Belgian Devotes Life to Honoring Allied War Heroes in Fierce ‘Battle of the Bulge’ : World War II: Outnumbered troops memorialized in museum’s vast collection of battlefield memorabilia.

HONDELANGE, Belgium —  Guy Arend bristles with pride that he was there when heavily outnumbered Allied forces halted the German blitzkrieg in the “Battle of the Bulge.”

The heroic actions he witnessed as a 16-year-old boy inspired him to devote much of his life to honoring those Allied soldiers.

His Victory Memorial Museum, housing a huge collection of vehicles, weapons and other war memorabilia, recalls how the Allies beat back the last major German offensive of World War II.

“We owe these men our freedom,” said Arend, whose hometown of Bastogne in the southern Ardennes region of Belgium was reduced to smoking rubble in the three weeks of fierce fighting.

He watched Allied forces, initially thinly stretched, battle in the bitter cold of December, 1944, to hold the line against the tank-led German attack.

The Germans wanted to smash across the Ardennes to recapture the port of Antwerp and cut off supplies to Allied forces in the north.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe defied the attack with a small force holed up in Bastogne. When the Germans demanded he surrender, the general snapped back: “Nuts!”

After the war Arend struck up friendships with McAuliffe and Hasso Eccard Von Manteuffel, a German general who fought in the Ardennes.

They helped give him ideas for his museum. “It was like setting-up the Waterloo museum with help from Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington,” Arend said.

The museum opened last year in the area where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. The battle got its name from the dent the Germans made in Allied lines before being pushed back.

Perched above the museum near the highway to Luxembourg is a C-47 Dakota military cargo plane.

It is one Arend’s prize exhibits, which include 200 vehicles--all in working order and many painstakingly put together.

Arend, 63, set up his first museum in the Ardennes shortly after the war. He worked in advertising for a number of years but now devotes all his time to the museum business.

With his latest project he tries to transport visitors back half a century to capture the atmosphere of the war years.

Glenn Miller music fills the air, and 250 almost lifelike figures in military uniforms are spread around the museum.

Mechanics labored long hours to reconstruct many of the vehicles, including tanks, trucks and cars.

“Collectors (of military vehicles) are disgusted when they see the amount of equipment we have,” Arend said.

Improvisation was sometimes necessary. A three-year search ended when a farmer told Arend that the type of tires needed for one German vehicle closely resembled those on his tractor.

“We bought four tires and asked the garage to ‘wear them down,’ ” Arend said. “The man in the garage thought I was crazy.”

One of the museum’s top displays is a collection of German half-tracks--armored vehicles with wheels at the front and caterpillar tracks at the back.

Another exhibit shows paratroopers with special tiny motorcycles which were shrouded in such secrecy that even some generals were unaware of their existence.

The United States suffered 80,000 casualties in the Battle of the Bulge, while the Germans incurred 110,000.

U.S. Gen. Bruce C. Clark wrote later: “The Battle of the Ardennes was the greatest American battle of the Second World War. Germany’s offensive halted the American progress and took away their opportunity to reach Berlin before the Russians.”