Open Writing

My war stories are the memories of a young Dutch boy living under the German occupation and later finally liberated by the Canadians and the British. I have collected them in a little book published in French "La guerre dans ma cour" (the war in my backyard).

The war was very literally in my backyard with a German General's staff, his radio listening post, the allied airmen hidden far away in the garden, and later the Canadian military field hospital in our living room with blood and wounded soldiers around us. It was a strange, terrible and sometimes even exciting period for the 11 year old boy I was then.

My stories of the fall of 1944 are told from the viewpoint of a child and not that of a historian or a soldier. If you are interested you can read a few of them here.

War games

By the spring of 1944, we were ready for our own war games. The school had been occupied by the Germans and so goodbye homework, hello holidays!

Inspired by the big war taking place all around us, my friends and I spent countless hours preparing for a war of our own. Making weapons for our future battles was our biggest pleasure.

I managed to make a sort of hand grenade with a bottle and a bit of carbide. Carbide was a crumbly white stone which my mother broke up and placed inside the lamp we lit at night. We no longer had electricity or oil for our lamps. My father therefore patented a "carbide lamp" for us, made of two tin cans fitted one inside the other. The top can had a small tube with two tiny holes through which the gas whistled as it produced a bright, white flame. The bottom can contained the carbide stones. My mother would pour a bit of water on them before quickly fitting the cans together. It was, however, a dangerous device, and the lighting of the lamp kept us in suspense night after night. If too much water was poured onto the stones, the lamp could explode once it was sealed. It happened often, but it caused more fright than real harm.

Nevertheless, I found this an interesting idea for manufacturing bombs for our battles. The technique was to stuff a few pieces of carbide into a not-too-solid bottle, add a little too much water, seal it carefully, then toss it at the enemy. My top-secret tests seemed conclusive.

One of our trials backfired, however. As the two camps faced each other, we tossed a bottle bomb which refused to explode. One of our brave warriors went to retrieve it so that we could reload it when it suddenly exploded. My friend called it quits after receiving glass fragments in his legs and we sounded the retreat as our enemies hooted with laughter. Best to stick with proven weapons from now on.

This first idea sparked what I considered to be an even more brilliant follow-up: a flying bomb. When pig breeders slaughtered the hogs, they always gave the bladders to children to make footballs. All we had to do was dry the bladder on the clothesline before blowing it up until it adopted the more-or-less round shape of a ball.

I concluded that the carbide gas that lit our lamp and made bottles explode might well be used to propel a bottle strung to a pig's bladder. I made a number of complicated sketches for this new device, but the project never saw the light of day.

We also made bows and arrows. I manufactured extra-sharp arrows by gluing the needles from my father's turntable with candle wax. My arrows refused to fly straight, however, and ended up getting lost in the trees. Our humble catapults were still our most reliable weapons.

The Crosses in the Cemetery

One beautiful September day in 1944, the overhead rumble of planes was so deafening that the daily flights of the Allied bombers seemed a simple buzzing noise in comparison. That afternoon, plane after plane flew by very low to the ground.

These weren't the usual bombers, but big planes towing motorless square gliders, brushing the tops of the trees as they flew past. We could even see the pilots and wave to the crew. It was absolutely incredible and terribly exciting.

The German anti-aircraft defence guns rattled endlessly, but the procession stayed on its course towards an unknown destination. We became convinced that they were coming to liberate us that very day. After several hours of racket and cheering as hundreds of planes flew by, all was quiet again. But we were worried. Mostly, we were disappointed. Not a single American or Canadian was in sight.

The Germans were nervous, but they were still lords and masters. Neighbours reported that one of the gliders had been shot down and crashed near the village, killing American soldiers in the accident. We were aghast.

Early the next day, I went to Sint-Peters-Banden church, where I sang in the choir. There was blood on the church steps, and the wrought-iron gates to the cemetery were open. German soldiers were busy with wheelbarrows on which they had placed long, blood-stained, brown paper bags. I understood that bodies had been placed in these bags for burial.

The soldiers were tossing the bags into a row of graves they had dug near the cemetery gates. What had happened? Who were the dead? Were they Germans, or were they the Allies who had died in yesterday's plane crash? I had no answers for the moment. First, I had to serve mass. But as soon as mass was over, I dashed to the cemetery.

The Germans were gone, but the gates were still open and a crowd of curious onlookers was examining the freshly-dug graves. I drew closer. Much to my surprise, there were five wooden crosses with khaki-coloured military helmets perched atop them. Most of these helmets were damaged or crushed. And they weren't German helmets either. What a distressing sight!

Maybe the dead were the people we waved to yesterday. Now they were buried in our cemetery, next to a row of German graves marked with similar crosses without helmets. I grew heavy hearted as I took it all in. I hadn't yet really seen death, but I'd found its sad monument.

Air raids at School

We regularly had air-raid drills at school. The principal sounded the siren: a big, red cylinder with a crank on it to emit the warning sounds. Our game of hide-and-seek began as soon as we heard the first shrill cries of the red contraption. We tried to save ourselves in various ways, depending on the severity of the anticipated attack. Minor attacks meant we should hide under our desks. If a very dangerous attack was at hand, we had to sit plastered against the inside walls of the school corridor.
The principal cleverly explained that the bombs that fell upon a house or a school would blow the walls outwards. This is why we had to sit along the inside walls. I never understood why the inside wall wouldn't fall on our heads as it exploded outwards.

These games were rather amusing. We knew that no bombing raid was imminent, but it transformed the school into a playground.