(What made you become a volunteer?) “I come from a family of soldiers. My grandfather (a soldier) was buried in Liverpool. My uncle and my godfather retired as the lieutenant colonel of the Belgian army. We had it in the family.”
“Germany attacked Belgium. We wanted to escape to France. We did not succeed. We returned to Liège. There was nothing in the shops. The rations were 225 grams of bread per day, I was still developing, it was not enough for me. When I delivered telegraphs I earned 21.60 francs per day while the bread on the black market cost 20 or 25 francs. You had to spend the whole day working if you wanted something extra in addition to the rations.”
“I joined the army when I was about seventeen and a couple of months. I joined the 17th Division, went through all of Germany and all the way to Czechoslovakia (to the borders).”
Hubert Rauw was born on the 8th of October 1927 in the town of Liège, located in the east of the Walloon part of Belgium. His father died when Hubert was five years old. Ever since it was his mother who took care of him. His childhood was difficult, he had no time or funds to study. He had to start working at an early age, first he was a company courier, later he progressed to a regular mailman job. After Belgium was liberated by the United States army he voluntarily entered the 17th Airborne Division that was deployed together with the Third United States Army. In May 1945 his unit almost made its way to the Czechoslovakian borders and stopped somewhere in Bavaria. Following demobilisation he continued working for the post office. He spent his whole life as a post office worker, holding various positions in Liège and Brussels. In the last decade he enjoyed coming back to Pilsen to participate in liberation celebration events. He died on October 26, 2020.
