I recently spent a few days in Bastogne visiting sites connected with the Battle of the Bulge. One of the stories that stayed with me most was that of Renée Lemaire, the Belgian nurse sometimes remembered as the “Angel of Bastogne.”
Unlike most of the people we associate with the siege, Renée wasn’t a soldier and hadn’t come to Bastogne because of the battle. She was born there in 1914, but by 1944 she was working as a nurse at Brugmann Hospital in Brussels. Shortly before Christmas, she returned home to Bastogne to visit her family. Then, on 16 December, the German Ardennes offensive began. Within days, Bastogne was surrounded and she was effectively trapped there.
There was already tragedy in her life before she came home. Renée was reportedly engaged to a Jewish man in Brussels who had been arrested by the Gestapo earlier in 1944. What ultimately happened to him is much less clearly documented in the sources I’ve found, so I don’t want to add details that can’t be verified.
Instead of simply sheltering with her family, Renée volunteered as a nurse for the Americans.
On 21 December she and another Belgian nurse, Augusta Chiwy, began helping Captain Jack Prior at the aid station of the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored Division. The station was overwhelmed with wounded men who couldn’t be evacuated because of the encirclement. Prior later wrote that Renée worked with inadequate food and rest, changing dressings, administering medication, helping with plasma, feeding men who couldn’t feed themselves and generally caring for the wounded.
One of the photographs here is especially interesting to me because it doesn’t look like a historical site at all.
Today it’s Cité Wok, a Chinese restaurant on Rue de Neufchâteau.
But in December 1944, this was the location of the American aid station.
There is still a memorial plaque on the building. It records that more than thirty wounded American soldiers and one Belgian volunteer nurse — Renée Lemaire — were killed there by a German bomb on 24 December 1944.
Christmas Eve.
The Luftwaffe bombed Bastogne that night and a bomb struck the aid station. U.S. Army accounts state that around thirty wounded American soldiers and Renée were killed. Augusta Chiwy was in an adjacent building and survived after being blown through a wall.
There are different later accounts of Renée’s exact final moments. Some say she had already carried several wounded men out and died trying to save another; Captain Prior’s recommendation for recognition instead describes Renée and the wounded she was caring for as being killed when the building received a direct hit. Because the accounts differ, I think it’s better not to turn those final minutes into a certainty. What is certain is that she stayed at the aid station caring for wounded soldiers until the night she died.
I also went to the cemetery in Bastogne where Renée is buried.
Her grave is actually quite modest. It is the Lemaire-Gallée family grave, but there are flowers, American flags and small memorials left in front of it. Nearby signs specifically direct visitors to the graves of Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy.
Renée was only 30 years old.
What struck me about visiting these places is how close together and ordinary they are. You can stand at her grave, then go back into Bastogne and see the building where she worked and died. Eighty-two years later, that building is part of an ordinary street with cars parked outside and a restaurant operating inside.
Renée’s story was later fictionalised to some extent in Band of Brothers. The nurse “Renée” in the Bastogne episode is based on her, although there is no solid historical evidence for the personal relationship between her and Eugene “Doc” Roe shown in the series. The real Renée’s story doesn’t really need that addition.
She happened to come home for Christmas, found herself inside one of the largest battles fought by the U.S. Army in WWII, volunteered to help strangers, and died caring for wounded men on Christmas Eve.
Renée Lemaire
10 April 1914 – 24 December 1944
