Brutally attacked by Germany which had entered into the most solemn engagements with her, Belgium will defend herself with all of her strength against the invader. In these tragic hours which my country is undergoing, I am addressing myself to Your Excellency, who so often has demonstrated towards Belgium an affectionate interest, in the certainty that you will support with all of your moral authority the efforts which we are now firmly decided to make in order to preserve our independence.
Telegram from Leopold III, King of Belgium, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, 10 May 1940
When I was a little girl my father took me to River Meuse, not far from the city of Namur, to visit my great-aunt, who had spent most of her life smoking cigarettes and playing mah-jong with her housekeeper.
It was summer, but Aunt Dolly refused to install air-conditioning in her house. My father tried to open the window in the room where we sat, and Aunt Dolly scolded him. ‘Don’t you open that window and let in the germs.’ She smacked the table with her open palm with such force that the mah-jong tiles jumped like startled crickets. The game ended, and my father stormed out of the room. He was only a major at the time – a general would have opened the window. My father called to me to follow him. I was only ten. If I had been eleven, I might not have followed him.
He stomped out of the house, cursing the stones under his feet, and I followed. His arms swung back and forth like the arms of an angry wind-up tin soldier. I trailed behind him, swinging my arms, stepping into the tracks he made in the earth with his thick-soled shoes. Sometimes I had to take extra steps to keep up with his forceful stride.
When he reached the river on that hot day, my father unbuttoned his shirt, pulled off his shoes and socks, and dived into the river. I remember how white his broad back looked when he popped up from the water and began cutting into the surface with his one good arm.
‘Simone,’ my father waved, ‘come in. It’s much cooler in the water.’
I stood on the edge of the river, realizing how little my father knew about me. Perhaps if I had been a boy, he would have known that I could not swim. When I shook my head in refusal, he barked an order that made me jump like the ivory tiles on the mah-jong table. ‘Simone! Come here!’
I sat on the grass, unbuttoned my black walking shoes, and from my little white feet I peeled off my pearl socks, as if removing the outer skin of an onion.
‘Simone!’
I stood up and slipped my yellow cotton dress above my head, letting it fall to the ground in defeat. I stood beside the rippling water in my thin camisole. I looked at my father – a little girl who did not know how to swim.
‘Simone!’ he entreated for the fourth time.
I held my nose and jumped into the water. When I sank, bubbles and my father’s arms surrounded me in a rush of trapped air and laughter.
‘You silly girl!’ my father chuckled as I draped my arms around his neck and shivered. ‘Don’t you know how to swim?’
I looked into his face and shook my head in shame.
‘Come here, my brave little swimmer.’ My father bent my arms in classic swimmer’s positions. He held me up on the water’s surface with his wide hand at the small of my back as I learned how to float. I was his tame little seal, eager to please, and delighted to feel the water push against my face as I learned how to kick my legs and feet in a steady churn of water and muscles.
What I remember most were the water lilies. Before we went home, I had gained enough confidence in my new talent that I was able to swim in the river with my eyes open. I liked seeing my father turn into a wiggling form worthy of Picasso’s paintings, as I looked at him through the thick lens of the turbulent water. But then I swam out a bit further and dived down into the cool green river. The sun penetrated the surface and illuminated my body like that of a river salmon, and when I looked up, I saw the outline of water lilies: dark shadows surrounded by light. They floated on the surface of the water as I swam beneath them, their shadows rippling over my arms and legs. I felt as if I was in a new world and that things were changing in ways that I didn’t yet understand.
As Sergeant De Waden and I rode through the Royal Park, I had been thinking about swimming in that river, the water lilies floating over my head. Until, suddenly, my distant memories of the lilies were viciously transformed into the shadows of large, distant bombers with long wings and churning engines.
The air throbbed and resonated, vibrating with a low-pitched drone that quickly drowned the confused cries of mothers and children. Black dots appeared in the sky, scattered across the far horizon, like gnats on a summer’s evening. They pulsed nearer and nearer, their shapes gaining clarity as they advanced, engines straining forward, screaming their arrival.
As the sudden swarm of black bombers thundered overhead, a palpable wave of panic nearly knocked me off the horse. My throat tightened, and my fists clung to Sergeant De Waden so firmly that he almost couldn’t pry me from his body as he twisted and shouted above the noise:, ‘Simone, I have to go! The Nazis are here and I have to report. Climb down, now! Climb down and go straight home!’
As he guided me from the horse, my throat so tight now that I could barely breathe, I wanted to cry out to him. I wanted to ask him what was happening. I wanted to ask him to take me with him . . . if I was going to die . . . if he would marry me. But all I could do was stand there in a daze and watch him ride away, his voice becoming fainter, ‘Go home, Simone! Go home!’
Hitler had invaded Belgium.