BELGIAN UNDERGROUND

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 9, 8 May 1944, Page 28

BELGIAN UNDERGROUND

As told to Don Eddy for the American Magazine, February, 1944

When the Germans stormed into Belgium, I was in Paris on government business. My wife, Marie, and our children, Lucienne, the daughter, then aged nine, and Claude, aged three, were at home in Antwerp. I managed to reach Marie on the telephone. I advised her, “ Take the youngsters in the car, and drive to Biarritz. Wait there for me. Do you hear ? ” She replied, “ Yes. Biarritz. Shall I ?” At that instant, the phone went dead. I had to remain in Paris at my job. No word came from Marie. The catastrophe at Dunkerque ended my usefulness. As the Nazi tanks rolled into Paris, I joined three companions in an automobile and plunged into the torrents of refugees streaming southward. Three days later, after being bombed and strafed, I reached Biarritz, on the French coast just above Spain. I found Marie, the children, and our little dog, Fifi, in a small pension. Marie and I talked all night. Where could we go ? ’ It was Marie who made the decision :

“It seems cowardly to run away. And we can’t stay here. So ” “ So we’ll go home,” I concluded. We heard in mid-morning that the Germans were occupying all the French coast. We piled into the car, already heaped with belongings, and struck inland, slowly weaving a tortuous trail northward, sleeping where nightfall found us, drawing ever nearer to Belgium. My family was magnificent.

One noon we came to a barricade guarded by German soldiers. The commander was a cocksure young fellow. He listened impassively as I explained our wish to return to Belgium. Before he could speak, I placed 500 francs on the edge of his chair. “For the toll charge,” I said, as though it were perfectly normal. He dropped one of his gloves over the money and said loudly, “It is impossible. This road is closed.” And then, softly, “ Go back 200 yards and take the lane to the left. It leads around the barricade.” - Fifteen minutes later we were on our way .

We drove two days through fantastic scenes cluttered with dead horses, looted towns, gutted farms. We passed the grotesque remnants of a column of refugees, a perambulator standing amidst the bodies. German soldiers were digging in a field. Their arms were bloody.

At nightfall we came to a town. It was forbidden to pass after dark. A German soldier led us to a looted house and assigned .us a room. It seemed most courteous, until next morning, when we found our car robbed of everything of value. We stopped beside the road for lunch, but were interrupted by the passage of an armoured column. We heard them laughing and shooting after they passed. Hurriedly, we drove on. * Up to that time, you must comprehend, we were more confused then resentful Like most Europeans, we were accustomed to the thought of war as a distressing but inevitable phase of existence, more political than personal. Of the old war, I remembered only the excitement. As a man I had known some Germans. They did not seem to me as the Nazis seem monsters incarnate, beastly creatures to be exterminated with unrelenting thoroughness and an utter absence of compunction. That cold anger grew as we reached my father’s estate near Antwerp. German troops had used one wing as • a brothel. In all other rooms, obviously done with deliberate contempt, were heaps of human offal. The cellars had been looted of the choicest wines : the rest had been smashed. China and crystal had been hurled against the walls. It was a shambles.

Our house in the city had escaped harm, although my business was wiped out. We tried to take up our life. Food became the paramount problem. Two pounds of tea cost SSO ; a loaf of bread, $2 ; two pounds of beef, $5 ; gasoline, $3 a quart. These were Black Market prices. The Germans ran the Black Market. They would post ceiling prices for the shopkeepers, then refuse to give the shopkeepers enough to sell. But German officers would sell anything, at 10 to 1,000 times the ceiling price.

They would even have soldiers deliver purchases to the door.

