Hello Able Five E-Book

Kerstin Trimble

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

During his birth on Christmas Day 1916 under a circling, grenade-dropping German warplane, Albert Torreele was blinded in one eye by a panicked midwife. That did not stop him on his tenacious path towards officerhood. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Brussels just in time to lead an ill-fated platoon straight into the German onslaught of May 10, 1940. A single shot that should have left him crippled sent him on a grueling odyssey, though his tumbling country to the edge of the hell of Dunkirk, and across the English Channel to the charming seaside town of Tenby where the Belgian forces regrouped and prepared for another chance to fight. Finding old friends and true love in Wales, Albert and his comrades of the Free Belgian Forces set their minds on a single goal - cross the English Channel, take back their home and free their families.

Leseprobe

Ce roman est dédié à la mémoire du

Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Torreele et de

tous ceux qui partagèrent son destin: les

milliers de jeunes citoyens qui ont souffert

au cours de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale et

qui ont surmonté d'impensables conflits

dans leur combat pour la liberté de leur

patrie et de l'Europe

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Epilogue

Preface

On December 25, 2013, Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léopold Georges Torreele celebrated Christmas Day, which was also his 97th birthday, with his family at the home of his son John. They ate well, enjoyed some champagne, and wound down with the latest blockbuster ‘Gravity’, which Albert keenly watched, only to state that he did not particularly like it. He was helped to bed by his children and grandchildren at midnight. He died an hour into his 98th year.

He departed his life the way he led it: with composure, contently, keenly observant. Despite his delightful story-telling, it was hard to get any strong descriptors out of Albert Torreele as he shared his life story with me. He would accept his greatest gifts and joys in life as “very nice”, call his proudest successes “a pretty good job”, and describe unspeakable horrors as something that had him “very worried”. He would sum up his most self-effacing, courageous deeds with a simple shrug:

“It had to be done, so I did it.”

It was this level-headed modesty, in the face of both triumph and challenge, in delight and in danger, which steered Albert Torreele through his incredible journey unbroken and with integrity. After his proverbial baptism of fire in the campaigns of Normandy, Belgium and Holland, he took these lessons with him onto his further life journey: to Germany as a conqueror; to his alma mater, the Royal Military Academy, as an instructor; to staff colleges in Britain and Belgium; to his former brigade as its commander; to NATO headquarters in France and Belgium; and to the Belgian Embassy in Washington D.C. as its Military Attaché.

Having lived the worst of his terrors and cruelest of losses by the hands of Germans in World War II, he served under German NATO superiors whom he deemed honorable men, and he did so loyally and without bitterness. He freely and warmly shared his life story with the “little German lady” who would occasionally come to his son’s house with a digital recorder, a notebook and a handful of sharpened pencils.

The book you are about to read is a novel. It contains fictional dialogue. Its characters are a tribute to real individuals rather than a precise portrayal. Some of the minor characters are purely fictitious. Nonetheless, it is a true description of the character and adventures of Colonel Albert Torreele, and the spirit of several thousand Belgian boys whom fate turned into warriors, and many of them into heroes; who defied the impossible to do their duty and to free their mothers, fathers and siblings from occupation and tyranny.

Annandale, May 2015

Kerstin Trimble

1

Madame Ghys was clutching her heavy curtain tightly, as if she was the one in pain. She pulled it aside, peering intently into the bleached blue of the skies and sea. She found what she was searching, no more than a yellow smudge against the ivory of the dunes, hunkering between shocks of pale grass. She let the curtain swing back into place, picked up her skirts, rushed out of her apartment, down the steps. On the ground floor, she swept through the parlor of the Hostel Marie Henriette, past the landlady Madame Evers, without answering the latter’s befuddled gaze, and then, barefoot, out onto the wintry-cold beach.

She reached the yellow-clad figure who was kneeling in the sand. She was bent by the pain, much like the tufts of grass around her bowed to the icy winds. Her black hair was almost undone. The wind played with it.

“Berthe. Wouldn’t you agree that it is time now?”

“I don’t know, mother.”

Such a helpless answer, coming from this usually so stubborn mouth, led Madame Ghys to the conclusion that it was now indeed time to call the midwife. She pulled her girl back onto her feet and helped her home. She began calling up to the second floor window to hail her husband. Her voice did not carry far enough; the wind tore it to shreds. She hollered louder.

“Call Madame Leroy. The child is coming.”

The landlady came rushing out of the villa, followed by Monsieur Ghys. “Good heavens, why did you let her out all by herself in this state?” her husband wanted to know as he watched his daughter buckle down for another contraction on the doorstep.

“Let her?” Madame Ghys huffed. They both knew the narrow limits of their parental authority over Berthe.

“Call the midwife!” Madame Evers called out. Monsieur Ghys rushed back upstairs to grab his coat and hat, and as he left, collided with his younger child. Paul’s cheeks were flushed with wind-chill and eagerness.

“She’s nowhere to be found!” the twelve-year-old reported breathlessly.

