During the occupation from 1940 to 1944, German troops used the large military camp in Leopoldsburg to train and send out tens of thousands of soldiers across Europe. They simultaneously used the camp as a prison and execution site for those who resisted the Nazi regime. In September 1944, Leopoldsburg and the surrounding area found itself in the eye of the storm during fighting between German and Allied troops. After the fighting was over, some 20,000 vehicles and 130,000 Allied troops gathered in and around the town. This was in preparation for the ground offensive of Operation Market Garden. After the failure of Operation Market Garden, the area around Leopoldsburg became a major logistics centre and home base for a large concentration of Spitfires that helped cross the Rhine and bring down the Hitler regime.American troops played an important role in the area. They liberated parts of the province of Limburg, south and east of Leopoldsburg. During Operation Market Garden, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division flew towards the Netherlands via an airlift over Leopoldsburg.

Belgium

Liberation Garden is a museum in Leopoldsburg, BE.

Liberation Garden

Liberation Garden Museum

The Jagdpanther tank

Cinema Splendid

WWII in Leopoldsburg

One of the buildings often used by the Allied troops was the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. Consecrated in 1903, this church was built by and for soldiers. This explains the presence of statues, donated by the royal family, of Saint Mauritius and Saint Gommarus, both of whom had once been soldiers. During Christmas 1944, the church was packed with British soldiers who held a celebration together led by Chaplain J. Coghlan. The life of the Allied soldiers in Leopoldsburg was filled with everyday household chores in addition to military affairs. The popular British magazine Picture Post even devoted a large article to it in February 1945. The population was happy about the liberation, but not everything went smoothly. The passions that arose between the many soldiers and young women across Belgium soon caused discontent. In addition, cases of venereal diseases also increased everywhere. By spring 1945, they took on epidemic proportions across Belgium. Allied authorities had to provide penicillin for civilian hospitals that could barely cope with the influx of patients. In addition, the harsh winter of 1944 caused a reduction in rations, something that caused much discontent. British general George Erskine, British commander for Belgium, wondered aloud "whether any Belgian would be willing to trade harsh conditions and freedom for German occupation". Although the post-liberation situation caused tensions, these were quickly forgotten. Now people tend to look back on this time through rose-tinted glasses and are full of nostalgia. Additionally, there is still a lot of gratitude for the liberators, something that is very noticeable in Leopoldsburg. At the station, there is a monument in the shape of a Sherman tank with an M4A4 hull and Firefly turret. Furthermore, the pert of British Commonwealth troops in the region is remembered in the Liberation Garden museum, in the Chinese Pavilion, and the British Commonwealth Cemetery, located opposite the museum, has been renovated.

Living with the Liberators

Although there is no footage of this event, it is easy to imagine what a crowd there must have been in the cinema hall. The scene in the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far is iconic, and Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks' memoirs also reveal what a gathering this briefing meeting must have caused: "The residents must have wondered what the hell was happening when they noticed that the British military police occupied their village early in the morning, and from about it 9:00am a colourful stream of officers in cars and jeeps of every description came in." In the cinema hall, Horrocks revealed the plan to launch a rapid advance into the heart of Nazi Germany via a two-part operation. First, British and American airborne units would capture the bridges over the Meuse, Waal and Rhine rivers and occupy them. Soon afterwards, at the same time, the XXX Army Corps would advance from the Belgian border towards Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, via a narrow corridor sometimes only a kilometre wide. More than 50,000 soldiers of the XXX Corps and their thousands of vehicles had to laboriously make their way towards Arnhem. The legendary start of the briefing at Cinema Splendid was memorably portrayed by actor Edward Fox, who played the role of Brian Horrocks in A Bridge Too Far: "This is a story you will tell your grandchildren; and mightily bored they'll be".

