Alone In The Trenches by Vince Cross Page A

beautiful homes!” said one man. “It’s downright criminal!”
    “Remember what happened in Louvain,” retorted another. “The guns didn’t leave a building standing or spare a single family. Why should we be any different?”
    A church bell started tolling, and then another. An electric alarm bell began to ring somewhere close by and wouldn’t stop. In the distance a trumpeter started to play the Belgian national
anthem. Horses and carts appeared, as well as one or two motorized lorries. Overhead I began to hear the noise of an aeroplane engine. People in the street looked up anxiously. I could see the
’plane circling out beyond the
Grand Place
. There were two men inside it. One was throwing bombs down into the streets. The horses bucked and shied as yet more shells from the distant
German howitzer guns rained in. Each explosion seemed closer than the last, and even louder than before. I could hear the rumbling of collapsing walls. Men shouted. Women and children screamed.
    I had no idea what to do! The doorway was certainly no place to be. I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. A covered wagon had drawn up at the kerb beside me. The horse was panicking and the
driver had dismounted to fiddle with its harness before he moved off again. I thought that if I stayed where I was I would certainly be killed. Hitching a lift would be better than running! While
he tried to soothe the poor animal, I hauled myself up into the cart among its cargo of groceries, still clutching my two loaves. As if it would keep me safe, I covered myself with a smelly blanket
from a pile that was lying there. I heard the frightened driver tell the horse to “giddy-up” and found myself being bumped away from the confusion and dust at an unsteady gallop.
Peeking out from under the covering, I could just make out the scars that were beginning to appear on the ancient and lovely face of Ypres. A corner of the Cloth Hall had been completely blown
away. Its windows were broken. Its huge wooden door hung at a crazy angle from one hinge.

    Despite the blanket and my overcoat, it was icily cold in the back of the cart. I was shivering, probably from the shock of all that had just happened. I twisted my hands together to get some
warmth back into them and tried to slow my breathing down. To calm myself I set out to count slowly to a thousand.
I was still alive, wasn’t I?
Looking back now, what a clever and
brave little girl I was! Yes, but how silly and stubborn too… as you’re about to hear.
    *
    My name is Annette. When all this happened I was just nine years old. I’d always been small for my age, but my legs and arms were strong. I had short fair hair which I
liked, and freckles which I didn’t. My dad was an Englishman who ran away from home to find his fortune in far off countries when he was sixteen years old. He got no further than Belgium. To
his surprise, he found that his name –
Albert Martin
– worked just as well in French as it did in English. The spelling stayed the same: they just said it differently. He must
have had a very quick ear, because he was soon speaking French too – with only the slightest accent. As you probably know, Belgium is a country with two languages, but he found himself among
French-speaking people, and he never really got to grips with Flemish. It probably didn’t help that within a year or so he’d met my mother, Elise, and before long they were sweethearts.
Her
Flemish wasn’t very good either. Once they were married, my brother Michel came along quite quickly, and I followed two years later.
    Dad was a blacksmith, and he was always at his happiest working in the heat and sweat of his forge, bending hard iron to his will. His customers loved him.
    “You’re a genius, Albert,” they would say. “Is there
anything
you can’t make?” And he would smile shyly, and accept their generous tips with a touch of
his cap.
    After they married, my parents moved to the city of Antwerp,