"Nuts."

February 14, 2025.

In her January 24^th newsletter “Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson marked the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII  by noting American General Anthony C. McAuliffe’s famous response to a German demand for the surrender of Bastogne. “Nuts.”

Richardson went on to describe the US role in stabilizing the postwar world and the development of an American era of prosperity, including the success of the GI Bill. “At home, the government invested in ordinary Americans. In 1944, Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, more commonly known as the G.I. Bill, to fund higher education for some 7.8 million former military personnel. The law added to the American workforce some 450,000 engineers, 180,000 medical professionals, 360,000 teachers, 150,000 scientists, 243,000 accountants, 107,000 lawyers, and 36,000 clergymen.”

The newsletter entry resonates with me. My uncle, John “Jack,” McCabe, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. One of those GI Bill doctors was Francis O’Connor, MD, my father-in-law. Dr. O’Connor was a graduate of the University of Louvain Medical School in Belgium. Americans were welcome there because of Belgium, and Louvain’s, strong relationship with the US. 

Before WWI, Louvain was most famous as a university town. The library tower of the Catholic University of Louvain dominated the town. In 1914, the German army of Kaiser Wilhelm II invaded neutral Belgium. Louvain was burned and the library destroyed, but not before German soldiers committed atrocities, including pillaging and the rape and execution of civilians.

The Sack of Louvain was part of Germany’s Rape of Belgium. The invasion of “poor little Belgium” became a rallying point in turning other countries, including the US, against German aggression. 

After WWI, a movement to raise funds to rebuild the library gained momentum in the US, especially among academic communities. The new “American Library” of Louvain was designed by an American architect and built by an American company. An eagle sits atop the tower and inscriptions in the foundation blocks bear the names of US donor universities and organizations. A plaque in the entry explains in English and Flemish that the library was presented to the people of Belgium by the people of the United States.

Only seven years after it was completed WWII began and the library was again burned in a fire started by German artillery. The fire caused international outrage. Again. After the war the library was rebuilt again and completed in 1950. 

Francis O’Connor arrived at the University of Louvain just a few years later. The rest, as they say, is history. Francis met Jackie de Fays. They married, and my wife Mary and her sister Za were born in nearby Brussels in 1958 and 1959.

Richardson concluded her newsletter by detailing how “since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday, the dismantling of that system is happening all at once.”

Americans continue to take pride in our heroes like my Uncle Jack but seem to have forgotten or abandoned the history of why he was there, how Dr. Francis O’Connor and countless other Americans benefited along the way, and how the US became a world power. 

Notes.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-24-2025

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef-library-brochure-online-06-2023.pdf