DAPHNE, Alabama (GCN)— Growing up in German-occupied Belgium during World War II wasn’t easy, and for one Daphne resident it was a harsh reality.

From the small Belgium city of Willebroek, Georgette Turney was 13 years old when the war started. A Nazi prison camp was located just inside the city.

“There were never many Jews there,” said Turney of the prison camp. “They were sent back to Germany to the concentration camps there. The camp in Willebroek held mostly political prisoners.”

Turney told her stories to a group of local teens and parents on Feb. 6 at Daphne Public Library. The program was a part of their “World War II Remembered” series.

Life during the war was difficult. The Germans put in place curfews, Turney told the group.

“Sometimes we would have to be off the street by 4 p.m. Other times in was 7:30 p.m. But we couldn’t be out on the streets after curfew, or else we risked getting shot.”

There wasn’t a whole lot of food either. Potatoes, bread, and vegetables were her family’s main diet.

“I could always eat. (But) my mom would feed me and send me off to school, and I was hungry again an hour after I got there,” Turney said. “The bread there, it was horrible. My mom would have to use two bread knives: one to slice the bread with, and the other to get the slice off the first knife.

“Our coffee was roasted wheat and roasted acorns. That was the coffee ration we had. Meat was hard to come by,” she said. “My mom would save our daily meat ration up until she had enough to cook something with it. We had a garden though, so we always had plenty of vegetables.”

The conditions were hard, but the things Turney saw the Germans do to people sticks with her still.

“I saw them run the bayonets through an escaped prisoner. They shot him. I can still see him with his hands up,” said Turney. “Then they just ran the bayonets through him. They picked him and threw him like a varmint. No respect.”

While no one should have to live through what she did, Turney does think kids today are babied too much.

“Things happen and they say these kids are traumatized and need therapy. We didn’t need any psychologists. We had one at home: Mom. I do not regret going through that war. It was a good, good lesson.”

As the war started to end, Turney found herself in love with an American G.I. She came to America in 1946 and married him when she was 19 years old.

The rest of Turney’s family is still back in Belgium, but she says that she tries to go back every other year to see them, and they come here to visit her too. Turney and her husband were married for 53 years before he died.

“My husband was a huge baseball fan and the Cardinals were his team,” said Turney. “I cried and cried a few years ago when the Cardinals won the World Series. That’s the thing about men. First you start out pretending to like that stuff. Then 53 years later you’re crying because the Cardinals won the World Series.”

Turney said one thing is sure: she’ll never forget her time living in occupied Belgium, and the war that introduced her to her husband.