Liberation

The first British tanks rolled into the city on the tenth of September 1944. The city was ready for the victorious arrival of our liberators and they received a tumultuous welcome. Everywhere flags were flying. They were hoisted on public buildings and draped along every house front. Everyone was overjoyed, there was cheering and shouting. “Welcome Tommy”. The British soldiers were overwhelmed with armfuls of flowers and offers of beer and wine. Many citizens had saved a bottle or two for this very occasion. Children and adults alike clambered on top of the tanks and festooned them with flags and flowers to ride in triumph through the town with the celebrated troops. We begged the soldiers for their autographs. I had one of my own snapshots signed “Robert Taylor”.

Those first days were heady, emotional days, but they had their dark side too. Amidst all the feasting and rejoicing, there was recrimination and reprisals were taken out on those who had been friendly or collaborated with the Germans. One incident I shall never forget. It was a chilling, cruel spectacle. A jeering crowd stood around an open lorry. On the back of the lorry were chairs in which sat a group of women who had been rounded up and had their heads shaved. They were ashen faced and trembling. The sight made me feel sick and my mother and I quickly walked away. Further on we came to a house that was being vandalized and destroyed. All the furniture and contents of the house were being thrown out the windows and came crashing to the pavement below. The occupants of the house had fled. In our own street the same thing happened to a family whose daughter was engaged to a German army officer. The parents and the girl had managed to escape through their back garden and found refuge at a sympathetic neighbour's house. It was a sad reflection of humanity to see, amidst so much happiness and celebration, the resentment and hatred that had been festering.

Among the first advancing troops were many Canadian soldiers. They were a very wild bunch, roaming the streets totally drunk. I remember seeing two Canadian soldiers swaying side to side down the street, draped in a Belgian flag, guzzling from bottles of spirits and with more bottles stuffed in their pockets. Another time I was caught in the crossfire of two groups of soldiers fighting and shooting at each other across the street. The Canadians soon became notorious among the girls and were regarded as bad men to be avoided at all costs. The gallant British were more in favour. Later, when the jitterbugging, gum chewing Yanks arrived, they were popular with the girls too.

A big civic Liberation Celebration was organized in the city and the streets were decked with flags, flowers and coloured lights. Fireworks were lit at night and there was dancing in the streets. A long victory march took place with contingents of all the different troops. Military bands played and so did my brothers' school band. It was the first time we had seen Lieven and Georges play in a public performance. We had grown accustomed to the German military marches, but now we heard our own familiar national tunes and anthems. We also heard “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”, and other British songs. The crowd was wild with joy and cheered on and on. It was a day never to be forgotten and the anniversary of Liberation Day has been celebrated ever since.

After a while the elation began to die down and the pattern of life returned to normal, but now there was a feeling of freedom in the air. It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted from our shoulders. We felt free to laugh and enjoy life again. Food supplies from overseas began to arrive including long forgotten luxuries like chocolate, oranges and bananas. Soon we were eating white bread again. The hustle and bustle of everyday life from before the war returned.

The war was not quite over yet. There was still heavy fighting happening in Arnhem and in the Ardennes. The Germans made a last desperate stand to hold on to a part of Belgium in the east. We lived in fear of the dreaded V2 Flying Bombs which the Germans were still launching at the advancing Allied troops.

Soon however, the Germans were defeated and peace was restored. When it was declared that the war was over and Hitler was dead, church bells rang across the town and countryside. Again there was celebration, but nothing like the exuberance of our initial liberation. I cannot remember how I celebrated Victory Day very clearly, but I will never forget my first sight of a British soldier.

D-Day

Soon after this was June 6th 1944, and the first Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. D-Day had arrived at last. One cannot understate the enormous impact this event had on the people of Belgium. The history books have well documented the desperate battles that raged as the Allied forces pushed the Germans back to Berlin. We waited impatiently for a victorious outcome for our liberators. At first the news trickled through of the heavy battles and slow advance of the American and British forces. Later we noticed German troop convoys in retreat and began to realize the Nazi defeat was imminent. Buildings they had occupied were abandoned; the equipment and furnishings were left behind. Looters moved in and took everything they could lay their hands on. Unfortunately sometimes they arrived too soon and if they were caught stealing by German troops they were shot on sight.

