WISHFUL JOURNEY

It is 1995, November 3, and cold outside, so I have decided to start my memoirs, after I had the heartbreaking experience of losing a complete document due to a power failure!   Our very beginnings were in a little town in the Netherlands, a place close to the German border. This town of my birth was nestled between two woodland hills.--Snug as a bug in a rug. -
We used to call these hills "the Mountains," and we were very proud of the imposing structures, They were our own private little worlds and we felt safe and secure in the presence of those sand dunes and heater fields.
It was not much more than sand dunes --but we did not realize this then--.  We revered those "Mountains" as only the small time Berger can do, because our life was so uncomplicated.

Life in my childhood was so simple that people would come out in droves when a new contraption-called automobile, made their way through the dusty gravel roads.
Mothers would warn their children to stay behind the safety of their collective skirts, and the farmers would watch with anxious eyes to the welfare of their cows and horses.
'[You could never know what would happen] when those machines made their way under hacking and coughing and thundering explosions when the old time engines backfired.'
 
Some farms were still around, close to the center of town, and it was quite common to see some schoolchildren with a herd of cattle right in main-street.
All traffic had to come to a standstill as the mooing and bellowing crowds made their way  to home or pasture.
My brothers would bring the milk cows to pasture in the morning and haul them home at night
-A distance of about one kilometer-- and they would feel very privileged that they allowed them to do this important assignment. It also turned them into little capitalist. The owner of the cows paid them two pennies a week and that set them apart from the lower class neighborhood kids. They were men of substance and the other children would be jealous of my privileged bigger brothers

 The ruling powers of the day had named this town "The Pearl of the Province," trying to attract an ever-increasing tourist public, Although, not much tourism was there in that point of time.  Everything moved by foot or bicycle.
Many people worked from eight  in the morning till six in  the evening, Five days in a week, and four hours Saturday: All this for about two or three guilders a week, and people were glad to have work.
 
This was in the early thirties and the crisis years were just around the corner.   Nobody in his right mind would walk or ride a bicycle more than was strictly necessary in those days. An effort like that was just too tiresome unless you had pressing business, fortunately: that did not occur all that often. :
We were in the horse and horse buggy days after all... The pace of life was slow and sure.   Saturday afternoon was for relaxation or to putter around with the rabbits and the pigeons.
Rabbits were the milk cows of the poor men and pigeons were for the more enterprising folks.
Many [pigeon-milkers] as they called them, would spend all their free time in their pigeon house's build into the roof of the house -more often as not--!
They treated those little birds like members of the family and their owners would spend more time with the birds than with their wives.
Bus or train sent these homing pigeons all the way to Belgium or even farther.
It was here that the expert could show of his knowledge and expertise.
It was a matter of great pride to see your pigeon come in as number one. -Just by instinct and strength of muscle and feather
Many of these men would speculate their hard-earned money on the expertise of those little birds.
Our parents did not approve of this kind of sport. Our Saturdays were spent in preparation for the Sunday. A Sunday that was set aside for the service of the Lord .
-It was a day of rest and worship-
The devoted believers of those days would not even ride a bicycle on a  Sunday unless there was an emergency, and even then it had to be a serious event!  
The generation of this day looks down on those early Christians.'
‘They were so simple minded you know'’
I wonder at times: Is the  Sunday celebrated better in these days of fast-moving cars and mini skirt women.
Oops! I had to throw that in.

Occasionally we would go for a walk in our Creators handy-work-on to the forest with the ageless pine trees who spread their branches reaching for heaven like shriveled old men. Bend-over and vulnerable in their sand blasted resting-places.
On our travels we would be passing the so-called folk's gardens winding their way up into the heater fields on the far horizon. A purple blanket of heather that was a feast for our eyes would welcome us and place us in a completely different World
This would happen on those days that my parents could do so. They were just too tired most of the time.

The country to the west was as ageless as the sea and just as enduring.  The hills on that side were slowly undulating to a horizon that was lost many days of the year in misty, cloudy skies.
Low hanging clouds appeared to hug the tree-filled skyline of mostly pine and poplar trees with a sprinkling of birch and other deciduous trees. 
Suddenly, the sun would break through and create a completely different landscape. 
The Sun and shade would be playing over that beautiful blanket of purple heather that wound its way up the sloping hillside. Farther up it would be mellowed by the sobering  abundance of so-called gin trees to lose it self into the variation of the more subdued color facets of every shape and hue.
Then the gin trees, as lonely centennials, in their prickly ugliness, just as ageless as the sheepfold. Complete with shepherd and sheepdog, which were adding to the wholesome picture of undisturbed peace and quiet.   It is hard to understand that those sheep could find enough to eat in that sparse environment of bunt grass and woody heather plant. Nevertheless, these hardy animals seemed to do good enough on this diet of grass and heather.
Heather plants may be hard to swallow but they are beautiful to look at when they are in full bloom.
The little purple buts around a crown of lilac stems set into the rust-colored background of the hardy plant make for a wonder-work of color and harmony. 
[Al this formed a panorama that is far beyond any thing that human hand can create.]
The Creators hand has thrown this abundance all over creation in an almost callous way. He has all that beauty in the palm of his hand and much to spare.   We have seen this many times and never more so than in the present time of T V and deep sea diving. Even the deep sea is full of color of unknown dimension in places that no ordinary human has ever been, or will ever be!
Schools of fish of unbelievable beauty and variation of color swirl back and fort, over and under all things.
Everything is in unison of movement that is amazing and wonderful.
The most ardent researcher cannot explain this play of movement in unknown dimensions set out against a background setting of swaying plant growth in a watery world, in a mixture of blue and turquoise color. 
All this makes you wonder when you look at the pictures of the deep-sea divers of the modern age..   However, this was in the far future at the time when we were little children.
Nobody could fore see the present explosion of knowledge that is so evident and common today.   The country to the east lost itself in the heather and peat lands where the ordinary working man dug the light-colored peat briquette's dried into four by eight squares called turf.
This was the heating material that would be warming the poor man twice.
First, When he poured out his sweat to dig the stuff in the hot and humid summer days.
Later in the cold winter weather conditions when he sat with his family huddled around the potbelly stove with a cup of chocolate milk.--- if he were that fortunate.--
We will hear more of that east country later! I wanted to show you the setting and the surroundings of...  

My hometown!

It is in this little town that where our story begins:

  Dad was a quiet little man with an unpredictable wisdom that was as hard to fathom as a quiet mountain lake that has great depths and unknown riches.  The common folk wisdom describes this so nicely with the saying, "quiet waters have often great depths!" That was how my dad was.
Our Mother explained to us in one of her colorful stories that her brothers were teasing her with that giant of a man in leather boots and corduroy pants. (The Goliath of the high country') they would call him.
This was in the time before they were married in the days of wine and roses, before the thorns and ten children made inroads into their happy ignorance.   Dad proved them all wrong. He was a giant of a man in his own right. He was his own man whom money or favor could not buy.
--Leader of a labor union that was the under dog in their battle with high finance.--
It happened that the management offered him an easier life stile when the going was tough and many were unemployed. He refused--he wanted to be one with the other union members. A deal like that would have put a distance between him and his fellow workers. He did not want that [The great Goliath stood his ground.]
They could not buy him at any price.
It reminds us a little bit of Moses in Egypt when the Israelites fell on hard times.
 (Just a little mind you.)   Dad was a man of high morals and way ahead of his time. For instance!
Our Father did not allow us to make fun of anyone who was different in any shape of form.
Whether it was by religious conviction or merely handy-capped by shape or birth.
It is a fact that we knew that all persons were different.
Some were Catholic and others were Reformed and others were from different denominations of every shape and color. All this made no difference to our parents.
They believed all to be serving the same Lord unless they showed that they were faking a faith-life that was not theirs by the wrong way of living.
It was this kind of thinking that shaped our neighborhood relations and more important
It shaped our outlook of life.   We are from a gypsy offspring, according to some unconfirmed story.  This may or may not be true; Nevertheless: it would explain our great love for music and our emotional approach to many situations in life and also our somewhat reckless nature! 
Whatever the case, my father was a king among men, as he has proven time and again in his later life.   People have named my mother "A Mother in Israel" -- and rightly so!

She had a most endearing quality that seemed to reach out to others no matter what the circumstances or personalities.  The invisible quality, touching the heart, when others are lost or uncaring. 
It happened once that an older man went to the hospital to comfort Mother when she was sick.  He came back from that visit and said in amazement, "I went over there to bring comfort to her and came back from that visit being comforted!" 
That was our Mother all right. Always giving!

