Attached is a picture taken a five years ago in our living room. It shows the FLAG mother sewed during World War Two in our temporary home in Bierges-lez-Wavre, Belgium.
Herbert H. Adams, 82nd AB, 504th PIR, Co D
Helen Najarian-Rusz, Nurse, 59th Evacuation Hospital.
Francis J. Gaudere, 30th ID, 119th IR, Headquarters Co
John E. McAuliffe, 87th ID, 347th IR
Mother, Alix U. de Kerchove, was a Belgian. She married Gustave R. de Marcken, who was raised and educated in Chicago, Illinois. They had nine (9) children all born U.S. citizens and registered at the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, Belgium.
Mother knew that our Flag had forty eight (48) stars and thirteen (13) stripes; however Dad was already in German concentration camp and could not tell her that the stars should be pointing up. Mother sewed the Flag piece by piece at night, when the German guard was asleep; she would hide the Flag under the floor in her bedroom, where she had loosen a floor board and where she pulled a small piece of furniture over the board so as to hide her work from the German SS, who would at times come to search our home.
None of us knew that she was making this Flag, we only heard about it on September third (3rd) 1944, when she heard that the American troops were approaching our home.
Submitted by Christian W. de Marcken, Associate
Lamar Soutter/Central Chapter (22)