We did not expect our city to be taken by the advancing Allied troops without a struggle. We braced ourselves for a siege. We were prepared if necessary to seek refuge in the reinforced foundations of a nearby unfinished University Hospital building that had been started before the war began. It was just a concrete skeleton structure but was solid and we hoped it would provide the protection we needed from gunfire. Thankfully our city was spared from much heavy fighting and damage. Some bridges were blown up at strategic points to cover the enemy’s retreat. There was however one night of fierce gunfire. We gathered in the hospital that night, but it would have been better to stay home. The loud ear-piercing sound of the gunfire was amplified by the bare concrete structure. Then there was a direct hit on the hospital. It was a deafening explosion and it tore a hole in the thick concrete in the upper section of the building. We thought for a moment we were going to die. The next morning we learned that the Allied Forces had broken through and there was little resistance left from the fleeing Germans.

Devotion And Adventure

In the spring of 1944 we knew that something was about to happen at last. For us the war had been a stalemate until now. Battles had been fought in far away places, Africa, Russia and so on, too far away for us to concern ourselves with. We wanted things to change here in Belgium so we could get out of the static situation we had been living in for four years. A new excitement took hold of people in anticipation of the approaching and long-awaited liberation from the hated Nazi oppression. Rumours were circulating; messages were broadcast from London to secretly operated wireless radio receivers. Leaflets were dropped from British planes to keep us informed and telling us to be ready.

At the same time there was an upsurge in religious devotion. With the new hope came a fervour for prayer to invoke heaven’s intercession for our cause. Churches were full. Peace masses were offered and Novenas were held. In the Belgian countryside there are numerous roadside chapels. During May, the month of the Holy Virgin, the chapels were decorated with wild flowers and many candles were lit. Every evening a crowd would gather round the chapels, rosary beads entwined around their fingers, to recite the rosary prayers. At the end of the gathering hymns were sung. Even for the skeptics among us, the open display of hope and faith had an uplifting effect. It was a typical expression of a simple Flemish tradition.

There were also cynics. Some joker composed a satirical prayer to Hitler, despite the risk of retaliation if discovered to be the creator of such an insult. The prayer was published and ran like this:

Hitler’s Paternoster

In the name of the Fuhrer and of Himmler and of Goebbels,

Great Fuhrer who art in Germany,

Herr and master in your Reich,

You will be done in Holland, in Belgium and in France,

But in England you stand no chance,

You steal our daily bread and punish us,

As we shall punish you in return,

Hitler source of our misery,

You villain why don’t you perish,

Go to hell, Amen

As related earlier, our cat had met the fate of many others and had probably ended up in a rabbit stew. With barely enough to feed ourselves it was perhaps for the best that we did not need to feed her too. But we were sorry to lose her. That summer however, with revived hope for the future, we decided to adopt a newborn kitten that was offered to my mother. A friend of hers who worked at the laundry had a litter of four from her cat and she was desperate to find homes for them. One evening we set off to collect the kitten, which meant a tram ride across town. The lady’s brother-in-law next door had a bakery and we were pleasantly surprised with a gift of a small bag of flour and were also offered refreshments. We spent such a nice time chatting that we forgot to watch the clock and consequently missed the last tram home. Curfew time was 10 PM. We knew there was hardly enough time to reach home but we decided to try and make it on foot. Daylight was no problem because we were on double summertime and it was light until 11 PM. It was a beautiful balmy summer evening and the walk through town taking short cuts through the park, over bridges and along the river, was very pleasant. Pussy was safely tucked inside my coat. As we reached about halfway the streets became deserted as the clock struck 10. It became eerie walking through the empty streets, expecting to run into a German patrol at the turn of any corner. We managed to avoid this till we approached the railway viaduct we had to pass. From a distance of fifty yards we heard a shout, “Achtung!”, and a rifle was pointed menacingly at us. We froze and quaked in our shoes. A young German army guard beckoned us to come near. We tried to explain in halting German the reason for our still being about in the street. We showed him the kitten which he kindly stroked. He was friendly enough but still he decided to take us along to the guardhouse to be questioned by the officer in charge. We were very nervous, especially when my mother’s bag was inspected and the bag of flour was suspiciously examined. It was as if they thought it was explosive and its purpose was to blow up a railway bridge. With our limited knowledge of the German language we tried in vain to explain how we came into possession of the flour. But the officer was finally satisfied it was flour and to our great relief he let us go. We thought our troubles were over and continued on the last lap home which would only take another ten minutes. We were running across a field parallel to the road when a couple of soldiers began shouting “Achtung! Achtung!” Once again we went through the same procedure of explanations and again they must have thought us harmless and let us go.

We were relieved when we finally reached home and welcomed our kitten to her new home with a saucer full of precious skimmed milk. We considered naming her “Achtung” or “Fritz” but she was the first cat we named “Marouf”.