Meisy and Wiltz and Luxembourg

Wiltz, Luxembourg, WWII

The Battle of the Bulge had not gone well for a California kid named Ralph Ellis, who, like countless others in the fog of war, had lost track of his outfit and they of him. He was in awful shape, as so many were when the Wehrmacht sprung sprung an immense December surprise and bullied their way through "the ghost front" of the Allied lines in France and Belgium. Ellis was very much alone, wounded, frozen and famished, hiding out in an uninhabited house in a wreck of a town pummeled--for the second time--by the Nazi advance. He thought he was dying. He had cause to believe he was.

He had found his way to Wiltz, a tiny town in a tiny country, Luxembourg, a nation that found itself, not to its liking, in the bloody heart of the biggest battle on the European front. Wiltz, like the entire country, had got itself occupied early in the war, when Nazis stormed in, then freed when the Allies snatched it back. Then, in December's blizzards, it was beat up again when Hitler decided the only way to win was a desperate attack in the unforgiving cold.

Confusion?--all over. Death?--everywhere. Positions?--insanely scrambled. Thousands got lost, like Ralph Ellis. The U. S. sustained 75,000 casualties at the Battle of the Bulge, 20,000 American "boys" never returned. Hiding in a house in Wiltz, Ralph Ellis, some might say, was among the lucky ones.

He spent some time upstairs in that old house in Wiltz. I have no idea what unabated hunger feels like, but Ellis was feeling it. And his feet weren't just cold, they were frozen, literally frozen. That too means pain unlike any I've ever felt. And he was alone. 

On the street below, he heard voices, people speaking in German. He'd known for a day or two that he was behind enemy lines. He leaned out a ways simply to see. Two civilians were talking to two German soldiers. He leaned out farther. It seemed unreal. The Germans had a cart full of schnapps.

One of the civilians, a woman, just happened to look up. She saw him. He was seen. 

Ralph Ellis was convinced his time had come. He heard footsteps on the stairway upstairs. Yes, she'd seen him all right. The door opened. They pointed to each other--"Meisy," the woman told him. He knew it was her name. "Louis," she said, pointing at the man.

"Ralph," he said, pointing at his chest. 

Meisy and Louis engineered a way to get him out of the cold of the abandoned house and into the warmth of the tiny basement grocery store Meisy ran and where she lived. Louis played nurse, cut off one of Ralph Ellis toes with a razor blade. Had to. But Ralph Ellis was regaining strength. He was alive, still suffering but alive, dressed up in Meisy's son's clothes, sitting in a rocking chair, still alive in the back of the little store. 

When one day the Germans came in, there was no one to stop them. In a second, they were in the back room, where they told Meisy they were going to sleep in her place. 

"That's impossible," she told them. She said she had only one room and that was already full with her and her nephew here in the rocking chair.

They wore the uniform of the SS. They pointed at Ralph Ellis and asked him why a young man his age wasn't in the war effort. 

Meisy stepped between them, told them the boy was sick--were they blind? Couldn't they see that much?

"Let him talk for himself," the SS said.

Meisy told him her nephew couldn't speak because he'd been hurt in one of the American bombings. And then, or so the story goes, she just turned furious. "And don't think you're going to stay here either," she told them. She said she had nothing for them or for her to eat. "And somewhere in Germany you too have a mother, don't you?"

The SS cowed, nodding.

She had a son in the war, she said, and pointed at a picture of her boy in a German uniform, then steered them both back out into the store. "Just what would your mothers say?" she scolded, then gave them each an apple. "That's all I can give you." 

That did it. They actually cowered. "We didn't mean anything," they said when they took the apples and left the store.

Ralph Ellis said nothing but never forgot.

*     *     * 

Just down the road, Luxembourgian-Americans will, this summer, celebrate the 150th anniversary of their arrival in Siouxland, May, 1870. They'll dress up the little commemorative stone east of Alton at the place where they built their first church. The Oktoberfest Choir will sing, and the Mass will be celebrated at St. Mary's Church, Alton. 

It's unlikely, I suppose, that any of the celebrants could count Meisy from Wiltz as a distant relative. The Iowa Luxembourgians were here more than a half century before the Battle of the Bulge. 

But if I were one of them, I think I'd try to find a way to tell the story anyway or at least stories like it, stories of what Luxembourgians have done, stories of what we all could be. That the rest of us aren't dying behind enemy lines doesn't mean we don't need men and women like Meisy and tales of their astonishing selfless lives.

Lord knows, we do. 
___________________________ 
Ralph Ellis's story is adapted from John Toland's Battle: The Story of the Bulge.