Chapter 20 - Belgian Adventures
From Luxembourg I went on to Belgium, to rejoice in a ten days' hectic round of Guide festivities. Great plans had been made, and there was not one idle minute as I hared round from one thing to another, fitting all the various items in like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—visiting hospitals, broadcasting, attending committee meetings, camp fires, rallies, Guiders' meetings, Scout gatherings, official meals and entertainments !
The history and position of the Guide Movement in Belgium is probably known to a good many of you, but I had better just remind you that here, as in most European countries, there are the two ' Associations ' in existence, held together by one national co-ordinating body at the top.
The ' Girl Guides de Belgique ' were first started and were greatly helped by an Englishwoman, Mrs. O'Ferrall (then Ann Kindersley), who took Guide literature over from England and contributed by her own personal advice and service to the founding of this Association. Dark blue was adopted as their uniform, and they had a distinctive Tenderfoot badge of three coloured interlocked rings on which, at a later date, the Guide Trefoil was superimposed.
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Later on, the ` Guides Catholique de Belgique ' were founded ; they adopted khaki as their uniform and took as a model for their badges those of the Guides de France ' because they were their Roman Catholic counterpart in the neighbouring country. These two Associations, although they keep their distinctive badges and uniforms, join hands for all special occasions and in matters of policy, and their intemational relationships.
During the Occupation, Guide numbers in Belgium have been doubled although their activities were forbidden by the Germans who tried to organise a youth movement on their own lines, bribing attendance with the issue of new shoes, etcetera. The Guides met clandestinely, however, at Red Cross activities, sports clubs, on swimming excursions, and so on. They even arranged for a member to celebrate a ' birthday ' every week, so that if a meeting were challenged it was proved to be only a ' birthday party '! On the day of liberation, 700 Guides turned up in Brussels alone in their uniforms, although there had been no post to tell them of a general arrangement, and many of them rode triumphantly into the city on British tanks and jeeps.
Their war record has been magnificent, and they have served wherever opportunity could be found to do so. Many of the Guiders were members of the ' Resistance,' and risked their lives over and over again, rescuing children and assisting the Allies.
I attended a Rally at Liege where we had a great time together, and then the next day H.M. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, received us at the lovely Palace of Laaken. It was a great honour and pleasure to talk with this brave and well-loved lady, who has endured so much, who lost her husband and her sweet daughter-in-law in tragic accidents, and who was forced to stand by and see her country drained and maltreated in two wars. She spoke of her real interest in Scouting and Guiding, and told me that one of the finest things about the Movement, as she saw it, was that ' it has no frontiers of the mind.'
On the way from the Queen, I saw a great gathering of Extension Guides on stretchers and chairs all squeezed together into two small rooms, and I also called in at a Home for Blind and Mentally retarded children run by a Guider at Ghlin.
Then we rushed miles and miles in great haste to the quite lovely Chateau of Balael where we had tea with the Prince de Ligne. We found him a most charming person, whose whole aim seemed to be to serve as much and as well as possible. A part
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of his big house and the stables and out-buildings had been turned into dormitories and rooms for a whole host of small children who were in need of care and good feeding. AU through the exquisite Park, with its beautiful lake and avenue of trees, droves of happy children wandered at will, and wandered at the same time back to health. Most of them were too small to be Brownies or Cubs, but they were organised on the patrol system, and on that afternoon 200 of them ' marched past ' carrying little patrol flags!
What rallies we attended in Belgium! There was the aftemoon we spent with the British Guides, watching a short display, and afterwards sharing their supper out-of-doors, and in Antwerp later on, we saw more British Guides give an excellent skit on how they treated the Germans—it was so fine to think that they had kept their sense of humour through all the trying times. Then there was the G.C.B. rally of about 5,000 on a football ground, when each District took part in the displays that varied from exercises performed to music to first-aid races with improvised stretchers.
Perhaps the most moving gathering, however, was the one in Brussels where about 7,000 Guides of both Associations met in the ' Grand Place.' It was just wonderful to see that famous old square surrounded by the unique, ancient buildings, filled with alternate blue and beige ' cake slices,' radiating out from a central platform, with the Allied flags flying high overhead. Only Patrol Leaders and Seconds were allowed to take part in the ' March In ' from the surrounding streets, and they came pouring in from every corner of the Square, carrying their bright company colours and their national flags, and headed by three of our British Guide Intemational Service Team carrying the World Flag. These three stalwarts had come over from Holland in their lorry the day before to share in the celebrations, and it was a very gracious gesture on the part of the Belgian Rally organisers that they should have thus been given the place of honour on so very great an occasion.
