Belgian museum to honor veteran

In a ceremony Saturday at a museum in Belgium, the local population will again give thanks for the heroism of young Americans from a California-based battalion during that brutal winter of 1944 when the German army launched the Battle of the Bulge.

The Allied generals had been caught unawares by the massive assault by German armor and infantry divisions into the Ardennes region. Soon U.S. troops were in retreat and desperate measures were needed to block the rapid advance of German tanks.

A lieutenant -- a lawyer from Los Angeles before being drafted -- was hastily given what seemed like a suicide assignment: to stop a column of German tanks with an artillery piece that was intended to shoot down airplanes, soldiers who weren’t trained for the job and a firing position that provided no protection.

“If they got one shot at us, we were dead,” Leon Kent said. “I remember thinking: Do the shells go through you, or do you just go up in pieces?”

But what Kent and three enlisted soldiers under his command accomplished soon became symbolic of the Allies’ determination to blunt the German offensive.

With two “miracle” shots, soldiers of 143rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion disabled the two lead German tanks, blocking the rest of the column from advancing along the narrow road outside Stoumont Station in Belgium.

“We stopped them cold,” Kent said.

In the four hours it took the German tank commanders to resume their advance, the U.S. soldiers were able to establish a blocking position several miles away. After the war, the locals put up a plaque that, in French, reads: “Here the invader was stopped.”

The three enlisted soldiers who fired the 90mm gun were given the Silver Star for bravery. Kent was meritoriously promoted to captain.

As an officer, he should have taken up a safe position away from the gun. Instead he had stayed on the platform beside his men.

Now 96 and living in retirement in Beverly Hills after resuming his law career, Kent eschews any suggestion of courage on his part. He felt obligated to stay with his men.

“I think it was more guilt than bravery,” he said.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. John Crowe sees it somewhat differently. He’ll be at the ceremony at the December 1944 Historical Museum in La Gleize, Belgium.

“What Capt. Kent showed was extraordinary leadership,” said Crowe, now retired in Visalia. “He wouldn’t ask his troops to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. That’s the kind of leadership that inspires troops.”

The museum ceremony has its origin in a 2009 trip to the museum by Kent’s daughter, Lynette, a writer and photographer from Huntington Beach. She noticed that the exhibit about the tanks at Stoumont Station named a different officer as having been in charge.

She arranged for U.S. Army documents about the battle to be sent to museum officials. Chagrined at the error, they promised to make amends.

For health reasons, Kent and his wife, Monette, 88, will remain in Beverly Hills. Lynette Kent will represent the family at the ceremony. The U.S. embassy is sending a representative.

It’s not the first time the record of the battle has had to be updated. Because of an administrative error, Kent did not receive the Silver Star along with the three other soldiers.

In 1998, after encouragement by a local congressman, the Army made a belated award.

The artillery piece used by Kent’s men was intended primarily for shooting down aircraft but could also be used to fire horizontally at targets on the ground. Kent’s soldiers, however, were trained to shoot only at aircraft.

But with the Germans advancing, the U.S. was cobbling together a defense. The goal was to slow the German offensive and allow time for other U.S. forces to arrive and mount a counter-offensive.

On Christmas Day, a week after the battle at Stoumont Station, the Associated Press sent out a dispatch from the front:

“Anti-aircraft gunners, who stayed behind to fight when the infantry withdrew, played a vital role in preventing a major German breakthrough in Belgium. These gunners had never seen a German tank, but one battery, commanded by Lt. Leon Kent of Los Angeles, knocked out five tanks, including one King Tiger tank, in two hours.”

The fighting throughout the battlefield had taken on an ad hoc quality. Two soldiers from the 143rd were handed bazookas and told to attack. Neither had ever fired a bazooka, but they crippled two tanks with four rounds, according to the AP dispatch.

More than six decades later, Kent can recall the terse order he received during the retreat at Stoumont Station: “You hold them here. We’ll be back with reinforcements.”

Those were “the worst words I had heard in my life,” Kent said.

tony.perry@latimes.com