Compared to the events of the previous day, the attack on Leopoldsburg on 11 September was a carried out quickly. The plan to take the village was the same as the day before, only with many more troops. The 13th/18th Royal Hussars attacked from the west, and the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards from the east. The attack started in the early afternoon and within the hour British troops controlled the village, after limited German resistance. In the late afternoon, the Belgian Piron Brigade also arrived in Leopoldsburg. The British halted their advance on the Quatre-Bras. During the evening of 11 September this junction formed an important link in the security perimeter around Leopoldsburg. However, the British troops first had to clear a number of mines that the retreating Germans had placed here on top of the cobblestones Although the liberation had gone fairly smoothly, 11 September would end badly for the Piron Brigade. Towards evening time, Colonel Piron ordered some reconnaissance patrols from the crossroads towards Kerkhoven and Balen. The patrol towards Kerkhoven went smoothly, and the Belgian soldiers reported that the village was deserted. However, during the patrol towards Balen the Pantserwagens (armoured cars) were ambushed by the 88mm guns of the 6./Schwere Flak-Abteilung 602. Before their departure, British soldiers had asked what the Belgians were up to with their Pantserwagens armed with 'prop guns'. Consequently, the German ambush caused immediate casualties. An armoured car was hit and two Belgian soldiers were killed. After nightfall, the rest of the patrol retreated towards the crossroads. The fallen Belgians, Marcel Benoot and Lucien Simoen, were recovered from the wreckage by the locals.

Quatre-Bras Junction

The ex-prisoners from K-34 did not have an immediate travel destination after their release. Many were taken in by locals as the German army still had a firm grip on Leopoldsburg. In addition, more and more German soldiers arrived. After all, the military camp was an ideal assembly point in preparation for attacks on the British bridgehead near Beringen. Some of the prisoners found shelter in Brewery Leopold on Nicolaylaan. Here they were given food and a place to sleep. In the evening of 6 September, a group of Flemish SS soldiers arrived. They were fleeing to the Netherlands. When the group picked up a rumour about released political prisoners, they surrounded the building on Nicolaylaan. 39 ex-prisoners were interrogated at gunpoint and robbed of valuables, even boots. The SS then escorted the ex-prisoners to the IJzerlei, where they had to take their seats in a moat. There they were executed in two groups. Some of them dropped down and also escaped the mercy shots that some others still received. From there, the SS men moved on towards the Dutch border. The execution had not gone unnoticed. The Red Cross post was immediately alerted and residents immediately helped carry away victims. For 20 ex-prisoners, all help came too late. They are honoured by a monument with white crosses on IJzerlei.

Treurgracht Monument

Leopoldsburg was relatively close to the British bridgehead at Beringen, therefore the German army command decided to provide an artillery position on the site of an old velodrome. Due to the large number of Belgian soldiers quartered there in the pre-war years, the two velodromes in Leopoldsburg were an important social and recreation spot. All major cyclists visited these velodromes. On 6 September 1944, the site of the old velodrome on Het Geleeg was seen as an ideal firing position for the 88mm guns of the 17./18. SS Artillerie Ersatz und Ausbildungsregiment. This unit provided indirect fire support to the German troops counterattacking the British bridgehead. To coordinate this artillery fire, the forward fire observer had established himself on the Beringen mine ridge. From here, this observer had a good view of the bridgehead and British troop movements. The Jagdpanther tank hunters of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 also used Leopoldsburg as a base of operations towards Hechtel and Beringen. Together with the already mentioned artillery unit, tank hunters from this unit would try to stop the British near Heppen on 8 September, without success.

Former velodrome

On the night of 27-28 May 1944, 331 aircraft from RAF Bomber Command flew towards Leopoldsburg for a bombardment of the Beverlo Military Camp. 267 Halifax and 56 Lancaster bombers were escorted by eight Mosquito target designators. The formation of bombers faced repeated attacks by German night fighters along the way, and 10 bombers were lost in the process along the entire route, about 3% of the total number of aircraft that night. The mission report described the bombing as a successful operation. The targeting was very precise and the damage to military installations extensive. On the ground, many hundreds of people, even outside the village, had noticed the impact of the bombing. An eyewitness from Wijchmaal, 12 km from Leopoldsburg, stated: "Leopoldsburg became the target of a terrible bombardment. Everyone in Wijchmaal had got out of bed and stood in the clear night to watch the spectacle. Masses and masses of flares floated above the Camp and illuminated the military cantonments (sic) then the bombardment began." Although the bombardment was a success according to Bomber Command, a lot of the bombs had missed their targets. They had landed on the village itself resulting in 19 civilian casualties. Some 300 German soldiers died in the camp. Also among those affected was the Technical Institute of Our Lady's Visitation which suffered heavy damage.

