I read many riveting escape-and-evade accounts of airmen and of the Resistance networks organized to hide them and then send them on grueling treks across the Pyrenees to safety. But it was the people I met in France and Belgium who made the period come alive for me. They had lived it.
I was born in Belgium, but we moved to Kilburn when I was one, so 'Time Out' has always been in the background of my life.
WhatsApp provides phone-number-based messaging, and people asked, 'Isn't that what SMS is?' Yes, but SMS is expensive, antiquated, and what WhatsApp did was modernize and level that playing field. For example, in Europe, if France wants to talk to Belgium, it's extraordinary costly because of border and telecom charges.
My parents, of Belgian-German extraction, were Belgian nationals who had taken refuge in England during the war. They returned to Belgium in 1920, and I grew up in the cosmopolitan harbour city of Antwerp, at a time when education in the Flemish part of the country was still half French and half Flemish.
Born in England during the First World War, of Belgian parents with partly German roots, I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Antwerp, where I had the benefit of a classical education taught in the two national languages of Belgium: French and Dutch.
Social Democratic and trade union organs have approved of the illegal invasion of Belgium, of the massacre of suspected guerrillas, as well as their wives and children, as well as the destruction of their homes in various towns and districts.
We have been playing every summer on clay since I was five years old, so it is an easy surface for us in Belgium.
I was born in Belgium. I went to school in England and in Switzerland, then I came to America, so I really feel like I am a citizen of the world.
I still remember my days in Komarock estate, the days when it was all normal, and even though I am born and bred in Belgium, I could easily fit in and feel like any other Kenyan.
To be honest, I started playing for Belgium in the youth team stages. As a kid, Belgium was all I knew. We played football with my schoolmates as well as at the academy.
