part of a semi-circular defense around the town that came to be called the “goose-egg”.
The plan under General Bruce Clark of the 7th Armored was simple; get as many men as possible armed and into the defensive perimeter and hold until relieved or ordered to withdrawal. Everyone knew that there could be no withdrawal. If they fell back, the Germans were that much closer to turning the tide of the war. In Clark’s mind, he would stand there.
I’ve always wanted to come here. Family stories have it that grandpa was cut off with his men behind enemy lines and that he helped to lead them out. I’m not sure if this happened here, or in The Netherlands, but it wasn’t that uncommon of an occurrence during the Bulge. Especially during the first few days, the situation was so chaotic that men often didn’t know where they were. Orders weren’t always passed through the usual channels, and communication lines were cut.
On top of this, the Germans parachuted a bunch of English speaking commandos behind our line who reeked havoc with communication and distribution. They did things like reverse road signs. That sounds like a small thing, but after having spent some time trying to navigate through Western Europe with a crappy map and no one shooting at me, I can attest that this simple little act of sabotage probably cost many men their lives.
Into this atmosphere grandpa was thrown, fresh from fighting in The Netherlands, and then going into the line for a brief stretch in the Hurtgen Forest, where I’m currently camped. He drove down a crowded highway full of panic stricken men running the other way. There was such a bad traffic jam that it took the bulk of the 7th armored almost 24 full hours to get to St. Vith from Waubach, Holland. To put that into perspective, that’s around 100km. It would take you an hour in a car. I could do the whole thing on my bike with gear in 6 hours.
Every minute extra they spent on the road to St. Vith, the Germans were that much closer to taking the town and pushing further west.