The first years
My recollections of the beginning of the war are rather vague. All I remember is that there were a lot of discussions in our house about what was going on in the world
But then how much does a ten year old get involved in that kind of a discussion. At that age I had no idea what war would actually mean to our country, to us as a family, or to me personally.
But then there came the day that war actually broke out. All we heard were street rumours and a very short announcement from our government on the radio. At that time there really was no reporting of any kind as to what actually was happening.
I can remember expecting great and terrible things to be occurring on that day, but the funny thing was that everything was very quiet, and there was not anything happening at all. There were no bombardments and no soldiers marching into our city and we were really not aware of anything even vaguely resembling war.
And so it was not until a few days later that my Dad told us that we could expect to be occupied by the German army today. Well, at least that sounded like real news and we could expect to see some real excitement on this day.
So my best friend Harm and I decided to head into the city to see what was going on. I should perhaps explain that my home town, the city of Sneek, is a very old city which has a system of canals surrounding the city proper, more or less like a moat around a castle. And as we were living in what may be termed the suburbs, we had to cross a bridge over the canal in order to go to the actual city.
Well anyway, as we crossed this bridge we noted a lot of activity in front of a distillery. Some men were rolling big barrels, obviously containing liquor, to the water's edge and then were allowing the contents of those barrels to drain into the canal .
Apparently the city fathers had issued warnings that the barbaric German soldiers were expected to pillage the city and rape all the women. So in order to avoid that the soldiers would get the opportunity to get drunk, which of course would make things even worse, it was thought best to get rid of all the hard liquor in the city.
Well, of course Harm and I had to see what was going on, and just as we came upon the scene, the men were in the process of emptying a barrel of Advocaat, which is a sort of eggnog with about a 30% alcohol content. We joined the crowd and quickly managed to push ourselves to the front, where we knelt at the waters edge, right next to the barrel being emptied, and thus were able to put our cupped hands right under the spout of the barrel and unnoticed by most people present we were able to gulp quite a bit of that delicious advocaat. I don't really believe that we became anywhere near drunk, but after a while we certainly were not feeling any pain.
However as the day wore on it became apparent that the German soldiers were not anywhere near the city. And so on this beautiful day in May 1940, while the citizens of Sneek were expecting the ravages of war and we were just 10 years of age, we had our first taste of hard liquor. But in any event, even if the German army had entered the city that day, they would not have had the chance of getting drunk on the liquor from that distillery.
I believe it was two days later when the first German soldiers finally did make it to our city. They were a grimy dirty looking lot and they were obviously extremely tired. I remember one of them leaning against a panzer wagon, he was really only a young boy, probably not much older than 18, and the first thing I noticed was that he was crying. His face was very dirty, but that could also have been from the charcoal used as a sort of camouflage. His tears made his face look very streaky, and to us, as young boys, it was funny that a soldier would stand there crying with a rifle in his hands and just after they had overrun and captured our fair city.
But then we heard a little later that a fierce battle was taking place about 50 miles west from our city between the Dutch and the German armies, where apparently many German soldiers had already lost their life. It was then that we realised that the young German soldier had good reason to cry, he was obviously very scared. We knew of course that these German soldiers were our enemies, but at 10 years of age one does not really know how to distinguish between friend and foe in that kind of a situation.
Anyway I did feel very sorry for this German soldier and deep down in my heart I wished him well. We of course never did see him again and to this day I have no idea what became of him, perhaps he did get killed in the big battle at the Afsluit dike.
The next day we saw a battalion of the elite Waffen SS corps marching into the city. It was truly a sight to behold, these soldiers knew how to march and they sang the most wonderful marching songs as they marched into the city. Their uniforms were absolutely splendid, and all in all it was quite a show. Especially for boys our age who had only ever seen soldiers in the drab old uniforms of the Dutch army.
We were most certainly impressed, and were even more impressed when a cavalry regiment came into view where the soldiers were all riding on beautiful horses. What a show it was! Truly hard for little boys to imagine that these people were actually our enemies, but of course that was exactly why this type of show was being put on.
One thing was for sure though, the German soldiers were extremely disciplined and all the fears that the citizens had regarding the barbaric ways of the conquering army were obviously not warranted. As a matter of fact during the first year of the war we were really not aware of a lot of friction between the citizenry and the occupying army.
Especially for us as ten year old boys everything seemed to be going pretty well along the same lines as before. School was still the same, although some of the subjects we studied were changed. History lessons all of a sudden were more about the Third Reich and Hitler, and we now had to learn the German language exclusively, where before we were learning French, English, and German. But otherwise we really did not notice a whole lot of difference.
However, about a year later, a public school at the end of our street was requisitioned by the German army and turned into barracks, so now all of a sudden we had the German army almost right on our doorstep and we became more aware of the fact that we were an occupied country. But as boys we were extremely fascinated by what the soldiers were doing and we would march with them as they were marching through the city, always singing their beautiful German songs, and we would go with them whenever they were holding exercises, either in the field or in the city.
One exercise that really fascinated us was when they were holding war games in the city, and were conducting a house to house and street to street battle with dummy bullets and hand grenades. It most certainly paid to be careful around these war games though, because although the bullets were not real but made out of wood, I can remember being shot in the leg with one of those wooden bullets, witch left me with a nasty looking bruise on my thigh and splinters of the red painted wood stuck in my pant leg.
All through these exercises we were always treated well by the soldiers, and often shared their rations and or chocolate bars with them. Had my father known what we were doing, I am sure he would not have given his blessing, but on the other hand I am reasonably sure that he heard from neighbours and relatives what we were up to, but he never told us that we could not go.
Then, almost overnight, things started to change for the worse. New, more aggressive troops moved into the school and all of a sudden there were no more friendly Germans. One morning we awoke to find our street completely blocked off, machine guns at each end of the street with real ammo and soldiers sprawled on their belly behind the gun. Other soldiers were doing a house to house search for what turned out to be radios, which the citizens were not allowed to own or listen to.
Unbeknown to me, my parents also had a radio stashed in the attic of our house on which they would listen to the BBC long after I had gone to bed. But although our house was searched from top to bottom in that raid, no radio was discovered, and I found out later that we were just about the only family left on the street with a radio. I guess we became pretty popular after that, but unfortunately that popularity did not last very long.
It was perhaps a month or so later that again the street was blocked off as if a raid was taking place, but now the soldiers headed straight for our house and marched right up to the attic and confiscated the radio. I really don't know whether my father and mother were punished in any way for having that radio in the house. However the one thing I do know is that from that day forward we were not allowed to go to the barber on the corner any more. Apparently he was a sympathiser and collaborator of the Germans and was presumed to be the one that gave the information regarding our radio to the German army commander. A real nuisance for us, because now we were forced to go to a barber on the other side of town.
