The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-05-19
Heroic Saga Reflects
 Belgian Hate Of Nazis


 column of dust some distance up the side road. Advance German forces. He will be overtaken before he can catch up with his unit.
 FOOLED NAZIS
 In an instant he changes his plans. Less than mile ahead there is sharp turn in the road, just at the crest of a hill. How well Jean Mason knows that turn. His fian- cee lives 10 miles down this road.
 If one skidded around this turn,
 just before the crist of the hill, you slid right off the sandy road into deep gully.
 Sergeant Mason heads his tank for the gully. At its bottom, the
 tank clankS to halt.
 When the Germans advance with
 in range, Sergeant Mason opens fire. By racing his tank backwards and forwards along the ravine, by changing the angle of his guns, by firing at almost superhuman speed, Sergeant Nassau fools the Nazi supermen into believing that his lone tank is a strong Belgian force. The Nazis halt, call for anti-tank guns and then heavy artillery before trying to go further.
 More than 12 hours later, half dead of exhaustion, his ammunition finally gone. Sergeant Mason or- ders the retreat. It is hopeless to stay here. He has already held up a regiment for an afternoon and a night.
 A German shell gets Sergeant Mason just before the tank clear ed the ravine. It falls right in the open turret. Miraculously, it does not kill Mason outright. Semi-con- scious most of the time, in mortal agony, he manages to reach an emergency air field a few miles ahead. When his comrades get to him, he is dead. But in his right hand he holds blood-soaked scrap of paper on which he had scrawled the name and address of a girl Nicole Vivler-his fiancee.
 It is now the end of 1940. Bel gium, along with Holland and France, has been swept away in the German mechanized flood tide.
 AS the noon train for Lille, chuffs out of the Brussels station, 8 fat, clustering old man bursts into a compartment. In it are two young men, beautiful girl in her early twenties, and German officer.
 Out of breath from running for the train, the fat man Hops ex- hausted into a corner, turns to one of the young men and asks him. in to open window. The man makes no reply. Instead, the young woman jumps up and opens it.
 The young men shrug their shoulders. Suddenly the truth dawns on the German. These are not Belgians. They are English. They do not understand a single word of French.
 TORTURE
 Now, for the first time, the young woman speaks. Yes. the men are British. They have to be considered as prisoners of war-prisoners of war, not spies-as their civilian clothes might suggest. She is Bel gium. It is she, and she alone, who is to blame. She alone sheltered them.
 The men have understood none of the conversation, except that their number is up. But it is not up. After a few days in jail, they are sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. They have been spared the gallows. They have been spared the torture the Nazis would certainly have ap- piled to spies. This torture, which the young men unknowingly escap- ed, is reserved for the girl.
 The girl was not put to death irn- mediately One day she may talk. thought the Germans. Today. May l944, 1t is not certain whether this once beautiful girl in her early twenties is still alive. When last seen she had been forced to work in German factory making poison gas any sort of protection against escaping fumes. She was her face lined ana yellow and drawn. toothless and without hair.
 What Is certain is that she never talked, never told how she met the British men. who she was working with. Always in her mind, helping her suffer torture in silence. was the picture of another Belgian's de- votion to his country.
 His name was Sgt. Jean Mason. Her name was Nicole Vivier.