Day 17 – Meeting Uncle Ray

Day 17 – Tuesday, Apr 7 – Meeting Uncle Ray

We awoke to another even more glorious day – very blue skies and warm temperatures. Finally! Hotel Selys has a spectacular breakfast buffet, including a machine to make fresh squeezed orange juice, and if you want honey, there is a big rectangular chunk of a honeycomb for you to take whatever honey you want. It just oozes out of the honeycomb. I have never seen that before!

   

Vincent and Severine picked us up at 9:30 in front of the hotel to go to Henri-Chapelle, a very small town in the Belgian countryside with gorgeous rolling hills covered with farmland and dotted with little villages and the ever-present church spire in the middle of the town. When we arrived, there was construction in the front of the cemetery, so we had to park around the side. Steve wandered over to a small area across the street where there was a flagpole and seating area. I was reliving my first visit to Henri Chapelle in 1992. I stood there then and I stood there now, composing myself and  looking over the bucolic countryside. Kurt and I got a picture at the stone Monument.

    

I returned to the parking lot to find a woman there talking with Severine. I was introduced to Mathilde Schmetz. She is responsible for making the connection with our family. I won’t detail the incredible, circuitous path of connections and communications that brought us all to this point at this time, but Laureen and Don’s nephew on the Averbeck side – Joe, an Air Force pilot once stationed in nearby Germany – got the ball rolling. We introduced ourselves to this warm, engaging, energetic lady (I am guessing she is upper 70’s, but has the energy and disposition of a 30-year-old … really). Vincent arrived shortly thereafter with the rest of the Rubergs and Laureen and Mathilde had a boisterous greeting (as only Italians can do … Laureen is of Italian heritage for readers who don’t know). You will learn more about Mathilde in a little bit. We were the greeted by Amadine, a young lady who worked at Henri-Chapelle and was going to help us honor Uncle Ray.

We entered through the side of the cemetery to see the many, many neatly aligned curved rows of white crosses with an occasional Jewish 6-point star. We walked slowly, taking in the beautiful weather and the enormity of the scene. 

When we arrived at Section C, Row 6, Grave 19, we saw the inscription.

RAYMOND E RUBERG

PFC    331 INF    83 DIV

OHIO    JAN 11  1945

 Hard to describe the emotions.

We stood in silence for a little bit. Then, Amadine told us the process of honoring those buried there when family comes to visit. She had a small bucket of sand from Omaha Beach of D-Day fame. To highlight the engraving on the pure white stone, the sand is rubbed on and into the inscription. So, each of us took a turn: Don did Raymond E, Steve did Ruberg, etc. The Guerra’s had a floral bouquet of red, white and blue to place at the marble white cross. The Ruberg siblings did the honor. Next, the in-laws placed an American flag and a Belgian flag on either side of the bouquet. 

We took pictures – plenty of pictures with the Rubergs, then including the Guerra’s and then including Mathilde. Mathilde then offered a reading – a prayer of sorts – written by a GI the night before he was going into battle in the Ardennes to resist the German offensive. It was very moving. Each of the family members offered their thoughts and prayers at the foot of Ray’s grave. Too hard to describe more than that.

  

 

Girls in Front: Carol, Mathilde, Laureen, Mary, Severine

Guys in Back: Vincent, Mark, Don, Kurt, Steve

 

 Then, Steve told the story of his first visit; the random meeting of the elderly German couple at the cemetery; how they took pictures of Steve at the gravesite (there were no selfies in 1992); how the man, speaking through his wife, said he was part of the German army that fought on this very piece of land; how he apologized to Steve for what he had done; how Steve offered sincere and repeated forgiveness; how they all hugged at the foot of Ray’s grave for 30 seconds or was it 3 minutes or was it 5 minutes? How the woman confided to Steve that her husband needed to hear that he was forgiven; that he had carried that burdened his whole life. We wept.