The funny thing is that the collaborator barber turned out to be an uncle of my good friend Peter Lenters here in Canada. But anyway the barber was being shunned by everybody in the neighbourhood and pretty soon he was forced to close the barber shop, as there was no more business to be had for him. We never did find out whether he in fact was the person who gave the radio secret to the Germans, but it became very clear that he was a collaborator when he showed up in the uniform of the hated Landwacht, which was actually a volunteer army of collaborators.
As time went on there were more and more raids of the kind described above. But unfortunately they now were becoming a lot more serious, because the Germans now were after the young men between the ages of 18 and 25. They were being rounded up to be forced into the army or to work in the factories in Germany. The young men had been ordered to register at the army headquarters but of course very few of them had actually shown up voluntarily.
And now because of these raids it became necessary for the young man in that age bracket to go underground, and so my oldest brother Gerry was also forced to leave home. He moved around a bit from farmer to farmer and finally settled with some people about 25 miles from our home town in a little village. All through the rest of the war I don't think I ever saw him again, although we would hear from him from time to time, and my father would occasionally visit him.
The second boy in the family was my brother Bram, who was then about 15 years old, and as he was an apprentice in a bakery, he was recruited to work in the central bakery. By that time all the regular food supplies had pretty well dried up, and all the bakers in the city had been forced to close their businesses for lack of supplies. But together they were allowed to create this central bakery, where only some terrible brown bread was baked, and as it was baked without the benefit of any yeast, it was truly terrible stuff to eat.
All other food stuffs were now also becoming more difficult to obtain, as most of it was taken by the Germans to feed their huge army. The shelves in the stores were pretty well bare and people were forced to go directly to the farmers for their food supplies.
And because of all these shortages an illegal bartering system developed among the citizenry, whereby people would exchange foodstuffs and other necessities among themselves. The German army tried to control all this activity and as most of this trading took place in the evening hours after dark, they instigated an eight O'clock curfew thereby forcing people to remain in their homes.
It became very dangerous for adults to be on the street after eight O'clock as the Germans would very often shoot before asking questions. And so it happened that one evening after the eight O'clock curfew my father asked me to sneak through the back alleys to a family friend about two city blocks away to exchange some salt for matches.
I was forced to go through the back alleys as German soldiers were patrolling the streets, and although they probably would not have arrested a little boy like me, they would certainly not have allowed me to walk around on the streets. But that was really no problem for me because we got used to sneaking around like that after hours and I actually found great excitement in doing that.
As I left the house I pocketed a dynamo operated flashlight, which also happened to be the only flashlight we had. It was pitch dark outside as there were of course no street lights because the whole city was blacked out so that the allied bombers would not be able to find targets for their bombs, and besides that, there was no electricity any more in our city anyay.
I left by the back door and walked very quietly through a very narrow alley in absolute darkness, not even a little moonlight or star light, as the skies were heavily overcast. I just squeezed my flashlight very sparingly once every few steps, just to see where I was going. But every time I did that, the sound of the whining dynamo would echo through this narrow alley, and I certainly did not wish to alert any patrolling German soldier of my presence.
I came near the street I was forced to cross, and of course pocketed the flashlight again, just in case there were soldiers on the street. I tip toed to the end of the alley and very carefully stuck my head around the corner and found myself face to face with a German soldier, who barked: "Gieb mir das licht!" (Give me that light). He obviously had heard the whine of the flashlight, but I reacted by saying: "What light?" And with that he poked a pistol in my ribs and repeated his order: "Gieb mir das licht". Well, under those circumstances I really did not feel that I had too much choice, so I handed over the only flashlight that we possessed, and ran back home through the dark alley.
As I opened the door my father asked: "How come you are back already?" I told him my story with tears streaming down my face, but instead of finding sympathy, his face grew darker and darker, and he literally exploded when he found out that the German soldier had taken the flashlight. His anger however was not so much directed at the soldier as at me. "How could you hand that flashlight over to that Kraut?" was his question. And when I explained that the soldier had poked his pistol in my ribs, he got even more livid. Since when do they shoot little boys? Why do you think we send you out at this late hour? Grown-ups can get shot but they don't shoot little boys yet!
He was raging on like that for a while and then sent me to bed. The next morning my father went to the German commander to see if somehow he could get the flashlight back, but apparently found little sympathy and we never did get the flashlight back. My father in later years always claimed that he never really was angry at me for losing the flashlight in that manner, but it sure appeared to me that I should have risked my life for that stupid flashlight.
Chapter 2
Things are getting worse
It became obvious now that the war was not going so smooth any more for the German army. We heard that the Russian front especially was giving Hitler some real headaches.
We now saw the first Russian prisoners of war in our city, and they were put to work as a chain gang, building fortifications in and near our city. We would try to get near those Russian prisoners but the German soldiers would not allow that, and so we could only watch them from a distance.
Things were really getting tough now for the citizenry and it also became impossible for us to go to school in the winter of ‘43-44 because there was just no more fuel to heat the school. So now we were free to roam the streets all day, and we were instructed by our normally very law abiding parents, that we should steal whatever we could from the German army, especially food for the family and fuel to heat the house.
However, we were also told to be extremely careful as the Germans were very much becoming aware of the damage the young kids could do. Well, Harm and I were certainly doing our very best on both counts, and one day we were snooping around the railroad switching yard, which just a few days before had been bombed by an Allied plane. Things were really in a mess there, and as we snooped around some railroad cars which were still in tact, we opened the door of one of the cars and lo and behold, there was a pile of coal the likes of which we had not seen for several years.
We realized immediately that this was a very valuable discovery, and that somehow we had to get that coal home without getting spotted by the Germans. But how? We carefully closed the door of the car again and made our way out of the railroad yard. Just as we were climbing over the fence a German soldier spotted us and called out for us to halt, which of course we ignored. We heard a couple of bangs and then a whizzing sound, which made us quickly realize that we were being shot at, and that sure made us hurry over the fence.
And now we faced a huge dilemma; how were we supposed to get that coal out of there without getting shot. Harm said: "We have to do it very casually as if it was something that we were supposed to do, because if we try to do it sneakily we are not going to make it". So after some deliberation we decided to go back with a hand cart and we also took a white sheet and a pot of red paint with us.
We pushed that hand cart through the city and marched right into the railroad yard. The German soldiers were standing there looking at us, but nobody stopped us, so we marched right on. And as soon as we were out of sight behind a building we headed of course straight for "our" railroad car. With our bare hands we scooped the coal on to the hand cart, and when the cart was full we placed the white sheet over the coals and tucked the sheet in on the sides.
We then painted a large red cross on the sheet, as we thought that it was a symbol that even the Germans would respect. We again pushed our now fully loaded cart past the German soldiers and although they again sort of stared at us, nobody made a move to stop us.