In larger matters, they tried to cloak their depredations with a disarming suavity. If they wanted a man’s business, building, residence, motor-car, they politely served legal documents and agreeably held conferences. Of course, they always got what they wanted. They have abandoned this mockery now. But the problem of living, just living, surpasses belief. Malnutrition is the national ailment. The most pitiful victims are the children. I thank God each night that my friends in the Underground are watching over my own youngsters until the hour of liberation. . . As weeks passed, I feared I was going mad. Sleep became impossible ; my nerves were fraying raw. The Germans — just their presence, the look of them, their arrogant insolence, their green uniforms, their placards on the walls, their diabolical hypocrisy —became intolerable. It was like living in a cage of monstrous beasts that played with us, taunted us, as a cat plays with a mouse. Our neighbour was an old gentleman, almost 75. He staunchly refused to truckle to the Germans. One day he borrowed a bicycle and rode into the country, where he bought a small bag of potatoes from a farmer. Returning, he was caught by a German road patrol. They beat him insensible and threw him out of a car at his doorstep. He died that night.

I called upon the wisest, kindest man I ever knew. He had been one of my professors. I talked myself out. When I finished, he said quitely, “ I have been waiting for a man like you. We must fight.” We talked until midnight, making plans. That was the beginning of the Underground. Our first helpers were three of his young relatives.

From that night, the sight of the Germans annoyed me no more. I could even smile at —anything, to get what I wanted. This is an odd thing, and I want you to comprehend. It is something that happens inside a man. He becomes a dual personality. On the one hand, he is solid, sedate, prosaic ; on the other, he is an avenging spirit in whom the flame of resistence is a slow

and steady fire, burning deep and warm, never going out.

It is not like the cinema. We do not fight for glory or adventure. We fight because the urge is in us, driving us on ; because it is a way to express ourselves and to help others. We do not use a yardstick to measure the fitness of those we select to fight beside us : we use a thermometer, plunged into their hearts. If the flame is there, they are worthy to become patriots.

We built slowly, one man at a time, striving for quality, not quantity. Other groups sprang up. We affiliated. Today, we are legion. To-day Belgium seethes and boils with resistance. Almost a fourth of the total population works actively in the Underground ; the rest are passively helpful, doing what they can. * We are two organized groups ; the Armed Front and the Psychological Front. Each has its leaders. Both fronts work under a unified command which, in Belgium itself, has no fixed headquarters. To-day, it may be a residence in Brussels ; to-morrow, a dentist’s office in Antwerp or Liege. We work along military lines. If one command post is cut off, another takes over. If I were to die to-night, another man .would step into my place. The flame never flickers ; resistance never ceases.

Of the Armed Front, I can assure you it is one of the best small armies in the world. Its members are farmers, tradesmen, teamsters. By night they are mobile, well-equipped troops trained to strike with deadly speed and skill. At the outset, our only weapon was psychology. We determined to combat German propaganda inside Belgium. To that end, La Libre Belgique, the clandestine newspaper of the last war, was born again. It is delivered by volunteers, of whom scores have been caught. We have had to move our printing-plant many times. But the paper has never failed to come out on time. lam proud that a copy of every issue has been placed on the desk of General von Falkenhausen, Nazi military chief of Belgium and northern France.

Our most vicious opponent was Paul Colin, a renegade editor whose paper,

Nouveau Journal, was a Nazi mouthpiece. We decided Colin must be exterminated. Volunteers were called. A few days later he was shot and killed. A boy of nineteen was arrested and tortured. All joints of his hands and feet were broken. He was then hanged.

Earlier atrocities had led to the formation of the Armed Front. Now men begged to avenge that boy. But we needed more weapons. We had contact with our friends in England through a secret system. We asked them to send guns, ammunition, explosives. The answer came : “Beat a certain place on a certain right.” We were there. It was a farming district. We heard heavy firing far away ; the clump of exploding bombs. Soon we heard air-plane motors overhead. We flashed the signal with our electric torches. The planes swept away; returned. We saw the blur of opening parachutes. We gathered up the bundles and hid them. We cut up the parachutes converting the cloth to practical uses. Thus we maintain our arsenal. Soon after, the Germans took over a factory to produce an improved type of airplane propeller. It was surrounded with barbed wire, soldiers and dogs. We notified England. Nothing happened. We grew restless ; made a plan. The only Belgian permitted inside the