Amadine, Vincent, Severine and Mathilde said that they would tell that story to future visitors; to keep the memory alive; to never forget what was sacrificed here. I thanked Amadine for helping us with a little ceremony for honoring Ray, and she said emphatically, “No! I should be thanking you. You had a family member who gave his life for my country!”

After a time (was it 5 minutes or 10 minutes?), we also wandered to my mother’s cousin’s grave – Edward F Timmers who died on Dec 21, 1944. We did a similar ceremony but without the floral bouquet. We offered our prayers. 

We spent more time wandering around the expansive cemetery and going into the memorial building to review some history, maps of the battle and a small chapel for quiet prayer or reflection. We saw an inscription that stated, “In proud remembrance of the achievements of her sons and in humble tribute to their sacrifices, this memorial has been erected by the United States of America.” There were many names inscribed on the walls of the memorial, and we were not sure why until we came upon another inscription honoring those unidentified soldiers buried there. We had seen a cross with the inscription, “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God” and now the whole story came together. 

 In the chapel was another great inscription, “O Lord, support us all the day long until the shadows lengthen and our work is done. Then in Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last.”

So sad to see 7,992 graves and imagine the battles fought in this area 81 years ago. Views from the monument at the entrance to the cemetery.

    

Looking left                                       From the middle                            Looking right

We left Henri-Chapelle for lunch at a nearby (former) Abbey – Val-Dieu (Valley of God). What a spectacular place! It was originally built in 1216 – that makes it over 800 years old! The SS murdered all the monks there in WW II as suspected resistance collaborators, and the church and abbey were damaged in the war. Damaged parts have been successfully rebuilt in the same style as the original that was built 800 years ago. We ate a wonderful lunch on a sunlit patio – 7 Rubergs, 2 Guerras and 1 Mathilde Schmetz. The church and the grounds were gorgeous.

 

    

   

I had the pleasure of sitting across from Mathilde and hearing her incredible life story. It culminated in creating the Remember Museum with her late husband, Marcel who died just two months earlier in January. I will spare you the lengthy details of her life and the work of her husband and how they came to create the Remember Museum. The net-net is this: two humble people from a very small town called Thimister (actually the outskirts of the suburbs of the very small town of Thimister) created a museum full of WW II artifacts, each with their own personal story about a soldier or a battle or some aspect of WW II. The amazing thing is that it was totally created by Marcel and Mathilde in 1991, and Mathilde knows the story behind every piece in the museum … and there are thousands. SHE IS AMAZING, and we heard that her husband was the same way. They do not want the Belgians or the world to forget the sacrifices made by American soldiers to liberate Belgium.

Now, the museum is a homemade museum and a bit cluttered with lots of artifacts, but it is organized. Marcel made all the manikins in the museum to depict soldiers in foxholes or prison camps or manning a tank (yes, Marcel built a tank out of wood in the museum since they could not get one into the building! There is one outside – a real Sherman tank). All of this stuff is donated by the soldiers who visit, many of whom fought on this very piece of land in the Bulge. 

 This museum has been visited by many dozens of US Generals and Brigadier Generals, by US Ambassadors to Belgium, by numerous dignitaries. They have received the highest civilian award one can get in Belgium AND they have received the highest American civilian award that can be given to a non-US citizen with a letter signed by President Obama. The museum is attached to their house via a hallway that leads to the kitchen, and she has numerous pictures of generals and dignitaries in her kitchen, eating at the table that was in her husband’s boyhood home when American soldiers stayed there before they went to the front lines for the Battle of the Bulge. 

Some of those soldiers who stayed in Marcel’s home have returned to the museum and their home for a visit. They do no advertising or purchasing artifacts, and yet they have military personnel of all ranks from the US and across Europe visit there. They have been to the US to be honored in various military events and reunions celebrating WW II, and they were even the guests of honor at an enormous celebration in 2024 at a Joint Service Ball sponsored by the US Department of Defense! They were at the head table with Ambassadors, Generals, and State Department officials. Simply unbelievable!!! It reminded me of the quote from the Anne Frank Museum in which Anne wrote, “How wonderful it is that no one has to wait even a minute to start gradually changing the world.”