Sandwiched between all these Rallies, I paid several visits to a Guider who was very ill in hospital. She had just returned from Buchenwald, where, in common with everyone else, she had been starved and brutally treated. When she was being stripped of all her possessions there, her own clothes, her little trinkets and personal treasures, she determined that there was at least one thing she would never part from, and that was her Guide badge-
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her Guide ' life ' as she called it—and so she hid it safely tucked away in the comer of her mouth.
On my second visit, sitting beside the frail, thin form in which only a flicker of life remained, I took her hand in mine and tried
to give her back her own courage in another way, tried to reinvigorate her with some of the strength that she and so many of her countrywomen and co-Europeans have poured out so generously on the Movement's behalf, and of which I have heard so much during my tours. As I talked, she slipped into a quiet sleep, and I crept noiselessly away, to learn later that she had rallied and the life, of which the doctors had despaired, was now safe.
Each of our European and Allied countries has suffered so much, and each in its own particular way, but certainly we in England were spared that dreadful nightmare of insecurity which dogged the lives of all the people in the Occupied Countries through the long, dark years of Nazi domination. Deportation became such a common thing that in talking of the past, the question ' How many of your family were deported ? ' is invariably asked in a strange matter-of-fact tone as if it had been an ordinary every-day occurrence, and quite the usual thing to happen. In the Antwerp Province which I visited, I learned that many Guiders had been included in the 800,000 deportees, and I also leamed that an area of 65 square miles had been so peppered with bombs, plus rockets, which had fallen short of their British targets, that 271,412 houses were damaged between October, 1944, and March, 1945 ; 5,410 people being killed and 83,208 rendered homeless.
The Commissaire of the Province, corresponding to one, of our County Lord Lieutenants, never gave in to the Germans. Listening in to England was an imprisonable offence, and radio sets were confiscated. But every evening his wee baby's pram was solemnly wheeled into the drawing room and the wireless set concealed in it turned on in time for the B.B.C. news! There are many tales like this, of the way the Germans were tricked under their very noses, but few stories are more pathetic than those told me of Guiders who rescued Jewish and other children from the Nazis and had big chests prepared each night .with the children's clothes in them, so that if the Gestapo arrived the little ones could be popped into the boxes until they had gone away again. Hearts must often have been in mouths when the enemy lived up to his name for thoroughness and went so far as
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to push their hands under the clothes and feel inside the beds to see if they were warm.
What else can I tell you of Belgium—of the ' Home Scout,' which is the Headquarters of both Scout and Guide Associations, the different branches of the Movement having their own rooms on separate floors ; of the Camp Fire at Antwerp that was held on the very site where one was set during the Scout and Guide cruise in 1938 ; of the talks and fun and stunts ; of the civic receptions and all the nice things the civic dignataries said about Scouts and Guides—and of the marvellous aftemoon we spent at the circus ?
Yes, it really was a circus, with a huge arena in which all kinds of shows and displays took place before a packed house. Then, after all these were over, we were led below ' to the place where the performing animals were usually kept and there we had a wonderful surprise. In each of the eighty stalls, patrols of the G.G.B. had arranged the most unique ' Patrol Comers,' each being decorated according to a particular scheme—one with leaves and ferns, another in Red Indian style, another as the fruits of the sea—and we walked round them all, amazed at the ingenuity and perfection with which they had been made. And on every stall, holding the central position of honour, was a picture of the Founder to whom they, and you, and I most of all, owe so much.
And so a ten-weeks' non-stop tour ended. Everywhere, throughout war-scarred Europe, I had been heartened and humbled and inspired by the splendid example of these sister Guides of ours, and I was proud and very content.
As I walked on to the airfield at Brussels I was handed a message that sums up all our hopes and dreams for the future, and I pass that message on to you that it may inspire you with the enthusiasm and the fiery will of your Belgian friends :—
Lady B-P, nous a apporte de vos nouvelles et a ouvert toutes les fenetres de noire pays stir les votres.
A noire tour nous travaillons avec ferveur a plus de comprehension et plus d'entente, afin de contribuer avec vous toutes a la reconstruction de la Paix Mondiale.
Nous attendous avec impatience le moment de reprendre contact avec vous, et vous envoyons, au travers du sourire lumineux de la Chief Guide, notre amine et de confiance dans l'avenir.
' Lady Baden-Powell,- you have brought us news and have opened the windows of our country towards yours. In our tum
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we will work with enthusiasm towards a greater understanding and co-operation, in order to contribute with you all to the recreation of World Peace.'
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