We marched right through the city again, past the school on the corner, where a German soldier stood on guard, and into our street. We stopped first in front of Harm's house and called his father out to show him our great success. Harm's father, together with another neighbour, came out to have a look, and of course they got all excited when they saw what we had in that hand cart.
Suddenly the neighbour whispered: "Oh no, here comes a German soldier!". And sure enough one of the guards strolled over and demanded to see what was under the sheet. The neighbour took the German by the arm and said in German: "If you leave us alone, you can have Christmas dinner at my house." Well, of course those soldiers were also very lonely in a foreign country at Christmas time, and this soldier immediately accepted the offer and turned away to leave us to the task of emptying the hand cart.
But the ultimate result was that our neighbour, who by now of course had earned a full share of our bounty, ended up having a German soldier at his Christmas dinner table. But at least we all had warm houses that Christmas, and Harm and I were the big heros of the day.
Now things were getting worse by the day, and it became increasingly difficult for us to find enough fuel to keep at least one room heated and have enough fuel to do the cooking. Every morning we would go to the old gas factory, where, before the war, gas had been manufactured from coal. Now there was no other activity there than people sifting through the old ashes for pieces of coke. It was a dirty and very cold job as one had to use bare hands to find the pieces of coke hidden in the ashes. But, at least in the beginning, we usually could find enough pieces of coke to keep a fire going for a couple of hours.
We did not have a regular coal burning cooking stove any more, because that would have used way too much fuel. Instead we had a very little stove, which was called the little devil and it enabled us to burn the least possible amount of fuel while keeping the pot very close to the fire. Food supplies in the city had pretty well disappeared, but my father somehow managed to keep us reasonably well fed.
I can remember one instance when he had traded a truck tire for a nice fat pig, and as the pig needed to be butchered, my uncle the butcher was called upon to perform that task. However my uncle managed to talk my dad into trading the pig for two sheep, and that seemed like a pretty good deal to my dad, as there is obviously a lot more meat on two full grown sheep than on one little pig. So that is how we ended up having to eat mutton, which we learned to hate with a passion. The sheep were apparently pretty old and the smell was just absolutely terrible whenever my mother was preparing a meal of that mutton. To this very day I will not eat lamb's meat and can not even stand the smell of it being prepared.
But at least we were eating better than most of our neighbours. By now it also had become one of my chores to go every evening to a couple of farmers in nearby villages to buy milk. My father had made the original deal with the farmers, but I had to go and get it, because if the German soldiers were to stop an adult they would usually confiscate whatever foodstuffs were found on the person, but somehow kids my age could get away with almost anything.
Then later on in the evening we had to make butter from the cream my mother skimmed off the milk. My mother would place the sour cream in a glass jar and we then sat with the jar in our lap, shaking the jar while we were either talking or reading a book.
The room we lived in was perhaps 12 by 10 feet and heated by a stove in the corner. We had of course no television and also no radio, no electricity and no gas. The light in the room came from a carbide lantern standing on the table, which provided a hellish white light on the rare occasions that it was working well, but most of the time it was sputtering away with once in a while a pretty good explosion, And of course carbide gas provides an awful smell when it is being burned, so with five people and a smelly lantern in that small room the air was none to pure.
But somehow I remember those evenings as the cosiest we ever had, and I believe that we grew much closer as a family during that period of time.
Of course, whenever you shake a bottle of sour cream there is a certain amount of pressure being built up in the bottle, and we therefore once in a while would have to remove the stopper to let the pressure dissipate. One evening however I was shaking away without really paying attention to the job, and all of a sudden the stopper flew of the bottle with a big bang, and of course the sour cream and the butter was flying through the room. Just imagine the mess that makes in a small room. I most certainly was not the most popular guy that evening.
It was also during this time that my father developed a stomach ulcer and he was suffering a lot of pain. I can remember that in the evening he would very often have to drape himself over the stove, because the heat would alleviate the stomach pain somewhat. One day I brought home some German ration cookies, which we had somehow obtained from one of the soldiers, and my father discovered that at least he could eat those cookies without it creating a lot of pain in his stomach. So he asked me if it was possible for me to get a hold of more of those ration cookies.
I explained to him that the only way I could get a fairly good supply was to have something that I could offer in trade. And the one thing that we knew the Germans wanted was packages of cigarette paper. They still had some tobacco but lacked the paper to roll cigarettes. Well I don't know how he did it but my father came up with a single package of cigarette papers, and now it was up to me to do the rest.
So I took that package of cigarette papers to the school/barracks on the corner of the street and explained my mission to the guard on duty.
He told me to wait while he went inside, and pretty soon another soldier came out with his cap full of ration cookies, and motioned me to a corner behind the fence, where he showed me the cookies. I explained to him that the value of the cigarette paper was at least two capfuls and that one capful just was not enough. He agreed and let me fill my pockets with the cookies that he had and then went back inside to get more. But the moment he was out of sight I turned and ran home with my pockets full of cookies and the cigarette paper firmly in hand.
The next day there was of course another guard and I showed up again with my package of cigarette papers and the whole thing was repeated exactly as the first time. I pulled the whole thing off twice more after that with about a weeks time between episodes, after which my father forbade me to try it again for fear that I would get caught. But my dad sure had a lot of ration cookies and through it all we retained ownership of the cigarette paper. As they say: "All is fair in love and war", and this story was told many times by my father and has created a lot of laughs in our family and among friends and neighbours.
My father, who was a truck driver before the war and was still able to work during the first couple of years, had by now lost his truck to the Germans, as they were confiscating all modes of transportation. He was still doing some work for the large laundry plant he was working for, but there really was not enough for him to do as the soap supplies were also disappearing.
So now he was performing odd jobs and one of those jobs was riding a hearse. Of course by now the only hearses they had were the kind that had to be drawn by horses, But as my father had grown up on a farm and was a real good horseman, this was exactly up his alley.
Often the corpses had to be delivered out of town to one of the surrounding villages when the people had died in the city hospital, and that provided my father with a fantastic opportunity to smuggle foodstuffs into the city. He would drive the hearse with the corpse inside to the village and come back with meat and potatoes and vegetables and what have you in the area usually reserved for the casket, without arousing the suspicion of the German soldiers.
One day he had to make one of those trips again, and after the corpse was loaded in the hearse he came home for some lunch before setting out on the road. He parked the hearse with two horses in front of our house and ordered my brother Bram to hold the horses. He instructed Bram to remain in front of the horses, because otherwise the horses might bolt. Well, after a while Bram decided that this standing in front of the horses was really nonsense and he stepped to the side to stroke the horses, but of course also to show off to the kids watching that he had the situation well in hand.
What it was I don't know, but something spooked those horses and they took off with the hearse in tow. It sure was a sight; two of those big horses and that hearse flying down the street. Luckily our milkman who lived at the end of our street got a hold of the reins and brought the whole thing to a halt. Sure was a wild last ride for whoever was in that hearse, but luckily the casket and the body did not get spilled on the street.
