Ardennes Dec 1944 and today at Baugnez

[WeyAx]

The first Pics out of Baugnez from the war correspondant.......

After a terrible night trip through storm and heavy rain I reached the Ardennes at 8:00. Always very dark like night:















Some well known forum members of our schwimmwagen.com early in the morning(register there and you will be able to see my Normandy 2019 thread with thousands of photos)




More and more participients arrived:


























The weather was very, very bad....but war is war and we started into the dark forest of the Ardennes :mrgreen: on the Traces of Kampfgruppe Knittel



Above you can see Knittel with one of his swims in the background,
but he personally used a dodge command car that you can see on his left side










There is a very good video, where you can see, that on the Kaiserbaracke crossroad two swims were involved and not only the well known one
with misters Gelände sitting in:
Here you can see the first swim at Kaiserbaracke, notice the Malmedy sign, than a K98 was used to bring it in the right position



and than the Mister Gelände swim(the Malmedy sign already the right way)







And you can clearly(or better) see Knittels Dodge(look at the tail-lights!) and the deep mud in early dec 1944 in the YouTube filme(watch the whole film!!):

YouTube


kings of the mud:



there was always the question of Knittels staff car at Malmedy and here you can clearly see,

that he used a Dodge(left side) and that since of the begining of Wacht am Rhein!!, here Losheimer Graben(watch the tail-lights of his car):
















































































Back to the Museum we parked at the field what saw so much sad things.....after 3 days of rain it was a difficult wet terrain, some members
managed it:

















Do not forget in our happy days with our little cars!







and others not:



but Schucky towed it out






Mister Gelände was there too:



and our cars in the mud




but the real heros of the day......the Kradmelders






After visiting a famous place at Ligneuville










and its remmbering place




I started back and a 450 km trip ended at the Moselle.



Salut and enjoy


Alex

[Anderson]

What a great set of photos. I think the soggy conditions must have added authenticity to the occasion. Those photos of the convoy on the muddy lane match the period photos. Thanks for sharing them with us.

[MAP]

These are great. Thanks for posting!

[Martin Bull]

Excellent post - many thanks for sharing !

[HistoryMan]

Was there Christmas 2016, great work

[HoundsTooth]

Great photos. That M4 really churned the place up.
nick

[BlackCat1982]

Excellent report Alex,

Thanks for posting.

[WeyAx]

yes, against the mud, the rain and thr cold, only one thing is able to help:



Ohne Mampf kein Kampf(Feldküche des Clubs d'Ardennes)

Salut

Alex

[buellmeister]

Fantastic Pictures! Thank you so much for sharing and taking us as with you on your pictorial journey.

Cheers,

Joel

[HARRY THE MOLE]

Thanks for taking the trouble to post all those pictures.

Cheers,
Steve