“We have her. Come along, we must fetch the midwife.”

When the men returned with Madame Leroy, Madame Ghys could read displeasure and reluctance in the midwife’s demeanor from a hundred yards away. They came up the dike and reached the villa; Paul hauled the midwife’s cumbrous duffel bag up the stairs into Berthe’s bedroom. There they stood, father and son, their mission accomplished, and watched a little forlorn as midwife and mother were swishing around the room. Berthe, for once, stood relatively still. She was leaning against a bedpost, heaving heavy breaths.

“I thought I had made myself clear when I said: plenty of rest,” the midwife grumbled.

Madame Ghys replied nothing. How was she to impose rest on that girl? Besides, she had the feeling that the child had somehow chosen to be born on Christmas Day. It had been awfully quiet those past few days, so quiet that Berthe had begun to worry and spent hours stroking her belly to animate her baby. Then, this morning, the child had kicked her into labor precisely at sunrise.

“People call far too early for the first child, anyway,” Madame Leroy griped as she dug through her utensils. “I will be here all day.”

She went over to the tall bed, which was made neatly in fine white linen and topped with a lacy blanket and a veritable mountain of ornate pillows.

“Won’t need all that. It would all be ruined, anyway,” declared Madame Leroy, yanking the coverlets and pillows off the bed. She produced a grimy sheet from her equally dingy duffel bag and flung it over the mattress. Madame Ghys watched in mounting malaise, and when she caught a glimpse of some of Madame Leroy’s other tools in the depths of her bag, her stomach writhed a little.

“Where is the father?” Madame Leroy asked crustily, showing her disdain for the presumed weakling who lacked the guts to presence the delivery, which was, after all, all his doing.

“Captain Torreele is at the front,” Madame Ghys replied with a slight huff.

“Did he get no leave for Christmas?”

“War does not know about Christmas, Madame.”

“Neither do new mothers.”

Madame Ghys sighed silently.

On a Saturday before the war, Georges Torreele had arrived from Brussels, the visor of his kepi gleaming merrily against the somberness of his young face beneath, his white-gloved hand steadying the fine saber as he gravely mounted the stairs to their door. That had been the day he formally asked for Berthe’s hand in marriage. Madame Ghys remembered how she and her husband were sitting in the living room, their spines stiffly pressed against the backs of their chairs. What to say? Georges was a sober, dignified boy, the perfect counterweight to their daughter’s impulsive, bubbling spirit. He was a student at the prestigious Ecole de Guerre. Very soon, he would graduate from it a young aspiring officer. He was the perfect son-in-law.

But Georges was also their nephew.

Into the stiff silence that his proposal had created, Georges produced a paper.

“I know what you are worried about. But that is not a problem.”

He handed them the paper, signed and sealed by the magistrate. Their marriage permit. He had also written to Rome, he went on to explain, to obtain the official, written blessing of the Catholic Church for their very close union. Finally, Berthe’s father shrugged.

“Well, then.”

Georges nodded. Done deal. He meticulously put the marriage permit back into the leather dossier from which he had pulled it.

He was back in school in Brussels when the war broke out. They did not see much of Georges after that. He swapped his khaki field uniform for his old strapping blue and silver once more for their wedding, a hasty affair during a two-day front-leave. On another such rushed furlough, he begot Mme Ghys’ first grandchild. And now he was not here, had gotten no leave for Christmas, even though he was a mere twelve kilometers away in neighboring Nieuwpoort. Before the war, little Paul could have wheeled over there on his bike in under an hour. But back then, the fields around Nieuwpoort weren’t a muddy, ravaged plain. There weren’t any bloated bodies floating in sheets of foul water, no ruins of farmhouses and barns jutting out from the floods.

“Paul. Come.”

Labor and childbirth was no spectacle for an old seaman.

“Yes, leave us already and let me do my work,” the midwife encouraged the men’s retreat.

Monsieur Ghys’ sailing days were over, so he and Paul had no other refuge than the kitchen.

“Oh, mon Dieu,” Madame Leroy sighed when she reached under Berthe’s skirts and found what she had feared. “You are nowhere near delivery, girl.”

Berthe wordlessly breathed through the next contraction. Nowhere near? She had been laboring all day. Madame Leroy spent the afternoon producing all kinds of birth-hastening things from her ominous bag.

She slathered castor oil on Berthe’s belly.

“No girl, don’t push yet. No use.”

She broke Berthe’s waters with a long needle.

“Just breathe. Don’t push.”

She made her drink a yellowish broth.

“I said, no pushing. You are not there yet.”

A distant rumble began to whirr over the rush of the surf. As it drew closer to the dike, they realized: It was the sound of an engine. The midwife’s complexion changed, as did her strategy:

“Push!!”

Madame Ghys stood petrified and powerless by her daughter’s bed. Madame Leroy was pacing back and forth between her bag and the window, from where she was monitoring the skies. She was feverishly trying to think of other ways to speed up the birth. The German warplane was droning over the affable, regular murmur of the sea; then it veered away again.