One night in the winter of '43-'44 I could not go on my bike to get the milk from the farmers because there was too much snow on the road. But as the milk by now was an absolute necessity, it was decided that I should walk and pull a small sleigh to hold the milk bottles.
My sister Annie who was then probably about nine years of age, wanted to come with me as she liked riding on the sleigh. We set out at about four O'clock in the afternoon, and the snow seemed to have tapered off somewhat. My mother had been somewhat reluctant to let my little sister go with me, but she was finally persuaded that the weather was clearing up and as we had to go only about six miles out of town, it would be alright. We of course did not have the benefit of weather forecasts on TV or radio, but the sky seemed to be clearing.
However as we reached the outskirts of the city, the snow seemed to become heavier again but it was not very cold and we enjoyed walking through the snow and Annie was taking great delight in riding on the sleigh from time to time.
We arrived at the farmer who while filling our bottles with milk cautioned me to hurry home as it would soon be dark and he had the feeling that we were in for a real snow storm. As we got back on the road I realized immediately that the wind had picked up and was straight in our faces. It also had turned bitter cold and very dark, and pretty soon Annie began to complain that she was cold.
The snow became heavier by the minute and pulling the sleigh became a real chore. Annie had to help me pull the sleigh as it was loaded down with some ten bottles of milk. After a while the wind was driving the snow in our faces and practically blinding us and we were still some four miles from home. Just imagine walking in a snow storm with a little girl and no light whatsoever. After a while I had no idea where we were, and there was not another soul to be seen on that road.
Annie, instead of being my little helper, became a real burden. I had to literally drag her and that sleigh through the snow. The snow was now so thick that I only knew where the road was by looking at the trees that lined the road. Well, we finally made it home very late, and of course my parents were very worried but they could not even go looking for us, because of the very strictly enforced curfew. Adults caught on the streets after curfew time were immediately arrested or in some cases even shot on the spot. And so there was great relief when we did come home, and from that day on I refused to take my little sister on any of my trips to the farmers.
The shortage of fuel became even more acute and people started to cut down the trees in the city in order to keep at least one room heated in their homes. We roamed the city and gathered whatever wood we could find, but pretty soon we were also forced to cut down the trees in our street. Of course the city fathers together with the Germans were trying to stop this cutting down of the trees in the city, and trying to tell people that they should go outside the city and into the forests to look for fire wood. But the people did not have any means of transportation any more and therefore had no way of getting the wood home from any distance.
And so, especially the smaller trees in the city became a convenient target for the woodcutters. Pretty soon all the trees in our street and the neighbouring streets were chopped down, but right in front of the school turned barracks stood this lonely tree. We had been eyeing that tree for some time, but as it was almost right in front of the guard house it was practically impossible for us to chop it down.
But desperation was again the mother of invention here, in the evening just before the eight O'clock curfew the kids in our street very often played a game of hide and seek, and Harm and I came to the conclusion that perhaps we could use that game, which was played in full view of the German guards, as the cover needed to cut down that tree.
The German guards were required to patrol the school from end to end, and as the school was on the corner they would walk from the guard house to the end of the school, then back to the guard house and on to the other end of the school. The walk to each end of the school would take perhaps 2 to 3 minutes, and of course we could only use the time when the guard was walking away from us. We gathered a bunch of kids to play the game and got hold of a handsaw. The kids were all told what the plan was, and as we pretended to play hide and seek, each kid would take a turn to hide behind that tree for a few minutes. The hand saw was placed in the grass under the tree, and each kid was required to make a few strokes with the saw when the guards back was turned.
The other kids were of course instructed to be fairly noisy so that the sound of the saw could not easily be heard by the guard, but not so noisy as to arouse suspicion. It probably took about an hour of this sawing and playing to cut through most of the tree, and now we were ready to make that last cut and then had to take the tree down and remove it in the time the guard walked away from us.
We planned the game so that all the kids gathered around the tree, talking rather loudly about the fact that one of the kids had not played the game fairly. In that commotion it was easy for Harm, who was the strongest among us, to make the last few desperate strokes with the saw. The tree was beginning to fall as the guard returned towards the guard house, and we actually had to hold the tree up to avoid suspicion. Then as the guard got past his guard house and started his walk to the other end of the school, we ripped that tree down and with all of us ran away with the tree. I have often wondered what the German soldier must have thought when all of a sudden the tree had disappeared.
Well, we of course had to share that tree with all the other kids and it did not provide each of us with any great amount of fire wood, but we were always very proud of the fact that we had pulled the whole thing off.
CHAPTER 3
The end is in sight
The war was now entering what we thought was the last phase, and everybody was now absolutely convinced that the Germans were losing the war very rapidly. The Allied armies had advanced as far as the Rhine river and we expected to be liberated almost any day.
The Allied planes were now flying over our city almost every night on their way to Germany. The Germans would fire their anti aircraft guns and that would cause the fighter planes to come down and attack those gun emplacements. Practically every night, weather permitting, it was the same exciting fireworks show. .
The first time we saw one of those attacks everybody climbed on the roof of their house in order to get a better view.
My father himself climbed on the roof of our house and allowed us up there with him. Well, all of us very quickly learned that standing on a roof was not the smartest thing to do during an air attack, as the allied pilots had no way of discriminating between the enemy and us. And of course, with the city totally blacked out, their attacks were not always very accurate. So as a result some people actually were shot off the roof of their own house and several houses ended up with bullet holes in the roofs..
The German army now also became much more aggressive against the population. This was caused mostly by the activities of the underground army which through the years had become a force to be reckoned with. I don't really know whether my dad ever got involved in the underground, because that was of course very hush hush, although I suspect that he did in a somewhat limited way. It were the younger men between the ages of eighteen and say thirty five years of age who really did get involved in sabotage and attacks against the German army..
But even the younger children like myself were used to deliver papers for the underground press. Papers like that could not just be tossed on to the front porch, but had to be hand delivered very secretively..
One morning we heard the news that the German army was going to execute five prominent citizens from our city in revenge for the killing of a high ranking German officer who had been ambushed by the underground army the night before. And that day, just a few blocks from our home, those five men were lined up against a wall and shot without the benefit of a trial. The city was in an uproar after that happened but instead of being intimidated by this cruel revenge, the underground army became even more aggressive, which of course, in turn, served to make things even tougher for the general population. .
The Germans were hunting the members of the underground everywhere, and so one day as I left a public washroom, a man walking out with me was shot dead by a German officer. The German officer was shooting from a distance of more than one hundred feet, so I guess I was pretty lucky to be alive after that..