gates was the milkman. He was not very clever, so we furnished him a strong young helper who spoke German. He listened to the Germans and reported

what they said. One hot day the milk truck blew out a tire as it passed a doorway of the factory. The milkman and his helper had to take out a dozen big milk-cans to find the tire tools. They set the cans just inside the factory, in the shade. Just as they finished repairing the tire, the young man walked to the milk-cans as though to return them to the truck. Instead, he struck a match. There was a blast of flame, a series of explosions. They were filled with high-test gasoline stolen from the Germans. The factory burned to the ground. Both men got away. The younger was burned and wounded by bullet, but we sent both to England that night.

We get many quiet laughs. Once we had some new incendiaries to test. A volunteer decided to be practical. He tossed an incendiary inside a. Nazi army truck he found, apparently deserted, on a side street. But he had failed to strike the fuse properly. As the bomb banged into the truck, a German soldier and his girl popped out, both in dishabille. We wrote to England : “ Our new incendiaries have more fire than a German romance.”

We laughed, too, about the stoves. A whole trainload of stoves was awaiting shipment to the Russian front last fall. Our patriots, in the railway system shuffled the shipping orders, and the stoves went to the sunny Riviera, where I am sure they did the Germans no good whatever. . . . * German soldiers are stupid animals. But the Gestapo is infernally clever. I do not know when they began to suspect me, but I have an idea. One day I was taking a suit of clothes to the apartment of a Patriot who was hiding an Allied airman. I was wearing it under my own suit. As I entered the elevator, five tall, blond Germans shouldered in. I knew the type —the Gestapo. They asked for the apartment of my friend. Hastily, I asked for a higher floor. I went back down and waited across the street. The five Germans came down with my friend and another man who I suppose was the airman. We never heard from them again. I believe the Gestapo marked me down that day for future investigation. Later, I was to meet one of our subchiefs in another city. He telephoned me in the morning and said, “ What was the name of that toothache medicine you use ? We have had toothaches in this house three days. They left us this morning, but we are afraid they may return.” I understood ; we often used that sort of double-talking. The Gestapo had been there three days and might come back. I had to think fast. I said, “ I have some of that medicine. I’ll bring it to your house.”

I went there, carrying a bottle of medicine. As I entered, I took a pad from my pocket and wrote : “ Say

nothing. Where is the phone ? ” We went to his study. I unscrewed the telephone box. Inside was a tiny microphone. I burned the note and left the house. Next day, my friend and his wife had a loud argument about expenses, during which he called the telephone company and asked to have the instrument removed as he could no longer afford it. But the damage had been done. I thought I felt eyes watching me constantly.

That week I came into possession of a highly important document for transmission to England. Fearful for my safety, my wife insisted upon keeping it until a messenger came for it. Sheconcealed it in her clothing. That afternoon, as she went to a friend’s home for tea, a German soldier opened the door and yanked her inside. Hemarched her to the library, where the others were guarded by troopers. The Gestapo was searching the house.

My wife is resourceful. After a few moments she asked to be permitted togo to the lavatory. One of the soldierssaid, “ I’ll have to go with you.” They went down the hall. The German said, ‘‘You must leave the door open.” Mariestared at him haughtily. She flared, “ I’ll do nothing of the sort ! ” Then she swept in, slammed the door, and locked it. While the soldier battered on the panels, she flushed the document down the drain into oblivion. Fortunately, her only punishment was a. tongue-lashing. I shudder to think how much worse it might have been.

We both felt that our usefullness in Belgium was drawing to a close.

How we reached America is of small consequence. It was not exciting. On the contrary, we found ourselves expected and welcomed. We worked in other countries for a little time, perfecting our courier system, arranging better methods for supplies to reach our comrades inside Belgium. I had a great deal of information to pass to the proper authorities. Then I was ordered to the United States, since part of the material for the Belgian Underground now emanates here. AsI write, I am expecting to be ordered back into Europe. There is much, so much, to be done. . . .