Houffalize: circuit commémorations 75ème Bataille des Ardennes

Monument to the link-up on 16 January '45 of the troops of Patton's 3rd Army with those of Hodge's 1st Army. (Place de janvier 1945).(Text source by Guy Blockmans / OPT)

This M4A3 Sherman tank is an American armoured vehicle from the Second World War. Equipped with a 75 mm gun, it was manned by a crew of 5. It fought in the village of Wibrin during the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate it on 14 January 1945. Destroyed during the fighting, it was repatriated to the centre of the village and is now a monument to the liberators.The vehicle has been beautifully restored, but still bears the scars of the fighting. In addition to its exploded gun, a shell hole is visible at the front of the tank, where the armour is thickest. The cut-outs at the rear of the vehicle are the result of the post-war period. When resources were in short supply, scrap dealers came to salvage the metal from the wreckage.

The German tank at Houffalize is a Panzer Mark V Sd. Kfz. 171 Ausf. G known as PANTHER 111. Its first missions were during the Battle of Normandy. It took part in the retreat of the German army to the interior of its borders. At the dawn of the Battle of the Bulge, he was incorporated into the 116th Panzer Division and returned to the front.Very early on the morning of 15 January 1945, he fell ass over head into the Ourthe. When the tank driver engaged the Panther on the Rue de La Roche bridge, part of the arch gave way under the vehicle's 44 tonnes. The bodies of four crew members were buried in 1947, when the tank was raised by the Belgian Engineers in Namur and the bodies finally made accessible. It was removed from the Ourthe on 20 or 28 September 1948.