They even went as far as raiding church services. One Sunday morning as we were about to leave the church, we found all the exits blocked by heavily armed German soldiers and all the grown-ups had to identify themselves. Several men were arrested that morning and shipped off to concentration camps and some were even killed without benefit of a trial..
One afternoon we had gone skating and came upon a group of boys, a few years older than us, who had a rather animated discussion with a couple of German soldiers. We joined the group and listened in on the discussion. The subject of the discussion was of course the war, and the Germans were being told by these boys that they were about to lose the war, which made them respond rather angrily that Hitler would come up with another secret weapon, and that the Allied forces would be driven out of Europe. The boys laughed at that and one of the boys was trying to be really funny, I guess, and called out to the Germans as he skated away: "Auf wiedersehn im Englisch Concentratie kamp" Which translated means " We'll see you in an English concentration camp" The German soldiers became livid and tried to catch up to the boy but of course the Dutch boy was much faster on his skates than the German soldiers and easily skated out of harms way. .
However that evening, just before the eight O'clock curfew time, we walked on the main street of our city and there were also saw the same boys from that afternoon again. All of a sudden out of nowhere appeared this German soldier, he grabbed the boy who had made that statement about the concentration camp, and pulled him in an alley where he shot him dead. We did not actually witness the killing but certainly heard the shot, and all we could do is run home in a panic. .
One day we had another raid in our street and now the Germans were after all the men between the ages of 18 and 65, as they were needed to build tank traps and other fortifications against the advancing Allied armies. My father was then probably about 43 or 44 years of age, and most certainly would be taken by the Germans. My mother decided that there was only one line of defence and that was to act as if he was gravely ill. So my dad crawled into bed and I was told to stand by the front door and report to my mother where the soldiers were in the street. So I would softly call out from time to time where the soldiers were, something like; "They are now at the Smith's" or "They are now at the Jones'. .
They came nearer and nearer and now they were at the next door neighbours. The men they had rounded up were being lined up in the street, and I really had no doubt that my father would join them very soon. As the soldiers were about to enter our house I called up to mom: "Here they come!" My mother had placed all kinds of medicine bottles on a table next to the bed and my father was lying there as if he was about to die. He was apparently as white as a sheet, which was sort of understandable under the circumstances.
A German officer marched up the stairs and my mother stood at the top of the stairs with a finger to her lips and whispered to the officer:" My husband is in here but he has what we believe to be a contagious disease." Germans at that time where particularly afraid of catching a contagious disease, so the officer took one look at my father and turned around and left our house. We laughed about that event quite a bit. And the funniest thing was that my father had, before he had climbed into bed, taken our only good bicycle apart and placed all the parts under the mattress. So if they had taken him they probably would have found the bike too, which was by now a rather hot item for them. .
One day we had a bicycle raid, as by now the only means of transportation for the German army were bicycles and horse drawn wagons. There just was no way for them to obtain any more gasoline because the Allied planes were almost always overhead and shooting at anything that moved on the road or on the water ways. Our street was again blocked off during this raid and the soldiers were searching all the houses for bicycles which were in reasonably good condition with good rubber tires. Our only bike, accept for the good one in hiding, by then had solid tires made out of rope, and therefore was not of great value to the Germans. But almost all the people had one or two good bikes stashed away in their attics and some even had them buried in their backyards. This time the search was extremely thorough and the soldiers were pretty lucky in finding quite a few bikes in very good condition. The soldiers were even having a good time doing this search and we saw them racing the bikes they found on the flat roofs of some of the row houses..
The confiscated bicycles were eventually brought out on to the street and we as kids were forced to ride one bike and hold another by the handlebars and so pedal them to a central gathering point. It was thus that I was also forced to take two bikes and as I was pedalling along with lots of people standing on the sidewalks watching us, I saw my uncle Gerrit who when he saw me coming with my two bikes called out: "let one go!". And so when I came to where he stood I let my second bike go and he grabbed it and quickly hustled it in to his butcher shop. The Germans never caught on to the fact that I had started with two bikes but arrived with only one bike, so instead of losing a bike we gained one that day. But to this day I really don't know whether my uncle kept that bike or if he eventually returned it to us..
One day as we were walking in our neighbourhood a large but friendly German shepherd dog started following us around, and it eventually followed me home. I asked my mother if I could keep that dog but the answer of course was negative, as we did not have any food to spare for a dog. But at least I was allowed to feed the dog some table scraps that day, and was at the same time firmly instructed to get rid off it after that. The dog started following me around no matter where I went, and with that dog following me I ran into a cousin of mine who asked me if that was my dog.
When I explained to her what had happened she offered to buy the dog from me and a deal was struck for a pair of shoes for my mother and a couple of guilders for me. I have no idea what my cousin ended up doing with that dog, but I do know that many a dog and cat was sold to people in the big cities, where people were literally starving to death, and dogs and cats were slaughtered and sold as meat to these unsuspecting and hungry people. Dogs and cats were not save anywhere any more because large sums of money could be obtained especially for cats, because once they were butchered they could easily pass for rabbits, and as rabbit meat they were of course in great demand in cities like Amsterdam. Anyway, I never saw that dog again and suspect that it may have ended up on somebody’s dinner table..
The allied armies where now stuck at the river Rhine and they would certainly not be able to advance any further that winter. So things were looking terribly bad for the population of the Northern provinces. Food became extremely difficult to obtain and even the German soldiers were now becoming fairly desperate. Nothing was safe from them now and we even had raids now for any items of copper and bronze, as they were needed for the manufacturing of bullets or whatever. The allied planes over head were becoming more aggressive and they were now shooting at almost everything that moved..
A new invention had made it possible for old trucks to run on gasses produced from burning wood, and we began to see a few of the real old trucks on the road trying to bring some needed supplies in to the city.
On the back of the truck would be a sort of large stove, in which wood was being burned and as it was a closed unit all smoke and gasses were then forced into a sort of carburator, and the truck motor would then run on that gas..
But unfortunately the British fighters could not see the difference between those civilian owned trucks and the German army trucks and therefore they would very often strafe those trucks just as unmercifully as they did the Germans. One day Harm and I were walking along the road near our city when one of those trucks was approaching. We were standing there watching the truck go by when all of a sudden a fighter plane swooped down and started firing on the truck. We dove into a ditch and from there watched the truck being shot to pieces. .
The civilian driver jumped out of the truck and tried to make a run for it, but unfortunately he was shot down within a few steps of the truck. When it was all over we took a look at the wrecked truck which turned out to be empty, but I will never forget the awful experience of finding a piece of a thumb on the front seat of that truck, which had obviously belonged to that driver who lay now dead on the road..
As a family we were now employed by the rope factory in our city, and our job consisted ot of the unravelling of old pieces of rope, At the plant they would take old rope and cut it in to about two feet length, and our job then was to unravel all the single strands from these pieces, so that the plant could make these strands into tires for the bikes. All the bikes with real tires had by now been confiscated by the German army and new tires were of course no longer produced. But with these rope tires on our bikes we could at least still get around..
