On October 21, 2019, Belgium Post issued a miniature sheet in honor of the 75th anniversary of the country's liberation during World War II.

Over the past five years, Belgium Post has been issuing a series of postage stamps dedicated to the World War II. This year the theme of the commemorative issue is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Belgium in 1944.

Designer Kris Demey worked on a series of stamps, he also designed all previous issues on this topic. Together with the historian Chantal Kesteloot of the CEGESOMA Research Center, Chris Demi has developed an interesting design concept for the miniature sheet. The plots of the stamps are individual moments of the liberation of Belgium, as they were seen by the soldiers of the allied forces.

When decorating the margins of the miniature sheet, a gradient in the colors of the Belgian flag was used, it also runs along the margins of the stamps. In the center of the sheet, the designer depicted a five-pointed star as a reference to the American flag and a symbol of the allied forces. At the end of each ray of the star are postage stamps. Moving from stamp to stamp, we, together with our allies, go all the way to the liberation of Belgium. Historical photographs taken in Belgium in 1944 were used in the design of postage stamps.

First stamp - September 2, 1944 - nuns at Mons waving a car with American soldiers. Mons was one of the first liberated Belgian cities. The next stamp - September 13, 1944 - the rapid advance of the allied forces and their reaching the eastern cantons. American soldiers pose at the border post. The third stamp - September 1944 - is a meeting of American soldiers with fighters of the Jean-Baptiste Piron brigade, which took an active part in the liberation of Belgium. After the war, this brigade formed the core of the new Belgian army. Fourth stamp - December 4, 1944 - Antwerp hit by devastating German rocket attacks. The wounded girl is carried by the British military. And finally, the last stamp - the winter of 1945 - the Ardennes operation and the evacuation of the inhabitants of Bastogne.

It is because of the last stamp that the miniature sheet ended up on this site. The stamp was based on a photograph taken in December 1944 in the Belgian city of Bastogne.

As you know, in June 1944, the Allies opened a second front in Europe by landing their troops in Normandy. By December 1944, the American army was in positions in southwestern Belgium in the Ardennes. In order to defeat the Anglo-American armed forces in Belgium and the Netherlands and change the situation on the Western Front, German troops launched an offensive operation in the Ardennes. For a successful offensive, it was vitally important for the German units to take control of the small Belgian town of Bastogne, where all the main roads converged. Bastogne, held by the allies, became a stumbling block for the entire offensive operation of the Germans. For a month, bloody battles were fought out of the city. In Bastogne, where in peacetime the entire population of the city was about 4 thousand people, 23 thousand American and 25 thousand German soldiers died. On January 8, 1945, seeing the futility of a further offensive in the Ardennes, Hitler gave the order to retreat, the Wehrmacht's offensive Ardennes operation ended in failure.

In the photo, American troops help Belgian refugees escape from Bastogne, besieged by the Nazi army. A horse-drawn cart is clearly visible in the foreground. The animal does not differ in apparent strength and article, but since the action takes place in the Ardennes, it can be assumed that this is an Ardennes draft.

After all, it is the region of the Ardennes mountains in Belgium that is the center of the origin and breeding of the Ardennes horse breed - one of the oldest draft breeds in Europe.

In the photo, a horse carries a cart with refugees and their belongings, but earlier during the First World War, these horses were considered ideal for use in the troops for transporting artillery. The Ardennes was considered so valuable and useful that during the war the German government identified it as the most valuable Belgian horse breed to capture. Today, ardens are still used in agricultural and forestry work, as well as for recreation and mountain walks.