In about-face, Heintz Caserne to remain open
Bastogne has a history of tense standoffs, including the Battle of the Bulge. And like that battle, a recent row has ended favorably for the city.
After months of public acrimony, the Belgian government has revised a plan that will allow for the continued use of Heintz Caserne, the headquarters of the encircled 101st Airborne Division during the siege of Bastogne in World War II.
"It’s very great news for us," said Roby Clam, a Bastogne resident involved in the effort to keep the caserne open. "It was necessary to preserve that."
Last fall, the Belgian Defense Ministry announced its intention to close 23 bases by the end of 2011 as part of a restructuring plan. On the list was Heintz Caserne, home of the Belgian army’s 1st Artillery Regiment, as well as a small museum in a cellar where U.S. Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe rebuffed a German demand for surrender in December 1944 by famously responding with one word: "Nuts."
Acknowledging its storied past, officials pledged to preserve "McAuliffe’s Cave," as the cellar came to be known, but said the rest of the modestly sized caserne would have to close and its 300 soldiers reassigned.
Word of the caserne’s pending closure caught many local and regional leaders off guard, including Philippe Collard, the mayor of Bastogne.
Led by Collard, opponents fought back, arguing the facility holds great historical meaning, that its closure would hurt the local economy, and that the overall plan favored the Flemish half of the country over the French-speaking part. The mayor even went so far as to publicly criticize Defense Minister Pieter De Crem during the recent 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, saying he was no longer welcomed in Bastogne.
Today, that’s no longer the case.
The Defense Ministry announced a few weeks ago that it would leave the Bastogne facility open, but in a greatly diminished capacity. The regiment will still be inactivated this year and soldiers will depart, but a group of about 100 soldiers will remain.
Kurt Verwilligen, a ministry spokesman, said Bastogne will become a storage depot for excess war materiel from the Royal Army and Military History Museum in Brussels. At times, the materiel will go on public display at the caserne.
"We don’t have room enough here in Brussels to store what we have," Verwilligen said of the collection, which encompasses more than World War II.
The spokesman sought to downplay the rift with the city as well as the policy shift. Verwilligen said the plan all along was to keep 30 to 40 soldiers at the post, and that the new mission would allow more to stay, many of whom live in the area.
"We found a solution to keep 60 additional people," Verwilligen said. "It’s really no big change at all."