The work we did could be done at home, and we were working mostly outside, or when the weather was inclement we worked in the bicycle shack behind our house. I don't really know whether we actually got paid for doing the work or if it was being done for the common good, but I do remember that it was hard work and that the rope strands would cut into your fingers in a very painful way.
I was also still getting milk from the farmers every day, but that journey became more dangerous every day. And I am sure that my mother did a lot of worrying about me. But we needed the milk now more than ever, and I therefore still made my daily journey. Very often the British fighters or Tommies as we called them, were flying above me and that was rather scary because if there happened to be a larger vehicle around they were likely to come swooping down and strafe the road with their machine guns. My bicycle with the solid rope tires was extremely uncomfortable to ride, but at least I still had a bike while many people were just walking on the road, some pushing baby buggies or pulling some home made cart. .
Most of the people on the road were now either children or very old people, because anybody who could work was forced into labour camps or shipped off to the ammunition plants in Germany. One day they even arrested my older brother Bram, who was then only just 17 years of age, He had been working the night shift in the central bakery and was on his way home when he was arrested just as he was crossing the bridge to our part of town.
Somebody came to our house to report that Bram was held in a garage by the German soldiers, and as my father could not really go, because he would probably be held too, my mother jumped into action and marched to the garage where Bram was being held. She demanded to see the officer in charge and explained to him that Bram was needed as a baker and could not be shipped off to some labour camp. It apparently took quite an argument, but my mother was a real fighter and was fairly fluent in the German language, and so she managed to not only obtain his release, but also obtained the necessary papers to make sure that Bram would not be bothered again about going to one of the work camps.
One evening my father came home rather excited and told us that the Germans at the school were unloading a large horse drawn wagon of peatmoss bricks. He suggested that perhaps my sister and I could sneak up there and steal some of these very valuable peatmoss bricks. These bricks were made of pressed peatmoss and made a great fuel for home heating purposes. So, my sister Annie and I made our way through the back alleys to where we could see the Germans unloading this large wagon load. We each had taken a large burlap sack and now sneaked up on the blind side of the wagon, and began to fill our burlap sack with those bricks..
Peatmoss is not very heavy and therefore we could fill the bag pretty well to the brim and were still able to carry it. As we stole back to the alley with our filled bags, we found my father there with the bike, and so we loaded our bags on to the bike and my father handed us two empty bags with which we made our way back to the wagon, while dad brought the first ones home. We were working very fast of course and were probably even faster than the German soldiers on the other side of the wagon in unloading the peatmoss. .
I have no idea as to what would have happened if the Germans had caught us, but in retrospect it is very hard to believe that no German soldier ever saw what we were doing, and I have had the feeling that perhaps they felt sorry for those two kids stealing their peatmoss, and let us get away with it..
How we got through that last winter of the war is almost a miracle. I believe that hope kept us alive. We knew the end of the war was near, but although the sky was now always filled with Allied planes and the Germans had reached the stage where everybody knew that they were about to lose the war, it seemed that they were only getting meaner, and more determined to hold out as long as they could. With the forced labour, which consisted of the men they rounded up, they were building tank traps and other fortifications right in our city. Even Bram was now forced to help in building a tank trap close to our home, I was rather skinny so they always let me go, which of course was lucky for the family, as I was the only person who could still get around without too much worry..
Getting the milk was becoming a real challenge, sometimes the Germans would not allow anybody on the road as they were transporting V bombs to a firing site some fifty miles from our city. This of course was Hitler's secret weapon which was being used to bomb London and other cities in England. The large projectiles would be shipped right through the city while the roads were very carefully guarded by the soldiers as they were worried about acts of sabotage by the underground. .
At other times we were being fired upon by the Tommies who were now shooting at every thing that moved on the road, including cyclists, because the German soldiers were now forced to use bicycles and horse drawn wagons as their only means of transportation. And the pilots of course had no way of differentiating between civilians and the German soldiers..
It became apparent that the Germans were now moving out of our city and only a skeleton staff was left to man the school/barracks. One morning we awoke to see one of our neighbours carrying a large wooden table, which he had taken from the school. He called out to us that the Germans had left and that we should help ourselves to whatever we wanted from the school. Well, the whole neighbourhood descended on the school like a swarm of locusts and emptied the place out. Dutch flags were dug up from where ever they had been hidden and it became a real party. .
We were all expecting our liberators to enter the city that day. But lo and behold, the next morning the German army was back and when they found their barracks had been emptied of furniture and bedding, they demanded that everything be returned within the hour and warned that anything found in the houses after that hour would lead to immediate execution of it's inhabitants. Well everybody realised that they meant business, as they were becoming pretty desperate, and we all returned whatever we had taken. Fortunately the Germans took no further retaliations against the people, but we all did become a lot more careful and were not jumping to any conclusions without being able to verify them..
By now it was April and we still were not liberated. The German army seemed to be very active and the roads were jammed with horse drawn wagons with weaponry and the odd truck, and then of course all the soldiers either on bicycles or on foot, mostly moving west to the Provinces of North and South Holland. Very often the Tommies would be screaming over head and shooting at everything that moved. The Germans would make a half hearted attempt at firing back, but most often without any success. .
One evening I was on my way to get milk, and as usual I was pedalling on my old bike with the rope tires, when all of a sudden I was stopped by a German soldier. He stood there with an almost new bicycle, but it had two flat tires, and he demanded my bike in exchange for the one he had. It did not appear to me that I had much to lose by this trade, so I did not even make too many objections. He allowed me to remove the bags with milk bottles from my bike, and then jumped on it and left me standing there with this bike with two flat tires. .
Well, having little choice I decided to walk the bike to the farmer and still get my milk. I told the farmer what had happened and he took a look at my new bike and agreed that I had probably made a pretty good trade. We also noticed that the valves had been taken out of the tires, and that of course was the reason that they were flat. He was good enough to find two new valves for me and we tried it out to find that the tires indeed were not flat at all. .
But one thing was for sure; if I were to ride that new bike on the road, I was almost sure to lose it to a German soldier. So the farmer and I decided that I would be much better off walking the bike home and keep the new valves in my pocket. It was a long walk, especially with the bike loaded down with fifteen bottles of milk. And so when I finally reached the top of the last bridge before home and was really very tired, an older man on a bicycle stopped when he saw me, and asked what the problem was with my tires. I told him the story, and he then assured me that the German traffic was really not that heavy any more and seeing that no soldier had made an attempt to confiscate his bike, it should be safe enough for me to ride the bicycle home. And then when he told me that he had a little bicycle pump on his bike, the temptation was too much and I gratefully accepted his offer to help me put air in the tires. .
