On December 17 in 2004 the idyllic little Belgian village of Houffalize hosted a celebration of the veterans of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII who had fought for the liberation of that town.

Houffalize was a strategically located crossroads right in the center of the Bulge, south of Liege and just north of Bastogne, on the Ourthe River. The Germans fought bitterly to hold the town, which was almost completely destroyed in the fighting.

The extraordinary thing about the celebrations taking place in 04 was the graciousness of a people towards the foreign veterans, given that the townspeople themselves had endured some of the most brutal fighting of the war. 192 residents of Houffalize died, all but eight of those at the hands of their "liberators."

It's hard to wrap your mind around the scale of civilian casualties and human suffering that took place in 1944 Europe. One eyewitness wrote, "One cannot say enough about how these people have suffered." Even the livestock was gone - either butchered by the Germans or killed by Allied bombing. Bodies lay unburied in the streets, entire families were wiped out. Belgian investigators who arrived to assess the damage in January found only 130 people remaining from a pre-war population of 1,325. Most of those were living in the vaulted basement of the rectory, no food, no clothing, no heat during the most severe winter in memory.

And yet the people of Houffalize today find it in themselves to thank their liberators and to remember the sacrifice of those who fought for the freedom of all of Europe.

"We salute you and pay respect to our American friends," Mayor Jose Lutgen told the veterans during a reception following the ceremonies. He recalled "those terrible days" when Houffalize had reached what seemed like rock bottom, then to be freed "by young soldiers who landed in the midst of enemy fire."

"You all were heroes," say Mayor Jose Lutgen to the veterans attending the ceremonies. "And today, 60 years later, we welcome you again as the heroes who helped us retrieve our lost freedoms."

Lost freedoms retrieved at a terrible price.

The statistics tell us the price but don’t tell the story. “One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.” That monstrous quote is attributed (probably inaccurately) to Joseph Stalin, one of the most evil figures of the 20th century. There were 192 civilian casualties in Houffalize during the Battle of the Bulge. That is the statistic.

But this is the story:

The Americans were stretched too thin to hold the town of Houffalize. They departed from there on December 19, 1944., concentrating instead on defending the town of Bastogne. The Germans moved in on December 20. Their occupation with the greatest battle of the war didn’t keep them from taking time to arrest and interrogate civilians in an effort to root out resistance fighters. They ordered the Mayor, Joseph Marechal, to round up resistance fighters who were then arrested and killed.

On December 22-23, six “suspected” resistance members were beaten and then shot. On December 24 two more were killed, and three more on December 26th. Merry Christmas.

Then the allied bombings began. Civilians in Belgium were always safer from bombs when their towns were occupied by Americans. German occupied towns were targets for allied bombing, civilian casualties be damned. It was a cost of war.

The American ninth Air Force struck on Christmas Day, in an attempt to destroy German armor and block road access through the town. Two townspeople died under the Christmas Day bombs. The next day, 28 died in the second wave of bombings. On December 27, eight more were killed. This continued nonstop for almost 30 days. On the 28th, two died. On the 29th, another. On the 30th, three, on the 31st two. On each of the first five days of 1995 civilian residents of Houffalize died in American bombings. But it was the bombing raid of January 6 that residents described as “atrocious, frightful, horrible, terrible, terrifying.” On that day 119 people died in a thirty minute US bombing raid, between 3:25 and 4:00 am. The dead ranged from 85 year old widow Josephine Martine, to three year old Jacques Decker. More died on January 8,9,10,12,19,20 and 29. By then, most of the population was either dead or had flown for their lives.

The information above was gleaned from the book “The Bitter Road to Freedom,” by William I. Hitchcock, whose meticulous research of source material gives us insights into the human side of the tragedy that was Houffalize in the winter of .44 - .45. Hitchcock writes, “During this month of fighting four members of the Bollet family were killed; five members of the Delme family died, and six of the Dubru family. The entire Hoffman family – father, mother, and four children – was wiped out. Joseph Marechal, the mayor, returned to his village to find his own family dead beneath the ruins….Twenty-seven of the victims were under the age of fifteen.”

Not naked numbers, but human beings with names, families, hopes and dreams for the future. Not a list of casualties but a story of human suffering in a terrible time. Through all that the people there find it in themselves to forgive, and even to honor, those who, however unwillingly, caused much of that suffering. It is a stark and terrible reminder of the terrible cost, paid in flesh and blood, paid by children and mothers and families, for lost freedoms regained.

There was a soldier named Joseph Plum Martin. Martin joined the Army when he was 17, and he fought continuously for the duration of the war - the Revolutionary War. Martin participated in the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of White Plains, the siege on Fort Mifflin and the Battle of Monmouth. Following the skirmishes at Whitemarsh, described below, he encamped at Valley Forge, witnessed John Andre being escorted to his execution and was also present during the climactic Siege of Yorktown. Quite a combat carreer.

Later in life Martin wrote a memoir of his time in the service. "A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier - Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plum Martin," is an astounding document - true source material from the Revolution - a hard look at the war from the viewpoint at the bottom - the opposite of what we normally read. The War for Independence from the point of view of a 17 year old Army private.

The conditions under which these men fought were often equal in harshness to any that our troops today or in recent decades have endured or do endure. The pictures we have seen of ragged troops trudging through snow with only bloody rags on their feet are accurate, probably not severe enough. Once, of the eve of battle, Martin wrote,

“Here I endured hardships sufficient to kill half a dozen horses. Let the reader only consider for a moment and he will still be satisfied if not sickened. In the cold month of November, without provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that was appalling in the highest degree.”

Government shutdown? Forget Government Shutdowns. Congress had no money to pay these men.

