Leon Pinckaers (80) still lives in his childhood home in Mesch, the southernmost town in the Netherlands. "The Americans came across that meadow on the afternoon of September 12, 1944," he recalled, pointing out the window. "They were followed by a jeep and it drove straight across the river Voer."

The family hurried outside and shook hands with their liberators. Mother Pinckaers was perhaps the most relieved of all. She was a refugee from the Belgian town of Visé, which had been all but burnt to the ground in 1914 by the advancing Germans. In May 1940 she had seen how ten inhabitants of Mesch, including her own husband, were rounded up for execution by the Germans on suspicion of sabotage. The execution was cancelled at the last minute, and the village had been quiet since.

Before the family saw the first Americans there had been fighting on the Belgian-Dutch border a mile away from ten in the morning. "Later we could see the dead Germans lying in the beet field."

Leon Pinckaers doesn't recall any jubilant celebrations that day. The village was still very much on a war footing. The meadow where units of the 30th Infantry Division emerged on September 12 later served as an assembly point for American jeeps and trucks. Elsewhere broken German tanks littered the road. The erratic German V2 rockets were still coming overhead. Later an American plane crashed in the village.

Fodder for historians

There is a monument in front of the primary school in Mesch, commemorating it as the first Dutch town to be liberated from the Germans. But that day in September 1944 is still fodder for historians - professionals and amateurs alike. Because the town of Noorbeek, a few kilometres to the east, has a similar monument. And it was Noorbeek, not Mesch, that ended up in the history books as the first liberated town in the Netherlands.

"To her majesty queen Wilhemina," mayor Nahon of Noorbeek telegraphed at the end of the afternoon. "As the first town in Limburg province to be liberated, on September 12 at 5.30 p.m., the mayor and the people of Noorbeek send Your Majesty, the Royal Family and the little Princesses our sincerest wishes and we express our affection and loyalty. We eagerly await Your safe return back home."

Two-and-a-half hours later another telegram was sent by mayor Beckers of neighbouring Mheer. He must have been in contact with Nahon, because his text was almost literally the same.

But the local history association in Mheer remains adamant that it, and not Noorbeek, was the first liberated town. It has accused Noorbeek of jumping the gun on liberation. At the time when mayor Nahon sent his telegram to queen Wilhelmina they was still fighting on the outskirts of Noorbeek; when mayor Beckers sent his telegram Mheer was completely liberated.

The Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) in Amsterdam has so far refused to join the fight over which town was the first. "In Belgium there is a village with two different monuments to two different liberating armies. It is just too hard to pinpoint."

Supported by American newsreels

But Jef Wetsels, an 85-year-old amateur historian in Mesch, is not ready to give up yet. He says the Mesch claim is supported by American newsreels at the time.

Wetsels was living at his parents' farm in Moerslag at the time. "The liberation approached very slowly. On September 9 and 8 Liège [in Belgium] fell. You could hear the guns. On the 12th, just after I'd finished milking the cows and had my breakfast, I could heard gunfire coming from the direction of Mesch. That was something very special. You could actually hear the battle. Not prolonged artillery fire, but short machine gun exchanges, after which the soldiers went back for cover. "

That afternoon the Wetsels family spent in the farm's basement. "There was still a lot of shooting. A cow in the barn and another one in the meadow were killed by artillery shells. As soon as there was a lull in the fighting, we fled to the village of Moerslag, because it was safer there."

By evening the battle was over. "The Americans looked depressed. I thought it was fatigue at the time, but it must have been the uncertainty. They knew very well they were in the Netherlands. An officer asked us for Dutch cheese. I told him we didn't have any, but we gave him our own farm cheese instead."

In the course of the evening more Americans ("at least five- or six-hundred") were quartered in Moerslag. The Germans were still close. It wasn't until the next day, when the allied troops advanced further, that the Wetsels family flew the Dutch flag. It was a self-made flag: Jef Wetsels' sisters had washed the red, white and blue cloth separately and sewn them together to make up the Dutch tricolore.