Europe will mark V-E Day's 80th anniversary as once-unbreakable bonds with the US are under pressure

THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium (AP) — The memory of blood dripping from trucks loaded with the mangled bodies of U.S. soldiers arriving at a nearby war cemetery straight from the battlefield in 1945 still gives 91-year-old Marcel Schmetz nightmares.

It also instilled a lifelong sense of gratitude for the young soldiers from the United States and around the world who gave their lives battling the armies of Adolf Hitler to end World War II in Europe.

Schmetz even built a museum at his home in the Belgian Ardennes to honor their sacrifice.

“If the Americans hadn’t come, we wouldn’t be here,” the Belgian retiree said.

That same spirit also pervades Normandy in northern France, where the allied forces landed on June 6, 1944, a day that became the tipping point of the war.

In Normandy, Marie-Pascale Legrand is still taking care of the ailing Charles Shay, a 100-year-old American who stormed the bloodied beaches on that fateful D-Day as a teenager and fought to help liberate Europe for many more months.

“Gratitude for me means that I am eternally indebted, because I can live free today,” Legrand said.

After D-Day, it would take almost another year of fierce fighting before Germany would finally surrender on May 8, 1945. Commemorations and festivities are planned for the 80th anniversary across much of the continent for what has become known as Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, one of the most momentous days on the continent in recent centuries.

Ever since, for generation upon generation in the nations west of the Iron Curtain that sliced Europe in two, it became a day to confirm and reconfirm what were long seen as the unbreakable bonds with the United States as both stood united against Soviet Eastern Europe.

No more.

Over the past several months, the rhetoric from Washington has become increasingly feisty.

The Trump administration has questioned the vestiges of the decades-old alliance and slapped trade sanctions on the 27-nation European Union and the United Kingdom. Trump has insisted that the EU trade bloc was there to “screw” the United States from the start.

The wartime allies are now involved in a trade war.

“After all that has happened, it is bound to leave scars,” said Hendrik Vos, European studies professor at Ghent University.

Yet deep in the green hills and Ardennes woods where the Battle of the Bulge was fought and Schmetz lives, just as along the windswept bluffs of Legrand's Normandy, the ties endure — isolated from the tremors of geopolitics.

“For all those that criticize the Americans, we can only say that for us, they were all good,” Schmetz said. “We should never forget that.”

After watching the horrors of the dead soldiers at the nearby Henri-Chapelle cemetery as an 11-year-old, Schmetz vowed he would do something in their honor and gathered war memorabilia.

A car mechanic with a big warehouse, he immediately started to turn it into the Remember Museum 39-45 once he retired more than three decades ago.

“I had to do something for those who died,” he said.

And for the treasure trove of military artifacts, what truly stands out is a long bench in the kitchen where U.S. veterans, their children, and even their grandchildren come and sit and talk about what happened, and the bonds uniting continent, memories all meticulously kept by his wife Mathilde, to pass on to new visitors and new generations of schoolkids.

In the coming weeks, she will be going out to put 696 roses on the graves of soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division — nicknamed “The Big Red One,” or “BRO” — who lie buried among 7,987 headstones at Henri Chapelle.

Charles Shay, who is now bedridden in Normandy, was also part of the 1st Infantry Division and came through the Ardennes region too before heading to Germany. He survived the Korean War too and started making visits to the D-Day beaches around two decades ago. Over the years, he became increasingly sick and Legrand, who has helped veterans in one way or another for more than 40 years, took him in to her home in 2018.

He has been living there ever since.

The moment everything changed for Legrand was listening to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984 speaking on a Normandy bluff of the sacrifice and heroism of American soldiers.

Barely in her 20s, she realized that “their blood is in our soil and we have to show gratitude. We have to do something. I didn't know what at the time, but I knew I would do something to show it.”

She had long volunteered to help Allied veterans before she met Shay. He was lonely, sick and frail when she took him in and began caring for him at her Normandy home.

