Belgian veteran remembers U.S. Army’s WWII sacrifice

Photo By Jonathan Austin | Paul Goffin says he is thankful to the American Soldiers who liberated his native Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.   

UNITED STATES

01.22.2025

Story by Jonathan Austin 

Defense Media Activity - Army Productions   

By Jonathan Austin
Paul Goffin has spent much of his adult life solemnly remembering the American Army Soldiers who fought to free his home country, Belgium, during World War II.
Yet, it wasn’t until Goffin retired in 1990 from the World Bank in the Washington, D.C., area that he could dedicate serious time to help recognize the men who fought during the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and deadliest conflict of the war.
“They represented everything,” said Goffin, now 100, during an interview at his northern Virginia home. They brought back the freedom which we didn't have, the hope for life, for a better life.”
The battle began on the morning of Dec. 16, 1944, when more than 200,000 German troops launched Adolf Hitler's last bid to salvage the war. This counterattack was meant to reverse several German military defeats following the Allied troops landing in German-occupied France in the summer of 1944.
The United States and its allies had moved quickly across France during the second half of 1944 on the way to Berlin, and some hoped the war in Europe might be over by Christmas.
The Germans had another idea, and they struck back in the Ardennes Forest along a 75-mile-long remote front line held by four American Army divisions stationed there.
Many U.S. Army units were overrun in the unexpected onslaught. German troops surged 50 miles toward the Meuse River in Belgium but failed to split the allies before being subdued and defeated.
Life under the Nazi reign
The Belgians had spent several years under Nazi domination, Goffin said. He was 15 years old when the Germans invaded his homeland in 1940.
Goffin’s family had a farm not far from the German and Dutch border. They used about 10 horses on the farm, and the German military also used horses to haul implements of war. It wasn’t long before the Germans came for the horses, Goffin remembered.
“They took the horses and left,” he said.
A few hours later, the soldiers came back. They had seen the garage, Goffin said. They opened the garage doors, saw the car, and ordered Goffin’s father to give him them the keys.
The younger Goffin was aghast. He said he didn’t understand why the invaders could come into his family’s home and demand things.
His mother stepped in and took him aside. She told his father to give them the keys. He did so, and they drove away.
Goffin said he never forgot what his mother then said: “Did you see on their buckles? Gott mit uns’ - ‘God is with us.” She said they are wearing the same buckles as they did in World War I.
Goffin wondered why God was withthem and not with the Belgians, but he said he knew the answer.
“We are objects. We belong to them,” he said. “If they don't like us, they discard us. That became the way of life.”
“We couldn't travel more than three or four miles in the area where we lived,” he explained. “When I was 18, they arrested my cousin with whom I had grown up, and he got shot.”
The family never knew why the cousin was killed by the Germans.
Goffin was arrested and forced to do labor at a nearby airfield when the Germans were preparing their winter 1944 counterattack.
Americans were wonderful guys
When the Germans struck during the Battle of the Bulge, Goffin, who was 20, joined the 21st Fusiliers Battalion of the Belgian reconstructed army. His unit served with American and British troops in patrolling and securing territories in the Rhine area on the Belgian German border.
Because the U.S. Army had rapidly advanced in 1944, reaching and crossing the Rhine River. Goffin said the area become a no man's land. Cities were destroyed and there were no functioning institutions, no transportation, no shops, he said.
Farms were abandoned, and liberated political prisoners and forced laborers were roaming around. The local population tried to stay sheltered.
Through it all, Goffin was interacting with the U.S. Army Soldiers, a bunch of young men who came from the four corners of America. He was amazed by them, he said. They were all around his age; some younger. He says the U.S. Army troops were wonderful guys full of compassion and understanding.
He said he now looks back on that time and realizes they were spending critically formative years of their lives fighting tooth-and-nail to save Europe.
U.S. casualties in the Battle of the Bulge were staggering, with 19,000 killed, 47,000 wounded, and 23,000 either captured or missing. It was the bloodiest battle American Soldiers have ever fought on foreign soil.
A few months after the battle ended, Germany surrendered, and those same American GIs wanted to go home and forget about everything they had seen, Goffin said.
But they couldn't forget.
Decades passed, but the American veterans couldn’t forget the Ardennes, the cold weather, the horror of the fight. They couldn't forget the Belgians.
By 1990, Goffin, who had earned his master’s degree in agricultural economics from Iowa State College, retired from the World Bank after a 25-year career dealing with agricultural development projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
He said he had heard of World War II U.S. Army veterans showing up at the embassy in Belgium, ready by then to acknowledge their war experiences and revisit the Ardennes.
Active in the Belgian community and vice president of the Belgian American Association, Goffin became their colleague and partner.
The veterans united in their goal of leaving a legacy of their service in the Ardennes Forest. They formalized their reunions and established the Battle of the Bulge Historical Foundation.
After years of deliberations, the Army veterans reached a consensus to build a conference table out of Ardennes Forest wood to honor and memorialize not only the American Soldiers who fought there in the winter of 1944-45, but also those who were executed by the Nazis during the battle.
‘They fought against tyranny’
The U.S. Army veterans traveled to Belgium to select the oak trees for the effort, and a Belgian cabinetmaker agreed to make the table.
That project was completed in 1994 in Stavelot, Belgium. It displays the insignia of the 45 Army divisions who fought during the battle and includes designs honoring those executed by the Nazis.
The table was initially used in the Army Memorial Room at Fort Meade, Maryland, but today resides within the Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Plans and Policy at the Pentagon.
For years after the table’s completion, Goffin said he felt at home at Battle of the Bulge reunions. He also served as a trustee of the Battle of the Bulge Historical Foundation.
And after all these years, he still remembers the kindness and compassion the Soldiers had for Belgians like him, and how those young men saved Europe at high personal cost.
“They fought back against tyranny,” Goffin said. “They fought in the snow and the ice and the blood … and they want us to remember that we have to be ready to fight for it” if the need ever arises again.

• Date Taken: 01.22.2025
• Date Posted: 01.22.2025 12:17
• Story ID: 489451
• Location: US