The liberation of Belgium began accidentally.
In the first days of September 1944, the German army was retreating across northern France, with the American 2nd Armored Division in close pursuit. American officers sent scouts ahead on motorcycles to assess the situation.
One of those that day was James William “Bill” Carroll from Alabama. By some accounts, Carroll didn’t realize he’d crossed the border into Belgium, but he had. The truth is a little more complicated, but no less dramatic. Carroll had ridden into the border town of Peruwelz on his Harley-Davidson, just in time to spot German soldiers pulling out — and shooting up the place as they left. Whether he knew he was in Belgium or not is unclear. Either way, he knew there were Nazis about, so Carroll hid in a store until the Germans had left, then returned to his unit to report on what he’d found. By then, some Belgian resistance fighters had shown up and asked the Americans for ammunition to root out 50 German soldiers they said were still at the train station. The Americans handed over the ammo, and Carroll volunteered to accompany the resistance group back to town. When the local resistance fighters had finished with the Germans (it’s unclear what actually happened, but you can use your imagination), Carroll soon found himself surrounded — not by Germans but by adoring townspeople who showered him with wine and kisses. A priest appeared to offer a blessing.
The first village in Belgium had just been liberated from the Nazis.
The townspeople were so grateful that to this day in Peruwelz, there’s a statue of Carroll on his Harley.
Belgium is a small country with a long memory.
This column is about just how long that memory is — and about one memorial that’s not so famous as the one in Peruwelz but just as meaningful to its townspeople.
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The D-Day landings, in the words of the Virginians who were there. See our special report.
The D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches in early June had been a struggle, but an Allied beachhead was established. That was heralded as a historic military achievement, but after that, progress was slow. The Allies had to fight not just the Germans but the French hedgerows that made it difficult to advance. The British had hoped to reach the French city of Caen, 9 miles inland, on the first day. Instead, it took them a little more than a month. The Americans had hoped to reach Saint-Lô, 24 miles inland, on the second day. It took them eight weeks. Back home, American newspapers fretted that the troops were bogged down. The trench warfare of World War I was still fresh in the public’s mind.
In late July, the Allies finally started to move a little faster, the long-awaited “breakout.” Much of August was spent in a bloody battle whose name we too often forget: the Battle of the Falaise Pocket. By the time it ended, casualties on both sides were in the hundreds of thousands — dead, wounded, missing. Bodies rotted in the summer heat. Pilots flying over the area could smell their stench even from the air. Two days after the battle ended, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower surveyed the scene and reported: “The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest ‘killing fields’ of any of the war areas. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap, I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.”
Military historians still debate whether this was a decisive defeat for the Germans or a missed opportunity for the Allies because, despite the scale of the slaughter, a significant number of German units escaped and retreated — toward Belgium to the north and Germany to the east.
While Charles De Gaulle marched victoriously into Paris four days later, the Allies rolled on after the retreating Germans — and on Sept. 3, crossed into Belgium to liberate that first village.
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The Belgian army had lasted just 18 days against the invading Nazis in the spring of 1940. The Germans invaded on May 10. By May 28, the outmanned army had surrendered and the government fled, first to France, and later to Britain after France met the same fate. Then the resistance began. The French Resistance movement is more famous, but only because France is bigger. Belgians did all the same things and maybe more: In his book “Last Train from Berlin,” the American journalist Howard K. Smith reported that more German troops were killed in occupied Belgium in 1941 than in occupied France. The Belgian resistance attacked trains carrying Jews and others to the death camps; Belgians are said to have hidden more than 20,000 people from the Nazis. City officials in Brussels defied German orders to distribute the yellow badges that the Nazis wanted Jews to wear.
Once Allied armies stormed ashore at Normandy, the Belgian resistance stepped up its activities, sabotaging railroads and communications networks. The slow Allied progress through the French hedgerows was as painful for the Belgians as it was for everyone else.
Then on Sept. 3, that lone American finally crossed the border. Carroll may have been the first, but he was not the last.
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Ralph Nimmo was 20 years old and working as a baker at Rainbo Bakery in Roanoke when he met his future wife, Julia. They got married on Jan. 9, 1943. Two days later, he was off to war. Nimmo was assigned to the 113th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, better known as the Red Horse Cavalry for its distinctive logo. Nimmo and his fellow soldiers arrived in France after D-Day; not until July 4 did they see their first action — and then they saw lots of it. In a previous era, the men would have ridden on horses. By now, horses had given way to tanks, but their job was still the same: to push ahead of the army and be the first to encounter the enemy. They were there at Goucherie, at Le Mesnil-Veneron, at Saint-Lô, at lots of other little French towns. They rode through Paris after that city was liberated — and then they kept on moving. Their orders were simple: “Fan out ahead of the advance in a fast, bold run, keeping well ahead of our skirmish lines.”
