Teniers Square

By Lynne Robinson Lawrence

         A lone US Army jeep threads its way through congested streets near the train station; a British convoy, headed toward the harbor, is clogging traffic. Schoolchildren, their woolen jackets and caps painting splashes of color against dingy granite buildings, are dashing home for lunch. Except for their darting colors, the city appears to have been brushed with a dark gray wash. Even the bright yellow armbands have disappeared because all the Jews are gone, although no one speaks of it openly. There are no new buildings, nothing broken has been repaired, no new clothes bought or sewn since the beginning of the Nazi occupation. But the children no longer complain about their clothes – everyone looks the same, and any coat at all is a comfort in an unheated classroom.

        Snatches of conversation in guttural Flemish – news of the German retreat, which shops still have something to sell, which family has suffered the latest loss, who has simply disappeared – neighborhood gossip, as though this were just any city, on any cloudy winter day. But this is Antwerp. It is late November of 1944, and the city is just beginning to hope. It was captured by the British on September 5th but two months later Allied troops are still endeavoring to dislodge German forces from a peninsula in the Netherlands where they continue to attack the city with V-2 rockets.

        Teniers Square is the heart of the city, formed by the intersection of two broad tree-lined avenues, de Keyserlei and Frankrijklei. By American standards, the square is vast, its faded elegance evident in its ornate architecture, like a grande dame atrophied by some wasting disease. It was once a very different place, and, God willing say the old men on the street corner, it will be again – a place of abundance, fruit vendors and corner butcher shops, old men dozing in the sun, mischievous boys playing marbles against corner walls. The grand old Weber Hotel that stood on the east side of the square once filled its rooms; the Rex Cinema, three doors up towards the train station, showed current American films. The city had color and life and culture. Then Nazi rule snuffed out that vitality, the shops were closed and the Weber stood empty and run down. But now in the early winter of 1944, with the return of friendly troops, people begin to hope that the worst of it might be over by Christmas.

        Once the hub of Flemish culture, Antwerp is now the prize in a deadly contest, all the more valuable because it is a railway hub as well as a deepwater harbor. Unlike Cherbourg, the great natural harbor on the northern tip of France, Antwerp is a man-made port and has been designed to handle the largest of ships – the very ships needed to sustain the Allied push into Germany. General Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery agree on little – but on this subject they are in accord: Antwerp is key – and on this cold November day, it is almost theirs. 

        A bloody price is being paid for this progress. Food and clothing are in short supply, and homes grow cold as fuel is diverted to feed machines of war. But on this particular day in November, there is a sense of renewed purpose in the air. Prosperity is still a dream but the citizens of Antwerp are beginning to experience the blessed relief that comes with the cessation of continual fear . . . the painful cancer is being removed street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. Even the relentless shelling by the newest in German weaponry – the deadly V-1 and V-2 Vengeance missiles – is recognized as part of the bloody cost of freedom.

        Businessmen and schoolchildren, secretaries, and old men, swirl through the square. Public trams, which are the primary mode of transportation for ordinary citizens, are running again. People have become accustomed to the stink of motor oil and gasoline from the jeeps, quarter-tons, and canvas-topped half-tons. There is no apparent organization to the ebb and flow of traffic, and like the drone of a weary bagpipe, the constant rumble of military vehicles provides the bass anchor note for the normal sounds of a city coming back to life – shouted voices, doors slamming, even laughter. British, American, and Canadian troops, welcomed as saviors, are everywhere.

        In the center, two British MPs are presiding over the chaos of military vehicles, delivery trucks, trolley cars, pedestrians, and horse-drawn wagons. There is a British convoy headed for the harbor and the MPs’ job is to shepherd the trucks through the main square with a minimum of disruption. As noon strikes on the tower clock, and schools and businesses close their doors for the lunch hour, one hundred and fifty miles to the east on the outskirts of the German-occupied city of Hellendoorn, members of the newly-activated SS Werfer Abteilung 500, under the direction of Wernher von Braun, complete the fueling of one of their new V-2 rockets. They wait nervously for the launch command – this is new technology and they still distrust it. Standing fifty feet high on its portable launch pad, it is painted in huge black and white squares, like a child’s toy. But the vivid design has a more sinister purpose. After the rocket’s launch, ground observers with binoculars will be able to clearly see its rotation in flight so they can fine tune future launches for maximum destruction. On November 27, 1944, the Germans already know Antwerp is lost to them. In fact, it will be officially declared as Allied territory the next day – but by aiming one of their great destructive vengeance weapons, with its ton of explosives loaded in the nose section, directly at the central city, at noon on a weekday, they know they will achieve a new level of physical and psychological damage to both the Belgian civilians, just beginning to hope, and the Allied troops, newly arrived in the city.

