COLUMBIA FALLS, Maine — A small group of people gathered Sunday to commemorate a battle of World War II known as one of the largest and bloodiest of the conflict.
Gathering by a perpetually lit Christmas tree, a symbol of the Battle of the Bulge because of its timing around the holiday, about a dozen people hung their heads in prayer, members of local Boy Scout Troop 139 stood by as a color guard, and Peter Dunston of Cherryfield, an Army veteran who dressed Sunday as a World War II soldier, played taps on a bugle.
Sunday marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the battle, which raged from mid-December 1944 until Jan. 25, 1945.
Following the brief ceremony, the group went to the Wreaths Across America offices in Columbia Falls for refreshments and to discuss the famous battle.
The Christmas tree, located near the Balsam Valley Amphitheater on Route 1, is maintained by Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit group that every year delivers thousands of Maine-made Christmas wreaths to graves at Arlington National Cemetery and to veterans’ monuments throughout the country. The tree is a symbol of Christmas Day 1944, when thousands of American troops were separated from their families and unable to celebrate the holiday while fighting against the German army’s unsuccessful westward push in the Ardennes forest near the border of France, Belgium and Luxembourg.