  She came out of a large family.
They told us that her grandparents were not al that church minded.
The family fell on hard times and there was no one around to help them in their time of need.
This changed when a Gereformeert minister gave the growing family living quarters and the means to make a living.
It was this minister who changed their life and they became Christians.
It was not so much the preaching of that minister that changed their lives, but this man’s action when the family was in need, His action was the better sermon and giving the better witness by far.
All the members in that family became members of the invisible church of the living savior.
His actions gave quite a testimony to the humane altitude of that humble minister in days long ago.   A sister of my mother got married to our neighbor who was living across the road from us. [You will read more about this man and his family, later.]
This woman died at a young age, after that she had three children with this man
Mom’s parents raised the third son in that family under the influence of my mother's brothers. It put a lasting impression on this young mans approach to life, and he was always attracted afterwards to my mother and her children.   The brothers of my mother were more inclined to reach for a higher education except my uncle Hank who was a bicycle repair man and one other uncle,
This person turned out to be the black sheep on the family the way it appeared then.
This man was a happy go lucky -kind of guy since his life was a big game of change;   Whatever might have been the case! . He could have been the best of them all.
Uncle Gerritjan; was his name, and, he moved to Canada in the early twenties. Coming back to Holland during the war with the liberation armies of Holland.
The army brass had promoted him to a higher rank at several occasions, but he would promptly get in trouble and was demoted again  . . .
He felt more at home with his bosom buddies.
It was a trend of character that has been a character trend in our family as far as I can remember.           `   Let us return to my mother.
She would sing psalms most of the day with great abandon and a joyful spirit that was nothing make believe.  It came straight from the heart.
It was a joy to behold and hear her sing songs of a lighter genre.  She would sing with complete abandon, giving it the full treatment, and the words she did not know or had forgotten she invented with sometimes-hilarious results.
She had some kind eye sickness when we were children, Help was hard to come by and medicine was relative simple in those days, not nearly as far advanced as in to-days world.
The doctor gave her some medicine and told our mother to keep her eyes covered for several days. The result was that she went around the house with her eyes covered with an old but clean diaper-A leftover from one of her children- Singing at the top of her voice.
It was then that the doctor came around the corner of the house for a house call.
He looked at the singing woman in amazement and said.
‘ Truly. Here is a woman singing in the night'!   We will hear more about her adventures later. We have to go on to more important matters and that is the historical occasion of my birth.   Dad and mom were married shortly after the First World War - the war that was to end all wars!
My grandfather from mothers' side was still living then and Mom was taking care of him in his old age. Children came along effortlessly in quick succession.
I should say that a little different.
Child-berth is never easy and most certainly not in those days when the children were delivered at home with the help of a midwife and well willing neighbors.
It was in those moments that the women were at their best and had some of their most glorious moments.
Several neighbor women and the mid wife would be in full control of the house and it's surrounding area. Even the doctor had to take a backseat to some older midwives.
Those women would be flouncing through the house like broad-beamed ships sailing over troubled waters. Ankle-high skirts swishing and apron strings flying in an age-old rhythm of birth and renewal.
Everything was under control since the midwife was around to dictate the operation and it's different aspect like an experienced conductor of a well-rehearsed practice of harmony and sound.
The doctor was contacted at the last moment and in case of complications that surpassed the knowledge of the well-experienced midwives.   The husband would be traveling back and forth through the kitchen in his own little purgatory.
 -If luck was with him. -
He was not tolerated at the premises at all, most of the time. He was wandering outside in a self-imposed desert-land with eyes as saucers burdened with the pangs of guilt under the accusing stares of the surrounding women.
He was the culprit who had started all this misery and he deserved a lot of punishment for his evil deed. He was a lonesome man in no-man's land.   The poor man would be allowed back in the house after the first cries of a wellborn baby and there would be rejoicing in the whole neighborhood if mother and child were in good health.   It was in this kind of environment that it was my turn was to enter this vale of tears, way back in 1924, but I forget much of it. It has been said that the midwife slapped my mother when she first laid eyes on me, Because I was so ugly, but that is not very likely. On the contrary!
[I was actually a delightful little fellow for the eyes of the beholder.]
Blond hair and blue eyes, A beautiful sight for sore eyes.
Even so! I was the one who was slapped on my pearly little bottom.
Times were good yet in that year and my parents had decided to build their own new house (heavily mortgaged!) but it was a good move as was proven later.    My memories go back to that little house, slightly off the center of town but still within a half-mile from school and church.
Our house was in two sections. There was the main building with kitchen and living-room and three bedrooms and a second story with two rooms.
The main section was for hay and straw. A straw cutting machine had been hoisted up to that part of the ceiling. It was a heavy piece of machinery that must have taken tremendous efforts to get it up there.
It had blades that would make the former inventor of the guillotine jealous beyond compare.
Then there was the front part that was rebuild into a bedroom in later days.
A smaller building had been added to the back of the house.
It had a ceiling for hay upstairs and a lower section for our herd of cattle.
And that was a herd of one calf and one cow.  That herd has in later days swollen in later days to the inconceivable number of one cow one heifer and one calf. 
A Billy goat in was included in later days to the sum total of animals in later days.
That became my prized possession!-The goat that is -
Our kitchen was sand-witched between the two buildings. It had a stove that would be smoking when the wind came from the Northwest because of a down draft.
 My dad came to the ingenious solution of that problem with the help of my uncle.
They put a fool on top of the chimney ‘it was called a fool‘ because it would turn with the changing of the wind just like a person who can't decide.
It also sounded like a fool at the best of times. ‘Always squeaking and complaining!'
I almost forgot the most important part of our home  -The toilet--!
It has seen a lot of heavy weather over the years. -Thunder and lightning and everything else between
Two grown up persons and ten children were regular worshipers in that place of torture and delight.
That was during the war years and also right after the war.
There was only room for one on that three by four feet board with an eight-inch hole in the middle resting on a square pit with an odor trap to control the fumes .A combination of the today toilet and the old time out-house
I can clearly remember how I used to lower half of my body through that hole until only my head and my knees were above board. The rest hung in the lower section like a bat in a belfry. Flies would be bussing around in the hot summer days and make a humming and droning noise that have no equal in all the worlds.
Even so!--I was in glory-land dreaming my childhood uninterrupted dreams if none of the others where in need.
I realize that all this sounds unfresh but it was part of my childhood and could not be that bad because all ten children are still alive to this very day, -Seventy years later.
Our mother was ruling the roost with little money and a lot of imagination.
Dad came in his glory when we were all gathered around the dinner table. He could not reach all of the ten children by hand and would have to resort to a bamboo fishing rod to correct the children who were in transgression.   Not that this would come to pass all that often but we had moments that we lost our saintly halos and the fishing rod was handy to create order in a situation like that.   Across from us was an old farmhouse with untold mysteries and very fascinating for the small fry --that were we, -- snot noses --much abused by our older brothers and sisters. 
This house was one of the oldest houses in town, I mean that house was really old! 
The main house had a straw roof, a roof that settled over the low slung building like a mother hen over her brood of little chicks.
That describes fairly closely the functional character of that rustic farm building.  The roof sloped down low to the ground on the side-walls that reached not higher then six feet at the highest. 
The livestock were kept under the same roof as the family that lived there.  Well established in a lifestyle that went back in tradition to the very hazy days of the early Saxons who were living in the lowlands even before the birth of our Lord Jesus. 
A row of little windows, and almost as many small doors, added to the rustic atmosphere of the whole building.  It also added to the useful function of unloading the manure that the farm animals produced so diligently throughout the winter season. 
Cattle were in the stalls behind those little doors.  A wide alley in the middle of the barn made separation complete between boys and girls, cows and bull -- most useful! 
This alley had the illustrious name of "Threshing-floor.  "   The grain was threshed there in the cold winter months.  It was quite often that the farmer came threshing straight out of bed, right in his long johns.  He was dressed in his long johns might be a better expression.  He never would have threshed much grain in his long johns, because there was only room for one in there! 
The pigs had an abode in the front of the barn, living their short and noisy life with great optimism -- completely unwarranted!  The whole set up made for a warm and cozy.
This lifestyle and was not nearly as smelly as you would think.  Houses like that still are found in the countryside of Holland, Germany, and many other European countries.                                                                                                                                                
Hay was stacked on a low ceiling above the cows on both sides of the alley and on the larger ceiling higher up above the threshing floor.  This hay was brought in through two beautiful big barn doors on the end of the floor.  Those doors made the buildings look even more beautiful. 
Those doors were a work of art in many farm buildings, adding even more to the rustic countryside appearance of those farms.  They were at least twelve feet high and had an imposing curve, large enough to let a high hay-load pass through under the high ceiling. 
Wrought iron letters beside the farm doors announced the year in which the farm was built.  Two numbers to the left, the others to the right anchored in the brick walls with ornamental curls of black iron forced in the smithies of the nearby blacksmith shop.
It was easy to walk from the animal section of the house to the living quarters.
An old oak door with another art-full wrought, iron handle gave entrance to the kitchen.
One would enter that room and was replaced in another age of rest and beauty.   The kitchen was half-hidden in a fascinating semi-darkness that made everything look mysterious and forbidding.
Several old reed-covered chairs stood in a haphazard way around a heavy oak table in front of a beautiful open fireplace.  Those fireplaces had blue Delft tiles along the back surface.  Tiles that were worth a fortune, many of them having a bible picture burned on the surface -- Adam and Eve -- or any other type of bible story, most fascinating for us as children!   I would never get enough of the picture of the twelve spies coming out of Canaan with sticks loaded with grapes on their heavy muscled arms and shoulders.
Santa Claus was supposed to have come through some of these fireplaces according to an age-old story that had its origin in the Low Countries -You will hear about that later-
The fireplace was not only important for the fire but also for a place to smoke the meat and the famous Dutch Farmer sausage.  Whole sides of bacon and row upon row of sausages hung in the upper structure.  Smoked, to an unbelievable delicacy, as time and smoke had their way with these farmer delicacies.    The sleeping place for some folks was along the side of the kitchen.  A kind of cubbyhole that was about five feet deep, five feet wide and six feet high Nice ornamental doors in front, were shutting of the hostile world.  Often hiding some heavy romancing. 
Many wedding nights were consummated behind those doors.   Joyful, but also sad, moments were experienced in those--bedsteads -as they were called.    Reed-covered chairs were placed on a clay-covered floor and on the whitewashed wall the grandest of all grandfather clocks!  Ticking away time into eternity. 
Sometimes that was reassuring and sometimes aggravating.  Tick tock, tick tock, going on and on.  This clock was more than one hundred years old it had been counting away many a lifetime from birth to death. 
The face of that clock was a painting in its own right.  Consisting of a landscape with cows, horses and sheep. An old farmhouse surrounded by trees in the background and above the trees was a picture of the moon going through the cycle of a new moon, half moon and full moon .
All in its own time and place.
Much copper-work was in and around this wholesome picture of time and rhythmic movement powered by two heavy copper weights, polished and spotless by the enduring efforts of Aunty Riek and her robust three daughters. 
This was not the end of it. Those weights had to be pulled up every evening at the exact moment in time A ritual that repeated itself night after night for as long as there was a living being in the house to pull those weights.
Old, eight by eight oak beams supported the ceiling, smoke colored and strong,
These remnants of days past were carrying the winter load of hay stored there throughout the fall and most of the winter. Springtime would lighten the burden for a time of relapse.  Then the cycle would start again.
The walls had been whitewashed so often that the old clock was bedded down snugly, in layer over layer of whitewash, in a time-honored resting-place.    The front of the house was of really old brickwork.  Time and elements had honed these bricks into a real work of art.  Always pleasing to the eye.  This front was overshadowed with a row of beautiful old chestnut trees. These trees would be casting a shade on the building, ever mysterious with a promise and warning of well-hidden secrets, present and past, forbidding and enticing! This impression was even more pronounced by  - blinds' --Little doors beside the windows-- these could be closed to shut out the sunshine or the night.
Heart formed openings in the doors send out a warming welcome when the evening was stormy and wet.                                                                                 
We looked at this house, first things in the morning, and the last thing at night.  Ending the day when the sun set over the incomparable trees surrounding the house or when the moon ruled over the night.  ‘If cloud and rain did not obscure her serene majesty. ‘   Our own house was an anticlimax; since it was new and untried, it held no secrets yet and no romance to speak of.  My first memories are a very vague collection of how I stood at the top of the stairs looking down at my brothers.  Fearful and a little proud that I had risen to such heights. 
My grandfather from mothers' side died when I was only two years old, and my memories of that time are vague and very distant.  Mom and dad were walking through the house with sad faces, and Mother was crying most of the time.  Grandfather was laying in the front room, still and not moving.  Strange men came in the living room later with a long wooden box and put grandpa in.  Strange and very scary that was. 
Death seems to have a language of its own, and even a little boy could understand that grandpa would leave forever.  The other grandparents had passed away many years before.  None of them got much older than sixty years of age.
 This was an age that was normal for the former generation. ‘   We often missed our grandparents in later years!  Other children had their grandparents and could show of their presents, bragging about them while we were standing empty-handed.  Until I thought, I had found the solution.  Down the street lived an old lady who was always sick and in bed.  I went to the old lady and asked her if she would be my grandma.  That would remedy the situation and the lack of presents!  I would be in for the good times, so I thought in my children's imagination.  But alas!  I bet on the wrong horse (or the wrong lady to be more to the point!).  The old lady did not have much money and had to share the little she had with the folks that looked after her.  No presents!   Easter was also a mixed blessing in my Mothers' country, a mixture of old pagan tradition and Christian faith. Folk tradition was a leftover from the old Sacson and German forefather’s .
The strange part is that many Nazi leaders of later days were following many of the same customs for all the wrong reasons. They had their bonfires and dances around the Mayday tree, closely linked to the old Teutonic customs that followed pagan rites and spirit worship based on satanic believes.   Many of our district people would work together to build an Easter fire of great dimensions. All kind of burning material was brought together from all over the country. Brush and shrubbery was saved for months ahead of the great day.
Old tables and old chairs-bedsteads-and any material that would burn was dragged to the Easter fire by young and old. Nothing was safe for the greedy hands of the little folks they would drag your mother-in-law to the fire if she were any good for that purpose.
It has happened that a little white-haired Dutch boys got carried away by the spirit of the moment taking their wooden shoes and throwing those in the blazing inferno.'
This was risky business for swift punishment was sure to follow.'
I remember a time that a regular war erupted between some neighbors when one neighbor stole some kindling wood from our Easter fire.
Al primitive instincts erupted in a blaze of indignity. Fathers and sons and even some daughters exploded in a righteous wrath about this affront to neighborly conduct. The passions of wrath flared higher than the flames of the Easter fire and died just as quickly.   It was a glorious moment when a tiny flame was started on the bottom of the pile. The smoke and tongues of fire erupted throughout the kindling wood to swell to a great bonfire. With us boys standing around that fire like old pagan priests, taken up in the heat of the moment in more ways than one. The joy would reach a new high when our parents helped us to roast potatoes, apples and chestnuts in the fire.
Most folks would stay around until late at night when the fire had died down to glowing embers and the little kids were chewing on burnt potatoes with grains of sand.
But it was fun--By the way! -This custom is followed to this very day!   Then there was the custom of hard-boiled eggs hidden in all kinds of hiding places. The children had a whale of a time to crawl over and under any object that might be hiding some eggs.
There was another custom that involved little swans on sticks. You would see children toting sticks.  With many branches and a little swan on every branch--I hate to say it but we had no branches and no sticks to carry around. We had little of any thing .Dad and Mom had not that kind of money.   We were also left out on another custom.
Many children carried a network stocking around their rudy little necks. These stockings were often filled to the brim with little chocolate eggs -sugar eggs -peanuts and oranges and much more.
The grand children from the folks across the road had stockings that were so long and had so much stuff in it that they tripped over it when they ran to fast.
Sugar eggs that were as big as your fist and chocolate eggs that were even bigger.--small eggs, big eggs -white eggs, colored eggs -eggs, eggs and more eggs. It was like the horn of abundance.
--And here we were --The poor folks of the neighborhood- Running around with holy stockings with a few peanuts and one or two oranges. (The stockings had holes in them)   It was remarkable that we were so content, it was the way of the world and we did not know any better than it had to be that way. It would not enter our mind to ask for any of those things.
--Not from those children and not from no one else.-- It was good the way it was. We were happy and content.
Our parents had shown us the real meaning of Easter and that was far more important than any amount of sweets and candies. We learned the real meaning of Easter and of the values in life.
But; We still missed out on these things
We had the same luck with our Sint Nicolaas (the Dutch Santa Claus).  Our neighbors across the road were Catholics.  They always gave very expensive presents to their children with Sint Nicolaas, while we had to be satisfied with a few peppermints, some peanuts, and very small gifts -- a very unsatisfactory situation.  Life would be much more pleasant if we became Catholic and had their Santa Claus -- that would improve our lives considerably.  Then we would have paradise on earth.    Even so! The Catholic Church was very scary on the other hand.  They would have a procession around the Church occasionally.  These events were always very colorful.  The church band playing sacred music and the priest dressed rich and colorful in long dresses and the altar boys, also in long dresses carrying mother Mary around the Church in company of other many colored symbols. 
But the most imposing and fearful Image in that procession was the Lamb of God. 
‘A pure white lamb' carried on a platform under a beautiful purple canopy. 
Many somber people following behind in this solemn procession.                                                   
Some priests were swinging gold and silver incense vessels filling the air with an ever-persistent aroma. ‘That alone was an experience in itself. ‘ All this was in honor of the Christ Child.  The Lamb of God . Everything made a sobering impression, the aroma of incense, and the somber and reverent people, mixed with the subdued music and the colorful priest.  It all made an overpowering impression on my little child's imagination. 
THIS REALLY WAS GOD! 
Our neighbors across the road had three large pictures on the wall and those pictures would fill me with great fear.  Jesus was shown there with bleeding hands reaching out to everyone looking up to.  Him.  This really was God!
 Mother Mary was there also looking down at you with a great bleeding heart in the middle of her chest and several other saints, more or less graphic.
I was in such childhood awe and wonder that I would enter those rooms under no condition. 
The children of that household went in and out, without any reserve, and I marveled at that.    I wonder some times, could it be that we as parents force our children to close to the awesome majesty of God without teaching them about a GOD who is Infinite,
He is the ruler of us all, also in the small things of life?  Somehow, we seem to lose the greatness of our Lord because we become too familiar with. [ His awesome majesty.]  We lose sight of the fact that God is not the neighbor next door but.  He saved us at great sacrifice.    I would like to mention again the priest and those boys! -- We never got used to those dresses.--  It just was not fitting for boys to be dressed like that. 
‘I had forgotten that I had a dress on myself when I was smaller.'  It was the dress code of those early days for the little ones in diapers.  We got a little higher on the ladder of life when we progressed to pants-wearing boys.    These pants were an art form in it self. with flaps on the back and on the front.  These flaps could be lowered or raised, as the occasion demanded.  Either way, to do a big one or a small shore 'neat hay?  It was interesting that a person who was not well liked was called a "flap peeing person.  "
We climbed higher on the ladder of the establishment as we progressed to short pants and knee-high stockings. We became little men then.
That was a proud moment when I walked to school on the hand of my mother.
A little boy with white hair dressed in a blouse with a marine collar and knee high socks.
‘Just the right setting for a lover boy like me.'   The women had a dress code also.  Their head covering was often of an unsurpassed beauty that was seldom equaled by any hat maker.  This headgear had to be spotless with white pleat coverings, complementing women in a way that I have never seen since then.  The headdress was not complete if it was not accentuated by gold ear rings and head irons, and other fineries as well.  The higher the status, the more finery!   The old dress form was accompanied by a long dress that reached to just above the shoes.
An eye pleasing picture in young women and old!   Purses were obsolete because the long dresses had slits on each side.  And any woman, worth her mettle, had a kind of apron under her garment -- an apron with many pockets.  These aprons were real treasure coves; almost anything could pop up out of there, and often do.  Handkerchiefs, safety pins, candy, lose change, ends of string, etc.  In there was an almost endless supply of odds and ends.    An old Oma was living with her sons and daughter. [A young couple blessed with many children].  It was a rainy day and the children were playing hide and seek in the kitchen area.  Everyone was found after much searching, except the smallest one.  He could not be found, no matter where they went, until suddenly, the little boy came peeping out of the side slot of Oma, s dress.  The little tike said, in a choked voice, ‘You never would have found me if Oma had not blown a smelly wind!'  The old lady had eaten a little too rich food and that brought on the disaster for the little buccaneer.  Old folks had a saying: “The last one that told that story is in the graveyard “
.The story is highly suspect of exaggeration.   Only the farm people wore this dress code and every country had a different dress code. 
Not only that! Every district had its own dress code and often its own language ‘
Some people were living less than four kilometers apart and have their own distinctive language and customs. There was no one bold enough to date a woman in another district .Men would fight with knives with anyone bold enough to approach one of their women. You will hear more of that later.   There were taverns in the eighteen hundreds who had their own special way of doing things.
Rough looking characters would be associating in these bizarre places. One rough individual would run the show, as often happens.  He would plant a knife in the table and the un-weary stranger who did not know the custom and was so unfortunate that he would look at the knife in the table would be challenged to a knife fight.--It is hard to understand, but it happened.--   We had out lived that kind of behavior and became more civilized.[That is what we like to think anyway ]We were almost as good as the folks living in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the west of Holland. But not quite!   Wooden shoes were also very common among us.  Those shoes were an institution in them selves.  Warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  A little straw could be added if it was really cold but that was not done all that often. 
Those instruments of subtle torture might have given me calluses in later days when I had difficulty walking. I had calluses under the ball of my feet as a result from these wooden culprits.
Even so! They were of use even after they had worn out.  You could make a boat out of them, put a little stick in the middle for a mast, and tie on some cloth and -- voila -- you had a sailboat. 
Wooden shoes were awful handy in a soccer match.  The play of the ball was usually spirited by clean play, but things could get out of hand sometimes.  Then the cry would sound: “First the man and then the ball!” Then all the primitive instincts would break lose. “Blood on the goal post!” Would be the cry in the really rough neighborhoods, but our parents would not allow us to play in that kind of neighborhood, and they were right in that.  
A neighborhood gang went on the warpath one day.  They hammered four-inch nails in the front of their wooden shoes and were all set for business.  But the opposing party showed great insight and vacated the premises.  It is not a pleasant feeling when your rear end is stuck to a wooden shoe by means of a four-inch nail .Not that I was in much danger. I was too much of a coward.   We were not involved in fights that often, but we had other means to settle our accounts.
 One could take off his wooden shoes and hammer away at the opposing party.  But that too was more for the rowdy types.  Our parents did not approve of that kind of conduct. 
I was a coward and therefore contacted one of my bigger friends and hid behind him in time of need.
 I repeat [--I was a coward—But a life coward] or else I would not be sitting here to tell you about it.   We had a guy in our town who was quite a character.  Crazy Dieksy was his name.  But he was far from crazy.  His thought process was a little different from ordinary persons  [that was all.] ‘He was in good company! ‘ Albert Einstein was like that too (although  to my regret I must say “Dieksy was no Einstein)'
On the other hand, Dieksy was wild about soccer. This was proven again when Dieksy was sitting at the sidelines while his team was losing, a very important game. 
He was not allowed to play because one player had donated a regulation soccer ball. The possession of a ball like that was very unusual in the deep depression of the middle thirties.
Only players with leather shoes were allowed to play with this treasure of a ball -- Dieksy had only wooden shoes so he had to sit out this game -- the powers that where --had dictated this.  But his team was losing and losing in a big way-- until, finally Dieksy could stand it no longer.  He demanded the loan of another player's leather shoes and entered the game with vigorous abandon.  He got so involved that he lost all rhyme and reason.  He went after the ball and kicked the ball through the goal post, including the goalkeeper and half the opposing team.  The other half got out of there, but fast! 
The game was over, and the opposing team had lost by default!  (Hurray for Dieksy?)  Not really. 
There are rules and regulations and this behavior was well outside expected behavior.  But a lot was forgiven because Dieksy had a special place in the sentiment of everyone that knew him! 
All this shows a little of our feelings, to the number one pastime of our youth! 
Soccer and bicycle racing were the real thing in those days!   Our neighbors, on the farm, had several boys and they were all soccer players.  Hank and Hans, especially, were our heroes.  The role models for our budding soccer talents. 
We asked Hank once, in a very confidential moment, to tell us the secret of a successful soccer player.  He gathered us around in a tight circle and, in a conspirator tone of voice, told us his great secret:  "Take a little piece of brown rye bread," he said, "make it about one inch thick, two inches long, and two inches wide."  His freckled face, with the red hair and stubble beard, could never have been more serious and solemn.  "Take that little piece of bread, and dry it for three days where no sun can reach it, then carry it in your pockets, at all time!"  "Don't," and his big finger waved at us, "Never leave home without that little piece of bread!" 
The net result of it was that we had a piece of bread in our pockets always, to the desperation of our mothers.    I can clearly remember that he was working at a wooden wheel that he was cutting with the help of a knife. This wooden wheel was hand made to drive the butter churn with an electric motor.
This was a giant step forward in the line of progress.
All butter churning had to be done by hand in those days and the condition had to be just right 
No butter was made if it was not. It was the age-old tradition that no woman ‘who had the time of the month could hope to make butter or can food for that matter.   Making this wheel to drive the churn was real progress and, we, as little boys were speechless with admiration for the expertise of Hank the dragon-slayer.
There were many nails in this wheel and Hank pointed from one nail after the other to explain the different positions of the players in a soccer team.
It is on that butter-churn wheel that we learned the elementaries of the soccer game.'
The meaning off penalties and offside, out-ball and corner ball and much more'
Hank, s family were the proud owners of a radio and that brought his expertise and knowledge to ever-new dimensions. He was the number one source of all there was to know about the game of soccer.    He could quote the greatest experts of the hallowed soccer game.   A sports announcer got so excited one day that he screamed at the top of his voice:  "Look at the quivering of the thighs, and the shivering of the stomach!"  That became a catchword and the slogan of soccer teams for years to come. 
We tried to make our stomach to shiver and our thighs to quiver but you can't make anything shiver if it is not there to start with. Hank and Hans where well equipped for that kind of exercise and we loved them even more for that reason   Our soccer matches had very humble beginnings.  We never had the money to buy a decent soccer ball, so we looked for a substitute -
[It is with great caution and a humble and forgiving spirit, great imagination and great trepidation, a strong stomach, and a warm heart, that I caution you to look at the rest of the story.] 
We had to look for a substitute, drawing on the great wisdom of our forefathers.                             We went to the butcher shop on slaughter day and begged the man for a pig bladder. 
We would get one free on our lucky days, and the fun could begin.  We walked as conquering heroes to the field of battle with our treasure, pumped air in the bladder, with the help of a bicycle pump, shivering with expectation, and the game could start before long. 
The bladder was wet and heavy at first and little slivers of fat and meat had a nasty habit of slapping one in the face but that improved by the minute.  Until the ball became so dry that it started leaking out of little holes and the game had an untimely end.  But it was all in a day's work, and the bladder would be good for an hour, or so, until the game had a deflated end-period!  The next game had to wait for the next slaughter day. 
You might have some difficulty believing this story, even so! This is how it happened, time and again.  We were a happy bunch of boys as long as the game lasted. 
This is indeed a sobering thought for the spoiled generation of this day!   Almost anyone has those days that everything seems right with the world.  We had one of those days. 
The sun was shining and one of the better "to-do" boys had received a real soccer ball--very unusual.--  The older boys in the neighborhood had graciously decided to play a game with the little fry.  That were we, the [would be victims.] 
Our heroes, Hans and Hank, joined also in the joyful throng.  We, the little guys, were deliriously happy -- but not quite -- there was work to be done!
I had no idea that I was the supreme dummy when they put me in on goal and another little fellow in the other goal.  Presto the game was on, and it was a fairly good game in the beginning.  Then the mood changed, and the cry went up:  "First the man, and then the ball!"  That's when the game got really interesting.  Those big guys were charging each other with wooden shoes that were as big as tugboats. 
I thought that my end had come when a bunch of those jokers came barreling through the goal like the steers of Bashan.  The little guy on the other side of the field did not do all that much better, He was ground into the dust even more than I was.
Even so! The big guys praised us to the high heavens, and they had us really convinced that we were almost ready for the big league! 
The ball and us were kicked from pillar to post, and we returned home from the field of honor covered with lumps and bruises.  But that was later!   The game had to be played on the road, and not the mill yard.  That place would have been better by far, but out of bounds, because the miller had a big mean dog, with the grandiose name of Prince.  This dog would bite any ball to shreds the moment he could get hold of it.  The animal was chained to the doghouse but the chain was long enough to make the situation very risky indeed.  Nor were there any volunteers to take the ball away from the dog.  [Not in that situation.]
It was in this fashion that a number of blond-haired and half crazy Dutchmen with wild eyes and fearsome expressions were chasing an empty space of pig leather filled with nothing but air.   All good things must come to an end, also this day of days.  Maybe just as well. 
We went home conquering heroes, wounded and wearied, but a day of reckoning was coming.  We would be there to participate.  We would have a good sleep, lick our wounds and come back for more.  Such was the nature of the beast!
My dad made a big mistake on a certain day.  He knitted a pair of knee high socks for me with the colors of our opposing soccer club!
You could not blame Dad, all that much, because he was not all that wise in the ways of the world.  But I absolutely refused to wear socks with those offensive colors. 
Our favorite team had white and green colors, and the other team red and black.  I would rather die than wear the red and black colors.  Period!
It was at that moment that my Dad showed great insight and gave the socks to a less tenderhearted person. My reputation was saved from a disastrous and inglorious ending.   It was a very joyful day when our favorite team got a new goalie.  The man was a German by birth but we did not hold that against him. He was awfully talented.  He could twist himself in the most impossible forms and positions.  We called him "the Snake-man," and the Snake-man was our hope and glory. 
He was a promise of better days to come.  It's a good thing we could not see in the future -- into the difficult times ahead of us.  You will meet the Snake-man again not too much later!
We had reason for joy and optimism because the near future was looking a lot better.
Now we had the combination of soccer-talents of the fearsome trio of the snake-man and his inhuman endeavor between the pipes.  The heavyset neighbor boy Hank, who was playing the back position in before the snake-man. Last but not least was the incomparable Uncle Hans in the offensive. He fooled the opposing team with dazzling speed and surprising moves into a magic show of unexpected feats that gave our team a victory, after a disheartening string of losses.
Our favored team did not have the money for dressing rooms and the players of both teams had to dress up in the bushes behind the soccer-field. A group of mild-mannered civilians would disappear in the bushes to come back moments later like the bulls of Basan. Regular fighting machines! Frothing at the mouth and ready for action and the action was not long in waiting.
Huge mountains of flesh were weaving back and forth over the green turf, like waves in the ocean. Weaving a tapestry of movement and collar in a dazzling display of knowledge and skillful cunning.
--That's how it looked to us ---but what did we know of the ways of the world of grown up folks.
Soccer was strictly a men's game in those days. Women were hardly tolerated!
Although--- Some brazen ladies would have a sneak preview of things to come.
They were peaking behind the bushes when the men were changing.
They were not very high-class ladies. -- This was not acceptable behavior.--
Soccer was almost a religion for many people. It has happened that a catholic priest came to soccer match so that he could give a benediction to his favored team.   We will leave the soccer champions for a while and go to another fascinating place. This was the bicycle shop of our beloved uncle Hank.
My uncle, the bicycle repair man, was named after me -- I think.  His repair shop was one of the favorite places to meet people.  This had a lot to do with his personality 
Always in a good mood and upbeat, he had the knack to handle the young ones. 
It was in this place, of all places, where I almost met disaster.   A truck of the steam-cleaning factory would come to his place, once a week.  This truck came from another place, to pick up clothes that had to be dry-cleaned, for the prospective customers and it was my uncle's job to line up the customers. He would go from house to house to pick up the materials.
It was that truck that was so fascinating to my nephew and me, only the doctor and the lawyer and perhaps the mayor of town had a car in these days.  The trucks that our town could muster could be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
It was quite an occasion, when this steam-cleaning truck came into town, and a little boy like me felt really privileged that I could participate in this glorious moment -- I was about four years old at that time
 My nephew and I snuggled up to the truck, in great awe.  And we dared each other, really fearfully, to touch this wonder of wonders.
Familiarity creates contempt!  My nephew dared me to hang onto the back of that truck and hang on until it started moving.  Disaster struck right then and there.  I could not let go! [Little boy me] was dragged over the sharp basalt gravel, for more then half a block, with my knees dragging through the gravel.   My father and uncle watched, in great horror, as I was dragged away behind that truck so that I almost certainly would do great harm to my knees.
The men started waving in desperation in the hopes that the driver might see something was wrong.  But, the driver drove on, in blissful ignorance -- just dreaming along.   Every child must have one or more guardian angels, beyond any doubt.  Mine was standing a little ways down the road, in the form of a middle-aged lady.  She noticed the desperate gestures of the men and waved the truck to a stand still. 
My knees were a bloody pulp by then, and my parents had to pick out little pieces of basalt and gravel for a long time to come.  The bone was showing, but no serious damage had been done that a little vinegar could fix up.  Was I lucky or not?  I like to think that I was blessed.  It could have been so much different.   Uncle Hank was also the proud owner of an air gun and he would invite all the able men from far and wide to participate in a competition of sharp shooting with the air gun.
A target was set up and the competition could begin. The gun had little pointed plugs with a feathery end. These plugs could be pulled out of the target to be used over and over again.   It was interesting to see the different sharpshooters at work in these competitions that were usually held close to New Year.
There was the chewing type who could not shoot straight unless they had a chew of tobacco.
A great big lump would be fighting the battle of the bulge behind his gray and often unshaven cheek. Men with a fairly good aim if they could move the bulge over far enough to make room for the rifle. You could watch the hunchbacks with burdened shoulders leaning into the prospective target. This seemed to help in some unexplained way.
Some shot with both eyes open and some with both eyes closed. It stands for reason that the later character would be all by them self while the others waited outside for the duration.   Then came the day that the second girl in uncle Hanks family came to the conviction that life could not go on unless she had a potshot at uncle Hank's illusive target.
This had to be done in uncle Hank; s dim lighted repair shop and that made it even worse.
This was something unheard of.  “Girls did not shoot guns “That were men's work.
She was different in more ways than one .She did not give up but wheedled and whined until she broke down the defenses of uncle Hank. But alash! She was better at whining than shooting!
She was also cross-eyed. And so it happened that this scrawny little girl shot the air-gun of uncle Hank .
In the bicycle repair shop of uncle Hank and all the dwellers of that building flew outside for the safety of their miserable lives. ---The cowards.--!The girl shot and the plug disappeared never to be seen again.
Thus, is the story of Hanna the second girl in uncle Hank's family.
She told this story her self about fifty years after that faith-full moment in the bicycle shop of dear uncle Hank!   Such were the days of our childhood .One day followed the other like a string of pearls.
Some days better than others, but always exciting and full of activities as one learning process followed the other through sunny and through rainy days. Winter and summer, spring and harvest.   I loved to go through nature from one wonder-world to the next .I would watch the dew drenched meadows in the morning when every blade of grass had its own dewdrop sparkling in the morning sun and creating untold variations of jewels in our Makers crown. I used to dream that every drop of dew was a jewel that belonged to me and no one else. I would watch the many color spectrums, as the sun and shifting meadow blanket would create a new rainbow on every blade of grass.
At other times I would lay belly down beside a creek with a little waterfall. Not far away from where we lived.
The misty spray of the falling water would form much a variation of light and color in ever changing patterns. Bouncing and swirling ‘around and over a number of rocks' in the bottom off that creek. Little insects would clamber up the reed stalks; hardy plants that wrestled and won a place in this ever-changing wonderland of swirling water and shifting sand.
Little sticklebacks would stand in the shadow of plant and rock, fins moving in constant motion,[Standing still and not moving backwards or forward], until a shadow fell in that little paradise. Then; the little fish would shoot away, faster than any thing you have ever seen. Not a ripple would be left in its resting-place and everything would return as if nothing had been there before.
I was reminded of this children song that we learned at school in first grade.  
In a peaceful quiet valley.
Near a murmuring waterfall.
Little flowers there are blooming
Water drops fall on them all.
Even on the smallest flower.
Just let me be such a little one.   High above up on the mountain.
Giant trees grow everywhere.
Thunderstorms are ruling there.
Mighty trees will then be falling
Ending  their superior calling.
Just let me be a little one.   Then I will choose by my desiring
The lowly place, the waterfall.
Just to be a humble being.
Live with the smallest of them all.
Just a tender little flower.
Praise to my Lord will be my calling
Let me be a little one.   I could see this so clearly in my childhood imagination.
Let others be with the high and the mighty, I would prefer to be small and humble and do my own thing in my own small way. Others can have the big stuff.
" I still feel that way!"   There was another song that left a deep impression on me.
It went as follows.
Do you know how many stars are twinkling high in heavens firmament?
Do you know how many bugs are dancing round the place were you just went?
On those thousands upon thousands rest the eye of God above.
He arranged it all with love and not one escapes.  His eye.   I though that this was a marvelous thing.
[The Almighty Creator, high above, in the highest heavens.]
Looking down on everything below even the lowly mosquito is included in that loving care.
Everything that moves is under  His constant supervision even the little bug that we squash under our feet without a thought.
It was mind-boggling!   There were many fascinating things in our little world Things that are missed by the grown up people. The grown ups live a lot further away from the ant size world of the level of the little people.
We would see the bulbous eye of a grasshopper or a pie size bug. Light would reflect in many variations and in every conceivable color. It was as if those bug eyes were swiveling on a little stem. Going in every direction seeing everything without resting.
A grasshopper will scrape the lower part of her raspy leg against the shield of her upper body and make the screeching noise that fills the summer night.   It is hard to remember a summer-night without the sound of crickets and the droning sound of the insects filling the night air. With a thousand variations in a lullaby that soothes the feelings and secret fears of a play-worn little human who has so much growing up to do and so little time to do it in.            
 I spend many happy moments just lying there on my belly in the grass in front of an ant hill, fascinated by the constant and orderly movements of these industrious creatures.
I have seen ants pulling weights that were several times bigger than their own body structures, over obstructions that must have been like mountains in their own little world.
Nothing is impossible when they have set their mind on moving an object.
Others would join the effort if the strength of one were not enough to the task at hand.
These ants would move anything they had set their mind to whether it took one or two or a dozen all working in unison until the job was done,
Would it ever be nice if we as human beings could work like that together but we are way to smart for that –or are we?
Did you ever watch a little ladybug, so exquisitely made?
We would watch this little creature when it crawled from underneath a chestnut leave.
A bright red little bug with pitch-black trimmings and pin-head with dots all over its little body
We had a song about this little being.   Little humble ladybug; Fly for us to heaven.
Father and mother are dead.
Bring them all our love.
Father and mother are dead.   I have never known the true meaning of this little song but it did speak to or childhood imagination telling the story of a little orphan who had lost its parents.
An orphan who was lonesome and hungry in an uncaring world. She was reaching out to this little red and black messenger .An ambassador for the heavenly beings far away in heaven and closer than we were This little bug on that chestnut leave.   Then there was the much larger may bug.
[Giant in proportion to the first one.] We could prod it to life out of a lethargic existence.
It would pump its wings up and down and make ready for flight while we were counting of the seconds going until take off.
The whole procedure could be upset with the simple flip o f a little stick that would flip the creature on its back and it would lay there -Harmless as Samson without hair -
It would starve to death if someone did not turn him over.
Many in this modern World have forgotten God They are beetles in their own right Powerful and strong.
 Nevertheless, He that is in the heavens will laugh and turn the beetle on its backside leaving it to die.  [Unless, they do not repent and turn back to the WORD OF GOD
To the Center of our being].      HIS NAME IS JESUS!   Some times we would go to a quiet pool in walking distance from our home.
Salamanders would be lurking in the shadow of the green-turquoise water. 
It would be a glorious day if you could snatch one of those giant salamanders out of that shadowy water. We called them giant salamanders, but they were only about six inches from head to tail.
The male would have beautiful colors that could match any thing in that smelly pond.
We used to think that they were the males because these animals would follow another species of the same make but with a more subdued -almost drab color
We did not know all that much about the male female relationship but our neighbor Hank had told us that it was the basic rule --.
The fish up front is always the female when two fish follow each other. The one that follows is the male. His stubby gnarly finger was waging back and forth in front of our startled faces once again and we had to bow for his superior knowledge,
Hank was an expert on soccer. It stands for reason that he would be an expert on fish to. It was as simple as that. We were convinced of that.
It was a strange affair that no fishes seemed to follow Hank.
He did not seem to be following any other fishes either. Hank did not seem to be an expert in that kind of endeavor.
He lived and died as a bachelor in later days.   Live of a growing little boy has many variations and often goes from one extreme to the other. One day on the mountain top and down in the valley on the next.
There came a time that the wisdom of our grown up neighbors was of no avail.
They had no answer for the ultimate mystery of death.
 