“It is a strong symbol, which takes on a new dimension in this day and age,” she said, referring to the tumultuous trans-Atlantic relations that have put the bonds between allies that Trump called “unbreakable” only six years ago, under extreme pressure.

Central in Trump's criticism of European NATO allies is that they have happily hunkered far too long under U.S. military supremacy since World War II and should start paying much more of their own way in the alliance. He has done so in such terms that many Europeans sincerely fear the breakup of the trans-Atlantic bonds that were a core of global politics for almost a century.

“The naive belief that the Americans will, by definition, always be an ally — once and for all, that is gone,” said Vos. It also raises a moral question for Europeans now.

“Are we doomed to be eternally grateful?” Vos asked.

FILE - Looking north from 44th Street, New York's Times Square is packed Monday, May 7, 1945, with crowds celebrating the news of Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons, File)

World War II D-Day veteran and Penobscot Elder from Maine, Charles Norman Shay, center, and Marie Pacale Legrand during a D-Day 76th anniversary ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

FILE - An American soldier, identified as Patsy Caliendo, is laid to rest in the largest Allied military cemetery on the Western Front March 14, 1945, in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. (AP Photo/William C. Allen, File)

Director of the WWII Remember Museum 1939-1945, Marcel Schmetz, stands near vintage WWII vehicles inside his museum in Thimister-Clermont, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Gravestones of American WWII soldiers at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Henri Chapelle, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — In the aftermath of a fire inside a Swiss Alpine bar that killed 40 people celebrating the new year, survivors, friends and family members, the region’s top authorities and even Pope Leo have spoken to the public in remarks in French, Italian, German and English, reflecting the tradition of Swiss multilingualism.

Another 119 people were injured in the blaze early Thursday as it ripped through the busy Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest tragedies in Switzerland’s history.

Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.

Here’s a look at what people said in the wake of the disaster:

— “I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Laetitia Brodard told reporters Friday in Crans-Montana as she searched for her son, 16-year-old Arthur. “I want to know, where is my child, and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”

— “We were bringing people out, people were collapsing. We were doing everything we could to save them, we helped as many as we could. We saw people screaming, running,” Marc-Antoine Chavanon, 14, told The Associated Press in Crans-Montana on Friday, recounting how he rushed to the bar to help the injured. “There was one of our friends: She was struggling to get out, she was all burned. You can’t imagine the pain I saw.”

— “It was hard to live through for everyone. Also probably because everyone was asking themselves, ‘Was my child, my cousin, someone from the region at this party?’” Eric Bonvin, general director of the regional hospital in Sion that took in dozens of injured people, told AP on Friday. “This place was very well known as somewhere to celebrate the new year,” Bonvin said. “Also, seeing young people arrive — that’s always traumatic.”

— “I have seen horror, and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation and rushed to the bar to help first responders, told France's TF1 television.

—“You will understand that the priority today is truly placed on identification, in order to allow the families to begin their mourning,” Beatrice Pilloud, the Valais region's attorney general, told reporters Friday during a news conference in Sion.

Pope Leo said in a telegram Friday to the bishop of Sion that he " wishes to express his compassion and concern to the relatives of the victims. He prays that the Lord will welcome the deceased into His abode of peace and light, and will sustain the courage of those who suffer in their hearts or in their bodies.”

— “We have numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say of very strong solidarity in the moment,” Cantonal head of government Mathias Reynard told RTS radio Friday. "In the first minutes it was citizens — and in large part young people — who saved lives with their courage.”

— “Switzerland is a strong country not because it is sheltered from drama, but because it knows how to face them with courage and a spirit of mutual help," Swiss President Guy Parmelin, speaking on his first day in the position that changes hands annually, told reporters Thursday.

People bring flowers near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/ Antonio Calanni)

A woman holding a stuffed animal, whose daughter is missing, gather with others near the sealed-off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

People light candles near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/ Antonio Calanni)