On a gray autumn November 11, 2011 after the ceremony for the American War dead, the dignitaries drove to attend the Ruhe Tag or ‘Quiet Day’ ceremony for the fallen German soldiers at the close-by Sandweiler German War Cemetery, a separate and smaller cemetery. Shaded by the trees and dark as a forest. Most of the tombstones were unmarked, as the decomposed corpses had been recovered from mass graves well after the Battle of the Bulge.
The cobblestone path led to a large gray stone cross on a monument. Two lines of stones formed the image of rail tracks. The heavy gray tombstones were reminiscent of Wehrmacht uniforms.
Over ten thousand German soldiers were buried here. Many were SS and their bodies had been buried one top of the other. The German ambassador explained to my friend, the UK ambassador, that they had been inter was so they would be close to their comrades. I thought the two to a grave policy had been to save space.
I stood next to the American ambassador. Robert was Jewish. His unease was obvious. Neither of us were here to judge the dead and we showed his respect during the somber rites for the dead.
I had earlier cried seeing the rows upon rows of white crosses at the American cemetery. Flowers had been laid at the monument for the German dead and a band played a dirge. I suspected that Germans had many of them. I shed no tears here.
I slipped outside the ceremony and an old man in a good suit was smoking a cigarette by an iron fence. The Battle of the Bulge had been over sixty-six years ago. He had to be in his late eighties. In 1944 he had been very young. He still stood militarily erect. I asked him for one of his cigarettes in German. He gave me one and lit it for me.
“Du kennst hier jemanden?” Did he know anyone here. My high school German was still stuck in my head thanks to Bruder Karl.
“Viele Kamaraden, du?” He smiled and sucked on his cigarette.
“Ich war damals noch etwas jung.” I hadn’t even been born in 1944.
“Du bis rechtig.” The old man laughed with a tobacco cough. Maybe something worse. “Ich bin alt. Sehr alt.”
“Aber nicht tot.” We were both old at different ages, but neither of were dead.
“Das stimmt. Du bist Amerikaner?”
I nodded yes.
“Guten Soldaten.” He nodded in appreciation of the Yankees’ valour and stubbed out the cigarette. “Guten tag.”
I said the same and he walked away, as I finished the cigarette. I didn’t go back inside the cemetery. I knew no one inside. I was better off outside and happy to be so. Every day above the dirt is a good one for the living. The good, the bad, and the in-between.
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