“Don’t you hear that?” she shrieked.

“Yes, Madame, I hear it.”

“He’s throwing bombs!”

“And what are we to do about that, Madame?”

“Push, girl!”

The German pilot was indeed hurling grenades from his cockpit. They heard them explode, some closer, some further away. Pearls of sweat trickled along the furrows of Madame Leroy’s forehead. No sound came from Berthe’s clenched teeth as she pressed down.

“There!” Madame Leroy called in both terror and excitement when she felt something.

“Push harder!”

Berthe complied, yet the little head slipped back. In the disheartened silence that followed the third unsuccessful attempt, the rattle and vroom of the German airplane engine drew near once more. Madame Leroy strode resolutely across the room, her hand dove deep into her bag, and she pulled out a large metal instrument. All sorts of smaller tools were tangled in its handles and loops. Madame Leroy fiercely shook it to free from the clutter. She did not waste a moment ― not to disinfect the instrument with the flask of pure alcohol, nor even to clean in the bowl of hot water that Berthe’s mother had carefully placed on the washstand. There was no time for such luxuries.

Even with the large forceps, she could not grab a hold of the child’s slippery crown. While she was holding the instrument ready for the next contraction, lurking like a hunter, she rummaged in the pockets of her smock with the other hand and found her surgical knife. At the sight of it, Madame Ghys sank onto the chair behind her, not really knowing there was a chair.

“Oh, mon Dieu.”

Just get it over with, said the expression on Berthe’s crimson, tight-lipped face.

The German engine rumbled. Without even wiping the knife, Madame Leroy did what nature would have done on its own in half an hour. Berthe did not wince. The next hard thrust produced the child’s head far enough so that Madame Leroy’s forceps could grasp it. She pulled hard. The forceps slid. The child retreated.

“Again!”

Berthe pushed once more. A grenade hit nearby. They heard wood splinter and beams creak. The forceps clasped down, and Madame Leroy was not going to let go this time. The bedroom, her daughter’s flushed face, the bloody linen, all began to swim before Madame Ghys’ horrified eyes.

“Please,” was all she could stammer. She is going to rip its head off.

She closed her eyes. And heard a cry, tiny and mighty at once. When she opened her eyes, she saw a furious little face, flailing limbs and a squirming body, covered in blood, strong enough to give Madame Leroy a good bit of trouble as she held it. Her daughter was gasping with relief. All of Madame Ghys’ motherly and grandmotherly strength returned to her instantly, she pushed out of her chair, swept over to the midwife and snatched her grandchild out of those cruel hands.

“A boy, Berthe,” she told her daughter as she handed the child to his mother. The midwife hastily clamped and clipped the umbilical cord, did not even care to clean it, or any of her instruments. She stuffed all of her belongings back into her bag as they were, soiled and wet, forgot to take her grubby sheet from the bed, and made a move to scurry out of the villa.

“You must sign the papers!” Berthe’s mother stopped the midwife.

With a gnarl, Madame Leroy opened her bag once more, dug, and found the crinkled and dog-eared form for the birth record at the very bottom. She left bloody fingerprints on the paper as she handled it.

“Got a name yet?”

Berthe was cradling the child close to her bosom, cleaning his face with infinite tenderness and a corner of the bed linen, much to the baby’s discontent, for he was already wriggling towards the source of his nourishment with all his instincts and all his little strength.

“Albert Léopold Georges,” she declared, as she and Georges had determined a while ago. Her mother nodded and handed the midwife a pen from the dresser. Madame Leroy carelessly scribbled the child’s name and those of his parents onto the birth papers, along with the time and the date, which she said aloud, full of reproach:

“December 25th, 1916.”

And she was gone. So was the German warplane. In the peacefulness that ensued, mother and child were nursing, still clumsily. Red welts crossed the left side of the boy’s tiny face right around the eye, where the forceps had clamped down on the newborn head.

“His first battle wound,” Berthe said. “Georges will be proud.”

2

Sometimes, when the night got very long, and his thoughts took him all over his young life, the black frozen waters outside his post were like a canvas on which he could conjure up all kinds of vivid images. His favorite sigh was that of a brand-new, stunning building, brilliant white against the blue skies of Brussels. The Ecole de Guerre. The King had just moved his War Academy back to the capital when Georges began his studies there. The day German troops rolled into Brussels, his entire class was yanked from the classrooms and thrown straight into the trenches. Georges was put in command of a company of three platoons, right back in West Flanders whence he had come. At twenty-two, Captain Torreele found himself answering for the lives of one hundred and eighteen men.

Georges lit a cigar and in its warm glow, pictured the pretty green countryside of West Flanders as it once was. The war had thrown his quaint homeland into the spotlight of the sparring world, for it was in the enemy’s way – the way to Dunkirk and Calais, keys to the English Channel. The British 7th Division disembarked to protect the French harbors right behind the Belgian border. The French Marine Fusiliers marched in. Then the British units fell back toward Ypres. The French retreated upon Dixmude.