Our neighbor on the eastside had been sick for a long time.  Mom would not let us play in the hallway between the houses for a long time.  The whole side east of the house was barred from loud noises.  Mother was very strict about that.  --It was the unwritten code of the neighborhood -- Everyone cared for the other person especially when sickness was involved!
Then came the day that everything became very quiet.  The wooden covers were up in front of the windows and the windows in back of the house were covered with white coverings.  The people next door were in mourning.  We were to confront the majesty of death and the grim reaper, twice, in quick succession!
Mom told us that the neighbor had passed away. We should go to the widow and tell her that we were truly sorry for the loss of her husband.  So that's what we did. 
The woman was very touched by this tactful gesture and she asked us if we would like to see the body.  She brought us to the front room, to a simple wooden coffin. 
The sight of it shook us with the force of a sledgehammer.  The man had been sick for a long time and had passed away three days ago.  --It is a well-known fact that the hair of a person will keep growing for days, after the dying of a person--. This had happened in this case, so that the result was really gruesome. 
The man had hair on his face a quarter of an inch long and the overall picture was so shocking that I could not forget for a long time the awesome reality, and finality, of death. 
I understood ,then and there, that life and death cannot be separated and that dying was by no means the end of all things.   The old and ageless wisdom had the following quotation:  "That man, or woman, has passed out of time!"  This is a very interesting statement, well worth thinking about.  Passing out of time would suggest that the departed is in a realm where time is no more -- biblical really!                           
I would like to think that Adam and Eve, and the last man to live are at the same level, as far as eternity effects us.  I believe that anyone who dies as a believer in the saving grace of Jesus will be with him immediately.   There was a boy living about half a block away from us.  He was one of the most favored, and most spoiled, of the children in the neighborhoods.  The farmers seemed to prefer him to most of us. 
He was the one that got permission to sit next to our neighbor on the farm wagon.  Something we wanted to do ourselves in the worst manner--.  He even got to hold the reins of the horses sometimes -- something that would have put any one of us in the seventh heaven--.  He could do all the little chores, while we were looking on.  Just hankering to do the same thing. 
The farmer even gave him the nickname "Patty vou, von Simsy."  A name with a very musical sound, we liked to listen to the sound of it.  Sounding like a mixture of French, German and Dutch, very romantic.   This boy could do no wrong with the rest of the grownups!  [Maybe the grown ups knew something that we did not.]  This boy became sickly and had to stay in bed, for longer and longer periods of time until we were told that he had passed away.  He was only eleven, just my age. 
This boy was born on Christmas day and in the Catholic Church that was considered very special.  The church provided a beautiful casket, pure white inside, with candles all around it. 
We all went out to see him.  It was almost as if an angel was laying there at perfect peace.  It was the nicest thing we had ever seen.  Much nicer than anything we were accustomed to.
 Al together an unearthly scene! There was this beautiful coffin with golden trimmings with the little boy in pure white. Right in the middle of the mediocre surroundings of that humble poor labor men's house.
That's how we learned to respect and fear the majesty of death at a very young age -
 This impression was so intensive that I never forgot those scenes, and adjusted my life accordingly.  
The funerals in those days were very impressive and of a morbid beauty.  A caller would come past every neighbor's door to announce the date of the burial ceremony.
This man was in total black uniform, with a high hat that had a long black fringe trailing down to his coat sleeves, and the rest of his coat was covered with ornaments all in somber black.  His voice was low and subdued as he informed the neighbors of the passing away of a loved one.
The hearse was total black, with black fringes, set off with black bells all around the shining coach.  Two, four or even six horses pulled the hearse, all black but ordinary workhorses, doubling as coach horses. 
The reins were set off with black fringes, and every horse had a black plume on his head set.  The horse heads nodded with every footstep, in time with the procession.  Solemn and somber but sure, oh so sure.  Going forward to their last destination.
 
                                          They always returned empty.  Always!   Forgive me for showing those scenes in detail, but this had a very great part in our lives also.    We were living in a mid-sized home with a cabled roof, attached to another building, our barn, that housed our life stock.  The story would not be complete if I did not tell you about our farm operation; if one can call this humble set up "a farm operation."
We had a cow and a calf, all under the same roof as where we lived.  Our dad was very proud of his little herd, and we had to go throughout the country to pick up potato peals for dad's herd! Many people, from all over town, were sympathetic to dad and mom.
After all, they had a large and fast-growing family. Some persons would have the opinion that my parents should know better, but it seems that my parents lived by their understanding of the Bible in much the same way as the Catholics. “Many children are a blessing of the Lord.” The old ones have a saying:  "It's faster to get a dozen kids than a thousand guilders!" 
It all depends on where your values are.  Some people want the money and some want the children! Only eternity will disclose which is the better, and the greater riches!  I have my own viewpoint on that matter.   My parents had ten children and followed through on their commitment with all their ability working more then twelve hours each day.
They also had a few animals to supplement the income in respect to milk and butter.
We had one cow and this animal was our pride and joy.  It had its stall in the back section of our dwelling place producing milk and butter and one tiny calf - once a year.  If we were lucky.!
My older brother had to look after her. Doing the milking and cleaning the gully behind the cow for after all it is an established fact that a cow will produce more than milk-in case you did not know this-
All things went on an even keel --. The cow did what she was supposed to do day after day and--Year after Year-- Life was as it should be.
Then, disaster struck.  The cow had been eating a potatoes and one-got stuck in the cow's throat.  She swelled up like a toad, in no time flat.
Someone went to the veterinarian at once, but almost too late.  The cow swelled up to at least two times, her normal size . It was a scary sight and we started moving stuff out of the way because the animal could fall over any moment and burst wide open, spilling all her insides over our humble abode. This would be a disaster in more ways than one for then there would be no more room for Derk and Geertje and their ten children. We would be on the outside looking into a horrible mess of blood and bones mixed with grass and grain and potato peelings.
That is what we thought anyway.   The vet came in, at the last moment.  He tried for several minutes to reach the offending object, but no luck.  A long flexible steel tube was the last resort, and he shoved the potato down in the cow's gullet, into the rumen (stomach).  That's what he thought, and, suddenly, the cow coughed and blew the offending fruit of evil out into the blue yonder.  The doctor was utterly amazed.  It seems that he had broken off a little of the potato, enough to give the cow a little air and room to move the thing out of her throat.
 It sounded like a big tire going flat, with all the air escaping in a horrible smelling stream of polluted air.  The stink was beyond compare!
‘Smell or stink'.  We could not care less.  The cow was alive and that's what counted.  Our milk supply was saved at the sounding of the bell and the producing of the smell.
Dad and our older brother could keep milking and cleaning after the cow, and, we could go through the neighborhood for potato peelings. Things were back to normal.   Now comes the story of the bees and that's no beeswax.
Our farm was also the proud owner of a colony of bees.  Every bee colony has one queen, and the whole life cycle of the colony rotates around the queen-bee...  Just as in my family. 
A colony has workers, nursing bees, soldiers, architects, and much more to regulate the bee collection.  Very much like a human society. All goes well until problems arise if the colony gets more than one queen, and almost half the colony will follow the new queen.  "The bees would be swarming," was the expression the common folk used when that happened.  And one day a swarm like that came flying past our home.                 My mother was running outside. Like a woman possessed, and the kitchen maid was just as wild.  They had flipped a lid. At least that's what it looked like to the harpies in the neighborhood.
They- that's mom and the maid- were throwing water in the air, hammering pots and pans together, and my older brothers were waving coats and jackets, blankets and all kind of home ware. One was even running around with  a piece of underwear. 
The people around were almost convinced that our family had finally cracked up.  Two wild looking women and a half a dozen kids jumping around like Indians in a war dance.
That is the way it looked but it was not all as bad as that. 
A swarm of bees was flying over, and mom was trying to bring it down using the age proven manner of duplicating a thunderstorm and rain.  They did a good job of thundering and raining.  The swarm of bees settled down a little further, and a beekeeper out of the neighborhood helped mom to get the bees in the hive. We had another swarm of bees, thanks to the thunder and rain of mom and the maid. --Bring the swarm of bees down-- and the possession of the bees is yours.  ‘This was the unwritten rule'
Getting the Queen-bee is the name of the game!  Everything will come together if you have the queen-bee.  I ought to know -- I married one!  Hee hee.  You are supposed to laugh now.  That was a joke!  Got it?  Queen bee!  Mom!   Dad had a whole row of beehives, some three hundred yards from our house.  I came walking past there on a nice and warm sunny day.  It was hot, and I became suddenly convinced that life could not go on properly if I did not hit those beehives with a rake.
One of those handy instruments happened to fall into my hands at just the right moment.  The bees were doing whatever they do best -- making honey-.  I did my thing and followed my noble intent I hit one beehive with a resounding whack and, that was almost the last whack I did in all my life, if it had not been for the fast action of my uncle, who was just at our place. 
The bees came after me in great numbers and would have stung me to death, if it had not been for my uncle, who covered me with his coat.  Mother treated me with vinegar and scolding, and I was left as a very disillusioned boy -- bees are not very friendly!--   September has always been a very important month in my life.  This was the month that I got slapped for the first time. My older brother went to school that day and said to the teacher, "I got another brother today, it was a good thing that my mom was home or else I would have had to face it all alone!"
September was also the first month that I went to school.  My free life was over and I had to learn to be quiet and humble, also to have clean hands and  fingernails that were not in mourning. 
You know -- nails with nice black edges!-- Clean ears and a clean nose, became a deciding factor in my life. I was not happy, I felt like a bear in a cage. I would much rather be outside than inside of that school. Looking from the outside in.
Let some one else do the learning. --I would do the yearning --for the wide open spaces and far away places.   And yet--It was in the first grade that the values were formed. These had a deciding influence on my life.  ‘Values that followed me all my life.' But it did not start all that smooth.  The teacher ordered me to come to the front one day to do some writing on the blackboard.  But I flatly refused to go there.  I hated to be the focus of attention even then.  It is still that way!
The teacher was well endowed with the necessities of life and her great bulk put a lot of pressure on little old me. Her upper-structure with the two moon shaped objects hung over me like the sword of Damocles .She put a real scare in me but I was more afraid of the fact that I had to go up front.  ‘All by my lonesome self'. I fought like a man possessed.
I think that the teacher had the wrong approach, but she was pressed for time.  She had forty kids in her class ... Anyway...  She tried to drag me to the front, but there was no way that she could handle me, I was hanging on in desperation, fighting tooth and nail. 
It took the teacher and three other boys to drag me to the front, screaming like a stuck steer.  The rest of the class watched the battle in great amazement and then in silence.  Most of them were very impressed with the fight I put up, in total disobedience to the schoolteacher.  They did not understand that it was a fight of desperation on my part.
I was finally subdued by the superiority of numbers. The pressure of human flesh put an end to this heroic struggle.
It was a broken little boy who stood in all his naked feelings in front of a class of some forty children.
It brought to the surface those trends that have followed me in later life.  I have always hated to be the center of attention or of public display. 
But an amazing fact showed up when I was about fourteen when I joined a drama club and played for crowds of a thousand, many times.  A crowd of three thousand at one time 
An amazing accomplishment of character discipline, if you consider the absolute fear, and even panic, of that first day in school.   And then there was the second trend that has followed me all along!  The ability to take charge against overwhelming odds when there was no outlook anywhere. 
What follows is a statement of fact and hardly self-glorification!  I have grown old enough not to look for brownie points ...  I don't need them!
Authority has always been sacred to me.  I believe that God ordains the forces that are and should be obeyed, unless their morals are wrong.  To follow and obey has been a sacred trust to me, more than 90 percent of the time. 
The other 10 percent were to shown my ability to lead, when no others came forward.   The school life was not at all kind to me .On the contrary,
We were given a twelve by fourteen-inch board with slate in it. A person could write on that slate with a kind of pencil of the same material. The writing could be washed away with a smelly sponge that was kept in a sponge box. This sponge box became very smelly too after a period of time. -In my case to say the least -I was to indifferent to take proper care of that little box while most of the girls kept that box smelling like the rose of Saron.
This was only part of the problem. On that board of slate we had to draw slanted lines
Nice and even .My whole life has never been even and those lines on that board were a perfect example of my lack of expertise. Those little lines of mine were wandering all over the board like withered old men. There was no rime or reason to any of my creations   In front of me sat a little girl with a beautiful ribbon in her hair. I adored that girl from a distance and I adored even more the lines that she could produce on the slate board and elsewhere. Most of the other girls were almost as good but the girl with the hair ribbon had them al beaten to smithereens. I think that I am still in love with that girl and her lines Even now after seventy-three years. One calls that nostalgia.   It is a funny thing but I went to a hypnotist a number of years ago .I wanted to know why I was so insecure at times. She put me under hypnoses and to my amassment I started crying. The hypnotist asked me why I was crying and I told her in a wavering voice that I could not make straight lines. Believe it or not. The lack of straight lines still bothered me after seventy years of living with my beloved Johanna who had no ribbon in her hair.
Strange but true.      The Bible lessons and psalms that we learned had the greatest impact on me.  Many songs that we learned in first grade have followed me all my life!  I can quote them in my mother tongue, even now, after sixty-five years living in a strange country, not speaking my mother tongue.   I could quote them.  In good times, but more in the bad times when my whole life was turned upside down.
I can still quote almost by heart, Psalm 131:  "Lord my heart is not proud, nor mine eyes haughty.  Nor do I involve myself in great matters.  Or in things too difficult for me.                                                                                                                                                                                                     Surely I have composed my soul, and I quieted it like a weaned child, resting against its mother.  My soul is like a weaned child within me.  O Israel hope in the Lord, from this time forth and forever!"   The infinite peace and quiet that reaches, and flows, out of that chapter, like a soothing song, have done just what that song said.  It has quieted my soul again and again, day after day, and year after year.
Psalm 81 was another key in my life.  "Hear o people, and I will admonish you.  O Israel, if you would listen to me! Oh that my people would listen to me.  Open your mouth and I will feed you.  But my people did not listen to my voice, and Israel did not obey me.  Oh that my people would listen to me, That Israel would walk in my ways.  I would feed you the finest wheat, and with honey from the rock, I would satisfy you!" 
This is among the most beautiful languages in the Bible.  It comes at you like a lullaby and surrounds you like a song.  Singing --Soothing --and you can hear the Lord, pleading with his people.  'Please listen to.  Me!  And I will feed you with honey from the rock!  Please give Me your loves and ask, ask, just ask anything, and I will give it to you.' 
Did you ever hear greater love than the one that's calling to you out of these passages? 
I confess that I love  Him.  I tried to love Him from day to day and to serve Him from year to year.  I did not ask for riches, and He gave me abundance.  He gave me all things and nothing that's good for me was withheld from me. 
I have a wife and children with all their love.  Grandchildren, and great grand children. 
Trials and misfortunes -- yes,-- but He was always there!  I had a completely full life.   Another familiar Bible passage; ‘ Psalm 103:  "   “As for a man, his days are like grass, as a flower in the field, so he flourishes.  When the wind passed over it, it is no more." 
This, also, was very familiar to me! Five times have I been confronted by death.  I had to face untold danger, time and again, and through it all I learned to understand the lessons of my childhood.  “The end of the road is Jesus.  And all between is Jesus!”   I remember the psalms but, even more important, the Bible lessons of the early years.  I have walked with Adam and Eve in paradise and pictured how he named the animals after their nature, one by one!  I followed the creation of Adam and Eve and their fall in sin.  Their sin and self will, and how God gave humankind a second chance, with the promise of the Savior. 
I did see it, and I believed.  I followed Cain and Abel, and the first violence.  Abel's dying. 
And then there was Enoch; ‘ The man who walked with God.' He did not see death because of that.   On and on, through the Old Testament, from Abram to Jacob.
Jacob was a guy I did not like all that much.  I would sooner have gone fishing with Esau.  But Jacob believed and Esau did not!  And that's what saving grace is all about! I walked with the Jews in the desert.  Through the burning sand, with dangerous enemies all around. 
I watched the Ammonites and the Moabites when they were lying behind the sand dunes ready to pounce on the Israelites in an unguarded moment when the Israelites would be vulnerable. They did not seem to see the presence of the Lord who was leading the people   I watched that stupid donkey of Balaam. You know the one who refused to walk when he saw the angel in front of him. This stupid Donkey was smarter then the prophet who was riding on his back. I remember that I was thinking that this donkey was most likely a girl because girls are smarter then boys when something like that happens.
Just think about it --this prophet was not as smart as the donkey --but he was smart enough to talk the Israelites into sinning with the Moabites when they were drinking and merry making and the whole kit and caboodle was in one mix-up.
I did not understand how the women related to all this. They were just girls.
Only a little bigger then school girls and I had absolutely no interest in those squealing little creatures with their swinging skirts and knitted stockings.
This little donkey was smarter then all the rest as far as I could see I think.
It is funny how a little child can see through the issues. I was well aware of the fact that the disobedience of the people of God was the issue at stake.
Then I suffered with Saul and wondered about David.  I watched Agag and the evil Jezebel. 
The battle of Ilyga, and the trip of Elysa and the leper, ‘Naaman of Syria.' 
I watched Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fire and Esther and Mordecai. 
Esther, and the evil Haman.
I went on and on, right through the old Testament, past Jonah and the fish, through the prophets and the Kings. -- Good and evil one after the other.  –
But it all was in the hand of God.   Then came the birth of Christ!  I walked with Mary and Joseph through an un-welcoming Nazareth and, wonder of wonders, have seen the Savior become one of us.  Only even much poorer in fulfilling the prophesies of the prophet Isaiah 53 -- then I sat with Jesus on the hillside -- this was behind our neighbor, in the meadow behind the barn.  I could see it, clear as day.  The people on the hillside when Jesus took mercy on them because they were so hungry and He gave them food to eat. I had that all figured out how that was. The hungry people were sitting on the meadow at the neighbor's farm. This meadow was sloping uphill with some oak trees in the background. That was the place where the people were sitting all over the place the hillside.
They were tired and hungry but they did not want to leave because this Man was so nice and His deep brown eyes had a dept. to it that far surpassed anything that they ever witnessed. Many of them were poor with no hope of a better future in this grim world of enemy soldiers and hardhearted priest who made life even harder with grim warnings of punishment if they did not live according to their law. There was so little love and the whole temple worship seemed to evolve around money and more money.
The hunchback of the bush country was sitting to the side.
Away from the crowd because he was dressed in nothing but rags that is all he could afford. He was clean but did not really belong here.  Nevertheless, he wanted to be there He wanted to see with his own eyes and then---Wonder of wonders—This Man with his kind eyes came to him personally.  He talked to him as if he was a real person.
This Man hand touched him and healed the sores on his face and his hands and feet.
Nobody had touched him in years but this Man did.
He talked about a New Kingdom that would be a kingdom of love with answers to many  unanswered questions and with solutions for many problems.
One woman in the neighborhood who had many children was there to. The smallest ones were hanging on her skirts and one of them had a snotty nose. She did not see any of this, but He did. And He talked to her and then He sat under the elm tree that was the tree with so many branches. The shadow of the tree was falling over His face and He was telling them about the shepherd and the little sheep that went astray. How He went after it and brought it back.
I never could comprehend the suffering of Jesus, and I don't think anyone can.  Not in Gethsemane and not on the cross of shame!  But I joyfully embraced the glad tidings of his resurrection, and again and again, right through the New Testament, including the last revelation and the last AMEN!  I believe and hope to see Him, one day soon!  This is the end of my testimonial.
The following pages will show you how I walked, and often stumbled, following the MASTER.
The playground of the school before the war was very adventurous and often mysterious, vibrant, undulating and interacting with life forces of hundreds of kids.  Every child had his or her own interpretation of how the game should be played.  Sounds familiar?  It is – “In the schoolyard, and in life.”  Life on the playground was carried on within its own cycles with rules that nobody laid down, and everybody obeyed.  There was a time for soccer, and a time for --snap the whip--.  A time to play marbles, and a time to catch the robber!  Ever changing, and always inventive! 
It was a bad day indeed when the teachers and the sports directors invaded the playground and started dictating the activities.  The creative force has been smothered and often disappeared altogether.  It is a well-known fact that young children can do some very creative drawing until the school system forces them in the one and one mode Everything is valued in numbers and facts from that moment on and the creative mind is subdued or disappears completely.  This is what happened on the playground, in later days. 
Some persons may think that we had an inferior system in respect of our playground activities. Nothing is farther from the truth .One would do well to remember that the generations of those days  brought forth the jet plane and the atom bomb (nothing to be proud of, but impressive nevertheless!).  
I said this ... just to prove a point.  There was a time to play marbles.  We would be playing hide and seek, one day, and suddenly, everyone had marbles.  A game that brought out the colorful characteristics of the children, like no other game I know.  You had boys, who had trouble adding and doing fractions in school, but the same boy came to school with a handful of marbles in the morning and the guy would go home with many times the amount in the evening.  One of those boys came to school with a board that had slots in it, as wide as a barn door.  Everyone was throwing marbles at that board and aiming for those slots for a fast win,
Yet: almost no one succeeded.  It looked so easy and was so deceptive.  This boy had the mark of a shrewd sales man.  I have seen the same system at work in almost all-gambling machines, but the boy in the playground came up with it first.  Almost sixty years ago! 
I have known a person who started with a whole bag of marbles.  She kept counting her riches, over and over again, and lost a few every time she was counting, until she ended with next to nothing.  I have seen that in real life also, many times over!  Marbles were also a game that boys and girls could play together.  A fact that was a no—no at all other times.  It would develop something like this.
The girls had the boys running in circles most of the time.  I have seen the women play with the marbles of life, many times with much the same result.    Boys play with boys, and girls with girls!  That was the unwritten rule of those days.  Then suddenly on no special day and for no special reason at all, the boys would play with the girls. -- The games of catch the robber.--  The boys went after the girls first, and made short work of it.  They rounded up the girls in no time.  Then the girls went after the boys, but the boys run too fast and were hard to get.  Never mind! 
The girls picked one boy at a time, running in relays I/O in groups of about ten, taking turns, and they ran the victim in the ground. 
Literally in the ground, the poor sucker did not have a chance!  I have seen the women do the same thing, in real life, many times, with many variations.  Fascinating -- is it not?
Life is really one big playground, but the marbles are for keeps!  Real life is just an extension from the playground in many ways!  Soccer was always fascinating on the playground especially with the addition of the wooden shoes.  Usually fairly mild but a heated debate could flare up at any moment, and the shoes would come off.  They were used as weapons of war and it became important, what was harder, the wooden shoes, or the wooden heads.  Two players would miss the ball occasionally and the wood-wear would clash head-on and one or both covers would come of the shoes.  That would be the end of the game for the victims, but not the end of the wooden shoe.                                                                                                   
Dad or a favored uncle would drive a small nail in the bottom of the shoe, wrap a wire over the cap and fasten it on the other side with another nail.  And the musical sound of clop-clop would become clip-clop, clip-clop, etc.!  All this did not round of my education. T here was more to it than that as you will see in the next little hearth rendering story.     We had boys club one evening, and we were standing with a group of boys during recess.
A guy by the name of Getty was also present. 
Normally, he would not associate with small fries like us but this evening was different.  He had a mission, and I was soon to find out what that was!
My humble person was just a stick in the mud in his opinion.  But I was good enough for a practical joke.  Only, I did not know that! - Dear me!- I was soon to find out what his  plans for my humble person were.
I was a gullible person at the best of times and I was going to prove it again. - Boy oh boy- was I ever!  Getty kind of snuggled up to me and said to the other guys:  "Don't you guys think that Hank is old enough to smoke? He is every bit as good as anybody!  I don't see any reason that he does not smoke!"  "Absolutely not!" said all the other guys in touching unity. 
I was trying to back out of the joyful throng but they had my hemmed in pretty good.  There was no one to help among the grinning faces all around me.  Hank was a very lonesome boy at that convention. 
"My mom and dad don't want me to smoke," is what I came up with, as a last resort, and this was true enough. 
The illustrious company was starting to crowd me in the corner ever more.  "Well," said Getty, quite helpful and understanding, "you can always make a start with chewing tobacco.  That's not as good as smoking but will do for a beginner.  You got to start small!  Isn't that right boys?"  And the chorus chimed in, quite dutifully, "That's right Getty!"  And Getty, who was all heart just then, handed me his tobacco pouch with some heavy black Negro chewing tobacco.  So I was forced to take a little chunk of the stuff, very reluctantly. --You got to keep in mind that this was very heavy chewing tobacco and, here I was, a beginner, like David tackling Goliath.  "That's not a chew," said Getty, "that's not even the beginning of a chew!"  And so with his ardent help and encouragement, little Henry dug in a little further and ended with about one third of that package, under the expert advise of my counselors.  About the size of a chicken egg! 
The bell sounded just then and we were called inside for the after-recess program. 
[There must have been about thirty or forty boys in that class and no one was on my side.]
The program started, and I did not feel good at all.  I was solid enough, but it seemed that the whole room was on the move.   Including the whole convention of would be saints,
The teacher, the boys including Moses, who was carrying the Ten Commandments in a picture on the classroom wall. Wow what a nightmare.   "What am I going to do with the spittle?" I said to Getty.  "Swallow it!" was  the answer.  "That's what I am doing!"  Henry swallowed, obediently, as he was told. 
This made things a lot worse, as was to be expected.  The rest of the boys were watching the proceedings with hawk eyes.     This was something nobody wanted to miss, and all around the room were boys with grins, and sly faces. 
"What am I going to do with the chew?" I said to Getty.  "Swallow it!"  "That's what I am doing!"  Said good old Getty, "Swallow it!"  And so I swallowed, and that was almost the end of me.
The room caved in on me and some boys had to carry me outside where the fresh air woke me up to some degree. 
Getty and the boys had a whale of a time of course.  And I had proven, again, that old Henry was a really naive and stupid little boy who needed a lot of protection from sources unknown!  Life was tough in those days not only for me but for the rest of my brothers also. This was especially so during the weekends when our Dad had a change to work on our well-being.
A great cleanup would be in progress just before Sunday mostly on the physical end of our endeavors.  Cleanness was next to godliness! Such was the opinion of our parents and --we had to go along come what may--. We had to be the unwilling participants in this adventure  Saturday was wash day in our household.  We all had to go in the tub,-- that is!--
Dad put a sink tub in the living room and we had to go in the tub, one after the other, while dad did the wash job.  This was not done in a wishy-washy way either.  We were scrubbed down with a fairly heavy hard bristle brush that really dug into the dirt, and in the skin, and it left an interesting burning sensation, all over your system. 
It was no picnic.  I can tell you that.  It was no use to cry when you got soap in your eyes for then a swipe around the ears might follow, to stabilize the situation. 
The job was followed by a haircut, about once a month, and there was nothing wishy washy about that either. 
Hair cutting was done by hand.-- Dad did not have the money for an electric machine -- the trouble being that the thing that he used was way too dull half the time. 
The cutting became a hair- pulling contest with dad on one end and us -- the victims -- on the other end. 
Contest, by the hair, that is!  Our hair was cut in bangs.  Completely bald with a little tuft of hair up front that's the best the artistic qualities of our dad would allow.
One of us ran off to bed one evening, with the hair cutter hanging from the back of his head.  He was in opposition and was not going to take it any longer.  Life is hazardous with a haircut like that! I was to find that out the hard and pain-full way.
I was on my way home one day, and I decided that I should try how far I could walk backwards, without looking up.  I went a wonderful long way. I might have gone all the way to Canada if grocer's horse had not stopped me in a painful manner.  The grocer’s horse happened to be a really mean little pony, and he bit me right in the back of my head
I have been watching my back ever since!  Living with a bald head and tufie is very precarious!
Our mother must have had the makings of an old time saint when I think of the trials and tribulations that she had to endure with a host of children, eight boys and two girls.   It was on a nice sunny hot summer Saturday afternoon that she dressed the children in their Sunday best clothes. Short pants and spotless white shirts.
Clothes had to be spotless in small time Holland. It was the earmark and the crowning glory of any well-meaning housewife.
Several elements worked together to turn  the afternoon into a complete disaster. 
The road repairmen had repaired the road in front of our house. That was good! But the hot sun had turned the tar of the road surface into a gooey mixture of glorious play material for us as children. That was not so good.
We had a whale of a time and our pure white shirts turned into coats of many colors. The tar stuck to our clothes and the debris of the road hung onto the tar in very satisfying patterns
We had tar in our ears and our noses and mostly in our hair. It was awe-inspiring.
One of my younger brothers had the habit of twirling his hair with his pointing finger. He had little pigtails of tar and hair standing on top of his head like the cedars of Lebanon. 
He was grinning from ear to ear, a perfectly happy little Dutch boy.
The rest of the clan was not looking any better until Mom got hold of us. She turned the smiling faces into crying ones with one mighty swipe of the flat of her hand.
Our heads were soaked in butter and vinegar and we were rolled in old blankets and kicked into bed, while mom and dad looked at the ruins of a perfect Saturday summer after noon.  It stands for reason that ten growing children could get into a lot of mischief but the bigger boys created the greatest upheavals. I was the third boy in the family and my place was near the top of the totem pole.
 The relation with my older brother was lukewarm at the best of time and the hostilities broke out one day in a very unusual manner.  Our Mother had set out the dinner table for twelve persons. The plates were set out around a big pot full of porridge with the spoons were neatly arranged in front of each prospective guest at the table. It was then that the hostilities broke out between my brother and I.
 It should be mentioned that I have always been a sloppy dresser and this day was no exception since my oversize shoes were not laced up as they should have been.
This was a small matter in the heat of battle and I hauled out to give my brother a solid kick in the unmentionables. He jumped side ways and my shoe flew of right through a three by six window and in the middle of the pot full of porridge.
The soup and the glass flew all over the place mostly in the plates around the table so that everything was spoiled beyond redemption in front off Moms unbelieving eyes.
She took one look, piled up the plates and put the pot away. Then she went to the cupboard and cut up a few loaves of bread to feed the hungry crowds. 
Dad would take care of the punishment when he came home, but this was the most surprising thing of all he could not hide his laughter and send us to bed without food. 
That was all – we could not believe it.--Small blessings do come our way at the most unexpected moments.  Some thing similar happened around that time but this time the hostilities appeared in reversed order. My older brother was about eighteen months older than I was .  He still is
He was also a grade higher in school. One grade is an awful distance when you are between eight and ten years old, it is like living on another planet but I did not understand that properly I did not have the proper sense of proportions.
I wanted to go with my brother and his friend on a short field trip to the forest.
This was unthinkable—but I kept wheedling and whining until I got the higher authorities involved in the form of my mother.
She told George in no uncertain terms that it was his duty to take his little brother along,
It stands for reason that we did a lot of haggling after that so that we finally struck the deal that my brother could throw a little potato against my head.
This may be worth the privilege of going with George and his friend into the wide blue yonder, and so I took my stand in the appointed place waiting for the little potato to come flying against my scull.
Several things went wrong with the setup.
The potato was not all that little. It was huge and became bigger as it came near my defenseless head. My name was not Custer and I did not make a last stand.
 I ducked the flying missile so that it sailed right through the neighbor's window.
We had forgotten that we were in front of the window and dad had to pay for another broken window.  You might have the impression that we did not get along all that well, but nothing is further from the truth.  We had a good relationship and shared a lot of life stock. We had several rabbits in a number of pens behind the house.
We cut grass together and we would see to it that the rabbit pens were clean and dry.
The physical needs of these animals were not forgotten we took the females to the male so that we might get more rabbits and more rabbits and more etc. 
We would Watch in fascination when one old lady with a male rabbit tied a little string to the tail of the female rabbit to made room for the struggling male animal.
It never entered our mind to lay a connection between the action of the animals and men and women around us. It would take many more years before we realized the true actions between a man and woman in love.
We were well in our teen-age years before we discovered the facts of life, and we could not believe that dad and mom would do a thing like that.
I was fourteen before I learned about the birds and the bees and I was so angry and disappointed that I killed the bees in that same day.
—I can always tell you a different story if you don't believe this one.--  We will try your patience with another story of those unforgettable moments of our child hood.
It was somewhere around that time that the Conferangeus came into our town.
This was a group of people who were working the trapeze in death defying acts of daring
and courage, that's the way it looked to us. 
There was one man with one leg. He had lost the other one in a miscue in another performance. That's what the story was as it was told among us. He was swinging around on that trapeze some forty or fifty feet in the air.
It made a person dizzy just watching the impossible feats of these daring persons.  We were awe-struck and would have traded places with him, if we had the courage but none of us was nearly that brave.
We went home and rigged up a ladder of about twelve feet. Three or four boys held the ladder in an upright position and one of us climbed to the top doing his best to copy the acts of our hero on the flying trapeze.
Our house doctor happened to drive by at that very moment and watched the performance with great interest, then he went to my mother and said, I'll be home Geertje in case my services are needed"
He shook his head and went his way meditating on the daring acts of the sons of Derk and Geertje.  My mother had a story that this doctor wanted to buy our little sister when it was born.
The doctor and his wife had no children, so he wanted to help Dad and Mom and give the child a good home. It seems like an unlikely story but our mother was quite adamant that he had said this. It is more likely that the doctor had said something like that in jest and that mom had taken him seriously.
There is little doubt that he liked my father and Mother, a little more, than is the case usually. He knew very well that my parents had to struggle to make ends meet, but I have no recollection that he helped us in any financial way.
Not then or at any other time.  My dad was a man with good insight and wanted his kids home and around the house where he could keep track of them and so our yard became one large playground.
We turned the place upside down and dug holes in the sandy soil to the point that it was not save any more. Especially Adolf was a giant among men.
We called him for dinner one day but he did not show up so one of us had seen him digging away until his white colored tuffy disappeared below ground level.
 Only shovels full of sand and the reflections of the shovel were seen--He had dug a hole that was so deep that he could not get out without help. --Not the first and the last time.--
 
