大象传媒

Maaseik Belgian Limbourg 4.00 am

At 4.00 am a young officer, Lieutenant Fernand de Vinck, who was in charge of watching the large bridge over the river Meuse or Maas between Belgium and Holland and Germany a few miles away. Fernand rang my father: "Major: I can detect some Grey or Green uniforms on the bridge, what must I do"? (half of the bridge was Belgian and the other half Dutch). "Hold on" answered my father "I am coming". Imagine blowing the bridge up with Dutch soldiers on it! What a diplomatic incident!! As my father arrived and approached the bridge, the Germans fired at his car and he received two bullets; one in the shoulder, and the other deeply into the groin. Of course the young Lieutenant knew they had to be Germans and immediately blew the bridge up. Later on we heard through the Belgian military attach茅 in Berlin, what the papers said, "Those ghastly Belgians waited until we had 300 soldiers on the bridge to blow it up... the true story tells you another side...

So strange that my family had the same start to the war at 4.00 am, as the other parts of the country knew nothing yet of the invasion, until the radio announced it later.... It was only later, when the family realised to our horror that my mother had prayed that my father would only be wounded, not killed, only to find out some time after that indeed he was wounded at exactly the same time! My mother had prayed this because they were sacrificial troops they.......

During WW1 my father had been a prisoner of war at 17 years of age and wounded on August 6th 1914 and she knew that he would not want to be a prisoner again.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.