And so here they were now, the scourged, exhausted remains of the Belgian forces, alone, forming a shaky line between Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide. They were the only thing left standing between those vital harbors and a formidable enemy army. They were cut off from their own railway lines. Belgian trains were still running − but alas, they were carrying enemy troops and enemy supplies back and forth between the front and Germany. There were good hospitals in Flanders − but they were in Ostend, in Bruges. Excellent Belgian nurses were dressing the wounds of German soldiers, while the Belgians on the other side of the frontlines were without medical attention. French reinforcements failed to arrive day after gruesome day, as did vital supplies. Every time the German forces were thrown back, they resurged like a hydra, coming back twice as terrible, twice as merciless. Who were these men who seemed to simply shrug off a hail of British fire from the sea and Belgian fire from the trenches; who bounced back from the most monstrous of casualties?

In the fall, the Belgian command came to realize what their footmen in the dirt had known for some time: No human warrior could win this Battle of the Yser. But the Flemish had another ally who was not human; the element that had always been both their sustenance and their scourge, their vassal and their master:

The water.

The pretty seaside town of Nieuwpoort had an intricate arrangement of canals, locks and basins. Once the sluices were opened, the water would take mere hours to conquer what no battalion was able to hold in weeks of bloody battle. The water would devastate the enemy. It would also devastate Nieuwpoort and everything around it. Late in October, the Belgian army was desperate enough to do it. From the elevated left bank of the Yser, the Belgians stood on the high ground, watching the water surge out of the canals, blanket their fields and fill the German trenches. Like a drowning animal, the German army lunged forward once more, blindly trying to gain dry ground, and failed. They retreated bare-handedly, leaving guns and mortars stuck in the swampy ground. Thousands of German men stayed behind, as well – drifting in the floods as pasty, bloated corpses. A quarter of the 60,000 Belgian troops lay dead or wounded. Yet they had killed or wounded more Germans than there were soldiers in the entire Belgian army. Dunkirk and Calais still stood. Since the weapons had fallen silent, a grueling existence had begun here in the murky floods. The Belgians built wooden walkways as their only means to move across the waters, and used them only in the cover of darkness. More than once, patrols who went out were seen no more. Right now as Georges was sitting here musing, a patrol squad was out ― and should have been back at least an hour ago.

“Mon Capitaine.”

He could not yet make him out in the darkness, but by the creaking of the planks he could tell that his man was lumbering along in a hurry. His footsteps were followed by those of the other men in his small patrol squad. The sight was most welcome.

The squad leader arrived at the end of the walkway and jumped down back onto land. His boots crunched in the frozen slush. He was holding something small and soggy with great care, and his expression was eager and officious.

“What is this?”

“I can’t read it. It’s German, look, mon Capitaine.”

He flapped it under Georges’ nose, very satisfied with himself.

“Where did you find it?”

“On a dead man.”

A tattered notebook.

“What kind of dead man?”

“Infantry, sir,” the squad leader was reluctant to admit, for it diminished the significance of his find. Just the ramblings of a footman. Not the log of an officer that might have contained valuable military information.

“I will take a look at it. Thank you.”

Georges took the notebook to his desk in the wooden shed that served as his quarters. He peeled the apart the icy, moist pages. The writing was rendered almost illegible by all sorts of marks, from coffee stains to the owner’s recently shed blood. Reading German was tiring, but not impossible. Georges sat and deciphered until his lamp was out of oil.

Ist ja nur noch die Hälfte von uns da.

Only half of them left.

Schenk und ich haben gestern so eine aufgedunsene Leiche aus dem Wasser gezogen. Wie sich herausstellte, war es Leutnant Ehrhard.

A bloated body, pulled from the water: their own lieutenant.

Erkannt haben wir ihn ja nur an der schönen Schnupftabakdose in der Brusttasche.

Recognizable only by the nice snuff tin in his pocket.

Nach zwei Tagen ganz ohne Essen schmeckt auch Ratte. Groß genug sind die Biester ja allemal.

The enormous rats, more appetizing with each rationless day.

Und was sollen wir denn bitte sehr trinken, wenn der letzte Kanister morgen leer wird? Ein schöner Hohn ist das, Wasser überall um uns herum, voller Leichengift und Fäule.

The irony of running out of drinking water while sitting in filthy floods.

Georges dropped the notebook in his lap and once again stared over the obscure expanse of ice outside his little window. The words of this dead man, so easily deciphered, so familiar, in the same biting tone his own men liked to use. This notebook spoke of a very different kind of creature than the formidable German fighting machines his men had come to fear. This man and his comrades were at the verge of insanity, rotting away in the swamps, while bullets and shells rained from above and foul waters poisoned them from below. The terrible monster on the other side was but a mass of starving, shell-shocked, leaderless lads. And what was worse, knowing this about them did not make them any less dangerous or terrifying.

