Mickael Therer: The Ardennes forest Behind the scene : why this panorama As a child, every year around new year's day I visited my father's family in the Ardennes. It was often a time of tears and sorrow as my great aunts and uncles silently remembered the winter of 44. This 17th December 2004 I spent it in the woods around Bastogne trying to remember something I have hardly been told and never lived through. The weather conditions are similar to what they were 60 years ago: foggy, cold and humid, it is hard to believe that in 1944 people buried themselves here for days, weeks even by -20°C. I wander through the woods occasionally coming across foxholes of 101st airborne and young US cadets roaming in noisy search of trophies: pieces of shrapnel, rounds or instant coffee sachets that can still be found here. I wish them no war. Civilians are always expandable in times of war. History will account for the winners against the loosers but for civilians things are really different in the fields of war. Return