My first cup of real coffee after the war didn’t taste good!

As a growing boy, I didn’t really lack food during the war. However, certain products became scarce. Tobacco, for example. At a time when, as a young boy, you would often walk around with a cigarette in your mouth after elementary school. Many people started growing their own tobacco, just like it was done before the war. When the leaves were ripe, they were taken off the plant, strung on iron wire, and hung in the shed to dry. After they turned brown, they were finely chopped with a sharp knife and then rolled. Clever people even made cigars from it. But it wasn’t anything special. When coffee became almost impossible to find, we ground peas, barley, and other grains in an old hand coffee mill. That grind was then roasted, and we ended up with coffee substitute. I was at the age when I started drinking coffee. I liked the substitute. When I finally had my first real cup of coffee after the liberation, I didn’t like it at all!

We were lucky that the war ended in May 1945. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to harvest the next year! In the last months of the war, the land couldn’t be worked due to shelling. We were still able to get the 1944 harvest in on time. But for me, Liberation Day wasn’t really a celebration… My father had to go to Bommel, so I had to go out early in the morning to plow the fields. Shortly after, school started again, so my freedom was completely over!

Looking back, not kidding; The liberation left a bitter taste in my mouth. Suddenly, all kinds of pseudo-Resistance heroes appeared, wearing blue overalls and an armband with the Dutch lion on it. I didn’t know there were so many people involved in the Resistance! These people were now busy arresting, shaving the heads of so-called ‘collaborator girls’ and parading them through the town. Of course, there were some promiscuous women among them. But I also knew girls who really loved those German boys. And there were those who had given up their Dutch lovers, as sometimes happens. These guys saw a chance to take revenge. What heroes! I thought it was a dirty, despicable thing to do!