The bombing of Technical Institute of Our Lady Visitation

The K-blocks were built as part of the Camp of Beverlo in 1835. Initially, only a few blocks were provided to house the cavalry. Over the years, however, the camp grew and reached its largest size in 1913. By then, 3,000 soldiers and 2,629 horses were housed in the various blocks. By 1936, most of the horses had left the blocks as the Belgian cavalry was modernised by motorisation. The K-blocks were used as a camp for political prisoners after the occupation of Leopoldsburg. As the internment camp was housed in block 34, it was named K-34. From Leopoldsburg, political prisoners were sent to German concentration camps throughout the war years. Thus, from 1942, the German army command decided to bury all those executed in Belgium in 'the secret cemetery'. This is located on the current military compound. Executions were also carried out in the cemetery, often early in the morning. During bombing raids in May 1944, the internment camp was spared. According to stories, this was because the Allies knew about the presence of political prisoners in the camp. The resistance was indeed very active in Leopoldsburg, but despite this, no conclusive evidence for this has been found to date. One of the most famous political prisoners in the camp was Marc Neels, better known as cartoonist Marc Sleen. He was in the camp at the time of liberation and even drew portraits of fellow prisoners, such as this one of Frans Houthuys.

Prisoner Camp K-34

A short walk around the cemeteries reveals that by no means do all graves date back to the Liberation period. In fact, there are also fallen soldiers from WWI in the Belgian cemetery. Among the British Commonwealth graves there are also those of aircrew members and some who died in 1940. The Belgian Military Cemetery was established in 1928 and was next to an existing German cemetery from WWI. The graves were mainly those of German soldiers who were cared for in Leopoldsburg and succumbed to their wounds or diseases. Another 404 German graves were added during the 1930s, and after World War II, these were moved to the Lommel German Military Cemetery. Because of this, the Military Cemetery is still sometimes called 'The German Cemetery'. After WWI and after WWII, fallen Belgian soldiers and war victims were buried there. The two buildings in the cemetery are mausoleums; the first is for the unknown prisoners of war from both World Wars, the second houses the remains of unknown political prisoners from WWII. A total of 1312 graves lie there, six of which belong to prisoners of war from the former Soviet Union. The British Military Cemetery was constructed in 1948 and was designed by British architect Philip Hepworth. Hepworth also designed the British cemeteries in Berlin and some in Normandy for the Commonwealth War Graves Commisson (CWGC). There are 767 graves from WWII, including 16 unknown soldiers. In addition to the Commonwealth graves, some fallen Dutch and Polish lie under Portland stone headstones. One of the graves belongs to William Cavendish who died on 9 September 1944 and was John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law.

Belgian and British Commonwealth Cemeteries

In 1940-44, the German occupiers used the military camp in Leopoldsburg to train and send out tens of thousands of troops to Europe. They also used the camp as a prison and execution site for those who resisted the Nazi regime.In September 1944, the liberation of Western Europe slowed down when German troops, in sight of their homeland, regrouped and dug in at the Kempen canals in Belgium. As a result, British troops encountered fierce resistance in and around Leopoldsburg, including the death of John F. Kennedy's British brother-in-law,The heavy fighting in the area obliged the Allies to take a new approach. Thus Operation Market Garden was born. That daring gamble aimed to bypass the Siegfried Line via crossing Dutch rivers, push on to Berlin, and end the war before Christmas. A scene from the iconic war film A Bridge Too Far shows British general Brian Horrocks outlining the plans at Cinema Splendid in Leopoldsburg. For the ground offensive, some 20,000 vehicles and 130,000 British troops gathered in and around Leopoldsburg.American troops also played an important role in the area. They liberated parts of the province of Limburg to the south and east of Leopoldsburg. During Operation Market Garden, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division flew towards the Netherlands via an air bridge over Leopoldsburg. During that operation, they set up field hospitals in and around Leopoldsburg for the many wounded from the corridor to Arnhem. After the operation, the paratroopers rested briefly in the military camp at Leopoldsburg before travelling on to France.Operation Market Garden failed despite the brave performance of the Allied troops. The Leopoldsburg area became a major logistics centre and home to a large concentration of Canadian Spitfires that helped cross the Rhine and fight the Hitler regime.After visiting the museum, visitors can explore the the British Commonwealth War Cemetery and the Belgian War Cemetery.&nbsp;