Dangerous Times - living in occupied Holland during WW2 - through the eyes of Gert Delwig

Dad was conscripted into the Dutch Army, they had to spend 12 months or so serving and were then called up again early 1939 with all the trouble with Hitler looming on the horizon.

When the Germans invaded Holland all the soldiers were sent home as they were unable to fight in the occupied country.  The Dutch royal family left Holland for England and safety.  My brother Jan was born while he was in the Army.  (Dutch Army photo of Dad in uniform above)

THE WAR YEARS

I was only 7 when the war broke out and Hank just 5, Jan had just been born in November 1939 all the men were called up to serve but by December 1940 it was all over and Holland was occupied by the Germans.

We were lucky to have food from the Grandpa’s farm.  We had fresh pork and goat meat every week though many went without.  We were never hungry and sometimes had bread and dripping.  There were always veggies from our backyard garden.

The Germans occupied all of Holland.  As kids all we knew was the Germans were marching through the streets all the time l was only 8 they didn’t do us any harm they took a lot of the young men in their 20’s to Germany to work.  Dad was in his 30’s he was hiding from the Germans in a creek underneath the water when the Gestapo and the SS were looking for all the eligible men. He used a reed to breathe through. The chill of the water may have been the reason why he had rheumatic fever.

 THE UNDERGROUND

Some of the men must have then formed the Dutch Underground – l didn’t know anything about that till after the war.  It was too dangerous to tell children and families in case they bragged to friends and towns people.

Being close to the German border many in our town were German sympathisers.  When the Germans invaded some people in our town hung German flags in front of their houses.  We decided to tear the flags down.  The first time was OK but the second time we were caught by the police.  They put us in goal we were just 10 and scared stiff, they gave us a lecture then called Dad, he said it was lucky the police caught us and not the Germans.  The cell was just a room with bars on the door and a bench to sit on and we were there for half an hour.  We had two householders in our street who were German sympathisers. We had a flagpole at the front of our house like many others in the town and when the Germans came we all had to take down our flags.  We were angry as kids that those people were flying German flags so we decided to get rid of them we hid the flags under a hedge. After we were arrested those people put up German flags again.

Dad and Uncle and the local underground raided trains which contained confiscated meat taken from Dutch farms. Some of that meat came from the farms at the top of Holland owned by Mum’s Uncles. They then handed it out to the people who had not seen meat for ages and had very little food to feed their families.

Dad was often away at night working for the Underground though we didn’t know that at the time.

It was not until we had migrated to Australia that we learned about Dad and our families involvement in the underground - a pilot who had been shot down and rescued by Dad then taken to Grandpa's farm greeted us when we arrived in Clunes, Victoria where we settled in Australia.  He embraced Dad then told us about the underground and how proud we should be of our father and family. Dad never spoke of it - even after the war.  The fear of reprisals was still great.

The Van Dolderen laundry mentioned in the book ‘A Bridge Too Far’ was 1km from our house.  Dad’s cousin owned the laundry.  When a plane came down the men in the Underground would retrieve the pilot and crew before the Germans got them, taking them to the laundry then later to safety across the river where the allied lines were camped.  They also helped many Jews escape.

Grandfather hid them at the farm.  The cows were bought inside when it was cold and there was a storage area under their stalls for hay and cattle food.  The Jews and the pilots and plane crews were hidden in there with the cows standing on top.  Grandpa showed us after the war.

MUM’S ILLNESS

When Jopie was born Mum had Thrombosis so she was very ill.  She spent most of her time in the Gazebo with her feet up as it was warm there and it was summer.  Dad and I looked after the home and the kids with the help of Mum’s sister through the day when we were at work.  I was studying to become a Kindergarten teacher then and was working as an aide doing my classes at night.  It took me 3 years to get my certificate. Hank helped Dad with the rabbits, the chickens and in the garden.  We had 6 rabbits as big as a large cat and black and white but bred for the table with the hutches in the shed.  The chicken coop was behind the shed.  We had an incubator to hatch chickens from our own eggs.  These were fine until the Germans took the rabbits.

IN THE CELLAR

Before that we moved into the cellar of our own house for safety the fighting was so bad.

The kids had to sleep on the shelves on mattresses Mum made by sewing sheets together and stuffing them with straw.  Gert, Jan, Hank, Tony and Willie as a baby. Food was all in coupons we were lucky that Grandpa and Grandma had the farm – sometimes we lived on potatoes for a week.  Meat, butter cheese coupons for everything but never enough – the farm made their own butter and milk we were luckier than many families.

There was an airfield close by which the allies tried to bomb, some missed and hit the town.  Air raid sirens would shriek then we heard the drone of the planes and we knew we had to get down into the cellar.  We were right on the flight path of planes heading into Germany to bomb German towns so the Germans would try to shoot them down.  It was a straight line from England to Germany. 

There must have been a lull in the fighting so Mum and Dad decided it was quiet enough for us to come up out of the cellar for a wash Mum was in the front room near the window bathing Willy who was just a little baby in a deep ceramic bowl as she lifted her out a bullet came through the window into the bowl breaking it.  All the water went onto the floor and the bullet went through the jug on the mantle piece lodging in the wall behind.  I think Jopie still has that jug as it didn’t break. We all ran for it back into the cellar to safety.

Fetching water – Dad and his brother got water from the creek which was our only source of water at that time.  They just got back to the door as bullets went through the bucket and the water was gone.

At one stage we couldn’t get out to get food, the Polish, American and English troops dropped food down to us when they realised where we were.  Macaroni and Broad Beans dried which we ate raw as there was no where to cook.

We used buckets for a toilet then Pop emptied it upstairs in the house. The bucket was covered with a lid.  Mum and Dad prepared the occupation by stuffing material mattresses with straw and putting everything they could think of in the cellar.   Germans occupied the airfield nearby and the English were bombing the town and we went into the cellar for safety – this went on all through the war.  When the siren went off we went down because we were so close to Germany we often copped the bombs.  I would go to sleep at night in my bed then wake up in the cellar, Dad had carried me down and l didn’t even wake up.

Pam and I stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in Oosterbeek which was the home where we shifted to a safer cellar than ours at home during the bombing during the war.  It was quite eerie to be back in that home which was in one of the nicer areas in our town – Uncle Jan.

We still went to school, life went on. The only thing different was watching the soldiers marching through the streets.  We walked about 2ks to school and walked home for lunch then back again. That’s 8ks a day in rain hail of shine or even snow.  Socks over our shoes to stop us falling on the icy roads. School hours were 9am – 12noon 1.45 – 4.15, giving us an hour and three quarters to get home and back for lunch.  Sometimes in the middle of winter when a snow storm was coming it got dark at a quarter to three they let us off early so we could get home before dark.

The Weirmacht were family men just soldiers but the Gestapo and the SS were the bad guys.  The soldiers didn’t harass us. (Picture of Gert on tank with girlfriends)