Hello Able Five

By Kerstin Trimble

Albert Torreele graduated from the Ecole Royale Militaire in Brussels just in time to lead an ill-fated platoon straight into the German onslaught of 10 May 1940. A single shot that should have left him crippled sent him on a grueling odyssey via Dunkirk to the Welsh 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 Brigade Piron set their minds on a single goal: cross the English Channel, take back their homes and free their families. Relive the adventures of the Belgian Free Forces in this story of incredible twists of fate, unyielding courage, true love and deep friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312374379

Book preview

Hello Able Five

Hello Able Five

The Journey of Albert Torreele

Kerstin Trimble

Transatlantic Passages 2015

© 2015 Kerstin Trimble

Transatlantic Passages

www.transatlantic-passages.com

Cover art: Ariana Chaivaranon

ISBN: 978-1-312-37437-9

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

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 Madame 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 ration-less 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