We aimed our fake fifles at that Messerschmitt

I was just a little boy when the war started but still have vivid memories – even from as early as 1939. My father had been mobilized and was stationed as an adjutant at the general staff in The Hague. I can still picture my mother crying every time he had to leave. That kind of thing leaves an impression on a child! She had her hands full, of course. We had a bookshop and printing press on Peperstraat, and business had to continue as usual.

I also clearly remember our evacuation to Montfoort in those first days of the war in May 1940. My father was in The Hague, so my mother had to handle everything. I can still see us, packed with our belongings, in a taxi driven by Job de Jong. My mother had my little brother Gijsbert on her lap – he was barely a year old. And I still see my grandfather, who lived with us, emptying a large sack of grain under a shelter – for the chickens! He assumed we’d be gone for months! In the end, it was only a week.

I also remember the German soldiers who were billeted in our home. They set up their sleeping quarters and workstations in the barrel-vaulted cellars, where they maintained communications with Germany. They even received their girlfriends there. We saw it all, because they had to pass through our front door, which had to remain open day and night. Generally, we got along fine with the German soldiers. They weren’t SS officers, but conscripted men who longed for their own families. I remember a captain who often sat with my little brother Tony, who was born in 1942, on his lap. We even heard them tell our parents that the war “wouldn’t last much longer.” All they wanted was to survive and return home. When they were ordered to the frontline near Tiel, they were terrified.

During the war, there wasn’t much printing work to do, but my father made good use of his state-of-the-art cutting machine. The blade was razor-sharp, it could cut 500 sheets of airmail paper in one go, provided someone kept the flywheel turning, because we had no electricity. My father used it to cut cigarette rolling papers. Many people couldn’t give up smoking and grew their own tobacco. Selling those papers allowed him to buy carbide, so we could keep our two carbide lamps burning.

We were surrounded by soldiers during the war. They were in the front room and in the cellar. So, it’s no surprise that my friends, my brother Gijsbert, and I often played ‘soldiers’ ourselves. We had imitation rifles with beautifully carved wooden stocks—they almost looked real! For helmets, we folded German newspapers into tricorn hats. Later, we switched to the Teisterbander newspaper, after one of us pointed out that it wasn’t quite right to be walking around with a German eagle on our heads. German fighter planes would regularly over our house—those famous Messerschmitts sent to disrupt Allied attacks. One day, while playing, we pretended to shoot at one of those planes from our garden, aiming our toy rifles at the sky.

To our shock, the fighter turned around, circled the church tower, and then fired its machine guns in our direction. We scrambled to hide under the cutting machine as quickly as we could! All the windows of the printing press shattered. After that, my father firmly requested that we stop playing those kinds of games.

From the liberation, I remember getting to ride on a tank with the Canadians and that they gave me chocolate. Shortly afterward, my mother made military uniforms for my brother and me from a Canadian soldier’s uniform. We proudly wore them to school!