Our beloved Getty had advanced my education with giant strides but something happened before that in the fourth grade that was even more important in the shaping of my character.
It was in the fourth grade that we had a teacher from Friesian decent.
This man did not think that he was fulfilling his calling if he did not get every student to stand in front of the class. This person would have to sing a song to the best of his or her ability.
Every day two or three children would go to the front of the class to bring a hearth-rendering message in song. Some forty children would sit there listening with bored expressions on their lovely faces. Except me! I was not bored
I was scared stiff and I had sleepless nights when the faithful day came closer.
-The day of my first appearance in public-
There was no getting away from it and the day came that I had to go to the front of forty  some children. The horrible day of my first appearance in the first grade came back in full force but I made op my mind that it would be a stellar performance and that it was !
Most children would sing a song of lighter genre but I decided that I was going to sing a psalm. I opened my mouth and a high squeaky sound burst forth out of my inner being.
I was so nervous that my voice brought forth the most impossible trillers of nervousness. It sounded like a dog with his tail caught in between the door .It was awful and the whole room full of children laughed that the tears run over their collective cheeks.
The ribbon girl laughed the hardest of all and that really hurt.
After that heartrending audition of that psalm I returned to my place as a broken man.
Deep down inside I was crying my eyes out but nobody could see this and that was good
My misery was great enough as it was .It really hurt and the laughter of the ribbon girl was the worst of all. [She really did me harm]
The teacher tried several times to get me to sing again but all to no avail.
I had met my Waterloo and there was no power on earth that was going to get me to perform again in front of that class and --What was even worse –In front of my beloved ribbon girl.
 It was several years later that I could overcome my fear of that song session in front of the class
A good friend gave me advice in that respect.” Go to the front of the class” he said .
“When you are there you have to close your eyes and then you will have the sing our national anthem as loud as you can. Don’t stop for nothing but holler as loud as you can”
The result was that I went up front wile shivering  in my wooden shoes and gave a rendition of our national anthem  such as never was heard before. I was howling so load that the steers of Basan would have been cross-eyed from jealousy.
I had overcome and was as proud as a peacock
Even the ribbon-girl was impressed but that did not impress me all that much any more because the fires of my love for her had all but died down to nothing. There was hardly a spark of life left in my former enchantment with that pesky little girl of yore.
This happened a little while before my rendition of the national anthem. It was on a day that our teacher had an urge to lead us into the unknown dimensions of chemistry.
The teacher had a little machine that would create a fairly severe electric shock if he turned a little handle on that little gismo. This machine had two handles and if you held these handles you would get a severe shock of electric voltage. Something like an electric fence for cattle control.
The teacher told the whole class to join hands. One end of the line would hold one handle of that machine The very end of the line of handholding victims would hold the other handle of the machine and the shock would travel right through the handholding congregation . It worked like a charm with one exception. .
My beloved ribbon-girl was sitting in front of me and I had to hold hands with her if the project was to succeed. I put my sweaty little hands in the soft sweet smelling hands of mine idol. The teacher turned the handle of the machine and the shock traveled right through my sweaty little hand over to the soft sweat Etc hands of the ribbon girl.
 I got a shock and she got a shock with the result that something broke in my inner being .
My infatuation [obsession] with the ribbon girl was ended. The magic chain was broken and I was a free man again. I could smell the roses again rediscovering the joys of the beetle and the grasshopper in company with a host of other little creatures that dwell in the lower realms of the Dutch lowlands. I rediscovered the beauty of the starry heavens on a cloudless summer night.  I was a renewed person!
 

The war years

Life went on like that during most of my child hood but there were rumors of war in the air.
The Germans were getting restless under the godless leadership of the dictator Adolph Hitler and his evil companions.
Times were tough where the rich had abundance and the poor got poorer as time wound its way through the fate full days of the hungry thirties.  It was Hitler who seemed to have found a way out of the dead lock of unemployment and near hunger conditions.
He forced the rich people of Germany to chose for the glittering system of the Nazis, out of fear for the rising might [power] of the communist in great Russia.
This – combined with the bitter feelings over a hard and unfeeling peace contract negotiated in Versailles after the first world war.—and the feeling of betrayal by the home front that still rankled in the minds of many former soldiers in Germany – had forced the masses into the arms of a hypnotic agitator by the name of Hitler   The demonic insight of Hitler and his tugs set forces in motion that were to destroy millions of people. Al this in the space of about ten years but  even so he created much employment at the first years of his reign.
He showed also great insight in some other areas so that many in Germany were taken in by the dream of a --thousand year Reich.--    Holland on the contrary was ruled by a Christian coalition of most Protestant parties and the Catholic under the leadership of an anty-revolutioneer leader by the name of Colyn.
He was hailed as a great statesman. The sad part was that he ruled under the motto –Protect the Guilder and keep up its value --.The result was that ship loads of potatoes and other food stuff was thrown in the sea. Just to keep up the price and many people went hungry in a country that was flowing with milk and honey.
Holland was a country that had not seen war in more than hundred years.  All this may sound a little bitter but that is just what it is.
Here was a Christian leader with all the resorts to help a country chained in the bondage of unemployment and he passed laws to protect the rich and punish the poor.
I will give an example.
I came home one day on my father's bicycle.  It had the proper license in the form of a little copper plate. --Even the bicycles were taxed in these days-- !
There was one little oversight on my part. This plate had a little hole in it so that only my dad was allowed to ride this precious machine.
I was stopped by a policeman (who was a member of our church)--and I got a ticket for 2,50. --This was a small fortune in those days.--
Our Mother gave me the money and told me that I had to tell this Samaritan that he had a stone where others had a heart.
In the mean time Holland was going on in its own slow and unsuspecting pace The big neighbor to the East was getting ready to pounce on a world that was tired of war and unwilling to face facts,  Then came the day that the Dutch army held a field practice in our neighborhood.  The Dutch army of that day was totally obsolete.  Holland had not seen war in more than a hundred years, so it really was no wonder that they were so ill prepared for what was coming.
But, the Dutch had a secret weapon and that was that the future enemy might die laughing when they saw our armament.
Most of the armies were still going with horse and wagon; another section was going by bicycles and, then there was the cream of the crop.  The motor cycles
The motor cycles might be dating back to the First World War -- most interesting that you could see the valve springs operating outside the motor block.  I never could understand how they managed to keep the dirt out of the engine, with a set up like that.
 It would be completely unacceptable in this day and age.  They were a good-machine, from what I hear from the experts, and we leave it at that.  Here came the Dutch cavalry! A bunch of Dutch citizens dressed up as soldiers in the caterpillar-green uniforms with bandage type legs covering dating back to the First World War.The Dutch were too thrifty and to set in their ways to make any amount of change in their out dated army and, here they were thundering up the drive way of our neighbor's farm.
We did not know whether we should laugh or cry. It looked ridiculous and glorious ‘All at the same time. Most of these boys had white hair and should have been home where they belonged.
The cavalry was put up on farms in the neighborhood and a detachment found a place with our neighbors across the road.  That made for some very interesting situations. 
One of the horses kicked a wall section completely out of the side of the barn.  This raised a few eyebrows, you could count on that, but this was the army, after all, and nobody talks back to the army -- not if you know what is good for you-.    The army was made up out of the good and the bad, like all armies over the world, and a good deal of girl chasing was the result.  But you have to close an eye in times like these, were the opinions.  "Boys will be boys," you know.  Still, it can be a dangerous mix as some found out nine months later.
It was a strange mix that landed in our front yard like a bunch of proverbial locust. Some of those boys came out of the city, while others came out of the country from the farms and little holdings.
‘They could swear like a trooper ‘is a saying that is well deserved. These boys could swear!
They would have won the war if it had been fought by word of mouth.
It was so bad that Dad and Mom told us to stay away from these rough characters. 
No good would come out of it, but this was one time  that we did not listen. We went anyway. It was to tempting.  We had our education behind the barn so to speak--  The big canons were an interesting thing to look at.  These pieces of artillery were good enough armaments, as was proven not all that much later when the going really got rough!
It has always been a mystery to me that those canons had an inscription:  "God is with us."  The German soldier had much the same inscription on his belt buckle.  Here we go killing, in His name, and both sides have some people in their ranks who pray for deliverance and victory and everyone thinks that the right is on their side.  They pray, and the killing goes on in the meantime ...  unabated and unhindered.  A mystery, for many that is sure.  All this might make you think that the Dutch soldier was lacking in courage, but nothing is further from the truth!  The Dutch soldier was every bit as good as the next- bar none.-  But they were highly individual, which was part of the trouble.  These guys were hard to discipline, and that was one of the greatest drawbacks.  But these hard-to-handle fellows turned out to be some of the best soldiers after the whole shebang exploded.  We were standing there watching when one of those guys was cleaning his saber.  He could not even get it out of the scabbard!  He had to hammer it out!  It had not been out of the scabbard for ages, by the look of things.  The clodhopper foamed and grumbled while he was kicking the thing all over the neighborhood.  "I better get this thing out and cleaned," he said.  The sergeant will take me apart, piece by piece, if I don't!"
--This boy put up a tremendous fight, when war broke out,-- and there were lots more like him. Those guys could never be drilled like the German soldier.                                                      They just were not built that way -- not until war forced the reality on them and then they performed above the call of duty, most of the time!  But all this was some little way off at that time, and we lived on, in blissful ignorance.  War was for other nations ... we would have peace in our times.  So we thought!  I will have to tell you a little about the history of Holland to explain the mind-set of the Dutch army.   It is a well-known fact that most big cities in the world had their origin close to great waters.
Along the Oceans, mostly down-streams from the great rivers that originated in the mountains of mid Europe.
London in England, at the Thames, and Rotterdam and Amsterdam at the end of the Maas and the Rhine. Antwerp and Paris are all on great rivers.
There were no roads in the middle ages most of the time and the roads would be hard to travel on when the seasons were bad .Boats and barges could travel in most weather conditions.
The Romans had build roads at often great expense at great cost .--That was not all --These roads had to be maintained at great expense to the Roman empire.  It was easier and faster to follow the waterways moving heavy loads of merchandise from one district to the other. The cities on the mouth of the rivers were used as distribution centers and smaller centers developed further inland as a spin-of effect of all this activity.
These were in turn supported by the activities of the other commodities like, farming, hunting, forestry and much more.
 
