Click below for comments from Brett Cornwell, Associate Vice Chancellor for Commercialization with the Texas A&M University System, visiting with WTAW’s Kevin O’Connor.
Original story:
Next month marks the 70th anniversary of World War II’s Battle of the Bulge.
Bastogne, Belgium will mark the event in part with a new museum that includes an exhibit featuring the stories of General Earl Rudder and four other Texas A&M soldiers.
One component of the Aggies Go To War exhibit is a 40 minute video presentation.
You can see a special viewing of the video Tuesday night at 8 in Rudder Theater. There is no admission charge.
Tuesday morning on The Infomaniacs, following the 8:30 news, you’ll hear more about the video and the exhibit that will spend two years in Belgium before returning to Aggieland.
News release courtesy of Texas A&M University:
A special screening of a video presentation honoring five Aggies who served with distinction at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II will be presented Tuesday (Nov. 4) at 8 p.m. in Rudder Theatre. The presentation is free and open to the public.
The video is a screening of a theatrical retelling of the stories of James Earl Rudder, Joe E. Routt, James Francis Hollingsworth, Turney White Leonard and William Merriweather Pena.
Each year on Memorial Day, the people of Belgium honor those heroes from Texas A&M University who helped to push back the German invasion of their country during World War II.
Organizers say the video, like the exhibit, marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans made a last push to extend their front line toward the English Channel and were forced back by Americans dug into deep snow inside the Ardennes Forest.
It is not ancient history to the residents of Bastogne, nor do they intend to let it become so to their descendants, says project historian John A. Adams, Jr. ’73. “Their town is really a living museum to this event.”
Exhibition designer Christophe Gaeta says teaching young visitors is paramount.
“The main objective of the exhibition is to tell the younger generation that a soldier in a black-and-white picture is not just a soldier,” Gaeta says. “He had a life before, he had a girlfriend, a father and he had family. You could have been in the same situation, 70 years ago.”
For that reason, he says, the displays will trace the men from their lives as Texas A&M students in the 1930s to the post-war successes and struggles of those who made it home.
After two years at its current site, the exhibit will then be moved to Texas A&M. In the meantime, organizers say the video screening will give viewers a sense of the importance the sacrifice of these Aggies still has to the people of Belgium.