Warm welcome in Belgium

Jack's infamous "Micheline" photos, front and back. 

As the 474^th crossed the French border into Belgium and moved farther into the over-run country, it received an enthusiastic welcome from the Belgian people, who lined the roads cheering. The crowds were so dense at some points it was next to impossible to move the half-tracks through. One Belgian man was even standing on a sidewalk with a fancy decanter and a liquor glass, dispensing free drinks to the troops.

The down side of this was that there wasn’t much privacy for the GIs. In fact, meals weren’t very enjoyable because hungry-looking kids would gather around as soon as one of the men got the 10-in-1 burner going and started to cook chow.

On Sunday, families came out in groups to look at the tracks and the guns and talk to the “American Soldat.” One such family—an elderly father and mother, a young daughter and her boyfriend, who were arm in arm—drew attention. The boyfriend used many American expressions and finally admitted to being a downed Canadian flyer. This family was one of the units in the underground that hid such people and ferried them back to freedom.

Another apparent civilian came up to a half-track and asked for some rations. The fellows gave him some K-rations, but he asked for a box of 10-in-1s instead. It turned out he was a downed American flyer, but he had no plans to return to his outfit. He liked it in Liege.

Jack and A Battery were stationed in Liege beginning Sept. 9, and eventually the rest of the battalion and battalion headquarters moved there as well. Jack remembers the warmth of the Belgian people, the open arms they welcomed the Americans with and their documented disdain for Hitler and the Nazis who had overrun their country.

Liege had lots of pretty women, too, and…

 On Sunday a group went to mass in the cathedral in Liege…It was an incongruous lot that filed into the large church, as they parked their M-1s against the pillars and knelt down. As they left the church they were mobbed by the other worshippers in the vestibule of the church and finally a prelate, who Dave Pearlman, of Boston, still claims was the Cardinal of Liege, came out and distributed medals. Pearlman, who is Jewish, and Harry Anderson of Roanoke, VA, were asked why they went to mass. “To meet the girls,” they replied, “all the girls are Catholic.³¹

Apparently, meeting girls wasn’t too difficult in Liege. If you were the least bit shy, they came and met you. Jack has two photos in his collection of Micheline Sottiaux, a young woman from Liege. One photo of her with a friend has her address written on the back, while the other of her alone says, “I love you.” Jack says he hardly knew her, that she was passing out similar pictures to other GIs as well and that the love she proclaimed was for the American liberators.

He does, however, admit to trying to go see her at her home when he returned to Liege a few months later. “Her house had been buzz-bombed,” he recalls. “Her mother answered the door and wasn’t very friendly. She showed me a picture of Micheline with her fiancé and sent me on my way.”

Jack’s wife, Wilma, whom he met and married after the war, never did like it that he kept those two photos and never was sure whether to believe his story. But it was probably true, because the unit was only stationed in Liege about a week or two and by Sept. 20 had moved into Germany—hardly enough time to begin much of a relationship, especially with a guy who just a few months earlier was making money in England laundering other guys’ trousers so THEY could chase women.

Jack’s gun crew also saw tanks doing battle in Belgium, from the top of one side of a deep valley. “We had to keep out of sight, of course. A farmer who lived close by cooked steaks and fried potatoes for all seven of us. I think he gave us some wine also.”