A clanking noise stirred him from his thoughts. Before the flood, the thing that he now saw in the flicker of his fading light would have made him jump in disgust. Now, however, rabbit-sized rats had become normalcy, and apparently even a means of sustenance to the starving enemy. The animal left a trail of crumbs as it scurried away.

“I told him to put it higher up,” Georges sighed as he grabbed the crate with the biscuits and thrust it up onto the tallest shelf.

“Mon Capitaine!”

His orderly entered the shed.

“Martin,” Georges griped. “The rations need to be stored high up. You see the rats, too, don’t you? You are aware of the fact that we have rats?”

“Mon Capitaine.”

Martin was not worried about rats at that particular moment. He was holding something small and crumpled, just like the patrol earlier.

“Message, mon Capitaine.”

Georges took it, too preoccupied with rats, patrols and dead Germans to notice the eagerness in his orderly’s face. Martin keenly watched his Captain unfold the paper. Georges took too long, Martin’s impatience got the better of him, and he blurted out the news before Georges could read it:

“You have a son, mon Capitaine!”

Georges was jerked back into reality. There was a life beyond the floods and the muck.

“I have…. How much longer before we…?”

“We have been out here five days, so three more.”

Three more days of this insalubrious, pest-infested, rotten existence; then they would be relieved and go rest at De Panne. And he would find Berthe with their new son in her arms.

“Albert is his name,” he told Martin after reading the letter.

“That is a good name, mon Capitaine. The name of our King.”

“Who is also in De Panne, after all.”

Georges smiled, warm and happy in the freezing night.

3

When his grandparents walked in, Albert forgot everything, the candles, the other guests, the sweets on the table. Paul came storming in, did not stop to take off his coat, flung his little nephew up in the air.

Reprimanding voices grumbled: “Gentle with the child!”

“Merry Christmas!”

“My birthday is tomorrow!”

Paul arched his eyebrows in feigned surprise.

“Really?”

“Did you bring me something, Uncle Paul?”

“No, no, no,” Berthe lifted her son out of her brother’s arms. “That is all for later.”

Albert’s toddler face glowered with disappointment. Paul’s reaction was hardly more mature.

“After we eat,” Berthe insisted.

“Is everybody here?”

This innocent question threw a troubled hush over the entire party, from the corridor to the living room, where the rest of the family was already taking the apéritif.

“Yes,” Georges slit the silence. “Let’s eat.”

They were not all here. Gustave was not here, because Gustave was dead. And Gustave’s parents were not here, his widow was not here. His little son was not here. Because in the Great War, Gustave had fought, like any other soldier. He got leave every once in a while, like any other soldier. But he did not, like any other soldier, return to the trenches after one of his furloughs. He was hence put against a wall and shot, court-martialed for treason and disobedience. Georges’ grief for his cousin was poisoned by a bitter suspicion that Gustave’s ruin had been more than cowardice. Georges had heard the ugly tales about Flemish compatriots who greeted the invaders as “liberators”. Had Gustave been one of those who got too friendly with their “Germanic brothers” on the other side of No Man’s Land? While Georges and his men stood knee-deep in the filth, fighting the enemy with all they had….

“Laure is my sister,” Madame Ghys had said objected when the relatives gathered without Gustave’s family for the first time after the tragedy.

“As well as the mother of a traitor,” Georges had replied. “I will not have it.”

“We will not have it,” Berthe had acceded, and her parents said no more. The little half-orphaned cousin who was growing up just a few miles from Albert would never be his playmate.

Albert was too small to sense the pain of the reopened wound that almost marred the Réveillon. He gulfed down his food, in frequent eye contact with Paul, trying to read his uncle’s face: What marvelous gift had he brought? Soon the last spoonful was gone, the child was twitching in his seat, waiting to be dismissed from the table. Finally, Paul and he were both excused from the table, and Albert tore open the cellophane in which Paul’s surprise was wrapped.

“Please, no,” complained Berthe as she swept past them with a stack of dirty plates towards the kitchen. “He is going to tear up the house with that.”

Albert was swinging his new wooden saber.

“Look, he knows exactly what to do with it! Wait, Albert, I have more things to give you.”

“What is all this?” gnarled Monsieur Ghys.

“Albert is going to be a pirate,” explained Paul.

“What on earth gave you that idea?”

“A wonderful book I read. It is called Treasure Island. I will read it to you when you are old enough to understand,” Paul promised Albert.

“A future merchant sailor, smitten with pirates. Now if that is not ironic,” grumbled Monsieur Ghys as he balanced his full glass back to the fireplace in the salon.

“Who says I’m going to be a sailor?” asked Paul.

“I say so,” called Monsieur Ghys from the salon.