We struggled with the little pump but finally managed to get enough air in the tires. I of course thanked him profusely and he then jumped on his bike and took off. I savoured the ride on real tires on this beautiful bicycle, and coasted down the bridge. But just as I reached the end of the bridge, a German soldier jumped out of the bushes and ordered me to stop. For a moment I even thought about racing by him and try to escape, but when I saw that his rifle was levelled at me, I knew that I did not have a ghost of a chance. So I stopped and of course he demanded my bike, and all my pleading was to no avail. He made me remove the bags with milk bottles, jumped on the bike and disappeared. With tears streaming down my face I was standing on this now very lonely road and started walking home with my arms loaded down with the bags and fifteen bottles of milk..
As I walked a little further there was suddenly all kinds of activity on the road with a bunch of horse drawn wagons and what seemed to be almost a battalion of German soldiers marching toward our city. I heard the high whine of a British fighter plane in the sky and immediately realised that the Tommies had probably spotted the activity on the road also. And sure enough, here came three planes screaming down, and began strafing the road with their machine guns..
The Germans, and myself of course, dove for cover and I ended up lying in a water filled ditch with my feet in the water, fifteen bottles of milk in my arms, and a couple of German soldiers as company. The noise of the planes and their machine guns was just deafening and the screams of the people and the horses as they were being torn apart by the heavy bullets was just unbearable. .
The attack seemed to last an eternity and when it was finally over, there were lots of dead and wounded horses and also many wounded and dead soldiers. But at least I was, although very wet and dirty, still alive and I finally did make it home with all my milk bottles in tact. But thank God, that was also the last time ever that I had to go for milk. The next day the world began to change for us in our beleaguered city..
CHAPTER 4
The Liberation
At long last we all began to realise that the end of the war was now very near. And although there were still hundreds of German soldiers in the city, they seemed to be getting ready to pull out.
Where some five years ago this great army of young and aggressive soldiers had rolled in with their tanks and other motorised vehicles, what we now saw getting ready to leave our city, was a bunch of bedraggled old men on horse drawn wagons and old rusty bicycles. What a wonderful sight!
A rumour was going around that a group of the more prominent Nazi collaborators were planning to leave the city on a large motorised barge. They were supposed to attempt an escape to the Western provinces which were still under the firm control of the German army. A crowd was quickly gathering at the wharf where this barge was being loaded and pretty soon, as those collaborators were beginning to board the barge, people began to hurl insults and obscenities at them. And it was of course not very long before the people also began to throw rotten tomatoes and potatoes and all kinds of other garbage at these once very powerful Nazi sympathisers.
The barge pulled away from shore as quickly as possible, and pretty soon it was out of range of the projectiles being thrown. However we all knew that we would be able to pelt them again when the barge had to go through the draw bridge, as there was no other way to get out of the city. So the crowd ran to the bridge and as they ran they were gathering as many projectiles as they could get their hands on. Anger and the lust for revenge was now building fast and the crowd realised that the time to pay these rats for all they had done to us had come
When the barge was passing underneath the raised bridge it were not just rotten tomatoes and the like that was being thrown, but many, including us, began to throw stones and bricks at these dirty Nazi sympathisers. It quickly became a blood bath on that barge, because those people on that open barge had nowhere to hide. What happened is of course inexcusable and not like the people of Sneek at all, but the pent up anger and resentment from five years of oppression needed to be vented.
The barge finally made it through the bridge and out of town, but we later heard, to our great joy, that the people on the barge never made it out of our province. They were stopped, just outside the city limits, by the underground army, and held in custody by them to be judged later.
Early that evening there was a huge explosion in our city, and we discovered that the German army had blown up one of the oldest buildings in the city. It was a large building that at one time had been used as a marketing place for the farmers, but was more recently used for storage of German ammunition. The building was totally destroyed and many other buildings were damaged as well, and a large fire was raging through a great part of the down-town area.
But although shocked by this senseless destruction, the people were actually dancing in the streets, because everybody realised that this was probably the final act by the German army before they pulled out. Every one was convinced that they would now be leaving our city for good. A bunch of us kids therefore decided to go to the outskirts of the city, hoping to get a chance to welcome our liberators.When we reached the open area outside the city, we could see lots of activity in the distance, but as all the fields outside the city were heavily mined, we could not go any further. I can still remember that we saw tanks and other motorised vehicles in the distance, and we could see the flags on top of the long antennas of the tanks. But although they seemed to be moving around, they did not come any closer to the city.
We could hear sporadic small arms fire but were not sure where that was coming from. And then all of a sudden the heavy German artillery behind us, on the other side of the city, began firing and all hell broke loose. The Allied planes were screaming overhead toward the German lines and the heavy Canadian artillery started to return the German fire.
Lucky for us this artillery battle did not last very long, but it sure was scary being between the two armies in what was actually no mans land. When it was over we beat a hasty retreat home, and pretty soon mother made me go to bed, because it had now become very clear that the Canadian soldiers were not going to attempt entering the city that night. I don't think I slept much that night, as the war was raging around our city all through the night with a lot of noise and once in a while the explosion of bombs or artillery fire.
Fortunately the city itself was spared any further damage and we awoke the next morning to find a platoon of Canadian soldiers sleeping in our street. They were stretched out on the sidewalk in their sleeping bags, right in front of our house. I had to actually step over one of them to get out of our front door. At the end of the street they had a field kitchen set up from where the most fantastic and enticing aroma was tantalising our noses. I will never forget that smell or the big slices of pure white bread that we were offered by the soldiers.
Together with that bread they gave us large chunks of Corned beef, Spam, or Pam, and it was the most delicious meal for us since the very beginning of the war. The street became just one massive party, and it was very obvious that the Canadian soldiers were taking great delight in feeding all those hungry people and were having the time of their life with all the beautiful Dutch girls hugging and kissing them.
I truly don't know where all the flags came from, but it seemed to me that every house was flying a Dutch or a British flag. Under those circumstances it was difficult to realize that the war was far from over. But unfortunately we discovered pretty soon that the soldiers had to go to the front lines once again as a fierce battle was taking place only about 5 kilometres from our city. And now I saw a young Canadian soldier crying in our street, just as I had seen a young German soldier cry that many years ago. It sure made me again aware of the horrors of war, and now I also understood so much better how this young soldier felt as I had in the meantime also become 5 years older and had experienced some of the horrors of that war myself.
The actual date of the liberation of our city was April 17, but shortly after we were liberated the Allied armies were once again bogged down only about 25 kilometres west of Sneek at the Afsluitdijk to the western provinces. The Afsluitdijk is a causeway between the province of Friesland, where we lived, and the province of Noord Holland where the German army was still quite firmly in control.
