Houffalize in Belgium is a lovely little place. Amber-coloured stone houses, friendly boozers with a selection of head-hurtingly fruity Belgian beers, nice little shops and a pretty river meandering through it. It’s particularly pleasant if you approach on the road from Liège, heading south towards Bastogne, on the outbound route of the famous bicycle race.
You come into town, past neat ‘Welcome to Houffalize signs’ and some nice floral displays, and slow dutifully to 30km/h to enjoy the sights as you tootle through the town. You hang a left at a nice-looking bistro, and follow the main road as it climbs slightly towards the town square – and then you see it.
Its 75mm gun is trained seemingly right at you. The Panther tank is parked on the right of the road, turret slightly turned towards you, like a car parked casually with a little bit of steering lock to show its intent. It’s huge – near 11 feet wide, 23 long, and almost 10 feet high – but at a distance it seems deceptively squat, more like a rock or a low building than a vehicle that could (in its day) rear up that snub nose and roar up the road at 30mph+. Its three-tone camouflage is still strangely menacing, making it look somehow organic, like a lurking crocodile’s dappled hide. And of course that black cross, the symbol of the worst regime that mankind has yet to dream up, evoking a hundred war movies and those terrible black and white films we all saw in school – rag-doll human bodies, discarded and piled up like so many cords of wood.