By early September, that meant the Red Horse was rumbling into Belgium. Things were happening faster now. The “Secret Army,” as the Belgian resistance fighters styled themselves, swung into action to help the approacahing liberators. The Red Horse crossed the border on Sept. 5 in what one historical account calls “one of the most spectacular mechanized cavalry reconnaissance missions in military history, when it made its brilliant dash across Belgium three days in advance” of the rest of the American army, aided by those Belgian resistance fighters who knew where the Germans were and the best roads to use to find them.
On their second day in Belgium — Sept. 6 — the Red Horse came upon one German unit that had surrounded a Belgian resistance unit known as Groupe Vilna. The resistance fighters were rescued and the Germans captured. According to historical accounts kept by the resistance group, the Americans pulled out an SS lieutenant they suspected of being a war criminal, and turned the rest of the Germans over to the Belgians until more American troops could arrive, a sudden reversal of fortunes for both sides. The Belgians marched their captives off to a farm near the village of Ramillies while the Red Horse then rolled on into Jauche, a little town about 36 miles east of Brussels.
With the Americans moving in and the Germans moving out, the front lines were somewhat fluid at best. At some point during the night, Germans towing an artillery piece arrived in Ramillies, woke up villager Joseph Malevé and demanded he give them directions. The villager knew that the route the Germans wanted to take would go past the farm where the Belgians were holding the previous German unit prisoner, and he also knew that the Americans were in Jauche, so he warned the Germans that the road was mined — that they should go through Jauche instead. Malevé hoped to direct the Germans into a trap. The Germans were suspicious, though, so they took the villager prisoner and forced him to be their navigator on the way to Jauche.
The Germans, indeed, drove directly into a trap — and shooting broke out. According to a 1998 account in The Roanoke Times, Nimmo, the former baker from Roanoke, was standing guard when he was hit in the leg by German fire. He crumpled outside the door of a house. That’s when a German soldier came up and stabbed him to death. Nimmo was 21. (Malevé was wounded, too, but survived.)
The Germans were soon pushed out of the town, and the American advance continued — but then something remarkable happened. Townspeople rushed out of hiding. They took Nimmo’s body and covered it with flowers and Belgian flags, their way of honoring the first (and maybe only) American soldier who had died to liberate their town.
Eventually, an American officer arrived to retrieve Nimmo’s body. The mayor pleaded with him to let the townspeople bury Nimmo in Jauche, as a symbol of the town’s respect for his sacrifice. The officer insisted that Nimmo’s body must be sent back home, so the mayor settled for writing down the dead American’s name and serial number. He vowed that Jauche would erect a monument in Nimmo’s honor.
And it did. The town took up a collection for the stone, and each year since, subsequent generations of villagers in Jauche have gathered there to mark the anniversary of their liberation — and pay their respects to Nimmo.
This observance has now been passed down to a third generation. Maxime Paquet is the current president of Groupe Vilna, which seeks to preserve the history of the resistance; his grandfather was part of the group during the war. Paquet describes the annual memorial as a solemn occasion. “We have a worship service at the church at the beginning of the day. After that, we go to Ralph’s stone to deposit flowers and make a little speech. Then the group moves on to the farm where the Red Horse Cavalry rescued the resistance fighters. There we have again a little speech,” Paquet said via a social media chat.
Over the years, the people of Jauche have tried to keep in touch with Nimmo’s family. Nimmo’s widow died in 1968. In 1994, Juache invited Nimmo’s sister to attend the 50th anniversary ceremony. She couldn’t make it, but another family member did. The following year, a delegation from Jauche visited Roanoke and laid flowers on Nimmo’s gravesite at the Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church in Roanoke County. Nimmo’s sister died in 2022, and, since then, Jauche has lost touch with the family. Paquet says he hopes to find some family members so that the town can stay in contact.
The 80th anniversary of Nimmo’s death — and Jauche’s liberation — is this weekend. Once again, the townspeople will gather to honor a young man from Roanoke who gave his life for their freedom. “For us,” Paquet says, “Ralph is the symbol of our liberty!”
If any relatives of Ralph Nimmo want to make contact with the Groupe Vilna in Belgium, please email me at dwayne@cardinalnews.org and I will make an introduction.
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