Friday, May 10, 1940, we were awakened in the morning between four and five o’clock by the engine noise of airplanes. We didn’t know what that meant, of course. Some time later we saw soldiers on foot and in a kind of cars passing under the road towards the Prickart. This took a long time. I don’t remember how long. What I remember most about that day is that during the morning we children were in front of the house in the garden, on the bleach, and that my father stood there with some other men watching that spectacle and that he smoked a cigar! I had never seen Dad smoke. I don’t remember anything about the rest of that day. We were immediately told that it was the Germans who had invaded our country. Much later I found out that the planes we heard had sailplanes with soldiers in tow, which a little later would occupy Fort Eben-Emael. Later still I read with the historian Marianne Jungen that in the first days of May 1940 40,000 soldiers were housed in private homes in Aachen.
The Germans had entered through all the openings in the border barrier; the whole village was overrun. They had come not only over the paved roads, but even through the fields. We had a few parcels on the Huelend that were sown with oats. One of those lots had been completely plowed up because the Germans had driven through it with their armored cars. The border barrier had been built by the Germans in previous years, as the front line of the Westwall or Siegfriedline. The second line consisted of the höcker, concrete obstacles to stop enemy tanks. Behind it were the bunkers where the cannons were located.
The front line consisted of a six-meter wide and three-meter high barbed wire barrier that, with the best will in the world, you couldn’t crawl through without leaving your clothes, skin and half your body behind. It was made of rock-solid Krupp steel. After the war, the farmers and others demolished entire sections of that barrier and used wire and poles, among other things, to make fences that would last for many years to come.
In the first months of the occupation we were twice confronted with einkwartierung, the forced shelter to the occupiers. A platoon of soldiers arrived at the farm with officers, horses, field kitchen, and so on. The horses were kept in the cowshed. Uncle Joseph, who normally milks the cows in the barn, had to do so outside on the dung heap. The soldiers slept in the hayloft and the officers demanded a bed in the house. They stayed for a day or two or three and then moved on. During the stay, the soldiers kept watch. They would then walk around the farm to keep an eye on everything.
On a beautiful, sunny day, for example, a soldier walked up and down in front of the house. Our mother had the kitchen window open and the soldier started a conversation with her about the war. At one point the soldier said to mother: Dieser Krieg could not win, we will never win this war.
I don’t remember how long it took before everything went back to normal. However, at the end of the school year, the entire class was transferred to the fifth grade and that this had more to do with a lack of space in the fourth grade than with the knowledge acquired.