Belgium France and Holland have also great harbors.
This was even more important. Most goods for the inland of Europe had to come through the great harbors of Amsterdam Rotterdam Antwerp and some harbors in France and Spain.
It is important to remember that Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp have harbors at the North-sea
The goods coming through Antwerp had to cross mountain ranges to the east before they could reach the inland states of greater Germany.
Bishops of the Roman church ruled many of these states.--Some places like Munster and Keulen--And many more inland the countries of France -Belgium -, Holland -and Germany etc.  The country east of the great Dutch harbors is practically level and easy going compared to the harbors further south. These harbors have mountain ranges to the east making traveling difficult.
It stands for reason that the route through the Dutch harbors was preferred for that reason
This put the Dutch merchants on controlling end of all goods going inland.--These men were on the controlling end of the feeding through!--
This is one of the reasons that the Low.  Countries were rich in many ways.
The Dutch became sharp businessmen that made them the envy of many other countries.
‘This information might be a little boring but I like to go into the history of Holland a little further.'  Karl the Fifth became one of the greatest rulers in the fourteenth century. He was not only a conqueror but also a wise ruler who built a mighty empire and united most of Western Europe. This man loved the Low Countries and he spent much time in those regions.
All this changed when he died and Philip the second, King of Spain became ruler of the better part of Europe. He made William of Orange --who was a catholic at that time--overseer(stadhouder) of North and South Holland.
The King of Spain started to persecute the Protestant population of Holland and William of Orange threw in his lot with the suffering Dutch population. He was assassinated by instigating of the Catholic priest.  The Dutch have never forgotten this sacrifice of the house of Orange and that is one of the main differences between Holland and England regarding the kingship.
The Dutch got in a wide-open war with Spain in a war that lasted eighty years and brought Spain to the verge of bankruptcy.  Holland was invaded by four countries (around seventeen hundred. )
England and France had formed an unholy alliance and two catholic states Munster and Keulen had jumped in to share the spoils of the stone rich Republic of Holland .
There was only one savior next to God at that time and the Dutch population turned to one of the sons of Orange who fought all their enemies to a standstill.
This prince of Orange became king of England in later days and he led the English into a period of freedom of Catholic oppression.
It is remarkable that the Dutch worked out the differences between Catholic and Protestant while the Irish are still fighting the old battle under the banner of the Orange men and Catholics.  Lets leave the battles of old-time Holland and lets return back to the ferocious men in green.
-The Dutch army-
There was also a mock air attack scheduled one evening.  The whole town came out to watch the event. 
The expectations were really high, but the whole show did not turn out to a hill of beans.  One airplane was flying over and dropped a couple dozen balloons.  These were supposed to be bombs.  A pile of wood was put on fire and that was the air attack.  At that point the fire brigade came flying around the corner, with a lot of racket, and little conviction.  Even so! you had to admit the firefighters looked firm and courageous in their hop scotch uniforms.  Their heroic appearance was the end of the show for the day. 
The Dutch army was indeed naive and ill prepared for the things to come.  So were the government, and the Dutch overall!  A detachment of gunners was in a shelter, facing the river close to the bridge.  These guys would be written off if an attack were launched against the bridge.  Such was the folks' wisdom of that day.  The thought of this made me shiver.  Those poor courageous guy. Bottled up like that! 
The enemy came in the back door when the attack came -- and the pillbox was empty.  Was there betrayal?  Nobody knows for sure, but that we were sold out in places is an established fact!  The other gunners' nest was right across a villa, where a family lived with several grown-up girls.  These girls were caught up in the spirit of the moment and made it a practice to go on a swing, right across these young fellows.  These guys grew ever more excited the higher the swing went.  The girls on the swing left little to the imagination and the language of the young soldiers even less.  These girls had a way of advertising themselves there is little doubt about that.  Not very up-building if one takes in consideration that the girls were from very a good upbringing.  Even so! We all do foolish things, at one time or other, and everyone is entitled to his, or her, own mistakes.  Still, how unprepared we were!  And so we lived on in blissful ignorance.  Bad things always happen to other people. This is often the mentality of most folk, and here there was no exception.    The Dutch had made good money in the first war and many thought that it would go the same way this time.  Let the other people fight and we look on, and we might make some money besides.  That seemed like a good policy.   My friend's name was Dick, and we had been friends for some time while the friendship was still growing as time went by.  Other guys were taken up in this close circle as time passed by and we had a lot of fun together.  But the fun was a little doubtful on the night that I had to baby sit. Dad and mom were entitled to a supplement ration in the later part of the hungry thirties.  The supplement was for families who were partly unemployed.  Usually canned meat, good to eat, but it looked kind of gruesome.  The top layer of the can of meat was filled with about an inch of some quivering substance that looked a lot like yellow, only more transparent. 
One fellow claimed that part of this was made of frog legs and that turned a few people off and they quit eating this food.  But it was really nutritious, and we were only too happy to eat the stuff.  We also got some cans of hamburger with that -- a kind of Spam! - This stuff was really delicious when it was fried.  But for the moment we were more interested in the margarine that came with this supplement.  That evening anyway!  The margarine butter came included with this supplement -- usually in packets of twelve, one kilo each.  My uncle had made a breadboard for mom that was a regular piece of art.  It was about ten inches long and eight inches wide and it had a nice handle on it. 
One brilliant brain among us put two and two together. [The board and the butter that is] He suggested a competition about which person could smash the butter and flatten it the most in one fell swoop.  It turned out to be a very interesting competition indeed. 
There was my friend Dick, who was always trying to be a little more debonair and sophisticated than the rest .He had a very dignified swing, you had to admit that!  But not nearly as effective as the swing of lanky easy-going Albert, who had a much longer reach.  He also had a much better coordination of head and hand.  Albert did all right!  -But just not good enough My brother George had a much more coordinated and vicious approach.  He flattened the butter in one fell swoop so that half the table was covered! 
But what about me, you may ask. -- I failed miserably. -- I was never any good in sports and totally incompetent at butter swapping.  I just did not have what it takes in a demolition exercise.  We had to scrape the butter back together and try to form reasonable little packs again before mom and dad came back home.  The wrapping paper was of a good quality, lucky enough. - Crazy? - I guess it was at that.  We had some growing up to do yet!  Our Mother was very strict when it concerned food:  "Never throw away food!  Some day you might lick your fingers for it!" she said.  These words were very prophetic because we did exactly that, not all that much later. 
She was also a forerunner of Colonel Sanders, who called his product "finger licking good."  Do not misunderstand what I just wrote. In my opinion. The wasting of food has always been a great sin.    It turns me off, and makes me sad, when I see good food wasted in the restaurants when sometimes as much as half a meal is thrown away because we can't eat it all.  This is not good stewardship, according to me!   I wish something could be done about it!  Dick and I had not been friends all that long yet, but he was to become one person that has been very close to me, all those years gone by.  He knows things about me that nobody else does.  It is a little like the story of David and Jonathan, the manner in which we met and became friends.  Dick is a year younger than I and he was in a lower grade in school and that's an awful long way when you are of that age.  And, of course, I could not associate with a person -that young. This was completely unacceptable.  But, the years fall away when you grow older -- that's the way it seems, anyway.  We were chumming around a little at times but nothing all that serious when, on an ill-fated day, he made a remark to me that did not come over that nice.  He called me a few names and that did not sit well at all.  This was kind of damaging to my dignity, to my way of thinking.  I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him, and we were involved in a good fist fight before you could say "Boo!" 
This was not all that serious at that point, but the onlookers got involved and, according to the custom. One boy acting as referee would go between the two fighters, One of us had to hold up his hand and dare the other party to knock it off.
 --We should have knocked his lights out instead --but were too stupid just then 
The strategy worked like a charm, neither of us wanted to be declared a coward and so the fight was on, and stayed on!  We had to walk about one mile to get home and we fought every inch of the way. The referees made sure of that.  How stupid can you get?  One pause in the hostilities came as a blessing in disguise in the unlikely form of our new minister and his wife.  The couple was out for a walk and almost bumped into us at that unsavory moment.  We had a warning just in time so that we could hide behind some bushes along the roadside.  It was most interesting that the two fighters were joined for the purpose that the two enemies could resume the thit for that after the minister was out of sight. 
And we fought all right. It was ferocious. None of the spectators gave us an argument about anything from that time on, after that battle of the Royals. 
Dick and me, that is!
This is the only favor that came my way from that minister in all the time I have known him.  -More about that later! - 
Our status among our classmates had grown considerably after that!  It is interesting that all my life events have developed along much the same pattern. 
Real shy, most of the time, with no desire to share the limelight at any cost!  But suddenly, when the need arose, the urge came over me to take control and take a situation in hand when nobody else had the will or the insight to do so!  We believe that we might have been of service when the occasion arose.  At least, that's what I like to believe.  Dick came over the next morning to apologize.  He was sporting a beauty of a blue eye and many bruises, and I was in no better shape. 
"I lost a lot of sleep last night," and he looked sheepish when he said that.  "My conscience has bothered me because I have hurt you so much!" --Well he was one up on me at that one -- my conscience did not bother at all!  But this was a mighty big gesture on his part and that's the way we got so close later.  "But, I gave you more than I got!" he said, as a parting shot.  Then he asked me very earnestly if I would ask my mother if we could become friends.  That was the beginning of a friendship that lasted a life-time.  My father was a quiet little man.  He never said all that much, but what he said was well worth listening to.  His brother Marten would come over sometimes and they would sit together, with the uncle smoking away on his old pipe as if laying a smoke screen.  This Uncle was a very heavy smoker, and they would sit together for a couple of hours, hardly saying anything.  Then uncle Martin would leave, and they would know everything about each other after this quiet conference.  Strange but a true story nevertheless!  This uncle fell off the roof of a building some years later and broke his neck.  This was awful hard to handle for dad because he was so close to that man.  Dad felt even worse because my uncle had been betrayed not that many years ago in a very dirty way, and he went broke later.  A widow with nine children was left behind in very difficult position.  Uncle Martin used to be in a very successful partnership in our hometown when, he was approached by an individual from another town, some ten miles away from us.  This man had a sawmill for sale.  There was a good market for lumber, the man said, and many people were waiting to buy lumber from his mill.  My uncle, who had a large family, was taken in by his sweet talk.  He did some checking in the background but was as good as sold to the deal, right from the start.  The man mentioned quite casually that he was an elder in the Church of Uncles Denomination and that convinced uncle.  After all, an elder of the church could be trusted -- am I right or not?  The mill was bought and my  uncle could sell all the lumber he could saw, and even more.  But he could buy no trees.  All the trees had been bought up by the former owner and next to nothing was left in the whole country.  He went broke in no time flat.  Guess what?  The people around there helped the family in any way possible.  That those people were mostly Red Socialist and never set a foot in the church was a mere coincidence.  They were only Samaritans, you know! -- One question. -- Who was the greater witness?  The Christians had the calling, but the Red Socialist lived it.  This is not the only time that I have seen this kind of behavior.  Some persons can evangelize, like you would not believe.  But don't deal with them!                                                                                                                                   Our family has been on the same receiving end of that treatment, while the world stood back shaking their heads, so to speak.  There was something else that happened around that time had a great influence on my life.  It was another example of dad's quiet wisdom.  There were not many holidays before the war; not for the ordinary working man anyway.  We had the church holidays, like Christmas and Easter and Pentecost, also Ascension Day, and that was it.  Dad would go with us on a bicycle ride on those days.  This one day, he took us for a ride to a coffeehouse that included a play garden with a live donkey.  It was a stubborn little animal, but you could not blame that poor animal al that much.
 I would have been stubborn too if I had to carry a bunch of screaming children on my back all day long with not too gentle treatment  that was easy to see.  One red freckled buffoon, out of our hometown, had taken charge of the animal.  Nobody else had a chance to have a ride.  Dad got quite upset at one point and told the guy in no uncertain terms what he was going to do if the other little ones did not get a turn for a ride also.  That was good for the other kids but we still did not go for a ride. 
Oh well, there were many other things to do and it was not the end of the world.  There was something going on that was way more interesting.  Dad was sitting at a side table with a bottle of beer.  This was very unusual.  Dad was not a drinking person at all.  This was the first time that we had seen him behind a bottle of beer.  Mom would be very upset if she had seen Dad with a bottle of beer in front of him.  We asked Dad for the reason for his unusual behavior.  "It is like this," he said. 
"It is no sin if you drink a bottle of liquor in moderation, if you don't over do it.  The Lord has given us many things.  And many things can be used or abused.  Beer is one of them.  Always drink in moderation.  I know that your mother is afraid of liquor and that is the reason that I never drink in while she is around.
She has a good reason to be afraid! . 
Her grandfather was one of the richest persons in his district.  He lost it all because he could not leave the liquor alone.  He drank too much.  He had one of the biggest farms in the country, and her grandmother was allowed to wear the silver scissors on a silver chain, around her middle. ; This was a sign of great distinction.  They lost it all in one life-time.  ,Be careful in the future. ‘ Dad was saying while he took a sip of his beer, You have drink abuse in your bloodstream.  Handle the stuff with care.  Your mother was so poor in her childhood that she went to school on two left wooden shoes.  Both the right shoes were broken, and they did not have the money to buy new ones.  Drink in moderation, or not at all.  Remember the history of your forefathers!"  We have never forgotten those words, until this very day.  Liquor was never used in my childhood years and very seldom in my adult years.                               I have never bought the stuff because I never wanted to give the wrong example for my children when they were growing up.  We have never made a big issue out of it either.
Dad gave us sound advice, on that day, long ago.
Many things are good in themselves, if they are not abused.

WAR!

Life went on at a fairly slow pace, and my life was filled with all kind of activities.  Some more important than others, but it was never boring.  Holland was a good country to live in.  A country of abundance, but the riches were loaded up in the wrong places. ‘ Fat will float on the top!" refairs to an old saying, and proven, time and again!  Holland had many colonies and that was part of the reason that life was so good for the upper class.  East India, as it was called before the war, country of mystery, country of romance.  The country of a thousand islands as it was called before the war.  The country that has suffered and benefitted from the Dutch.  The inhabitants of that fair land have been taken advantage of often, and their women abused  repeatedly.  Their men have had to work at rock bottom wages in often poor conditions, not only there but all over the world.  To our eternal shame, although, this was counter balanced with the fact that the Dutch also brought much that is good to this fair and humble land.
 
The little man in India was often abused, but the common man in Holland did not make out all that much better.  They were being used and abused .  I could write a book on that alone.
 Child labor was quite common in those days. My aunt had to watch the cows from four in the morning till late sundown in the summertime.  She was eleven years old then; Schooling had to wait for a more convenient time!
 
My parents had to work like that more often as not, but nobody complained all that much.
 The next generation made up for that, and they did not need much practice.
 
I have seen children working in the beets, from sun up to sundown, right here in sunny Alberta.  That was in the beginning of the immigrant days, Nobody wanted to notice their plight.
 They did not seem that unhappy either, come to think of it, making good citizens in later days!  Against the law, of course, but it was done!    Holland was a stone rich country; That's how the Germans called it later when they robbed Peter and Paul, in a unprecedented  manner .  For them it was a good enough reason to invade the country, anyway!  Our family was not all that unhappy.  Mom and dad carried a heavy burden, but we were too young to notice.
 We did learn to appreciate the small things in life.  Many people never went any further from home than a bicycle could carry them.  -That's how they lived  They were happy and content.    Our present day is  different.  Your car can bring you out of sight and sound, in a matter of minutes.
We never had a radio before we went to Canada.  Our main source of information was the newspaper and the rumor mill.  The newspaper of that day brought news in a responsible manner, While the rumor mill was very emotional and independent.  The prewar days were hardly paradise.  But we did have many good things in our life.  Evenings were to sit together and have a good time; be gezellig, sociable, especially in our family.  Uncle Jan, who was an uncle from dads sides of the family, was the owner of a small farm, just a little bigger than my dads holdings.  We, as boys, were just a little bit jealous of that Uncle -- his place seemed just a little bit nicer than dad's place and it had a few more animals to its credit.  But Uncle Jan was not a happy person.
 I remember best the discussion they had about Germany and Hitler, the upstart Austrian corporal!  Uncle Jan did not think that Hitler was all that bad.  He had put many people to work and had done many other good things.  The working conditions in Germany had improved a great deal and many good things were happening in Germany. 
Dad, on the other hand, had some second thoughts.  He had a lot of concern about the rumors that the Jew was being persecuted in Germany.  He had some undefined misgivings about a man that could treat other human beings in that manner, but, there was no way that he could convince Uncle Jan.  He believed in Hitler and continued to do so throughout the war.  Never did he come to understand the evil intent of the Nazi system.  Many more individuals were taken in by the hypnotism of the glittering Nazi system, especially in Great Germany.  Only the outcast sounded the alarm.
 Rev Mueller was one off them.  ?First they came and got the Jew," he said, I did not say anything.
Then they came and got the Communist, and I said nothing.  They came and got the Gypsy, and I said nothing.  Then they came for me, and there was nobody left to say anything!?  It is well always to test the spirits and see whether they are of God.  We can only do that on the hand of the Bible.  How I wish that more people would be aware of that, in this day and age!  Getting back to the prewar days...  It is not hard to understand the attitude of the people of that day.  Conditions were so bad that a farmer took his little pigs to the market and nobody was buying, not even one!   He went home very down hearted that evening and found double the amount of pigs in the back of his wagon.  An unwanted gift from another farmer unloading his pigs on someone else, rather than taking them back home, where he had more pigs to feed.
And life went on within its own slow rhythm that put people to sleep as in a lullaby.
 
A friend walked up to me at that time and told me that there had been a lot of shooting going on at the border.  It had something to do with smugglers. 
This was a little disturbing for the peace-loving Dutchmen but soon forgotten.
The real story was different.  The border guards had a shootout with some Germans, while some Dutch uniforms and other military hardware were secreted across the border.   The German was well informed about the Dutch army and was going to make good use of it!  Dad must have had a bit of suspicion because they had witnessed the first war from a distance.  They had a deep down fear of the future. 
We, as young guys, lived on, with no idea of what could come. 
Although; ever more rumors started swirling around.  We went to bed quite unconcerned on the night of May the tenth.  It had been a warm and cozy day, and all may be well with the world. Looks are deceiving!
It would be the last peaceful night in a long, long time!  A dark night of violence and terror was just about to enter our cozy little World! 
We were knocked out of bed at five o'clock in the morning as an awful lot of concerned people were filling the streets.  The sound of many airplanes was heard throughout the night.
People had a good reason to be concerned for this was a very unusual sound in the peaceful skies over the lowlands.
These were no Dutch airplanes. That was a sure thing.  The whole Dutch air force could not bring that many planes together at the best of time.
Far away thunder reverberated through the night.  Only; this was no thunder, as we soon were to find out.  Most of our neighbors had one opinion or other.  But our friend Hans said, ‘These must be the Germans.  Boy-o-boy, are they going to find out a thing or two, before they know what hits them.  The Dutch have a mighty army, and we will beat the tar out of them.  The English and the French have promised to help us and we are going to show that Corporal from Germany what real fighting is all about!” 
He hitched up his pants and spit a time or two, gesturing with mighty arm strokes. 
Hans had the Germans all but beaten, and he started to build the courage of all spectators.  My dad was not so sure that it would go as easy as all that, but, he did not say all that much.  He went home and quietly started packing, some high needed supplies in case the need arose.
Radio Holland announced that Germany had invaded Holland and admonished the population to be calm because the army had everything well in hand.
The bubble had burst.  We woke up out of a fool's paradise and were to enter the real world.  The New Reich had a crash course of new knowledge in terror and suppression all lined up, especially for us!   We figured that our boys would give a good account of themselves.  Hitler has made his first big mistake was the general opinion.  Our boys are going to beat them to pulp. 
We are going to drown them in the water line.  This was followed by the message,
“The English are landing on the coast and the Belgian and French troops are coming in from the south.  The Germans dead are laying three feet thick in front of our lines!” Etc. etc.  The rumor mill was going full tilt and we all thought that the enemy would be in for a hard fight. All were convinced that the Germans would be beaten to a pulp.  We had it all figured out pretty good but there was one serious mistake in our calculations:
The Germans did not know this yet, and it would take us five years to convince them!
 
I mentioned the bridge to the west that would be one of the first battle lines and then you would see something.  Well! ---The enemy came from the south and bypassed the bridge altogether.--  This was just one of  many surprises in store for the bewildered population.  The ultra modern tank traps on the bridge, pride of our engineers?  They were never even tested!  A blacksmith in town was forced by gunpoint to cut away the heavy steel bars cemented in the bridge deck.  The rest just was bulldozed away.  That was that!  The main force of enemy troops went through to the south of us!  The first detachment of troops came through our town at ten o'clock in the morning. Our beloved Snakeman.-- The man of many wonders and our beloved goalkeeper in days of yore –
This lovely sat on the first motorcycle with a side--car.  He was called back about a year earlier, like so many German citizens, and here he was -- the conquering hero -- Liberating our country just like so many others who had worked in Holland years before.  They came back to repay the hospitality of our countrymen. 
The Snake man died not many days later in a battle before the Ysel River.  My cousin talked to him on the first day of the invasion, and he was friendly enough -- small wonder.  It was the same story, Time and again.  People who had worked in Holland in former years came back to show the shortcuts, and the best way to kill our boys. 
Our soldiers were shot at from the rooftops.  Often by people who were sympathetic to the Nazis, willing to sell out their country for a handful of silver. 
It happened that our boys found sawdust, instead of dynamite, in places where it was needed most.  Officers ordered their men to fight in places that were unimportant.
These men found death, many times, in situations that were impossible to hold and had no bearing or importance to the defense of our land.  Betrayals like that happened in every war, but it sure hurt when it happened to us.  But, why be surprised?  
It was just one of the first lessons in the German mentality. Their beloved leader,-Adolf the Hun-, was quoted as saying: “Everyone will believe a lie, if it is repeated often enough!"
 