When Americans of such strength and endurance marshal all their human reserves to endure unspeakable hardship for the sake of American Freedom, who could believe that the citizens of that time would look down upon them, the soldiers? But look down upon them they did – soldiers were a lower form of life in their time. They were given the blame for much of the hardship that the country endured during the struggle.

Martin wrote a paragraph that stunned me in its similarity to the point of view and the experiences of the grunts of the Vietnam Era. Consider this remarkable passage:

"Those men whom they wish to die on a dunghill, men, who, if they had not ventured their lives in battle, and faced poverty, disease and death for their country, to gain and maintain that Independence and liberty, in the sunny beams of which, they like reptiles are basking, they would, many or the most of them, be this moment, in as much need of help and succor, as ever the most indigent soldier was before he experienced his country's beneficence. The soldiers consider it cruel to be thus vilified, and it is cruel as the grave, to any man, when he knows his own rectitude of conduct; to have his hard services, not only debased and underrated, but scandalized and vilified. But the Revolutionary soldiers are not the only people that endure obloquy, others as meritorious, and perhaps more deserving then they, are forced to submit to ungenerous treatment."

Let that sink in for a moment. Look at the sentence I put in bold. The soldiers of the American Revolution consider it unfair cruelety that they are made out to be the bad guys in this war. It is all the more cruel, "cruel as the grave," when a man knows in his heart that the honor and hard work and risk and sacrifice that he put into his service to his nation is not only downplayed, or ignored, but more, it is actually "scandalized," he is actually made the object of public scorn.

The American Revolution. Vietnam. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Thank God the American people seem to be starting, finally, to realize the importance of military service and sacrifice and the need to recognize that service for the noble act that it is. Too late for some, that recognition, to our everlasting shame as a nation.

FLASHPOINT: POLAND

Hitler invaded Poland from the west in the fall of 1939. Several days later Stalin invaded Poland from the east. The two powers divided Poland between them, thus beginning 50 years of oppression of the Polish people by totalitarian regimes. The once great empire vanished from the political map for the next five years. England and France had a treaty with Poland and declared war on Germany as a result of the invasion.

As the war drew to a close in 1945 with the Russian armies steamrolling the Germans from the east, it was clear that the Polish people were only exchanging one occupying force for another. The Soviets displaced the Germans in Poland and had no intentions of very leaving once they had "liberated" the Western half. The Big Three - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, divided up Europe at Yalta, drawing lines on a map - lines that meant freedom for some and slavery for millions of others. The Polish People were not consulted.

The results of Yalta and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe put Churchill in a difficult position. England had declared war on Germany for the same reason, after all. Churchill had drawn up a plan to make war on the Soviets, but it was a pipe dream. The world had just gone through the most cataclysmic event in the history if mankind. Sixty Million people worldwide had died in the war, hundreds of millions were displaced. The world was reeling from the violence - another war was unthinkable.

Besides, while America and Russia had risen from the ashes of WWII as the new world superpowers, the British Empire was finished as a force. The empire had been in steady decline for decades, and the war was the final nail in the coffin of British Imperialism. England was broke, and needed to focus on rebuilding its Island home.

All of this is in the history books. You leaned it in High School (Well, maybe not if you attended a public school. But you know all about recycling and gay, bi, trans-gendered rights). What is less known is how close the West (The United States) came to declaring war against the Soviet Union in the early 1980s over - you guessed it - Poland.

THE "HOLY ALLIANCE"

Ronald Reagan met Pope John Paul II for the first time in 1982. At that meeting they spoke for almost an hour, alone in the Vatican Library. Israel had invaded Lebanon the day before, but the focus of their conversation was on a subject much closer to the hearts of both men - the Communist domination of Eastern Europe.

Reagan and the Pope believed that a free, non-communist Poland would be an arrow through the heart of Soviet oppression. They agreed to a secret campaign to undermine and hasten the downfall of the Soviet Empire. Regan's National Security Adviser said, "This was one of the great secret alliances of all time."

Regan and John Paul II had something else in common - both had survived an assassination attempt - attempts made only six weeks apart - and both believed that they had been spared by God because they were destined for a special mission on Earth.

DARK HOURS FOR POLAND AND THE WORLD

Solidarity was the key to the downfall of the Soviet grip on Poland. In 1981 General Wojciech Januzelski declared Martial Law. Poland's communications with the free world were cut, and 6,000 Solidarity leaders were detained. Hundreds were charged with treason, nine were killed. The Union was banned and Lech Walesa was taken into custody and locked up in a remote hunting lodge. Polish security forces took to the streets.

The world was once again on the brink of war - over Poland. The American Armed Forces had been decimated by President' Carter's cuts in military funding, but the military buildup under President Regan was already well underway. Regan was prepared to go to war if the Soviet Union invaded Poland to crush Solidarity. American Troops stationed in Europe were aware that something was up as they were put on alert status.

Crushing sanctions were imposed on Poland, but by 1984 it became apparent that they were only hurting the citizens, and were mostly lifted. The country was flooded with communications equipment - radios, printing presses, and a network of Catholic Priests carried messages to Solidarity leaders in hiding. Technology, food and cultural exchange was withheld from Moscow in retaliation for continuing oppression in Poland. By 1985 it was clear that the Communist government of Poland had failed to suppress Solidarity.

An inch at a time the Soviets were forced to succumb to the moral, economic and political pressure imposed by Regan and the Pope. Political prisoners were released and Walesa's trial on crimes against the regime was abandoned. The country's economy collapsed. President Reagan lifted U.S. sanctions on Poland when Warsaw pledged to open a dialogue with the church. Four months later Pope John Paul II traveled across Poland, demanding human rights and praising Solidarity - to the cheers and adulation of millions. Solidarity was legalized on April 5, 1990, and in December, nine years after he was arrested and his labor union banned, Lech Walesa became president of Poland.