The Germans in Noord Holland were of course totally surrounded by the Allied armies on the one side and the ocean on the other side, and therefore the Canadian generals did not see the need to risk a lot of lives in trying to cross this narrow causeway in order to dislodge the German armies. And so it became a waiting game, and our city as one of the major staging areas became home to literally thousands of Canadian soldiers.
While during the war the German army had occupied some schools and other buildings, the Canadian army now occupied every school and any other building that could be used for housing of their soldiers. The great difference in all this was of course that we loved to see the Canadians and welcomed them with open arms. We were by now so used to having soldiers in the city and were so attuned to how the German army behaved, that we could not help but notice how different the Canadian army was from the German army.
We noticed very quickly the difference in discipline between the Canadian and the German armies. Where the Germans seemed to always be very subservient and respectful to their officers, the Canadians seemed to act like their was no difference between the officers and the ordinary soldiers. They had what may be described as a very casual way about them. We also noticed of course that the Canadian soldiers had no shortage of supplies and were also fairly sloppy with their ammo.
One day Harm and I were visiting with some of the soldiers when we noticed that there was an open box of hand grenades in the back of a jeep. Well, after all those years of stealing from soldiers, it was impossible for us to resist the temptation, and after all we had good use for those grenades, so we each slipped one in our pocket. Through the war years, while observing the German soldiers, we had learned what when can do with hand grenades beside killing people.
So with the grenades in our pockets we paddled a canoe to the lake and went fishing. Fishing with hand grenades is probably the easiest way to catch a lot of fish in a hurry. All you do is pull the pin and heave that grenade as far as you can throw it. When the grenade explodes under water it stuns the fish and that way fishing becomes pretty easy as the fish float to the surface. All one has to do is scoop up as many fish as one wants. I don't believe that either the Canadian soldiers or our parents would have approved of this little fishing trip, but anyway we brought home a lot of fish that day and practically everybody on our street had a fine meal out of it. And I really can't remember if we were ever asked how we managed to catch that many fish, but then of course our parents were used to the fact that one should not ask too many questions from young boys in war time.
The schools being occupied by the army meant of course that we still did not go to school, and so we spent most of our time hanging around the Canadian troops. We discovered that the Canadian soldiers very much wanted picture postcards of the older buildings and monuments in our city. Those postcards were of course very scarce after 5 years of war, so Harm and I went to different book stores to see if they had perhaps some old photographs stored away in their stockrooms. We came to this one book store which was run by a very old man, and we explained to him what we were looking for. He took us into his storage room and together we started looking through all the files and boxes there. He was, like almost everybody else, anxious to do whatever he could for those Canadian liberators and after much searching he finally came up with a box of picture postcards in booklet form.
The box probably contained at least 100 of these booklets and I believe there were about 10 pictures in a book. We bought the whole box and had to actually press the old man to accept payment. He wanted us to just give those pictures to the soldiers, but we had slightly different ideas. We were therefore very happy when he finally agreed to accept fair payment, as after having paid him we did not feel at all guilty when we started selling the booklets. At first we were asking five packages of cigarettes per booklet, but the demand was so overwhelming that the price was very quickly increased to a full carton of cigarettes and some chocolate bars per booklet. Too bad we sold out so quickly, for we could have sold hundreds more. But anyway we sure made a good deal because the Canadian cigarettes were worth a lot of money on the open market. And now that we had completed our first successful business transaction, we were of course looking for other opportunities.
The soldiers would very often ask us if we knew any girls, and at first we did not really know what to say, because the girls they had in mind were obviously older then the ones we knew. But then one day we overheard a conversation between two older girls about the fact that they would love to meet a couple of handsome young soldiers. It appeared that they were rather reluctant to approach strange men even though those strangers were our liberators. I turned to one of the girls and offered our services as mediators in setting up a date for them. They accepted our offer and a time to meet the soldiers was agreed upon. We now went to a group of soldiers and asked them if they were interested in meeting some girls, and the answer was of course a resounding yes. We explained that we had two beautiful girls who would be quite willing to go out with the soldiers, but that we wanted 5 packages of cigarettes each as our fee for arranging this date, Well, I think we could have asked for 5 cartons, because a deal was struck immediately. The date was set up and we later found out that the girls had a great time and the soldiers had behaved like real gentlemen, so we were not left with any great guilt feelings about the fact that we had actually acted as paid match makers.
The underground army had in the meantime taken over the actual running of the city in co-operation with the Allied command. One of the first things of course was the rounding up of all the Nazi collaborators and suspected collaborators, as well as the women who had dated German soldiers. The people suspected of collaboration with the enemy were rounded up and placed in camps especially set up for that purpose. Each and every one of those rounded up were eventually to appear in front of a judge and sentenced according to their degree of involvement and the deeds performed in service to the enemy. The ones who were very active and served in the Landwacht were sentenced to prison terms of various length, but most of the people rounded up were eventually just released because there were just too many of them.
The women who had been involved with German soldiers were all rounded up, and forced to sit on a chair in the middle of the street while their heads were being shaved bald. This was of course an extremely humiliating experience for those girls and the idea was that they would be forced to walk around bald headed, so that they would be instantly recognised as German army sluts. But each and every one so treated chose of course to wear a head scarf until their hair had grown back. Wearing a head scarf was up until then quite an accepted thing to do in that windy Holland, but after all the Nazi sluts had to wear them no decent Dutch lady would be caught dead wearing a scarf. It took a long time before ordinary women took to wearing scarves around their head once again.
Finally on the fifth of May the German army officially capitulated and the war was over. The country had the biggest celebration ever,and although everybody realised that it would take a long time before everything was back to normal, we were finally free again.
The huge German army which had amassed in Holland was now being marched back to Germany.
It certainly was a long march for these soldiers, and camps had been set up along the way for them to stay overnight. One of these campgrounds had been set up just outside our city and thus we were watching as the Germans were marched through the city. Within the city limits the German soldiers were forced to march with their hands behind their head, but I don't really know whether that was done as a form of humiliation or as a measure of safety.
Crowds were standing along the streets where the Germans were passing through under heavy guard of the Canadian soldiers and as we were standing there watching there was all of a sudden a scream from a woman who recognised one of the Germans as the killer of her son. I really don't know exactly what happened next. Perhaps the woman attacked the German soldier and he retaliated in kind, but anyway there was a burst of gun fire and the German soldier laid dead on the street. This kind of behaviour was of course not condoned by the Canadian command but I truly don't know what if anything was done to the Canadian soldier who did the actual shooting.
The Germans were of course not allowed to possess any weapons, but that evening at the entrance to the campground a German offer was found to possess a pistol and was also shot right on the spot. I do not know whether he was actually killed or just wounded, but the event certainly served to make the prisoners of war behave in the way that the allied soldiers demanded. And finally all the Germans had left our country and the Canadian soldiers were going home and thus the war was finally over.
THE END.