These leaders clearly had no morals of any kind! Some enemy storm troops stayed long enough to buy some things for their wives and girlfriends.  These jokers were very impressed with the quality and quantity of the Dutch articles in the stores.  There was stuff that they had not seen in years, and they bought all they could carry -- not much for a soldier at war, but they would be back.  Often, very, very, often! –
Why should they not?  The money that they used was as worthless as the paper it was written on!  The stuff was as useless as the black souls of the army leaders who conquered us in such deceitful manners. 
They were only the forerunners of the locust who settled down not that much later, for the wholesale rape of the Dutch countryside.
The trains came and came, over and again, for months on end.  Rolling east, plundering our country of produce withheld from those that were poor and hungry not that much earlier.    The tenth of May was a beautiful spring day.  Spring had just conquered winter.  Greens and flowers were bursting out all over. Proclaiming a festival of joy and new life.
A feast dedicated to the honor and glory of the great Creator. 
--He who is Creator of all that is living and beautiful.-- 
The sun was sparkling in untold dewdrops, sparkling, like just that many jewels in the crown of its Maker. 
Birds were bursting out in song, carrying stick and twig for the nest of future young ones,
The skylark reached out for heaven because earth was not big enough to hold her reaction to the birth of the newborn day and in the mean time. The proclaimed masters of the earth, The stewards and caretakers, had put in motion forces and powers of unsurpassed terror and destruction. 
Death is on the march and it will not be denied.  A grim silence had fallen over the countryside as we watched the Snake man and his cohorts move along a shortcut, orchestrated by the ever so helpful Snake man. 
Faces, camouflaged with dark colors have entered day.  This is no make-believe!  This is the real thing!  The set faces of the grim looking soldiers promise swift retribution for anyone who dares to oppose.  It gave me the coldest feeling I had ever experienced in all my life.
It was almost as if death itself was passing in front of our eyes.  And that is what it was that was coming our way right in front of us. 
It was a very good thing that no civilians were foolish enough to come shooting.  The enemy would have shot innocent people without any hesitation.  That lesson was well learned in Belgium and France, in the first word war.  It was there that many civilians were shot by these same invaders. 
German honor demands that only persons in uniform have a license to kill legally.  How crazy can you get?
I was wandering around with a lump in my throat and ice in my stomach.  We realized, full well, that here was the ultimate terror.  It would take something bigger than us to turn back the spawn of hell that had descended on us!  A strange kind of mood had set in.  There was this terror on one side, and on the other side was some pleasure in the unexpected holiday.  The ever-present -boy- meets- girl -syndrome was reaching out for better things, even now on this grim day. 
Many folks got dressed up and mixed the horror of this day with more life-centered ideas.  They had dressed up in their better clothes to watch the proceedings of the glorious conquerors. Not realizing that the German propaganda, ever watchful, made full use of the display of the throng of spectators. They showed the home front how glad the brothers' nation of German descent welcomed the concerning heroes. 
Opposition to the invading army was almost nonexistent, until they hid in the great rivers to the West of us.  The Germans had to cross the rivers and it was there that they met stiff opposition.  Very heavy fighting broke out at the Grebbeline.  It was there also that the Snake man died, and many of his weapon brothers with him.  Do you remember the guy I mentioned before?  The one who had the saber rusted in his scabbard?  This guy fought like a man possessed, as he well might have been.  It was not a playground for him anymore, and he fought long and determined, against superior numbers and better equipped men in front of him.  We lost track of him later, but it is very likely that he became a member of the Resistance later.  He would not give up either Like so many others who were fighting next to him in that war with the Germans.  The story goes that there was a gun crew, manning the big anti-aircraft cannon, --They were fighting  on  with unbelievable results. 
They never paid much attention on how to handle a gun when they were in training. 
It took the whole crew together to figure out how to handle the big cannon.  But they made it work, with old-fashioned ingenuity with excellent results.  It is a well-known fact that the Dutch anti-aircraft cannon was one of the best in the armies of that day.  Very heavy fighting broke out along the great rivers at Amsterdam and Rotterdam.  The enemy tried to cross the river at one of the main bridges.  This bridge had a very high crown and the Dutch marines shot everything crossing the high point of the bridge, with great results.  The Germans tried to cross the river in rubber boats that were heavy laden with equipment,
The Dutch marines jumped in the river with their knife between their teeth, and next thing you knew, no more Germans. 
The marines slit the bottom of the boats and the whole kit and caboodle went to the bottom! The German army never did take those rivers.  No matter what they did, their boats became water logged and so did the invader.  The Germans favored weapons were the parachute-troops.  These troops were thrown off in great numbers behind the Dutch lines, often assisted by Dutch traitors, who were giving a helping hand in many situations.  The Germans were piled three feet high in front of the Great Afsluitdyk -- a dam separating the North and the South Sea. – That's what the rumor was saying. 
The dike, as it was called, was the pride of the Dutch nation.  It had been put in place as a divider between the North and the South Sea, during the hungry thirties when times were hard and many folks went hungry.
The beginning of the dike was heavy fortified with reinforced bunkers.  And it was in front of these bunkers that many Germans lost their lives. 
Hitler could have bombed the dike easy enough and flooded the whole center of Holland but that did not fit in with his master plan.  He would have lost a lot of good farmland, so badly needed for the future war effort.  The people really did not matter, it was the land that was important. 
He had way better methods to force the low-Countries to surrender; land was important.  Humans were not.  He sent up his airplanes and bombarded the hearth and soul out of Rotterdam and out of the nation, with the ultimatum that more cities would follow if the Dutch did not surrender.  The Dutch generals counted the cost and decided to surrender. The message of the caputelation was falling on us like a clap of thunder. It was an action that shocked us to the core. 
The capitulation was unbelievable news for us, but the departure of the Queen was far more damaging.  We felt like we had lost the mother of the nation.  Holland without her was like a beehive without queen and much more damaging. 
We found out later that the Queen and the government escaped to England to form a legal government in exile, and it was a wise move after all.  We were standing on the mill yard in heated discussion when we heard the bad news.  We felt betrayed and sold out.  How could they do this to us?  There was so much left to fight for, and here we were left, all alone.  Our leaders left us to fight the battle, without resources and without weapons of any kind.  Hitler got the country, but he did not get the Queen and he did not get the government.  Neither did he get the navy of Holland nor her ships and merchant vessels -- ships he needed so badly for the upcoming invasion of England.  The Dutch sank most of their biggest ships in the mouth of the North Sea Canal, and they took off with the rest of the navy.  The Germans had also dropped paratroopers in the palace gardens to capture the Queen.  They came too late there also.
What is more important He did not concur our hearts.  Darkness ruled our living from that point on.  “They enemy is starting to turn on the screw!’ Our friend Hans was saying.
An expression that was new to us, but it was a saying that was going to be used often from that point on.  All windows had to be covered with blankets to keep the light from shining in the streets, and the night got darker and darker.  Order followed order, by German war command.  No more meetings of more than three persons anytime -- Heavy penalties would fall on the disobedient.  Curfew was set at eight o'clock.  Nobody allowed in the streets after eight o'clock -- Anyone hiding weapons of any kind would be shot.-- 
Anyone helping allied soldiers would be shot.--  Anyone helping or hiding a Jew would be shot.-- 
The list went on and on.  The humble Dutch became joke bearers and all life went under ground.  Dutch people had not known war or suppression in more than one hundred years and they had become law-abiding people in that time.  This was a habit that was hard to break.  But we were learning fast.  It did not take long before the Germans ordered that all lead and copper should be brought in.  The enemy needed copper and lead to make ammunition for the war effort, and the population started grumbling but obeyed.  We were used to obedience before the war.  Then all radios had to be brought in.  This was hurting the pocket book, and folks grumbled a little louder.  They brought in a few old radios but kept the good ones. 
We needed them too badly.  We had to listen to the BBC, Something that was also strictly forbidden. 
People hid the radios and started listening in hiding places, but oh so careful.  Traitors and Nazi sympathizers were lurking all over and nobody trusted anybody anymore.  The screw was slowly tightened ever more, and the Dutch were slow to react.  -True to their nature.The prisoners of war were ordered back into captivity, less than a year after they had been set free by a seemingly generous German war commander.  Then the thing happened that woke many of us up to the reality of our condition.  The Jews were ordered to wear a yellow star proclaiming to all the world that --the Jews were proclaimed to be the outcast of society. -- The scum of all nations. – That's the impression that the Nazi butchers wanted to impress on the entire world and in this they succeeded only too well in the minds of many people.  Excuses could by found left and right.  The Jew had betrayed this one.  The Jew had sold poor stuff to someone else.  They were leaches, not to be trusted.  Too many reasons to count, on and on! 
The strategy of the enemy was to set the Jew apart.  That was the reason for the yellow star.
Often they succeeded but not always many church going people started to see the writing on the wall .Our leaders sounded warnings about the German intend.  I will never forget how these unfortunate persons were scuffling through the streets of our hometown, hugging, close to the buildings, almost as if they were trying to hide in the brickwork.
I believe that they would gladly have done just that if they only could do so.  Their entire livelihood was taken away from them, and this was only the beginning. 
If anyone had told us on the tenth of May, when the war started, what was to happen, we would not have believed it.  The younger of the two Jewish families, who lived close to us, came over then and said,
“It might not be all that bad for the men, but the women will be forced to go to the hayloft often, when the Germans take over!” 
A trip to the hayloft would have been paradise compared to what was in store for them.  Little did we know what was waiting for them soon in the future.
I have never seen the man again.  They went into hiding from there on.  Until, one day, the German ordered the Dutch police to escort the Jews to the train.  They were to be put to work in a place of unknown destiny.
The shame of it all was the fact that some Dutch police lent a helping hand, and, I am a little surprised about that to this very day.  Most of us had heard rumors by then about death camps, and these men must have heard it to.  “Their hairs are black, the noses bent, disappears the Jew in concentration camp!?”
 This was a song that was well known in those days, the instinct of the common folk, sensed with their heart, what high born people were denying as much as four years later.  The song pointed to the distinct Jewish feature that gave them away, every turn of the road.  Most of them disappeared without a trace, as time went by, and we were standing by, helpless.  And slowly the facts started filtering through.  We started hearing about SS troops using vans with exhaust welded into the rear to blow the fumes into the closed area, poisoning Jews, as so many cattle. 
The treatment of humans became worse than that of animals.  Death camps were set up later for the only purpose of killing the Jews.  They were only more efficient,
Those camps were regular death factories where people were burned in great ovens and turned into ashes in an assembly line of morbid efficiency.

