Open Writing

It’s never been an off-leash area, but some stupid locals let their dogs run all over the place. One or two encourage their dogs to rush around in the small lakes. The small biosphere is wrecked, but they don’t care. Clouds of wood duck, black duck, chestnut teal, grebe, heron, and other water-birds make a hasty exit, if they’re lucky.

The lakes in our new and developing wetlands are for birds and whatever is washed down for bird dinners. That includes insect larvae, tadpoles and yabbies. It’s all new, and there are extensive raised nets to protect the growing water-plants. Yesterday a dog-owner walking on the far side, the hill slope, had to clamber through the mud and water on her short legs to release a dog which had got tangled in a net. It could find no way out. Serves her right.

Today, in the gleaming winter sunsmile, I lumbered lopsidedly along that hill slope. Not a good idea when the knees are going to wreak their arthritic revenge this evening, of course. But I wanted to check the damage. Sure enough, there’s a gaping hole in one of the nets which are there to keep scavenging ducks out.

I came back across the long footbridge, which for some reason is called a boardwalk. A tiny grebe was darting around at high speed in and beneath the water below, searching for food. I reckon they have jet-engines. A tall elderly woman was sitting on the bench. She hailed me with, ‘Are you a writer?’ An astounding question, out of the blue, from a stranger with a strong Dutch accent. How did she know? She had attended a talk I was invited to give to a group of palliative care workers in... wait for it... 1994. Twelve years ago. What a memory! We chatted, as one does, and she started bringing up her recollections of the 1940’s. Not all memories are good ones.

The Germans, nay, the Nazis had taken over. The compulsory greeting at every encounter was not ‘Goeden-dag’ or ‘Guten Tag’ but ‘Heil Hitler’, even between Dutch friends. Her father had been commandeered to fight for the occupiers. Her mother, on the other hand, helped the underground resistance. There were dreadful and potentially lethal secrets even within families.

Underground in more senses than one. There were cellars beneath some houses in which people were hidden and protected. My 80-year-old friend told how they had a trap-door in the floor, with a large iron ring to lift and lower it. As soon as anyone had been taken in, during the dark hours of night, the trap-door was closed. A thick-pile carpet was laid over it. A heavy cupboard was shifted onto the carpet. That way, a visiting Nazi military snooper wouldn’t feel anything unusual on the floor as he prowled around.

In someone’s very old out-house down the garden, with enormously thick walls, there was a double wall with a hidden entrance. A resistance fighter in need of rest or sleep could climb stealthily over the fence and get into the space between the walls. Blankets and food were waiting for her or him. The owners knew, because they arranged it, but of course the night visitor came over the fence while they were asleep in the house, so how were they to know who he was and how he got there, if and when the Gestapo asked?

Each hiding place for resistance fighters, Jews, Roma, and others, had one entrance. It was also the only way out. Had they been discovered, there would be no escape. They would be caught in the Nazi net of torture, concentration camps, and death.

On the far side of the wetland, the hole made by that out-of-control dog can be repaired. Next week, we probably won’t be able to see where it was. But some things stay. In my new friend’s mind, the scarring pictures of those terrible days have stayed. She can never forget. Nor should any of us forget.

© Copyright 2006 Brian Barratt