As we wandered through the museum gawking at the various exhibits and paraphernalia on walls and shelves and in bookcases, we came across the famous photo of Henry Tannenbaum lying dead in the snow. And there it was again – a display commemorating the massacre at Ottré, Unbelievably, Marcel and Mathilde had a picture of Raymond E Ruberg – killed in action at Ottré. They had pictures of many of the F Company soldiers killed there. Again, we were stunned as this is not part of any Ruberg family history/knowledge … that there is a museum in rural Belgium dedicated to remembering the soldiers who fought in WW II that has a picture of our Uncle Ray. Mind-blowing! 

After the personal, guided tour by Mathilde, she invited us to join her in her kitchen – the famous place that is small and simple and humble and quaint and has her husband’s table from his childhood farmhouse. We sat where dignitaries far outranking us sat, but we were treated just the same. Mathilde is a sincere woman who is so unpretentious that it made me wonder whether this was all make-believe. It wasn’t. It was as real as the Belgian waffle snacks she served us and her homemade apple wine – from her 1986 vintage!!! We were treated with perhaps more respect than the dignitaries since we had lost a relative in the war. We all wished that we could have met Marcel. Everyone said he was a giant of a man, and his “giantness” came from his magnanimous spirit and unwavering commitment to remember the sacrifice of American soldiers. 

 

We bought some things in the gift shop and left some donations. We also brought the best chocolate from Cincinnati – Ester Price. Now, it is a bit presumptuous bringing chocolate to a Belgian as a gift, and we were nervous. Mark presented a box to Mathilde and she graciously accepted. [Note: Interestingly, in an email she sent several days after we got home, she said the chocolate was really good. True or nice? We will never know, but she was kind enough to send a thank you note.] As we drove away, Mathilde waved us goodbye with her American flag scarf fluttering in the gentle, Belgian breeze. 

It was off to Vincent and Severine’s house for dinner – a drive of about 40 minutes. They have a very lovely house, and their backyard is exquisitely landscaped. Vincent is a human rights lawyer for the Belgian government and specializes in investigating war crimes. His job takes him to some tawdry places. Severine is a lawyer involved in fraud, scams and white-collar crime. I asked her about cryptocurrency, and she just shook her head. It is a never-ending source of work for her and colleagues.

  

We met their son Noah (age 15) but their other son, Romain age 19, was off at military school. He is seeking to pass a test in June that would get him admitted to the Belgian equivalent of West Point. Dinner was a traditional “simple” meal. Five kinds of soft meats/spreads, 8 kinds of cheese, 3 kinds of bread, plenty of Belgian beer and French wine. The finale included Belgian chocolate (that Swiss chocolate is “bullshit” compared to Belgian chocolate). After dinner, they drove us back to our hotel and we parted begrudgingly at 10:00pm (2200). We had made new friends that I believe will be lifelong connections.

What a day! What a 32 hours! It seemed like we had met many days ago since we had packed so much into that 32 hours. Whew!

PS: After our return, we had some email dialogue with Vincent. Here is an excerpt from one of his missives.

For us, too, it was an incredible experience and an unforgettable encounter. We learned so much from you, and we also had a wonderful time together. Now, we feel as though we know your uncle through your family history and our time together. In the future, we’ll put even more effort into honoring his grave and his sacrifice.

Meeting you has inspired some personal reflection. Statistically speaking (a field dear to Stephen), there was no chance our families would ever meet, and yet from your uncle’s sacrifice—an event of absolute sadness—friendships were born 80 years later. This story inspires a kind of optimism about the future of humanity, I find. 

Is that a cool thought or what?!?

YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!!!!