The war ended. That was the moment when everything changed dramatically.

It was still wartime, and occasionally I went with the ambulances to pick up wounded from the railway station, and had to help transporting them to their wards. The kitchen had always a jar of my favorite peanut butter available for me. It represented another means of survival for me, during those night shifts.

During kitchen duties, I quickly learned how to snatch a pancake from the POW cooking them. The guard was looking, but he never picked the trick, which only required a small tea towel.

An epidemic of diarrhoea happened twice. Can you imagine a camp of POW's, all having to use the limited facilities at once? That's what happened. I cannot describe the situation; it would turn you off, reading any further. Years later I found out, that some Yankee gave us extra meat, spiced with soap of some kind. One of the POW's working in the Hospital, said that he would kill himself drinking the alcohol, used for cleaning the instruments. He died shortly after. The Americans were not allowed to find out about it; his body was carted into the POW camp underneath some fire wood. What happened after, I don't know.

Then came the day to deliver lunch to a Yankee prisoner in the small jail building. Two armed guards with drawn pistols, carefully opened this prisoner's cell. There he was, a tall black fellow, both hands and legs handcuffed to the radiator in the rooms corner. I did not feel too good at that moment. But you see, I am still here; nothing happened to me. A piece of bacon to clean the bathroom hot water service, found its way into the camp. Here it was cooked and consumed.

I had some entertaining moments when a few Americans started to play a guitar and others were step dancing. They must have been professionals. So time went on; many other incidents came about. Some of them were not worth mentioning, others might be discriminating. Don't ever think that this was all as easy as reading about it. In my memory it remains a pretty unhappy time. All this time 'POW' marked uniforms. Nightly behind barbed wire fences, and armed guards about most of the time.

We wanted to go home, only home!

The war ended. That was the moment when everything changed dramatically.

The story goes that it had been tried many times to establish its depth, without discovering this secret.

In this place I learned why there was a bad feeling against the Germans. Our meals were served in a room, containing benches and tables. The walls and ceiling were half-moon shaped; on either end of this, was a flat brick wall. This room, like many others, was built into the surrounding walls of the citadel. There was another door to the right of the one we used, which had an exit leading to a cemetery .

A couple of metres further to the right, the wall showed bullet marks. This was where the German Army executed Belgians during their occupation of Belgium. I never dared go near this area, but I looked at it with sad, regrettable feelings every day.

Another entrance led many steps down into various underground halls. The lowest one of them had a heavy barricaded exit door. Padlocked at all times, was a door leading to the most fascinating of all under ground halls. A rough built stairway led down into a big circular room. An all round ceiling made from bricks, had a cast iron air vent in its top centre through which I could see daylight

Of all things, I recognized this ceiling vent as the place above ground where I sometimes helped cleaning the garden. I never went near that spot again. Every time I entered this hall I quivered. This place gave me the horrors. I tell you why. In the centre of this dark and horrible place exactly underneath the air vent was a huge and deep well with a small brick wall around it. Looking down with fear, I could see a very wide, round and gruesome dark hole in the ground in front of my feet. Deep down a few old timber beams were visible.

The citadel was pretty high up above sea level; it must have been difficult to find any water from this height. The story goes that it had been tried many times to establish its depth, without discovering this secret. Throwing something down, I never heard the impact. Another story goes, that the Belgians threw things into this well and knew from where to pick them up at the bottom of it.

Let's talk about other things. For some unknown reason I was punished. I had no meals for one day, only water. A POW kitchen personal, obviously to me, hid something in the toilet. I quickly found a reason to go there and found a big box of biscuits for me. I gobbled up the lot, within seconds.

Things got a bit easier; I was trusted a bit more and various jobs came along. Looking after electrical problems was one of them. Opposite from the Yankee quarters was a multistorey building the same size. This was an American Army Hospital.