Inscription in the “Fluwelen Grot”

Valkenburg was not liberated in one day because the advance of the US troops on the Geul brook came to a halt for a few days. As a result, between 14 and 17 September 1944, the front went along the Geul through Valkenburg. It was almost entirely evacuated during these liberation days. When elsewhere people went into a bunker or the basement, in Valkenburg they used of course the lime caves, those labyrinths in the soft limestone, which had been created over the centuries from the extraction of lime stones. These caves were in the liberated, southern part of Valkenburg.
In many places in the caves we find inscriptions like this one, scratched or with made charcoal, with the names of the people who have sheltered at this place.
Pierre Schunck