RAF CASERT
Associated Press
THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium (AP) — As a schoolboy three quarters of a century ago, Marcel Schmetz would regularly see open trucks rumble past to a makeshift American cemetery — filled with bodies, some headless, some limbless, blood seeping from the vehicles onto the roads that the U.S. soldiers had given their lives to liberate.
Sometimes, Schmetz said, there were over 200bodies a day, casualties of one of the bloodiest and most important battles in World War II: The Battle of the Bulge which started 75 years ago on Monday and effectively sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany.
"It gave me nightmares," Schmetz said. It also gave the 11-year-old the resolve that, one day, he would give something back.
"I had to do something," he said.M&M
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