Albert needed some help with his other gifts. Paul showed him how to make his hand disappear in his sleeve so he could wear the shiny hook. In his three-year-old pragmatism, Albert failed to see the purpose of giving up the use of a perfectly good hand for a hook, and immediately employed it as a second weapon. Only moments later, it was caught in the lace tablecloth on the little side table in the hall. Albert struggled to free it. As she returned from the kitchen, Berthe saw her beautiful Art Nouveau clock inch towards its doom atop the moving tablecloth. She saved it and resolutely confiscated the hook. Paul crowned his nephew with a bright scarlet headscarf, then put the finishing touch on his pirate, a black eye-patch, which Albert ripped right off.

“No, Albert, you look very terrifying like this. Leave it on.”

Albert suffered Paul to put the thing on him once more, and tore it off again.

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not? Every decent pirate has an eye patch.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Nonsense. It only goes over one eye.”

“I can’t see anything,” Albert insisted, reached up and moved the patch to the other side with his clumsy toddler fingers.

“Now it works!” he crowed happily. He made a move to retrieve his new saber.

“Wait a second.” Paul pulled him back onto his lap. Albert struggled, in very urgent need of the saber.

“I said, wait,” Paul insisted firmly. “Berthe?”

Berthe was the hostess of the gathering, fluttering around the house in a mixture of hassle and happiness, making sure the dirty dishes were cleared off the table, the wine glasses topped off, the chocolate sauce for the bûche not burning on the stove. The abnormally serious tone in her little brother’s voice, however, made her stop in her tracks.

“Look at this Berthe,” Paul said as he cupped his hand over Albert’s right eye. The child immediately began to wriggle.

“Dooon’t.”

“What can you see when I do this?”

“Nothing! Let go.”

Paul covered the other eye.

“What can you see now?”

“I can see maman.”

Albert thought this was a stupid question indeed, and what was worse, Paul was still restraining him firmly in his lap.

“And now?”

Paul covered his right eye.

“Nothiiiiing. Can I have my saber?”

Berthe crouched down. Much to Albert’s dismay, they repeated the experiment a few more times, called Georges, then cupped their nervous hands over Albert’s left and then his right eye a few more times. Soon, the entire family was assembled around them in the hallway. Albert finally lost patience with these bothersome grown-ups. He began to cry.

Berthe looked up at Georges.

“His left eye is blind.”

The hallway began to smell of burnt chocolate sauce.

4

There was quite a crowd bustling around the train station of Liège, but his father stood out in his Major’s uniform. Albert jumped off the platform before the train had trundled to a full stop and made a dash across the throngs of travelers, then throttled his stride just in time before his father spotted him. He forced himself to walk the last steps towards him with the measured pace that befitted his cadet’s uniform. Georges’ eyes lit up with pleasure. He had noticed both his son’s eager sprint and his restrained strut and was equally entertained by both.

“Well, well, your old man cannot be that exciting.”

“It’s just been so long again.”

“Well, that’s why we are taking advantage of this splendid day together. Hungry?” He huffed at his own question. “I‘m asking if a sixteen-year-old boy is hungry. Silly me.”

Soon, on the terrace of a riverfront bistro, Albert’s nostrils flared with delicious aroma rising from steak and fries. While he was wolfing down his meal, his father was relaxing with a nothing but a cold beer in the hot summer afternoon.

“How is school?”

“Fine.”

“More detail, please. You know I will see it on your school report, anyway.”

“French is fine. Flemish is fine. Math, Chemistry... all is fine, really. Except that I got a zero when I was called to the board in German class yesterday.”

Georges puffed some foam off his beer in ill-disguised amusement.

“How did you manage that?”

“I knew what to write, but I wrote it in Roman letters. And the teacher wanted it in Gothic writing.”

“Can you not do it?”

“I don’t want to do it. I hate newspaper German.”

“You mean blackletter. Actually, the new Chancellor of Germany does not like what you call ‘newspaper German’, either.”

“Why would he dislike it?”

“I’m afraid Hitler wants his news printed in a typeface that can be read… anywhere in the world.”

Georges took a long nip and cast a thoughtful look over the River Meuse, which was a mass of construction.

“Don’t you flunk German, though,” he abandoned his musings.

“Oh, I won’t,” Albert replied instantly with boyish seriousness. “I must have a perfect record in cadet school to be admitted to the Academy.”

“You know, it won’t be the end of the world if you don’t get in,” said his father with deliberate indifference between sips of his beer. “You can always join a regiment when you get out of cadet school.”

“You did not join a regiment straight out of cadet school.”

“The school has changed since I went there,” Georges said. Albert knew what he meant: It was even harder to be admitted nowadays. Since the Great War, the Ecole de Guerre had gained even more prestige. King Albert had given the school its own standard and, more importantly, both of his sons as students, making the crown prince and future king its most famous graduate. The school had its own motto now, its own blazon, the right to call itself the Royal Military Academy, and each year, about 1,400 young men from Belgium and beyond crowded its hall for the entrance exam, which only ten percent of the candidates would pass.

Albert eyed his father. Of course, Georges did not want to add to the pressure. But yes, it would be the end of the world if Albert was not admitted. He would disappoint. He now regretted the zero he had so recklessly earned in German class. What had seemed a bold act of schoolboy protest against that ominous new government east of the border now seemed a foolish mistake that might cost him his perfect school record, and, in dreadful consequence, admission to the Ecole Royale Militaire.

