Memorial plaque for the bombing of August 18, 1944 in Namur

After the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, it took a long time before the Allies were strong enough to break through the German lines. At the beginning of August the German army attempted a counterattack, but at a certain point a large part of the German army was in danger of being surrounded. The order to retreat was then given and then things suddenly happened quickly: on August 22, American troops succeeded in crossing the Seine, on August 25 General de Gaulle triumphantly entered Paris, on September 2 the Allies stood at the French-Belgian border, the liberation of Brussels followed on September 3, followed by Antwerp the next day.
To prevent the German army from supplying their troops and bringing in reinforcements and also to make a possible retreat more difficult, the Allied air forces carried out bombing raids on traffic junctions in Northern France and Belgium.
This was also the case on August 18, 1944, when the US 8th Air Force sighted seven bridges over the Maas: Yvoir-Houx, Namur, Huy, Seraing, Liège, Visé and Maastricht in the Netherlands.
Each bridge was assigned to a Bombardment Group, an armada of more than 700 bombers and 400 fighter aircraft as escort. The bridge over the Meuse in Namur was the target of the 351st Bombardment Group from the Polebrook base in Great Britain. At around 6pm the 36 bombers appeared over the city and dropped their deadly payload. At least 330 people were killed, at least 600 seriously injured and approximately 2,000 houses were damaged. There were also numerous casualties at other targets (such as Huy, 81 dead and 114 houses destroyed).

The memorial plaque for the victims of the bombing in Namur was created at the initiative of Richard Dessart and Bastien Wilmotte. They found that there was no memorial to the victims of the bombing anywhere, with the exception of a memorial plaque for the victims of the Sint-Nicolaas parish.
The memorial is placed on the facade of the Palais des Congrès in Rue du Beffroi and it was unveiled on August 18, 2014, exactly 70 years after the sad events.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck