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”.