“Tell me some anecdote from the war, Papa,” Albert asked in search of distraction.

“Oh, you are a pain in the neck,” his father said, yet nonetheless immediately began to talk, in this portentous tone that Albert had so loved since childhood, that timbre that turned quite recent events into timeless tales of principle and courage.

“Have I told you about the Fort de Loncin?”

“No”, lied Albert, wanting to hear the story again.

“I have not?” said Georges bemused while twiddling his mustache. “Well, it was built as part of the defenses of Liège half a century ago and was thought to be invincible. It came under siege in the Great War, and the men held out for days under heavy shelling, even when the fort began to tumble, even though being trapped inside became a living hell for the crew in the summer heat. Then the Germans brought in the infamous Big Bertha, for the very first time, and it hit …”

“The ammunition chamber.”

“So I did tell you before, didn’t I? Do you also remember how many men of the almost 600-strong garrison were still standing after the explosion?”

“Fifty or sixty”, said Albert gravely.

“Yes. Most of the dead still lie there under the ruins to this day. Here’s for a tale of courage, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, Father, but I think it should not have come to this.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the future, we will have technical means so advanced that we can resolve military conflicts without having to suffer ninety percent casualties.”

“Fort de Loncin had the most advanced technology of its time. It was made out of concrete instead of brick. And it was the concrete walls that collapsed when Big Bertha hit.” His father leaned back with an expressive air and put on his ‘you-will-see-when-you-are-older-son’ face.

The heat had ebbed under hurried clouds, the winds picked up. Albert relished the fresh breeze. Heavy drops began to plop onto Albert’s late lunch and into his father’s beer. They rescued their fare by retreating under an awning that was still rolled out in front of the bistro.

“Well,” his father said as he glanced over the Meuse. “Now look at that. At every bridge, they are building a contraption like this now.”

Over the sound of rolling thunder, Albert was eager to explain: “It is a pill box. Two stories of concrete, with cables that lead straight to the mines under each bridge. And not just on the Meuse, on every north-south river. If there is another invasion, a dozen gunners will be in the lower level of the pill box, behind a steel door, while the blaster behind the outer door blows up the bridge. After the explosion, they all come out without a scratch and start defending the position. The bridge is gone, the enemy advance is stopped. It’s ingenious. You will see, father, warfare of the future will be very different.”

Georges smiled at Albert’s enthusiasm. Bolts of lightning illuminated the normally lazy waters of the Meuse, curling and dancing in the swelling thunderstorm.

“Let’s hope we won’t have to put your new methods to the test too soon.”

His sentence drowned in roaring thunder, which suddenly filled with a prattle of sharper, more corporal bursts. Their heads turned, and father and son watched in stupor as the steel bridge over the Meuse began to quiver. Spouting showers of electric sparks, massive beams were shifting and tilting with a hideous screech. Pedestrians on the bridge broke into a desperate, headless run. The sparks mushroomed into a full blaze. The staccato of explosions abated to make way for the steadier crackling and hissing of a mighty fire. It was raging in all its sinister glory, mocking the rain. Men and women hurdled into the river.

The massive iron structure that the Torreeles had crossed just half an hour before … was gone. Skeletal beams were jutting out of swirling waters. Albert and his father shook off their stunned shock and ran for the scene and its victims.

“Your marvelous technology!” Georges panted as they rushed to the river. “One act of God, and it turns against you.”

Lightning, Albert understood. Lightning had hit the electric wiring and triggered the detonation which was meant to be set off deliberately, with control, under enemy attack.

5

O– Y - T – E – S –”

“I can tell.”

André was lounging on the sofa comfortably while Albert’s frustration was rising.

“How on earth can you tell?”

“By the way you hold your head.”

Albert sighed. “Let’s do it again.”

The physical exam would be rigorous, for the admission officers had to thin out a crowded field of contenders. With ten young men vying for each available spot at the Military Academy, a one-eyed candidate would not even make it to the actual entrance examination. Once more, Albert covered his good eye with his hand, peered through the gaps between his fingers and read the letter chart his brother had drawn, this time trying even harder to be ‘looking’ out of the eye that did not see.

“Better,” André was finally satisfied. “Just pray they let you use your own hand. They may give a piece of cardboard to cover your eye.”

“By the time they give me that, I will have already memorized the chart”, said Albert with grim confidence.

His physical took place the next day. While the army doctor was busy thumping away on his perfectly healthy chest, taking his vigorous pulse and testing his quick reflexes, Albert kept throwing discrete, but keen glances to the eye exam chart in the corner of the room. By the time the doctor began the vision test, he had most of the letters committed to memory.

“All right, sit here. Cover your left eye with your hand and read the chart to me, please.”

Albert read slowly.

“Good, now the other.”

