“Both knees have an entry and exit wound from a Bullet”

When Dick Kosters (1940) wears shorts, people often ask him about the scars on his legs. On both sides of each knee, there are visible marks—just like on his left wrist. “That’s where a bullet from a German soldier went through during the evacuation. If I don’t feel like telling the story, I joke that I got them in a bank robbery.”

The incident took place in Zoelen, where his parents had fled from Echteld in 1944, hoping to escape the fighting. For Dick, it was the second time he’d been displaced due to violence. He was born in 1940 in Angerlo. “Because of the fighting, my mother went to her parents’ house to give birth. I was baptised in the small church there.”

By 1942 the family had returned to Echteld, living on a farm by the dike. “I used to play near the holes in the dike, right where the Germans were patrolling.” His paternal grandparents lived in Echteld as well. His grandfather was a postman and ran the local post office. His father, who had an electronics business already owned a car and was a chauffeur for a regional commander. “When the Germans started requisitioning cars, my father hid his by removing the wheels and stashing it near Kasteel Wijenburg (Huis te Echteld). The Germans found it and demanded it back. My father put the wheels back on but didn’t tighten the nuts properly. The vehicle crashed. My father was arrested and faced execution. A policeman explained to the Germans that when a wheel is replaced, the nuts must be tightened again after driving a short distance. He saved my father’s life.”

During the war, his father helped the ‘Waalcrossers’. Those were resistance fighters who transported wounded Allied soldiers, members of the Underground and important documents across the river in small boats. Sometimes they even swam. “My father told me they covered themselves in grease from head to toe to keep warm.”

In the autumn of 1944, the family of three evacuated. “We ended up staying with the Gerritsen family. The Germans took over the house, using it to cook their meals. One day, a German soldier was fiddling with his pistol in the kitchen when it accidentally fired. The bullet went straight through the door behind which I was playing. It passed through both knees and my wrist before embedding itself in the wooden floor.”

Dick was taken to the emergency hospital at Bethesda, a school in Tiel. “I had to stay for a few days—each knee had an entry and exit wound. I was told I would have a stiff leg for the rest of my life. Luckily, I was an active child, that saved me. But I did have to learn to walk again.”

The family continued westward. “Perhaps because Mrs Gerritsen had said, ‘Thank goodness it wasn’t my child’?” When the water subsided—after the Germans had deliberately breached the dike at Elden—the family returned to Echteld. “The pastor helped me practise and learn to walk again.”

In the 1980s, he returned to the Gerritsen family home. “One of the children still lived there. The hole in the door was still there, covered by a plate. The hole in the floor was still visible. They never found the bullet.” Around the same time, he applied for compensation from the 40-45 Foundation (for supporting war victims). “At the hospital in Tiel, they managed to find my wartime medical records, which surprised me. But I wasn’t granted compensation—the doctor simply noted: ‘He’s walking again.’”

He knows he got off lightly. “When I went on holiday in the 1960s, you often saw war victims with amputated limbs. Sometimes, someone would unscrew their prosthetic foot on the beach.” What he struggled with most back then were Germans casually mentioning their time in the Netherlands during the war. “They would say, ‘Oh yes, I fought in this or that place.’ I know that not every German was bad—they were just following orders. But still in those moments, I would walk away.”

Interview with Dick Kosters, Wounded During the Evacuation
By: Ineke Inklaar