Military Museums - Belgium

JoeArthur

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I wrote an article for Pete and his View From the Trenches. It was on military mueums that I had visited in 2018.

He edited it slightly (no big deal) and I would like to throw it out to the wisdom of crowds. Did I miss anything? Here is the section on Belgium:

Belgium:

I had not seen the Belgian tank museum located at Bastogne. There are four things to see in Bastogne:

The Mardasson Memorial


Which weirdly had this very large statue of a WWII nurse being kissed by a sailor. It is “Unconditional Surrender”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_Surrender_(sculpture)#Bastogne,_Belgium

The Bastogne War Museum

Located close to the memorial and focusing on the Battle of the Bulge:

https://www.bastognewarmuseum.be/en/home-en/

My advice – don’t bother going. Nothing worth seeing or listening to. Bit of an American tourist trap?

It tried to track the battle through the eyes of a German soldier, a GI, a Belgian teacher in the resistance and a child. It did not work. It ended with an audio visual diorama (aargh!)

The Bastogne Airborne Museum:

http://www.101airbornemuseumbastogne.com/

Apparently this is one big diorama and after the experience of the Bastogne War Museum I did not bother going. Another US tourist trap?

Bastogne Barracks

Now this was an unexpected delight. The tanks kept in the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels had been moved here in 2010. Which is why I paid the price of admission.

You have to wait at the gate for the tour to start. It is a military base so they do not let you wander around on your own – guided tours only.

You start with a Belgian army officer explaining the Battle of the Bulge. It was like a military briefing. You are all sitting down with him pointing at maps. I talked to him afterwards about why is it all about the Battle of the Bulge? He stated it was because that was all the American tourists were interested in. He was a great tour guide.

After that you go through rooms displaying military equipment. There is the room where Brigadier General McAuliffe made his famous reply to the German request that he surrender – ‘Nuts’. Recreated with dummies and all – yes it is a diorama. One of the GI’s present at the time had toured the museum and he had made these rooms look as he remembered them.

You were then taken to the tank shed. It had a surprisingly good collection. It even had a couple of Russian tanks - an ISU 152 and I-3. These had been given to Belgium in the 1960’s as a gift for their diplomatic help – more “panda diplomacy”.

On a certain day of the week the tour includes the tank restoration centre. Worth trying to time your visit to see that.

Get the tour before it goes – according to a Dec 2019 comment on Tripadvisor apparently it's going to be much harder to get a tour in the future due to the Belgian government deciding to do something with the barracks that's not focused on tourism. So, take a tour while you can before it's no longer available.

At the end of the tour there is a bar and not a gift shop!
 

Von Kar

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That’s a list of WW2 museums in Bastogne only :)

I presume it’s not meant to be exhaustive as Belgium has a lot more military museums and places of interest, including those dedicated to other wars :

To name but a few :

  • for those wishing to get a feeling of the Atlantic Wall : Raversyde Atlantikwall
  • for those wishing to see a real Königstiger : December 44 Historical Museum La Gleize
  • for those wishing to see where German gliders landed on 10 May 1940 to initiate a surprise attack on one of the largest fortresses : Eben Emael
  • for those wishing to visit the largest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on the continent : Tyne Cot
  • for those wishing to walk the almost authentically conserved battlefield and get a sense of the sturdiness of Hougoumont Farm : Waterloo
  • and so on and so on …
And the good news is - as it’s such a small country - they can all be visited on a single day ;)
 

JoeArthur

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That’s a list of WW2 museums in Bastogne only
I did not know about the Atlantic Wall museum or Tyne Cot - thank you!

Waterloo - Not good. The battlefield is not as it was because they dug a lot of it up to construct the Lion's mound. When I visited the museum on the site in the 90's a Flemish person told me it had appeared in a newspaper article as one of the most run down museums in Belgium.

Have they spent some money on it?

I wrote a previous article for Pete which covered the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels and La Gleize - I should have added them on. Here is the relevant bit of the article:

6. December 44 Historical Museum, La Gleize, Belgium

If you play ASL and you are in Belgium you are going to head to Stoumont and La Gleize. Whilst you are there pop in and look at this place. Not because of the museum – usual weapons / uniforms – but because it has a King Tiger parked in the car park. It was left behind by KGP and bears scars on the front caused by American troops firing bazooka’s at it to see what happened. What happened is that there are a few gouges in the steel and nothing else.

The other point to note is that when they put new asphalt down in the car park they just went round the tank…………..

The dogs:

3. Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History, Brussels


All the usual arms / uniforms / medals but some were not displayed very well – some cases were old wooden affairs that had been there for decades. The whole place needed money spent on it. There was one case containing horseshoes – even if you are interested in the Napoleonic wars are you going to be interested in the all the types of horseshoes used?

The WWII tanks, sorry chars, as of 2016 have all been moved to the museum at Bastogne. I guess all the Americans make a bee line to Bastogne so the Belgians have put them there for them.

There is a huge aviation hall but it contained nothing much from WWII – it was jets and helicopters.

The only thing of note for me was the uniform of a WWII Abyssinian guardsman – it was straight off the cover of “Soldiers of the Negus”.
 

Von Kar

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Indeed, a lot of the original Waterloo battlefield was destroyed when they built the Lion mound.
The Duke of Wellington himself was not amused ….

As for the museum - the one in the 90’s was a disgrace.
They tore it down and built a completely new one for the 2015 commemoration of the battle and that one really is worth a visit. Take my word, I’ve been there.

And when you’re there, walk down to Hougoumont Farm : it’s been fully restored for the same occasion.
The site has been the location of some serious archeological research since a few years now :
Waterloo Uncovered
 
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Pip Smith

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Very nice.

Some fantastic museums over there from what shows on those sites.
 
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