Albert recited the memorized letters down to the last, tiniest line, with a little support from his good eye peeking between his fingers.

“Very good. You have perfect vision.”

“I know, sir,” Albert agreed, struggling to keep his face straight. The biggest hurdle was taken.

“I remember you!” Albert said to the lad who entered the room with his travel bag casually flung over his shoulder. “I remember your red head sitting in front of me at the entrance exam. It distracted me.”

“Henri De Radigues is the name of the red head,” the youth jovially introduced himself. “Is this bed taken?”

“All yours.”

Henri dropped his bag onto the bed that stood closest to the dormitory door.

“I am sorry I was a source of distraction to you. You should have asked the examiner to put a hat on me so you could focus on your exam. But, after all, you arehere, Monsieur….?”

“Albert Torreele.”

“Pleased to meet you. I for one do not remember anyone from the entrance exams, because I was busy soiling my knickers with fear.”

“You don’t seem very fearful,” the third roommate joined the conversation. He had already occupied the bed by the window, from which he now flipped to a standing position without effort. His hair was dark, his eyes bright and earnest, and a perennial smirk curled the corners of his mouth.

“I’m Pierre Roman. De Radigues, that sounds very aristocratic,” Pierre commented.

“Hence the fear,” laughed Henri. “My family has been spawning officers for as long as Belgium exists. No pressure at all.”

“I almost had a panic attack in the exams, and I have only one generation to live up to,” laughed Albert.

“Well, I have nobody to live up to, and therefore I was quite relaxed in the exam. And here I am,” concluded Pierre. “Block of 36.”

“Oh, so you are with the 97th Artillerie-Génie.”

“Right.”

“We are with the 83rd Infanterie-Cavalerie.”

“Well, welcome to the Boîte. It will be a pleasure to use my seniority to teach you all the unwritten ins and outs of this marvelous place.”

The three smiled at each other with the exquisite pleasure of finding their future roommates to their liking.

“Well, my young comrades, are you ready for a couple of years of deprivation, sacrifice and chastity?” asked Pierre with melodramatic expression.

“Chastity?” gasped Henri, and all three chortled.

Georges came home, kissed Berthe, squeezed Georgette’s shoulders, patted André, who was hunched over homework on the window ledge, and then stopped to contemplate the company around his kitchen table.

“Why, is this a permanent fixture now? The feeding of the wild Academy beasts, Saturdays at three at the Torreele residence?”

Pierre sprang up and saluted, hastily chomping down his big mouthful of pie so he could properly reply:

“You have no idea, mon Major, how much better your wife’s food is than the fare at the refectory.”

“Oh, I have a very good idea,” said Georges. “What are you feeding our young student-officers, Berthe?”

“Just a little appeltaart.”

A bicycle was carelessly dropped to the ground in the front yard.

“De Radigues,” Albert identified. Henri came in like a gust of wind.

“I got the bread you like, Madame,” Henri greeted his hostess as he placed a fresh loaf before Berthe on the table.

“Thank you. Very attentive of you, Henri. This bread is just delicious.”

“I hear the bread is not the only delicious thing at this particular bakery,” insinuated Pierre, but hushed immediately at Albert’s soundless motion. Not a topic to discuss in front of parents.

“Madame, how do you like having your whole family in the same place?” Pierre enquired about their recent move to Brussels, within just a couple of miles of Georges’ barracks.

“Oh, I am very happy, of course. Even though we did have a lovely home in Ostend.”

“But this here is very nice.”

“It is. I know fully well that I will not always be so lucky to have all my family in the same town.”

“It is a five-minute bike ride from Place Dailly to the Academy. Timed myself just yesterday,” bragged Albert.

“Without getting yourself run over by an automobile?” enquired Berthe. “You know I don’t like it when you race down the streets like that.”

Georges went upstairs to change into civilian clothes while Berthe disappeared in the storeroom. The boys’ tongues became untied.

“My brothers, I have important news,” announced Henri with his usual theatrical air. “I heard that commandant Nyssens is thinking about starting a number of new traditions at the Academy. One of them being… an annual ball.”

He looked at the other two enthusiastically.

“Do you understand, a ball! With music, and food and drink….”

“… and dance...,” added Pierre, not very enthusiastic.

“Precisely, and what do you need for dancing?” insisted Henri.

“Girls.”

“That’s right. Rosy girls in beautiful gowns. Comrades, I say, we volunteer to be on the organizing committee for the annual ball right away.”

“I’m in,” said Albert.

6

Albert picked up his correspondence from the mailroom. The wad of envelopes in his pigeonhole tended to be thick these days. Albert groaned. Under the command of Lieutenant-General Nyssens, the school had added various distractions, but at the same time lost none of its old soldierly rigor. Albert had three exams coming up, in addition to classes, exercises, drills, sports, and the preparations for the first annual ERM ball.

“Help me with this, Henri.”

“I have to study.” Henri did not even raise his fiery shock of hair from his books.

“Well, who doesn’t? Come on, you talked me into this.”