        The rocket launches and anyone watching would see a thin white streak, like the streak of a comet across the night sky, headed directly toward Teniers Square. “Whispering death” they are called. Unlike the loud V-1s dubbed “screaming meemies” by the Allies, the V-2s are larger, pack more destruction, and have been refined so the motor is relatively quiet, giving its victims little or no warning. The rocket levels out at a thousand feet. In the square, the British convoy is proceeding at a snail’s pace past the railway station. Here and there vehicles and soldiers of other Allied countries are going about their assignments. In spite of the great military presence, the atmosphere is remarkably optimistic. These after all are liberating troops – they are welcome in a city that has suffered for so long under the heavy hand of Hitler.

        As the two British MPs signal energetically, and people rush about their lunch-time errands, death moves nearer. Schoolboys converge on the square to watch the huge convoy crawl through and to beg for chocolate and chewing gum. An American ¾-ton truck from the 604th Army Engineers leaves the railway station and enters the square from the east. These soldiers are members of an American camouflage division and have just arranged for the delivery of red and white pigment for their paint factory in Namur . . . paint they will use to mark hospital tents and road signs for the advancing Allied infantry. Across the wide avenue, two city trams are discharging passengers. Several of those passengers are nurses from the local hospital, just finishing an eighteen-hour shift. A US Army photographer is getting ready to head back to his headquarters in Namur after picking up supplies. A horse-drawn wagon full of precious coal crosses in front of the American truck. An old man, impeccably dressed in a threadbare topcoat and fedora, crosses behind them both. The soldiers in the ¾-ton are just turning to look at something that has caught their attention – a pretty girl, perhaps, or an unexpected sound.

        The V-2 explodes in all its horrible fury just above the ground over Teniers Square. One MP disintegrates. The second – most of him anyway – is later found 60 yards away on the roof of l’Hotel de Place. A city water main bursts, flooding one side of the square. People lie like rag dolls on the cobblestones. The trams are twisted hulks, disgorging bodies, some moving, some not. A British one-ton truck lies on its side burning, the driver’s body lying next to it, also burning. The coal wagon which moments before had been ready to deliver its load is smashed completely, none of the wagon pieces any larger than the lumps of coal themselves, the driver nowhere to be seen, the horse down and screaming. A sympathetic citizen will shortly dispatch the wounded animal with the sledgehamer used to break up the coal.

        The American truck is stopped near the coal wagon. Private Herbert Moyer, who had been driving, sits motionless behind the steering wheel, in shock, his face peppered with small bleeding shrapnel wounds. Private Marcel Snauwaert, a medic from the 604th who was sitting in the passenger seat, jumps out of the vehicle and runs to the driver’s side to see what he can do for Moyer. He too is bloodied but not seriously wounded. Seeing that Moyer is going to be alright, he stands next to him, his face a blank, momentarily oblivious to the fact that his lieutenant is no longer in the back seat. Army photographer, Technician 3rd Class Ingeldew, after the first moments of shock, having discovered himself uninjured and with a full rucksack of film, begins documenting the scene. He captures the truck with its bloodied driver and stunned medic, the broken trams and bodies lying in puddles, twisted bicycles and people sitting with their heads in their hands. Just a few feet away, his camera finds the young lieutenant, lying in a puddle.

        The elderly man in the topcoat and fedora rushes to give aid – he kneels on the wet cobblestones, cradling the soldier’s head in his arms as the photographer clicks again. One of the nurses leaving her shift at the hospital, her uniform splattered with unknowable things, but her white wimple still crisp and bright amidst the horror, leans down to help. The lieutenant’s face happens to be turned toward the camera. A shrapnel wound in his left temple bleeds a little, and a thread of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. His uniform is still neatly creased, and he looks peaceful.

* * *

        His men called him Robbie, and they will not believe that he is dead. They are not front-line troops – they are camoufleurs, specializing in making fuel tank farms look like cow pastures and cow pastures look like landing strips, while the real landing strips look like duck ponds. Robbie was a writer and a practical joker and although he was the commanding officer of Company A, his men regarded him as a regular guy. Some of them will cry quietly, faces averted, when word of his death reaches them. Sully and C.B., his two closest buddies, will go to gather his personal effects and will sit next to each other on his cot, finishing his monthly officer’s allotment of whisky which will not make them drunk.

* * *

        Five thousand miles away in rural New England, the Boston Herald is advertising “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” starring June Haver and Dick Haymes. Just down the street from the RKO Theater, a pretty dark-haired woman will come awake, already thinking ahead to her day of packaging dental supplies for the troops overseas. Their business is booming with Army and Navy contracts for which she is thankful as she and her husband Verne, who is called Robbie by his men, now have a little daughter to support. She looks in on the baby before dressing for work; the soft scent of baby powder hangs in the air. She hopes today’s mail will bring news from her husband; one can’t help but worry all the time. For a split second, she sees his face, eyes closed peacefully, superimposed on her baby’s face and she thinks how alike they are. His words echo in her head . . . the words with which he closes every letter, just after he tells her how much he loves her . .

        Try not to worry about me, won’t you?