TALE OF TWO WARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 205, 29 August 1940, Page 18

TALE OF TWO WARS.

A COUPLE RE-UNITED. THOUGHT EACH OTHER DEAD. (Air Mail) LONDON, July 20. Separated for 2C years by the Kaiser's invasion of Belgium in 1914 a Belgian couple have been reunited by Hitler's invasion of 1940. The husband is M. Engers, once an amateur musician and owner of a grocer's shop in Brussels. When he married in June, 1914, M. Engers composed a tune, dedicated to his bride, called "Love Song." On the outbreak of war he sent his bride off to Paris, promising to join her as soon as possible. A few days later Brussels was captured. M. Engers was denounced by spies as being ''violently anti-German" and thrown into prison. There he heard that his wife had been killed while on her way to France. After two years of captivity Nurse Cavell and Belgian Sisters of Mercy planned his escape. He was smuggled through the high-voltage electrified wire fence which the Germans had erected to stop escape across the Dutch frontier. He emigrated to America, and in 1936 returned to Brussels as the representative of a big American firm.

Then came Hitler's invasion. M. Engers hurried to Paris. There, with thousands of other refugees, he spent most of his time in cafes and restaurants waiting for news that the tide had turned.

One day as he sat near the swinging door leading to a restaurant kitchen he heard some one inside singing. It was his own "Love Song"—the song he had composed 20 years before for his bride. Waitresses gazed in amazement as he leaped to his feet and pushed Ilia way through the door, calling '-Helcne" at the top of his voice. Work in the kitchen was stopped. \t the far end of the room a greyishhaired woman of nearly CO stopped her singing and turned to see who was calling her name. Madame Engers nearly , fainted when she recognised her husband. She had been told that he was killed trying to escape from the Kaiser's prison camp.