Posing at a Sherman tank in La Roche-en-Ardenne last week. The Belgian town paid a heavy price for its strategic location on the Ourthe River in the Battle of the Bulge. In my book THE UNKNOWN DEAD, I write: “By the time the guns fell silent, La Roche was such a heap of rubble that American bulldozers were called in to blaze narrow trails where once had been the town’s main roads. Locals would never forget that even the swallows appeared disoriented when they returned the following spring and found not a barn standing in which to build their nests.”