MIDNIGHT

The Jew was not without help, not entirely-- especially in Holland.-- 
A handful was saved from destruction, often at great cost to some well-meaning Dutchmen.  It also prompted the rise and organization of some cells of the underground movement.  I can testify to that myself, as you will see later in this story.
Even so! Not all the Jews were prepared to accept help and that was part of the problem.  Some of them were offered a hiding place and received many warnings.  The Germans could not be trusted!   Many were told that they were not going to work camps in East Germany or Poland but that they were in danger of losing their lives.  But most of those unfortunates were not prepared to take the risk of disobeying the new master race.   The Germans set up Jewish committees under Jewish over seers who helped to register and organize the shipment of Jews. All the time, the Jews misunderstood the true intentions of the Germans. They still believed that the Jewish population was relocated for work somewhere else
‘ It might not be so bad" they were telling themselves.  ‘The children might be better of if we obey" A little work is not going to hurt anybody" On and on went the excuses and arguments. 
Do not judge us too harshly (neither judge them.)  Human nature seeks the way of least resistance in moments like that.  And many of the Jews went ... never to be seen again.
 I was fifteen years old then and can testify that this is true.   My father and mother were not able to do much of anything, even if they had been approached, but I am sure that they would have found a way ... somehow ... somewhere.  Mom and dad had ten children then and were hard pressed to keep body and soul together.
Many stories have been told about the Jew and his disappearance. I won't go into that here.  You can look that up in other books, but it should be mentioned that the Jew is still the apple of Gods Eye -- nobody can touch them and escape punishment.  My parents thought so and I completely agree with them.   Everything was getting in short supply.  The trains kept rumbling past our hometown -- direction Germany ... day after day and month after month ... and the Dutch countryside was bled to starvation.
We were on rations for everything. -- Another weapon in the hands of the enemy. –
He could hold back the rations and starve you to surrender. The Germans used this fact of life to our detriment.  --My cards were held back when I was forced to work in enemy country at a later date.-
And the war went on while the German army seemed invincible.
The glorious thousand years Reich was sighen (fighting).  Their arrogance drove them to the point that they invaded Russia.  They were convinced that victory was eminent and that the rest of the world would fall into their hands like an over ripe apple.  We were happy to take note of their overconfidence.  ‘This is the last step!" we were saying.                                                                                                          
‘Russia will swallow them alive in the same way it swallowed Napoleon, some hundred years ago!" And our humble company gained new confidence and became more determined to fight on with each passing day.
But the fighting intensified and grew more vicious as day followed day and night followed night.  The nights became more important.  Meetings were held and actions carried out at an increasing pitch as time went on and the night became more important than the day.
The resistance and underground movements were ultra-secret in the first years.
Ordinary people like me were not invited to the party.  It was mostly for a select group of persons and what did we do? ...  We went fishing!  That is what we did.   The bicycles had still some form of tires and we peddled long distances to catch some fish. We did this partly to supplement the food supply.
On the other hand, we did this for relaxation.
 We went to a fast flowing river, about five kilometers past the next town.
We would sit there--Alone with our thoughts--. Spending a day in complete relaxation in an imaginary land filled with peace and dreams of days long gone by or yet to come.
You sat in a hiding place of head high reeds, surrounded by the pungent aroma of water plants and calamus roots.  The birds would be singing all around and the water would be nibbling at the shore.
The panorama at your feet would take on the dimensions of another world. You were floating away in timeless fashion, cherishing the present moment with no fears for the tomorrow.
 A dog barking in the distance was the only sound and, occasionally, a rooster in the distance was crowing ...He was proclaiming independence-day in the chicken world. 
A duck would be diving underwater, once every so often, recovering a little tidbit that's only important to the lowly duck.
There we would sit, hour after hour, watching the pen of a chicken feather that served as a bobber on the end of the line.
It was a tricky operation and you had to watch every second or a well-educated fish would nibble the bait off the hook, putting the sucker on your end of the line.
These were hours of complete relaxation and peace. In this way our day was spent at peace and atonement with all creation.   Bait was very important!  Someone told us that he had put together a bait that was so effective that he had to crawl behind a tree to bait the hook.  The fish would come up the shore to get at the bait if he did it any other way.  I'll gladly tell you another story if you do not believe that one!   Another guy went out fishing and ran out of bait.  The passions were high and the need of this unbearable moment was beyond description. 
He looked around in desperation, and what did he see? ... A dead cat. He cut the head off the cat and mixed it with some even more unappetizing substance, making fish food of an unbelievable delicacy.  He caught more fish that day than he did in any other day of his miserable fishermen's existence.
The stories were many but the fish were few.   The fish stories were of great variety and the fish would grow little by little until all the wagons of our hometown could not have carried all the imaginary fish.
I can honestly say that I never met a wagon with fish, unless it was the three wheeler bicycle of the fish peddler. 
Our neighbor went fishing one day, with no luck at all, but he found many bushes loaded with saskatoon berries.-- Ripe and ready.  Saskatoons were always better than no fish, and he ate his fill on the saskatoons.  They were good! 
There was absolutely no doubt about that fact of life.  But he ran into problems, according to his account of the scenario of events that followed, shortly afterwards.   He was so overloaded that he got the runs.  He could relieve himself easily enough, but had no toilet paper so he used the next best thing.  The bag around the sandwiches would have to do.  But alas!  He miscalculated on two accounts ...
 His sandwiches had been prepared in a pack that had served as a salt bag,
The salt bag and the fact that he had piles [hemorrhoids].were a bad combination . 
‘I jumped clear over the saskatoon bushes!" He recalled, as he told us the story in later days.  Somewhat downhearted and shame faced.
I can handle a big story as good as the next guy, but this one takes the cake and is a little hard to swallow.   I have heard many fish stories over the years and enjoyed most of them.  They are fun to listen to and gave us a little diversion in times when everything looked dark and dreary.
Some young people of our church had a competition at that time. The CRC churches against the Reformed.  At stake was the number of fish each church would wrangle on shore. 
Would you know it?  The competition was won by the Reformed with the overpowering number of one measly fingerling.  -A fingerling is a fish about a finger long.- 
The Reformed people were hard to live with after that overwhelming victory. They sure made us aware of it ... repeatedly.
The competition was set up in the spinning factory where I worked in a support service to the main job of spinning cotton on spools.  The refined product could be used by the weavers in the textile factories.
Our job was to remove the full spools and to replace them with empty ones.
The empty spools were stored in boxes along the walls, and it was absolutely forbidden to drop any empty spools in the hallways without picking them up right away.
Several other young guys and I went to the boxes to pick up some empty spools and boys being boys, one boy said, ‘Any one of you dare me to throw this bunch of spools on the floor"?  Well, this was no contest.  Two or three guys challenged him right away, right then and there.  Down went the spools: right where they should not be.   I wish the guy had stayed that brave in the following moments.  The manager of the factory came by that spot in the next few minutes and took up the challenge, then and there.  This man was an old German officer who had fought in the First World War. 
This man was no one to fool around with anytime and most certainly not at a time when we were so vulnerable.
The man was a naturalized German, to make matters even worse.  He would stand still occasionally, during the surveys of the factory.  He would wipe with his hand over his eyes as if he was trying to get rid of something. 
The story was that he was reliving some scenes of the trench war of the years, fourteen to eighteen.  It was to his credit that he had no use for Hitler and his crooks - none whatsoever -- because he ordered a handful of high Nazi officials right out of the factory.  He claimed that they were spying out factory secrets and he would not put up with that: no matter who they were.   It had to be this man of all people who ran into that pile of rubbish on the factory floor.  He had his foreman line up our crew in front of him and demanded that the man responsible for the mess should step forward and declare himself.
All to no avail-- The man who was so brave before was not brave enough to come forward now.  Then the German said, ‘I want anyone who witnessed brave the act to tell me at once.  I am giving you five minutes starting now." Nobody was willing to do that either.  There were only a few who had seen the guy's handy work and no one wanted to tell on a buddy, After that the manager threw us all out of the factory.
We were with a crew of eight, and all of us would have to report for work in Germany ... so much for that.   It was with a heavy heart and dragging foot steps that I went home to face my parents. 
My father was the union leader of the Christian Labor Association.  He climbed right on his war-horse after I had told him the bad news.  My father huffed and puffed, and said to me,
 ‘You go and see that manager in his office, first thing in the morning.  Tell him it's our own business whether you want to report for work in Germany.  He better does not have the heart to report on us, or he is going to hear a lot more about this.
 (As for wanting you to tell on someone else") 
He has got enough foremen around to watch what's going on.  It's not our duty to inform on anyone.  .  .  Period."                                 
A scared but very determined eighteen years old girded his loins, the next day, to do battle with the giant of the spinning factory.
One other boy (a fellow sufferer) caught up to me just before I entered the factory grounds.  His dad had sent him on much the same mission.  ‘Will you do the talking"?
He said to me.  ‘I get mad in no time and fly off the handle, doing more harm than good."   I was not all that enthusiastic but did agree to the added responsibility. 
We were directed to the main office as we entered the factory grounds and the man agreed to see us, almost at once, strangely enough.  He was the head of a thousand-man operation and had a lot of other things on his mind.  But he met with us, and I delivered my speech, shivering in my boots ... wooden shoes.   The meeting was short and not very sweet.  He assured me that we would have to report to work in Germany ourselves, and I told him that this was none of his business.  So, he told me to get out and that is just what we did.   My partner Bill did not say a word all the while, and I had to lead the attack -- All by my lonesome self.  We left the place, with the clerks sitting there, flabbergasted at this unusual spectacle.  The other guys went back to the factory and asked if they could come back to work.  Anything was better than going to work in Germany. 
All were accepted to come back, without any problems.  All the boys excluding Bill and me, that is.  His conversion had not lasted that long.   It so happened that the manager and the foreman had cornered Bills Sister, who worked in another department.  They had tried to force information out of her about the whole unsavory affair.  This did not sit well with our friend Bill, and he went after the manager hammer and thong.  ‘Pick on the guys involved and not on my sister!" he told the headman.  ‘This is men’s business; you keep my sister out of this!" etc. etc.   Well, to make a long story short, the manager turned absolutely livid and told Bill that he would get the police to throw him out on the street. Bill replied, ‘You just try and throw me out yourself, if you think you are man enough!"
Poor old Bill ended on the cobble stones, but good.  The whole situation was very unpleasant, to put it mildly.  For Bill, but more so for the management.  They had a lot of face to lose, as the china man would say.   I was left as the odd man out by this turn of events.  We had received a message that I was to attend this meeting also. To that message dad replied that it was not convenient just then-I had lost enough time already and had just picked up a job in the neighborhood for that particular day.  I had to do some threshing for a widow and dad wanted me to fulfil that commitment before doing anything else.   That kind of rebellion would have been totally unacceptable in normal times, but times were not normal times any more and we had to learn to assert ourselves.  We would have to do this even more as time passed by.   The head manager and the foreman were waiting for me the next day.  They put the pressure on again, and I refused to inform on my friends.  ‘You have a foreman to look after this kind of business, let him keep an eye on it," I told them.  ‘They get paid for that  You will get nothing out of me!"  The result was that I could come back next day.
 I could even come back the same day if I wanted to.  But the mighty men refused to let Bill back in.  That in turn did not sit right with me so I told them that I would not return, unless Bill was hired on also.  It seemed to me that there was a gleam of appreciation in the old boy’s eyes when he replied that Bill could come back the following week.   Bill had a notice from the unemployment office that he had to report for work in Germany: Less than two months later.  Coincidence? You might ask.
 Bil ended in one of the heaviest bombed areas in Germany -- Hanover, to be exact.   The old man tied into me again several days later when we were horsing around in the bathroom. ‘You again!" He hollered, after he swung open the doors to be a witness to that unsavory scene of us boys lazing around with the smoke of cigarettes hanging in the room.  The whole crew flew out of there as if somebody had shot a load of a bug shot in their rear ends.   The old man and I met again another time after that.  Someone had thrown a handful of sandwiches loaded with butter and other goodies in the trash can.  He did not think kindly about that at all.  ‘Many people are going hungry," he said.  ‘And you throw the food away like trash like so much junk!"
 The old man was almost crying when he said that, and I believe that he was absolutely sincere.  You had to respect him for that.  It's the little thing that sticks with you over the years.   Life went on in an almost normal routine, if such a thing is possible in a war-torn country.
There were always little boys sitting at the front gate of the factory.  It was quite an honor for them to be associated with young men that were a life-time older than they. 
One little guy piped up and said to us one day, ‘I am going to have a little baby brother!"            We joined in on the act and asked him, very seriously, ‘How do you know that you are going to have a little brother and not a sister"? 
He sniffled a little contemptuous and wrinkled his face when he replied, hunching his shoulders, like the little folks do.  ‘Last year my mother was in bed and we got a baby sister and now my father is in bed!"
 He looked at us with a lot of pity that we did not even know this simple fact of life. 
That's how we learned the facts of life at the tender age of fifteen years old.   Life went on and the war intensified on all fronts with the German troops battling before the gates of Leningrad with dubious results.  Ever more men were sent to the killing grounds in the East, to face an uncertain future and death very likely.
Italy lost all heart for fighting so that Germany had to stretch their manpower over greater territory as time went on. 
Germany needed workers to fill the place of the battling soldiers so that many men were conscripted in an unwilling labor force. The logical conclusion was that our town did not escape the high-handed methods of the enemy either.   The bell tolled for me one day, still unexpected.  I had to report to the unemployment office for a medical.  We were now in the position that the Jews had been , only a short time ago.  Would we disobey straight out?  Or was it better to report and hope for the best?  Dad and mom had to feed ten children, and it was impossible to feed more mouths if we were to lose our ration cards beside that.   The underground was top secret, and unknown to most of us, so the options were limited or none. 
I had no choice and reported for the medical -- a most degrading experience, as I remember it.  We had to parade naked in front of some kind of horse doctor, who was assisted by a fairly good-looking woman.
Thus, my humble person made his entrance into the real world.  The doctor and his nurse had a good look at me and burst out laughing and that really hurt.  I know that I am not that good looking but, then again, it is not as bad as all that either.   The doctor was not mellowed by the entertainment, Not even a little bit, and he declared me fit for work in Hitler land.  My friend Dick and I had attended an evening school for the last two years, under the able, but somewhat shady, guidance of a former East India officer. 
We worshiped that man who had a rough character but had seen his share of the world.  He was a top-notch teacher who had time to spare to throw in several jokes that would make a dock worker blush.  Nevertheless , We had to take the bad with the good and walking out was out of the question for that would mean the end of our education and that would never do! 
My friend Dick had convinced me that I needed more education.
My personality had the necessities for boss material, according to his infinite wisdom.
I needed this education badly as a first step into the hallowed halls of boss men.  So much for that...I became educated .I think   -To get back to the instructor. He told me to stay behind after class when he heard that I had to report for work in Germany.  He told me in deep secrecy that he could find ways to support me if I refused to go to Germany.  Sorry to say, but I missed the real implication of what he was trying to say.  Too bad that  I did not understand what he had in mind.  I might have ended in the ranks of the underground movement if I had accepted the offer.  Mom and dad had a big family and I could not take the risk of putting additional weight on their shoulders.
The instructor asked Dick, almost half a year later, about my whereabouts and started cussing and swearing when Dick told him that I had escaped out of German paradise.
 "I knew it!" he said.  ‘That guy had that in the back of his mind all along!"
Maybe he had seen something that I did not, but we just reacted to the events as they burst upon us, driven by a faith in Gods providence, then and always.   The matter of working in Germany would have been an interesting experience if it had been for a different cause.  As it was .A very glum group of young men boarded the train.  We felt like traitors to the good cause, ready to give service to the enemy.
Things started going wrong, almost from the very beginning.  We were promised that we would be put to work in a border town so that we could go home every weekend. Instead  we ended in a transfer barrack with an insecure outlook and sad feelings.
This barrack was something else.  Men and women of all nationalities were mixed in one big melting pot.  Several fast women were dancing on the tables that evening, leaving little to the imagination.  The toilets were so dirty that we did not dare to do that what comes naturally.  Danger of sickness seemed to be all over the place.  It was most certainly not what our parents had in mind when they gave us a first-rate education.  Whatever that may be.  We were in the boat in more ways than one and had to row as best as we could.
We were put on a train for an unknown destination, after a morning spent in total frustration, running from one office to the other.  The fast click click of the Dutch railroad system was replaced with a much slower click clack, since the German rail section was a lot longer than the Dutch.  We were in enemy country.
I can't say that I was really home sick since I am one of those persons who can leave everything behind the moment the home place disappears behind the horizon.  
The train walls were covered with slogans, reminding us that we were in a country at war.
 ‘Careful in conversation, the enemy listens" --was one of the most prominent. 
(Fighting first and then traveling) was another favored one, and many more that have disappeared in the mist of time.
We were all but ignored by the German travelers on the train.  They treated us like some foreign species, and that was fine with us.  We did not like them either and we could play that game with just as much effect.   We ended in the city of Munster, a city on the northern tip of the Ruhr district. 
This district was the heart of the German war effort with its enormous steel mills and factories.  All factories were geared to the weapon production of Hitters hungry armies.  And it was in one little corner of that bees- nest that we found a -- resting? -- place.
It never has been clear to me what we were supposed to do there -- we never did any work that amounted to anything and our usefulness was next to nil. 
It might have been just an exercise in bureaucratic stupidity, A move to strip the home country of fighting men.  Nevertheless, I do know that the contractor was charging big money for every person in his employ and that might have been the only reason that we were there, for all I know or care.   A large old baking oven was our home for the next four months.  The place was surrounded with a high barbwire fence so that nobody could get in or out, except through the main gate.  We were allowed to go out occasionally on a night pass. 
Getting away without a pass was out of the question and you could not go very far without papers anyway.  Police would start searching right away if a person was reported missing.  Concentration camp or death would be the result most often if you were found at large.  Options were limited indeed.   The ring oven was an interesting place.  It was a very large structure with a high chimney in the center.  A good size tunnel ran all along the outside wall and little holes were brought on in the roof every hundred feet or so.  
Bricks were loaded in one section and burning coals were dropped through the holes in the ceiling for a certain length of time until the clay was fired into solid bricks.  The new clay bricks had been started in the next section and were fired in turn while the first room was cooling off and bricks were unloaded in the room before that.  Bricks were made in a continuous operation in that manner.   We did none of that -- strangely enough.  We had to pack lumber, repeatedly again.                           Little come in and little went out, also in a continuous operation. 
Then came the day that we had to reinforce a section of the tunnel with heavy timber for no reason at all. The way it looked to us anyway.  These strange orders came through one day, and we asked the man in charge what this was all about. 
‘We reinforce the tunnel," he said in typical Prussian overblown manner, while he was standing there with protruding stomach and spread legs, hands on his hips and a face full of wrinkles.  ‘We reinforce the tunnel to keep the roof from caving in if the chimney falls on top of the tunnel when bombs fall around the factory."  None of us were looking for at anytime after that -- Something that stands for reason.
These were the inconsistencies of things and events in that unreal place.   It was really no wonder that it was that way.  The man in charge was a nut!  -A SS man who was mentally incompetent and not fit for active duty--. You really had to be off the beam to be discharged out of former sergeant Hitler, s armies. 
The mighty German intellect had put him in charge of a forced labor camp and we happened to be the beneficiaries of the great German logic.
And so we were wandering in that great German wonderland as an anticlimax to the happy wanderers.  The mornings were still very cold in that time of the year and that was something that none of us had counted on.  Nobody was too warmly dressed. 
One fellow was walking around in sandals all day long with the result that he had very cold feet.  “I wish I had shit myself to death in the high chair," he grumbled, looking at us with blood shot eyes.  His wispy, thin hair was sticking out of his old black fisher cap and he continued, “I would that a big bear would come and eat me!"   These expressions were not up building and certainly not the kind of languages that mother Geertje would approve of, but we were caught and there was no way out the way  it seemed at that time. 
We had two men in our group, who, were declared as an example for all of us.  By virtue of the --wily SS Trooper.--  These two guys were walking all the long day with several boards on their shoulder, never standing still, from morning till evening.  They were really working overtime and our German guards were really impressed by that outpouring of hard core labor.  They were the best among the best!  The poor German suckers never caught onto the fact that these two men were carrying the same boards from one place to the next Those men never did any real work but they were good at what they did. Nothing. There is no doubt about that.   One of my friends from the hometown had quite a back ground in poaching.  He and his brother got caught one day, when they were still in the old country.  There was never any love lost between the game warden and those two fellows, and they were mighty upset that they had been caught. A knife fight erupted before this deal was settled.                                                                     Those lovelies carved each other so bad that the people who were coming on the scene a little later had to roll the whole company in heavy wool blankets.  They were almost freezing to death, because of blood loss.  This was before the time of blood transfusion.
Such was the company that we were blessed with in those days of -no wine and no roses-
George was the man’s  name and poaching was his game.   George, the poacher, had to fulfil his calling no matter what the circumstances and poaching he did.  He fell right back into his evil ways, only this was war time and that, what was bad before, turned out to be good now.  It hurt the enemy in a small way and it helped our food supply. 
He asked me to help him in his enterprise, but the risk was not worth the gain and me politely, but firmly, denied.
I was shaken awake, one morning, bright and early, when I could go home for a weekend.  It was my indestructible friend George.  He had a bloody rabbit head, dangling on the end of a piece of wire.  His face split almost in half because he was laughing so hard. 
It seems that the second boss had found the rabbit in one of Georges snares and he had cut off the rabbit and left the head as a friendly reminder.  The second boss was a Communist and did not get along with the SS joker at all.  He turned out to be a partner in crime, much to the enjoyment of our friend George.   Luck turned against our friend in a matter of a few weeks.  He caught the hunting dog of the SS man in one of his snares and all furies descended on us in a matter of hours. 
The man of evil called the police and we had to line up in front of the barracks, facing a very wrathful SS man.
The procedure was much the same as in the old country, when I was facing the old manager.  We were threatened with the direst consequences if the culprit did not come forward. Nobody did because nobody knew anything, except George and me. 
Even so. Most of us were close to crying!  You can take my word for that. 
The SS joker turned on me, suddenly, and said, ‘You know more about this op den Driessss.  We will give you three days to come up with the guilty one; You will go to concentration camp if you do not show us the guilty one!"
He must have thought that I was the most likely one to break down because I was the smallest and least impressive one in the whole group of suspect sinners.   Old George must have lost a little bit of sleep in the next few days.  I know I did. 
I was scared stiff and did not sleep much at all.  It was a tempting situation.  Nevertheless, I would not tell on a buddy under any circumstances. I choose to worry and suffer through the following days.       
We never heard any more about it.  The local police were handling the case and that might have made the difference.  The SS or the green police would not have given in like that.  George became my friend and protector after that episode but that did not stop him from pulling a practical joke on my humble person. 
"Let's give Hank a ride for the money," he said to the other fellows.  And so he walked up to me in the morning and said, “I never thought that you would stab me in the back like that.  We are supposed to be friends, and then you pull something like that!" 
I did not know what he was talking about and just shrugged it off and thought no more about it.  But he came back, repeatedly, with the same words.  No wonder that I started worrying and became plump scared after a period of time.  Then he came over, close to quitting time, and said, “Get your knife ready.  Blood will be flowing tonight!" 
He had a couple of other guys with him and they all looked as serious as undertakers.   What was I to do?  It was a completely bewildered little Dutchman who went to the barracks at quitting time.  Then my courageous half took over and I picked out the biggest knife that I could find and started sharpening it.  I still did not know what was wrong but decided that, if there had to be a fight and blood had to flow,
The blood of someone else would have to flow and not only my blood.   George and followers came trundling along in due time and we went to the far corner of the yard.  Time had come to settle our differences.  Custer was going to make his last stand.  A good group of spectators had lined up on the sidelines and all things were set for the final showdown.  We walked the last few paces as a couple of warriors, ready to die.   Old George pretty near keeled over, laughing, when we got there and he said,
“Hank, my friend, I got to hand it to you.  I did not think you would show up -- you got spunk!"  He put his arms around my shoulder and took me along for a couple of beers.  He thought that it was a great joke. I did not agree with that at all Neither was I happy at all.  I would have worried a lot less even without spunk.   The Great War lord Adolph Hitler had his birthday ... sometime in April.  We all had to line up in front of the main barrack and had to listen to one of those long-winded speeches that the Nazis were so good with. 
Hans and I stood in the back row and foolishly turned our backs on the proceedings as the Swastika flag was raised. This was an act of great stupidity on our part. 
It was one of the greatest insults to the Germans who were ruling the day with saber and gun.  Nobody noticed us and that was good indeed.  I would not have been sitting here if anyone had reported at that sacred German ceremony.
The Lord sent his angels again to protect me from my own foolishness.
Our benefactors handed us a bottle of Voesel -- a cheap kind of gin--, with the kick of a gypsy horse.  The great German nation was generous to us for all the wrong reasons.
Generous to men who should not have been there in the first place.   I just mentioned the name of Hans, who was a good buddy of mine.  He was close because I never made fun of him due to the upbringing of my parents.  Others would tease him very often.  This happened mostly in good nature, but not always.. 
Hans was a little different.  Hans and the SS guy had much in common, with the exception that Hans had X legs and the SS had O legs.  Hans was mellow and good-hearted.  --Also a little simple.-- 
This could not be said of the SS guy.  (O, come to think of it), Hans had no shiny boots either.
Back to the story!
Hans asked me if I would trade with him.  My Voesel for a bread ration, and I agreed without thinking over the consequences.  I never suspected that Hans would dig into that gin with a ferocious appetite.  He became so drunk that he could not walk or see straight anymore.  He managed to get on his bunk and sat there singing at the top of his voice. 
It got so bad that one other man said, ‘We should try and get that shirt from his back; it's of excellent quality and it would be a pity if he wrecked that material." 
So, we tried to get it away from but he was of a way different opinion; he was going to stick with that shirt to the bitter end.  Nobody ... but nobody ... was going to talk him out of it!  That was that!  Then  -all of a sudden-- he jumped up and hollered,
“I am short of breath, I need air, I need freedom!" and he tore the shirt to shreds, right off his back.   We tried to get him to go to the toilet after that.  It seemed likely that we would have to clean him and his bed before long.  He wanted nothing of that either.  But he changed his mind again and hollered, ‘I need to take a shit, I got a chunk in my rear end as heavy as ten thousand kilo.  This is the first bomb that I am going to throw on German soil!"
Nobody knew where he got that silly talk but it sounded awful funny at the time, and we laughed our heads off while we carried him to the outdoor toilet.  His legs were sticking out in front of him, like two underdeveloped turkey legs.   The same Hans asked me one day to trade bunks with him.  He was sleeping on the top bunk but did not feel all that safe any more.  Ever more planes were coming over at night and the anti-aircraft guns around the camp were getting more active as time went by. 
The shreds of those shells were flying in every direction, not up only, but sideways and down to the ground more often as not.  It sounded at times as if there was a heavy thunderstorm in progress, a complete hailstorm battering away at the top of the barracks.  Nobody was sure what was going to happen next and we had to be prepared for the worst.
I felt sorry for Hans and we traded bunks so that Hans would have a little more protection on top of him in time of danger.
He was not the bravest of men at that.  He asked me one night to come with him to the bathroom.  I had told him some ghost stories the night before, and he was scared the spooks would get him that same night.   My behavior was not all that Christian at times, but times were unusual and I gave in to some bad manners.
My prayers were said before every meal.  I was more faithful in that respect.  Something that was not always that easy because my meat would be disappearing from my plate and a man had to pray with one eye open or have a lot of faith and little meat.   The other guys had a lot of fun on my expense but would return the meat later -- but not always and that was not pleasant because we got meat very sparingly.  One guy was saying that we should have a pair of binoculars and a bicycle along with the soup. 
You need the binoculars to find the meat and the bicycle to drive from one piece to the other was his opinion on that subject.   The war was starting to go sour, mostly in Russia.  The German army had come to a complete standstill before Stalingrad.
After that every forced laborer was forced to donate a day free labor. This was supposed to be a gesture of sympathy to the German soldier, who was having such a hard time before the gates of Stalingrad.  But, that was not all!  We were ordered to appear in a great assembly hall. 
We were on the end of one of those long-winded speeches, again.  This time it was a speech about the great sacrifices that the German soldier was making for the rest of the free world.   Those rallies were really impressive.  Loud march music started the proceedings, and row upon row of colorful flags were lining the stage where the brass ornamented big shots were lined up under a more-than-life size portrait of [Lord Adolph  The Lion hearted.]
The youth of Germany had been taken in by this farce.  And it also influenced us, up to a point, but not enough to make us join forces with the enemy against the great villain from the east:  Russia.   Each of us had to enter a big roomful of army colonels and captains and what else the army has in store. After that show of force.  We were asked, one by one, to join the German army, all by our lonely self. 
They let me go easy enough.  I was not that impressive looking -- a scrawny fellow, to say the least -- and my claim that I was anti-militaristic got me of the hook.  --But, not everyone. -- 
One fellow was forced to join the Waffen SS.  He had been working in Germany on a contract just before the war and he had broken that contract.  He met a roomful of very wrathful men and a whole bundle of papers were thrown in front of him with the choice of joining the army or go to concentration camp.  He chose to sign and was forced to join the SS core.   The nitwit of a SS man who was our camp director was discharged from the army but was still crazy about army life.  He tried every trick in the book to get those ignorant Dutchmen to march and sing. 
Singing and marches were some of the most interesting features of the German army, and they were good at it.  Like them or hate them, this was the main attraction that made the army so interesting for the youth of Germany. “Innocent kids who had never learned to look past the glitter and fools gold of the superficial Nazy system”.
Then, one day, everything was falling in place.  The Dutchmen agreed to march and sing -- not nearly equal to the army -- that would be asking a little too much.  But, Rome was not built in one day, you never know what might happen.  The beginning was there.   The SS joker was about five foot seven with the beginning of a potbelly, but that was a small matter!  --It was overshadowed by his beautiful shiny boots.--  But then again the boots could not disguise the O form of his spindly legs and that was  pitiful.  The man had an oversize Adams apple that was bobbing up and down like a yo-yo on a string and he had a tick under his right eye.  The tick would go up as the apple went down and vice versa.  The apple- tick worked overtime as he was marching proudly along in front of this group of deleted Dutchmen, and wonder of wonders ,those crazy Dutchmen were marching along, singing at the top of their voices.    We are too lazy for working.
 Poopsack is leading us on.
 All  in wooden glocks are walking.
 Poopsack in leather shoes up front.   These men were singing in Dutch but apple-tick did not understand that inferior language.  Even so! That was small matter.  His troop was singing en marching!  
Little did he know that the song they were singing was the team song of the Red Socialist when they were marching through Amsterdam following their leader:
 Who was named Poopsack.  The song was born out of the somewhat rough humor of some free people of days gone by when there was still freedom of expression.
P/S Poop-sack was not a nice expression. –Editer--
We must have looked like the happy wanderers as we went up and down the hills and dales of the German countryside but we were anything but happy and wanted to go home desperately and we wanted the Germans to do the same.   It would have been comical if we had been in a better mood, but life was getting distinctly unhealthy.  The allied planes had thrown out many leaflets over the countryside with the warning that the bombing would be intensified more in the near future.
 Even so! This fact did not scare me al that much.  There was something else that bothered me a lot more.  We had to stay in Germany for two months at a time from that time on and the once every weekend trip home was canceled.  That was a lot harder to handle.  We were now to stay in Germany for two months at a time. 
Heavy punishment would follow for our buddies if we did not return after this. Our last weekend.  These men would be held indefinitely and, thus, we were honor-bound to return from this two-week break at home.   -
The enemy followed the same system with us as that they had done with the Jew not all that long ago. ‘ Do as we have ordered or the ones left behind will suffer the consequences."   Some boys asked me to take some letters along, over the border, and mail them in Holland.  It was an unnecessary risk, but I did it anyway.  I cut some slices of bread right through the middle, length ways, and sandwiched the letters between the two halves.  That's how I smuggled them across the border without difficulty, but with a pounding heart.  The border guard was very interested in a wrestling manual that I carried in my suitcase.  He started asking questions about the wrestling sport and forgot to look through my suitcase.  I was saved from great danger again.
The whole thing was silly and not necessary, since I would have been treated as a spy if they had caught me with those letters. 
My brother and his two friends were caught with some letters and beaten to within an inch of their life with a rubber truncheon.  They had welts on their bodies that were more than three inches wide.  The whole game was not worth the candle.  They were still lucky Worse things were happening nearly every day.   The restrictions that followed shortly after my return were prohibitive.  They really burned me up, and I started looking for a way out of that mess. 
The allied airplanes started to throw out pamphlets with the warning that the bombing was going to intensify.  All forced labor was advised to get out of the Ruhr district, just as soon as possible.  Something that was easier said than done!   It was even well the cancellation of our two-week stay at home bothered me more than the bombing.  I was too stupid to be scared at that time and  I decided to do something about this. The Lord would provide in this also as I was soon to find out for then I met Sam!  He was a new comer out of Holland, well acquainted with the border region northeast of my hometown.  He had sold dry goods on both sides of the border and was still in possession of a border pass. 
Sam was one of those men who seemed to have absolutely no fear of consequences: Acting before thinking, impulsive and some what undependable.  This sounds bad?   Well, he was not that bad a guy but this was the nature of the beast. 
I did not like him that much at first sight, but changed my mind later.  He had a mighty heavy grudge against the Black-shirt police who had picked him up.  He was very determined to have the evil deed undone -- i/o Sam was a man with a mission and that was to get home and back at the Black-shirt hooligans.  He started talking about escape from the very moment that he entered our barracks.  His audience did not share his convictions at first but that improved as time went by.   Meetings were held and plans were made until even the date was set and it seemed likely that friend Sam was really serious.  This had to be the turning point and the audience started dwindling, until only Sam and I were left. 
Secrecy was the code word from that point on.
Sam was so secret that he was gone one morning and even I did not know of his intentions.  It was a kind of betrayal according to my code of conduct.  He could have given me some information on his plans but, then again, it was war and nobody knew much about the other person.  It was much safer that way.   Anyway, Sam was gone and there was little that I could do about that.  I settled down  and started to make other plans  but we were really surprised when a very disappointed Sam was ushered back in to camp that very evening.  He had tried to make it across the border with the border pass that was still in his possession. 
Our not so beloved hero, the SS man, was no clutch either. 
He phoned the border, right after the first alarm, when Sam was reported missing. Dear old Sam ran right into an enthusiastic welcoming commission with Willy, who was one of the most feared border guards heading the parade.   You know what?  Willy let him go with a severe warning.  He took his border pass and told him to get back to where he came from.  -Under an escort, of course.-  They would beat him to death if he ever showed up again. 
He would end in concentration camp if there was anything left to go.  No idle threat indeed!  Willy was just the man to do it.  He was the very man who had beaten my brother and his friends, not all that long ago.  So much for that!   Munster had received its heaviest bombing yet, and we were ordered to go to the rescue.  A horse and wagon were commandeered for a half a dozen men and their guards,
We were on our way to the hapless city of Munster 
Not to the rescue: That would have been to much of a good thing .No, there was a way more selfish reason for this mission. 
The camp commandant lived there, and he wanted his furniture rescued.  Hang the need of the local citizen.  The furniture of the commandant was more important. I have to say We did a good job of rescuing and managed to break several pieces by accident.   The Hitler youth had complete control over all operations in the city limits and nobody ... but nobody ... dared to disobey the orders of those ten and eleven-year-old boys.  -Neither did we!-  There were signs all over, ”Anyone caught plundering will be shot on sight!" and many more threats like that.
The display of ruthless power made us shiver and we could not get out of there fast enough.   Old Russian women were clearing rubble in the streets, bent down to do a man's job, with little protection except a pair of hip wader boots.  Some women were as old as my mother, and I felt very sorry for them.  Others were young and good-looking but, no matter, the treatment was the same for young and old.  This was womens lib to perfection.   We were caught in another air warning when we were still in the city.  Everyone headed for the bomb shelters except the ignorant Dutchmen.  ?Our friends would not hurt us!?  We were above the law.  How wrong can you be!   Education came in a hurry when a German police man ordered us to clear the street.  We had to go through the streets frequented by the oldest trade.  Prostitutes were wheeling their scant possessions on little cars, trying to reach a relative save shelter that could turn into a death trap at any given moment.  The whole thing was extremely sad.   War like that does not make any distinction between citizens and soldiers.
Women or child.  Everything is welcome to the ever-hungry war god appetite.  Women and children have been known to jump in the water, burning while still alive. They were covered with phosphor, trying to quench the flames in the water but they started burning again the moment they surfaced above water.  I have not had to witness this but others did and survived to tell about it.  Nothing can justify that kind of war.  The German had sown the wind and was reaping the storm.  The ghost of Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and many other cities was crying for retribution and would not be denied!  But did we have to make war on women and children?   Our company traveled along and arrived safely back to the barracks, and Sam found a message waiting that he could pick up a package from home in the SSr,s office.  He was not looking forward to that because he had not seen the man after his little trip to border land, and he asked me to come along as a morale builder. 
The code of honor among friends demanded that I come along, but I was not rejoicing at the prospect either.  --The possibilities of a general love in were remote indeed.-- 
Our friend, the SS'r dug right in as was to be expected the moment we entered the room.   ‘Well, Sam," he said.  ‘How did you enjoy the pleasure ride with the German army"                          You should know better than to try and get away from the long arm of the German army!  What do you say, op den Dries?" and he looked at me with eyes that tried to look fearsome.   I agreed with him  whole hearted, praising the mighty and great works of the invincible German army core.  I practically fell over my verbal feet to make a good impression on the man.  ‘You just wait," I was thinking in the back of my mind.  He was making fun of us while we were already planning for another kick at the cat.   I would have given almost anything to have seen his face, only weeks later, when we were gone again.  --This time for good. –
The camp commandant allowed one free Sunday every other week.  We could do as we pleased: stay in bed all day if we wanted to or visit friends outside camp.  Even a trip to Munster or anywhere else within reason.  We could not go far at the best of times, since we had no weekend papers.  It was fairly safe to let us out on those terms.   This is exactly what we needed!  It worked in our favor in a strange kind of way.  It was the day before the long weekend, and Sam and I made sure that we were working close to the main boss.  I walked up to Sam and said, ‘Let's go to our friends on the other side of Munster tomorrow.  It looks like a nice day and we can have a little party together."   Germans are always in favor of a good time, and this man was no exception.  He listened with a big grin on his face and threw in a few ribald remarks -- better left unmentioned.  The man took the bait, just the way we planned it, and the alarm went off, much delayed, the next day.  It gave us most of the day to disappear, without any Willies looking for us at the border.   Sam and I crawled over the barb wire fence in the middle of the night and started our reckless journey all alone and unnoticed by friend or foe.  We bypassed the local railway station and walked to the Munster City -- bahnhoff (station).  The main station in Munster was a better place to disappear since most personnel in the local station were only too familiar.   Time of decision came when we were only some little ways from the Munster railway station.  Each was busy with his own thoughts and fears.  ‘Shall we go, or turn back?" put one of us into words.  I prayed to the Lord for strength and guidance at that difficult moment and was very much comforted.  A knowledge and a surety took hold of me, and I felt serene at that difficult moment.  I looked at Sam and said, ‘I prayed to my Lord and am assured that everything will be well, no matter what happens!"   ‘I did the same," said my friend, ‘I think that we should go on!"
 A strange encounter indeed. There were the two of us.-- Protestant and Catholic--, in the dark of night at the outskirts of Munster. 
Very different in temperament, but yet so close.  --Praying to the same Lord and Savior.--   I believe to this very day that Sam was put on my way so that the way was opened for escape for the two of us.  Sam, with his knowledge of the country while I was I a little more level-headed with a little more insight when planning was called for.
I never doubted for a moment that Jesus sent his help in more ways than one, when the occasion arose.  You will see proof of that as we go on our way!   The Munster railway station of that day was of huge proportions.  Steel girdles along the roof reached as far as the eye could see.  The locomotive smoke of many generations had put layer upon layer of soot on the steel roof-lines.  Many glass sections of the roof had been broken and shattered with the passing of time.  Some might have been the result of bombings but that was quite limited then.  This would change not all that much later, as history has recorded.   Many rail lines beside each other entered and left the station to all directions.  The station was connected to most the major centers of wartime Germany.  Trains went by in the thousands during the two months that we were in the forced labor camp along that railroad, giving testimony to the hyperactivity of the German war effort.
The hustle and bustle in the railroad station were ideal for our purposes. We bought tickets and boarded the train unnoticed with Holland as destination. 
Things were going very nicely this far and the train ride was remarkably uneventful right up to the border station.  It was not until we left the train that I got the scare of my life.
Sam was walking in front of me as we were walking into a whole line of soldiers, all lined up in front of us, in full battle dress.  It was a really grim looking lot that had their guns leveled at us, ready to take us in.  That's exactly what it looked like at first sight.  These soldiers must have been leaving on some kind of assignment, but it did not look good for us in the first few moments.
Sam, who was a really cool cucumber, hardly hesitated but shoved his hat on the back of his head and walked right past the welcoming committee.  If he could do it, I could do it to.  I followed right in his foot-steps.  My pants were not completely dry after we had survived that ordeal!   We turned our back on the main border crossing where the border guard Willy resided as the proverbial spider in his web.          
We went to a little railroad station instead, on the other side of the tracks, and bought tickets for a little railroad that went right back into Germany.  This was a little branch line that served mostly the small settlements along the way.  This train seemed to stop anywhere there were more than a half dozen houses.
Willy and friends were looking for persons who went over the border.  Nobody bothered us because we were going into Germany.  We did not even try to cross the border at that point.  The beauty of that branch line was the fact that it headed inland for a little while and then curved right back to cross the Dutch border an hour or so later.   Four men boarded the train in a stretch when there were no other persons in our compartment.  I know that all this sounds unbelievable, but it happened just as I will describe it.  All the four men had a hat on.  This was very unusual and looked kind of odd to me.  If there had been one or two, I might not have noticed it.
But four men and all with a hat on? It was almost ridiculous.
One man came running up to Sam the minute he laid eyes on him.  ‘Man," he said.  ‘Of all the guys I had to meet, it had to be you!"  We asked them what they were up to and they took off their head-gear.  Every one of them was as bald as a billiard ball. 
They had just been released from the Osnabruck Concentration camp and tried an escape at the first opportunity.  This was a joyous reunion for those guys A fact that could not be denied.   Still, it increased the danger many fold!  We were starting to look like a Sunday class, on the way to a picnic.  One of those guys was a nervous type and that made matters even worse.  He kept jabbering away about being caught and what would happen etc. 
This guy stuck out like a sore thumb.  He was more than six feet tall and acting like a baby.  There was no help to it, we had to shut him up one way or the other. 
The result was that we took him into a corner and told him that we would take him on the platform and throw him of the train if he did not shut up.  This helped a lot.  He was more scared of us than anything or anyone else.  There were no other people on that train, not in that compartment anyway, so we escaped undue attention, luckily enough, and that was good under the circumstances.  We could have been in big trouble.   There was a little settlement about one hour walk from the Dutch border.  That is where we got off the train.  It is an amazing thing that nobody asked us for our tickets.
 --Something that is normal procedure on all trains.--   The idea was to contact some of Sam’s friends -- Men who helped other escapees before – It was our hope that they would be willing to help us.                                                                                                                         Our bad luck was the fact that all those people were in church around that time.  A beer parlor close by the church seemed to be the only place where we might escape attention and that's where we spent the next little while Sam made his way to church to try and contact these folks.  He was Catholic too and knew the men we needed.  He was the most likely candidate for this job.   It is a pleasure for me to tell about these helpful people which we met only a short while later.  They were willing to help us without a moment hesitation.  Their wives set up an excellent meal, before any thing else. 
These people hated Hitler almost as much as we did and were very willing to risk their freedom and much more to help us to get across the border.  “Something that should not be taken lightly” They had little to gain and everything to lose.  What is even more striking is the fact that the war was by no means lost for Germany, in that point in time.  Those men and women helped us out of sheer compassion and solid conviction in the virtues of their religious beliefs.   It was decided to split the escape parties into three groups.  One young German would take two of the other boys under his care.  The other young German would try and take the other two across, and Sam and I would make our way to a point close to the border, hiding there until the young Germans would return to pick us up.
It seemed a lot better to do it that way because six of us and the two Germans would make a big enough crowd that nobody could ignore, even if they wanted to.  It would have been an awful tempting catch for any border guard with a good chance for promotion.   Sam and I were the last to leave for an uncertain future.  We went into hiding in a ditch, a little ways away from the Duane Station.  Our hiding place was far from comfortable, but we were still free and that was worth a little discomfort.
The rain was coming down steady at a fairly heavy rate during the time that  we were in that ditch for hours, the way it felt, and our nerves were strained to the breaking point.  Still, nobody came back for us.  Something had to be done.  Neither one of us felt much like talking.
My clothing got heavier as it soaked up the rain.  I had put on two sets of underwear, a coat, an overcoat and an extra pair of socks in my pocket.  Plus all the stuff I could carry.  Our suitcases had been left in camp to prevent early detection.  The result was that I was a very heavy little Dutchman by the time I had soaked up a couple hours of rain. 
Sam was in a little better position since he had left most of his stuff with the family that we just left.  He could pick it up later because he lived just across the border.   Friend Sam was not prepared to wait any longer.  ‘Let's go," he said.  ‘Something must have gone wrong.  Waiting much longer will only make it worse!"
This seemed a little radical to me, but he was in the driver seat at that stage of the game.  I was afraid that our German friends would end up looking for us all over the country when we were not there after they returned to pick us up.  Sam could be a little selfish at times.  He was looking after his own hide first An attitude I had noticed before, and would again before it was all over and we parted company for good.   Sam knew the country.  I had little to say in the matter.  He had done me a lot of good, so I went along, somewhat reluctantly.
We took a round about way and bypassed the border guard station.  This meant another half hour or so in the driving rain through heavy bush country.  But we made it and returned to the main asphalt road . We walked there for about a half hour when I heard a whisper of tires behind us.  ‘Its over," I said to my pal.  ‘The police are coming!" 
The situation looked very grim indeed but Sam was not ready to give up yet. 
“Put your hand in your pocket when he asks for papers, and then hit him."
That's all the time we had and the man was upon us.  His rifle was hanging from his shoulder, the barrel down to keep out the rain.  “Well, you guys," he said.  “What are you up to Taking yourself on a Sunday walk"  He was laughing when he said this.   ‘We are visiting relatives!" Sam said.
‘Well, have yourself a good time," the policeman said and continued on his way, shaking with laughter.   God's providence had used a kind hearted German to keep us from harm and imprisonment.  My guardian angle must have worked over time, that day and the next -- humanly speaking.  A lot more was going to happen before I got home.
I really do not know what would have happened if the man had acted different.  We would not have had much of a chance.  Then again, who knows?  We were awfully keyed up and would have done strange things in a moment of desperation.   Neither one of us had much to say after this encounter.  This had been a little too close for comfort.
One thing was certain!  We had to get off that road in a hurry.  The chance of running into another patrol was just too great.  A choice had to be made.  The only way out was to take a chance and go to the next farm and ask for directions to the Dutch border.
Our choice could not have been much better.  An old man lived in the next farm. 
We could see that he was another Catholic by the crucifix, hanging over the fire place.  He gave us a bowl of soup before asking any questions.  He must have seen already what was going on.  Then he told us that he had been a prisoner in England in the First World War.  He was well aware of our difficulties and only too willing to help us get away.  Here we were yet again with another generous deed of the ordinary German farmer. 
--A deed that will stay with me until my dying day.--
The old man pointed to two little red houses in the far distance.  ‘That's Holland," he said.  ‘Just walk through my pasture and walk in the direction of those two houses.  Walk to my cows if you see any soldiers coming."  He looked at us with a little grin on his scraggy face and said, “You know what a soldier looks like? A man with a gun you know"
We assured him that we knew all about soldiers.
“Just walk up to my cows and look them over closely, patting them just as if you are interested in buying.  Then come back here and we try again tonight."   His precautions were not needed after all as we walked through the meadow in the direction of the little red houses.
A high railroad dike was in front of us, about eight feet high.  A barrier that we would have to cross unseen.  Anybody could see us for miles around, against the evening sky if we just walked over that railroad dike. 
Border guards were sure to be around, because the old man had told us so.  We practically rolled over that railroad to land in a muddy ditch on the other side.  And so, we were muddy all again.  What else is new?   The Dutch border was about one mile away at that point, and we followed a little winding road that must have been used by farmers as a pathway from pasture to pasture.  It was at that point that we noticed a border guard, about five hundred meters to the left of us.  Turning back was out of the question and going on was almost certain capture. Good advice was hard to come by on that lonesome stretch of a cow path. What should we do?   Going on seemed to be the better way, and we went forward with fear and trembling.  I'll never know what happened.  Maybe the man was blinded, like the Assyrians in Elisha.s days, or he might have been too cold and too miserable to bother. 
Then again, he could have had pity on us.  I don't know!   We just walked straight ahead and nothing happened.
We had reached Holland, our beloved country.
Disillusion was our first experience on native soil.  An absolute anti climax!                                                      
We entered the farm in front of us and asked if we could rest for a moment. The man who answered the door told us in no uncertain terms that he did not want us around.  It was much too dangerous and he could lose his farm and all his possessions.   I wondered what would have happened to the folks on the other side of the border, under the same circumstances.  So much for the Dutch hospitality!
“What way did you come?" He asked before we left.  We pointed to the little path that we had followed.  “Man,?" he said.  “There was a border guard at the left of you about five hundred meters away."
“We have seen that," we told him.
“ There was another one to the right of you."
We had never seen that one.  My Lord had sent his angles again and let us through dangers unknown but very real.
I was allowed to change into a new pair of socks. Then we were ushered out of the door, politely, but very insistent.   The journey was all but over for my friend and partner Sam.  We reached a farmhouse not all that much further and the folks in that place were easier to talk to.  They were acquainted with Sam somehow and again I noticed that strange willingness of Sam to send someone else in danger to protect his own hide.
He told me, more than he asked me, to go to his parents about twenty minutes bicycle ride away and tell them that we had managed to escape that very day.  There were a half a dozen people on that farm and any one of them would have been more able to make that trip. I could hardly do that trip in the shape that I was in after a heavy day that we just went through.
Sam himself did not want to go for fear of meeting his black shirt friends again.  That was understandable, but there was no reason that this could not have waited until the next morning.
I went.  What else could I do?  I owed Sam for the help he gave me during the trip and mostly for the last little while.  On the other hand, he might not have been this far without my help either.
I went, reluctantly, to his parents in the town of Coevorden.  His parents lived just over the bridge as you come into Coevorden.  It turned out that these folks were very sympathetic and very considerate for my well being .Overjoyed to have their son back from Hitler land.
We made the return trip after they had fed me an excellent meal. They made sure to ride in front of me so that they could warn me if any thing went wrong on the way down there.  This gave me a good feeling, and I appreciated their consideration.   You may believe that I was dead tired when I got back to the place where Sam was, and I fell asleep in a matter of minutes after my return to that farm.  Sam brought me to the train, early next morning. 
It must have been around five o'clock that morning when Sam and I had a very emotional farewell for it t was hard to say farewell to this man with a mixture of good and bad.  We had traveled a long and dangerous road together.  From Munster, all the way through enemy country, through many dangers, and made it safe this far.  I owe him and wish him well.
The road ahead was far from over, and I had to continue  that road by my lonesome self.  But not really!
It was Gods hand that was leading me the rest of the way in a special way.   This was really the same railroad track that had brought us out of Germany but going in a westerly direction to the center of Holland. It was one of those midsummer mornings when the day is coming forth out of a night of darkness out of the mist of the night.
A day that every thing seemed right with the world, but everything was not right, Far from it. There was a war on and I was surrounded by enemies. I had become a hunted man and I would be in hiding from that day on until the end of the war, almost two years later.   I had planned to transfer to a train going south in the next station, but my God decided differently.  I fell asleep within minutes of boarding the train, and the train carried me to the middle of Holland, dead to the world and directed into unforeseen territory.
I woke when the train came to a standstill, about fifty kilometers west of my hometown, and not fifty kilometers east, as I had planned.  You can imagine my amazement when I woke in the Zwolle train station in the center of Holland, and not in Almelo a city that is to the east of my hometown. My plans were upset again and I headed for the exit to find a hiding place.
The conductor told me that I had to make a transfer to another train. He insisted in paying me the money that I had overpaid at the beginning of the journey. Much to my dismay!  He held up the whole line in front of that ticket office and attracted way too much attention to my way of thinking.  I wanted to get out of there.  That's all! 
Go to a quiet corner and wait for the train going east, back to my hometown. 
I was a lonesome boy indeed in a city full of people and no place to go. It was with a sigh of relief that I boarded the train going east, finally, without any more hold ups.
It was still early morning when the train pulled into the station of my birthplace and I had a feeling that everyone was watching me. The Omni presence of the German armynmight be reaching out from every direction to pull me back into captivity.
My brother George and his friend were the first persons that I met when the train arrived in my hometown.  They had to leave with this train to go back to work in Germany in one border town.  They were absolutely speechless and wanted to know where I came from and why I was not in Munster as I was supposed to be.  Both of them wanted to go right back with me and go underwater -- a term used for persons hiding from the Germans.--   I asked them to hold off for a little while until I had found a place to hide.  It might be a little too much for mom and dad to have two persons in hiding in that short order.                                                                                    They were hard to persuade and had their minds made up they wanted to come with me!  They kept arguing and I felt very ill at ease.  The feeling persisted that half the police force was on the lookout for me.   It was at that point that my brother asked me how I got back home.  He told me that the Germans had surrounded the city to the east of us and that they were searching every house and every moving vehicle in that city, including the trains.  I would have walked right into their arms if I had come in from the east, as I had intended.
I had abundant proof again that the Lord protected me every step of the way.   My smaller brother Gerrit was at the railroad station with a bicycle, and he insisted that I would ride on the back of his bicycle.  Would you know it?  Some police men told us to stop before we had gone much further. -- Do you think I was scared?  No comment!
I covered the rest of the way home as if going on wings, extremely happy, but afraid that mom and dad would be angry with me for showing up like that. “ I could not have been more wrong.”
My father was just getting ready to leave for the factory where he worked as a weaver of textile goods.
And our mother was doing what she always was doing  Making ready for a new day with new problems in an ever-changing way.
“I had a feeling that something was going on with you yesterday.  I had it in my heart to pray for you all day long!”  These were the first words of my mother.  She had known ... somehow. I asked my father not to be angry for they had so many mouths to feed already.  All they did was hug me ... repeatedly.  Neither of them was ashamed of their tears and I was not free of tears either.   The fact that my mother prayed for me without any knowledge of my danger is an undisputed fact.  Only the ones that know the secret relationship with the Lord can testify to those things, my parents were true children of their heavenly father.
-More was to come yet!-
The door opened, and the father of my friend Hans came in.  We had never seen the man before but he came anyway.  He had seen me when I left the train and had followed me with the hope that I would carry news from his son Hans. This was a shocking experience and just one of many reminders that the world around us is ever watchful.
Nothing is secret for long and it would be wise to move on as quickly as possible but all avenues to a save hiding place were closed. So it seemed. The German police could be coming to take me in at any moment and the future seemed bleak indeed. That this man was at our doorstep so quick was a reminder that caution was well advised.
We were in luck. Or “To put it in a better way”. The Lord had seen our need before it was at our door. He send a messenger in a scrubby middle-aged man on wooden shoes with a beard of two days or more. Hollow-eyed and dressed in warn down clothes.—This was an unlikely angel if I have ever seen one – but that is just what he turned out to be.
 I could assure him that all was well with Hans when I left him.
The man was a bricklayer, and he had worked for a farmer in a little place east of us.  He went to see this farmer straight away, and the farmer agreed to take me in for room and board and twenty- five guilders a month.  Much more than I ever had hoped for.  --An answer to a prayer that I had not even prayed yet, and a Godsend for my family.--  

