Mardasson Memorial in Bastogne, Belgium

Pictures and text by Jenna Magness

The Mardasson Memorial is located in Bastogne. I took these pictures on the 25th of September 2008. The Mardasson was built in July 1950 to commemorate the acts of the American units which fought the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne. This battle was extremely important in winning World War II.

	This is the plaque you see when you to the memorial, it talks of the friendship between the American soldiers and the Belgian civilians in their common goal.
	This is a picture of the memorial taken from a helicopter that flew overhead. It shows a bird eye view of the memorial overall.
	This picture is one side of the memorial itself, you can see that along the top of the memorial is a list of all the states in America.
	This picture is one of the 90 columns that make up the memorial. Each column has the names of the units that fought in the battle.
	This photo is a close up view of the inner circle of the memorial taken from the top of the Memorial itself. It continues the states along the top.
	This is a picture of the flags that are next to the memorial. As you can see they have the American flag flying next to the EU flag in honor of the friendship between the two.
	This picture is of the tomb that is below the memorial itself. 76,890 people are being honored here.
	This is another one of the picture in the tomb. There are three sides to the tomb each one honoring a different religion, this picture is in honor of the Jewish soldiers. While the one above was in Honor of the Catholic soldiers. The tomb itself is locked off and I was unable to get a picture of the third side which was honoring Protestant soldiers.
	This picture shows another side of the star shaped memorial. The structure you see in the bottom right of the picture allows light to shine down into the crypt below so that daylight will always be able to shine on the shrines.