We Saw the Adventure, Not the Danger!

Mom and Dad had 11 children, and I was the eldest. After the birth of the eleventh, the pastor came by and remarked that they could have one more. I can still hear my father’s reply: “That’s fine—I’ll make them if you provide for them!” We lived in poverty. My father worked leveling the Maas River, but that wasn’t enough to make ends meet.
So, we relied partly on government support. Every Friday, we had to collect 11 packets of Blue Band margarine from the municipality. Later, my father became a hoop maker. Those hoops were made from willow wood and used to reinforce barrels and casks. Despite our financial struggles, I was allowed to continue studying after primary school, but I didn’t want to. I ended up working in the hoop-making trade as well, at the Van Zwam brothers’ workshop in Boven-Leeuwen.

When the war started, I had already received my papers for a medical examination for military service. It never happened. I was also selected for forced labor in Germany, but I managed to escape that fate by bribing the officials with food stamps. Instead, I worked for a time at a shipyard in Druten. The management was German, so technically, I was working for the Germans, but at least I could stay home.

One of the first nights of the war, I was awakened by a noise right outside my window. I quietly got dressed and went outside to see what was going on. I saw two Dutch soldiers from the Irene Battalion returning from their guard duty on the dike. In the darkness, two German soldiers were standing near the bakery across the street, unnoticed by the Dutch soldiers. As they got closer, the Germans threw a hand grenade. Both of those young men died instantly. I watched the Germans sneak along the dike before crossing over it further down. They must have taken a small boat back across to the Betuwe. That same night, the Germans set fire to around forty houses along the dike—I saw them burn with my own eyes.

After the capitulation, life in our area returned to normal quite quickly. We hardly saw any Germans in the following years, but from the fall of 1944, we saw plenty of British soldiers. We had already been liberated during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. The war was now happening across the river. We had a great time with the British—they gave us cigarettes. Sometimes we were even allowed to help load a mortar, which they then fired over the Waal at the German positions in the Betuwe.

As young boys, we only saw the adventure, not the danger. We built a cross out of two wooden slats, draped an English military jacket over it, and placed a helmet on top. Then, we stuck our creation above the dike. Immediately, the German machine guns started rattling. The people living in the houses at the foot of the dike were terrified, as the bullets ricocheted off their roof tiles and buried themselves in the wooden beams. But we thought it was hilarious.

Still, the war brought great sorrow to our family. A cousin and a niece of mine in Beneden-Leeuwen were killed when a German grenade exploded near the church. Their names are engraved on the memorial monument in the village.