by Leo Barron
In the years after the war, Major “Long John” Hanlon felt an incredible sense of debt toward the people of Hemroulle. It had been their sacrifice and selfless charity that had helped his men survive the Bastogne siege. By giving up their priceless white linens and cloth, they had saved the lives of untold numbers of his soldiers who used the cloth for camouflage and warmth.
Hanlon—who returned to his hometown of Winchester, Massachusetts, married his sweetheart, Joan, and became a successful journalist—could not stop thinking about the people of Hemroulle and their noble sacrifice. After the war, he spoke to the clergy and congregation of his church, St. Mary’s of Winchester, and told them the amazing story. Organizing volunteer efforts, the church sparked people in the town into donating more than seven hundred bedsheets, pillowcases, and other linen to take back to Bastogne and replace that which the Belgians had so willingly given up.2
In February of 1948, Hanlon flew back to Belgium with several members of his town and church. The story garnered national headlines, including coverage in Life magazine. As they traveled by bus to Bastogne, Hanlon was amazed at how quickly the Belgian countryside was rebounding from the war. Gone were the wrecks of tanks and weaponry, the shell craters were filled in, and in town, the rebuilding had already begun.
In Bastogne, the town was decorated with colorful flags, trimmings, and posters of appreciation for Hanlon and the other Americans who had saved Bastogne. To Hanlon, it seemed every child in Bastogne was waving a small American flag on each street corner. In a moving ceremony that day, the town leaders made Hanlon an honorary Belgian citizen.
The American delegation was also warmly greeted at Hemroulle. Once again Hanlon was given the honor of ringing the chapel bell. The townspeople had heard that Hanlon was coming back, but the American hero who had saved their town from German attack on that dark Christmas morning was humble. He was the one who had the debt to pay. As the Americans produced armfuls of folded sheets and blankets to give to the people, the town mayor, Victor Gaspard, embraced Hanlon in a warm reunion.3
It was hard to say who was more grateful; after all, the people of Bastogne and Hemroulle returned these favors years later by sending a surprise shipment of boxes to all of the churches in Winchester, regardless of denomination. In 1951 an elaborate ceremony was held at the crowded Winchester High School auditorium. As church bells rang throughout the town, the consul of Belgium—Dr. Albert Navez—presented the contents of the boxes to representatives of Winchester’s ten churches. Inside each carefully packed crate, the clergy found a beautiful oil painting on a large wood frame. Each of the paintings represented a station of the cross from the Passion. The ten paintings had been hanging in the Hemroulle chapel since 1906. Before that, they had been in the possession of the sisters of Notre-Dame in Bastogne, possibly as early as 1820. Four previous paintings were damaged or destroyed, and several of the ten had the marks of shrapnel and bullets, but miraculously the ten works had survived both world wars, even the destructive Christmas Eve bombing.
In a brief speech, Dr. Navez communicated the appreciation of the people of Hemroulle and, in a wider sense, Bastogne and Belgium, for all the Americans had done in saving their city. Navez also expressed a fond sense of brotherhood between the people of Hemroulle and the people of Winchester that he hoped would be remembered by all who viewed the paintings in the ten Massachusetts churches for years to come.
The delicate yet simple representation of Christ’s sacrifice, told in the beautiful gift of hand-painted Walloon woodcarving, was a gift from the Bastogne congregations to the congregations of America—a humble thank-you for saving their town. It was also an act of appreciation for the generosity of the reimbursed linen, and a reminder that the people of Bastogne would not forget the sacrifice made by so many Americans on that fateful Christmas in 1944.
More important, the paintings were a token of hope that the true meaning of Christmas, temporarily forsaken in those bloody and desperate days of 1944 among the people of Belgium, Germany, and the U.S., would once again never be forgotten.
The artwork adorns the churches of Winchester, Massachusetts, to this day.4
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