Rittershoffen

image from Pinterest

Before 1945, there was one church in Rittershoffen, where the Catholics and the Protestants took turns having services.

Like the rest of the place, it was destroyed during Operation Nordwind in January 1945. As the Americans were hanging on to one small triangle of the town, a soldier sought shelter in the cellar of a house with a Frenchwoman who had a baby and a small boy. While she soothed the baby, the GI took the boy on his knee and tried to distract him from the sound of the shells falling all around by singing to him, and teaching him to count to five in English.

In 1990 the man returned to Rittershoffen and with the help of a local historian was able to find the house.  The boy, now fifty years old, remembered him.  Also still remembered how to count to five.

The residents have deliberately left the bullet-riddled wall standing. 

After the war, the respective congregations decided they no longer wished to share a church and built two new ones.  As the historian remarked to us with Gallic wryness "Now no-one goes to church."