RESISTANCE.

“From Munster to the hamlet of Haarle”
A trip that began early Sunday in the German city of Munster .
Ending Monday afternoon in the flat lands of a one-horse town in Holland.
It was a long way to travel in a short period, but here I was in Haarle between twelve and one o'clock in the afternoon.
Everyone was asleep when I got there; it was the custom in the farm country. --Early to rise and a nap in the afternoon. – Hard at work and hard at play.

  It was a beautiful summer day, and I stretched out in the grass to enjoy the quiet of the countryside.  There was hardly a sound, maybe a dog barking in the distance.  The birds were singing in the trees ever so nice and peaceful while one scrawny little bird was having a tug of war with a fair sized worm who was oh so reluctant to leave the safety of mother earth.  The worm did not seem to agree with the bird's plan for, his or her, immediate future.  It's hard to tell with a worm if it's a he or a she, and it does not matter anyway -- the result is the same.
A rooster was crowing trying to wake the neighborhood with little effect. He might be the rooster but the chicken had to lay the egg” It is still that way.
Quiet rained supreme except a few doves that were cooing away on top of the farm building.  The leaves of the trees were shivering through the efforts of a lazy wind.  The whole nature seemed to act like a haven of rest and peace. -A peace that surrounded this quiet farmyard.- The devil of war had stolen it from all other civilizations.   My tired nerves were soaking in the peace and quiet of this surrounding.  A great feeling of peace settled over my whole being. -- From the storm into the quiet.--  Blessings unsurpassed by anything I had known for months.
‘This is going to be a boring place," I thought, while I was getting the rest that I desperately needed.
That is how it looked like but I could not have been more wrong as I was soon to find out.  -Quiet waters have great depths- is a saying that applies very well to life in the sedate farmer’s country life.  Life is experienced much more intensive in close communities like these--love and hate, bitterness and compassion, jealousy and greediness. The whole range of human emotions --run the gauntlet of human behavior in an intensive pattern. Well established in age-old settings.   I was to spent some of the most exciting days of my youth in that quiet little settlement.  You never would have thought so when you looked at the graceful lines of these Sacsish farm buildings.
Those farm homes must be some of the most romantic structures ever created, as I have explained in a previous chapter.  The livestock and the farm folk share the same building through most of the winter, but the stables are white washed during the summer so that hardly a speck of dirt can be found.  These places are so clean that you can almost eat from the floor ... during the summer anyway.   A warm and cloudless sky hovered over this idyllic picture with the exception of a dark.         cloud bank that was building up in the west.
A reminder that nothing is ever perfect in this earthly abode.  The ever-changing objects in the distance were shivering in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors and hues floating above ground in a mixture of reality and misconceptions.  Even the chickens had quit their unending bickering and had given in to the all-prevailing heat syndrome.
 I could hardly see myself fitting into this picture of rest and seeming boredom.   The waiting was almost over, and I was soon to find my place in the realm of things.  The old farmer appeared followed by his wife and two daughters, none of them ready to face the realities of life.  Not by the looks of them anyway!   The old farmer, by the name of Jan, was the blustering type. - Overpowering and forceful. –
Yet, he had a heart of gold but managed to hide this fact most of the time real well.
 They did take me in with great risk to themselves.  Jan was something like the rough chestnut, rough outside and mellow in the core.  He was known like that, in the whole district.
His wife, who walked in Jan’s shadow, most of the time, was the motherly type – one of those persons who do the job before them without fuss or complaining,-- somewhat subdued in manners.  Yet those types are the prevailing powers in the scene of daily life!
The two daughters will be introduced later -- a date usually too soon!-  Young John was out with the milk wagon and would not be back for some time.   The family checked me out like a newly acquired possession and some approval was hinting, especially from the women’s quarter.  Then they put me to work, without any further ado.  We went straight to the field, digging potatoes.  The youngest daughter made it a point to work in my neighborhood, most of the time.  -She would be my downfall later.- Like a twentieth century Delilah. 
She was not a bad looker and got her point across.  A closer relationship would be much desired.  This served to make my outlook on life a little brighter.  Follow-up work would have to be done in one form or other.
My real job started the next day when we brought out the milk wagon for the daily pick up of milk from the farmers.
We had to pick up the ten-gallon cans of milk that the farmers set at the roadside and bring those to the factory.  I got a milk wagon with a gypsy palomino horse.  A little horse, slightly crippled, this happened at the time that she had a foal at a younger age.  That little horse was all heart, and I grew quite attached to the little critter. 
It is hard to describe the accelerating feeling that a horse provides when they pull the wagon, with no other sound than the clip-clop of the horse hoofs on the sandy ground.  No other sound is heard, and the feeling of power and companionship is ultimate to horse and driver at the same time.   The whole settlement was aware of the new help that worked at old Jan’s farm.  Everyone, including the Catholic priest. Every one was involved when the word was passed around at the local Catholic Church. I was now one of them and under the protection of the church –in a manner of speaking. They had told me to jump off the wagon and go in hiding at any moment that there was danger or even a hint of danger.  Never mind the horse and wagon, just get out.  Such was to be my life from that point on. The first passing farmer would take care of horse and wagon and take it to a safe place.
Everyone was in on this, and almost all of them were Catholic.  The whole community was just like one big family with all the virtues and vices involved. 
There was only one Protestant farmer in the whole district, and he was good in his calling.  He was handled with good-natured respect, for that reason.  He was counted as one of the community.  My parents had taught me to respect all persons with other forms of worship.  Here I learned to love those people with all the good and the bad involved.   We had to pick up the milk at the farms and bring it to the factory over a hard service road, a trip of about two hours, one way.  The drivers would wait sometimes for each other at the main road. A get together was held on the last wagon -when they were in the mood- trading gossip and telling jokes -- not always that clean, but in an acceptable coat of ethics.  The front horse would bring the whole train of wagons to the factory, without fail, every time. 
One of the drivers was not all that bright, but he loved to sit in on these story sessions, most of the time without understanding what the jokes were all about.  One of the men would tell a joke and everyone would have a good laugh.  Everyone ... except this boy.  Then, almost at the end of the trip, he would start laughing his head off, and we looked at him without understanding what brought that on, but it was just a delayed reaction to the joke of half an hour ago.  He would enjoy the joke all over again.  I think that the simple have often a much nicer time then the so-called normal folks.  Things are uncomplicated for them, and they worry much less.   We were in the harvest time before long, and every person had to go out to the field to bring in the harvest.  Old Jan told his daughter and me to get a load full of rye bundles.  Any farmer can tell you that it is a real art to load rye bundles but I did not know beans about it. 
The youngest girl, Marie, told me that she knew all about loading the grain bundles and we did not have a worry in the world We were in good hands; Her grandma had shown her exactly how to stash the bundles on the wagon in the right manner. 
The load had to be built out when we got above the wagon boards, and that is where the expert shines at its brightest.  I was loading bundles with the pitchfork, and Marie was stashing them in the right manner.  She would call to me every so often, How am I doing?” I would do my job and would say, “Pull in a little on the left, you are over a little.”  This would be repeated for the left and the right all along, until we had a load as skinny as a bean pole.  The whole thing was shaking back and forth like a drunken sailor.  But Marie and I went home with great pride, we had a beautiful high load of bundles.
Marie sat on top of the load. She looked much like Cleopatra in her glory-days.   The whole family was lined up in front of the house when we were ready to turn in the driveway.  They looked on in great horror, but we thought that they were speechless with admiration.  But alash! The glory parade would come to an untimely end for he front wheel went through a puddle in the road and disaster overtook us.  Cleopatra came down with the whole kit and caboodle -- an untimely end to the victory parade.--   The farmer went absolutely berserk.  ‘That Hank is so stupid to make that mistake is one thing, he doesn't know any better, but you should have known."  Those were words of bitter disappointment.  Cleopatra was sent into the house crying her lovely eyes out.
The farmer sent me away to do a job where I would do less harm.  The rest of the family reloaded the grain that had fallen off the wagon, grumbling about the loss of seed that had spilled out of the overripe ears of rye.  The lost grain could have brought good money on the black market.  Too bad!   All the grain had to be turned into the German authorities.  Only about 10 percent was returned to the struggling farmers. This was a fact that was heavily detested by the overall farm population.
Farmer John was determent to do something about this and Little John and I were called out of bed early every morning to help him thresh a layer of grain. Before going on the milk haul. 
Old Jan never bothered dressing for the occasion.  He jumped into the fray, threshing only in his long johns.- I mean he was dressed in his long johns.-  His underwear had only room for one and would not hold any amount of grain to speak of.
This threshing by hand was an interesting procedure.  A layer of grain was spread out on the floor, about three bundles deep. We would beat the tar out of the bundles, hitting the grain with alternating strokes of heavy wooden flays.  This was tricky business for your timing had to be perfect or someone else would hit your stick with a bone jarring crash.
This crash would travel all through your arms right into your head. Setting your teeth shattering. All this put me in a vulnerable position since my head needed protection and my teeth were getting loose, so I learned to keep perfect timing.   Life was hard indeed for a city slicker like me and a person had to be on constant alert against the danger that surround you from every direction. But life has its own compensations. A little sweet in is often mixed in the bitter moments of your life.
This happens when my friend Dick and his girlfriend came over on a Sunday, to visit his wayward friend and to correct my erring ways. It must have been a pleasant outing for him and his girl. He was still a free man in good company while I was a fugitive on the run for Hitler the Lion hearted but this was going to change drastically in the following moments. 
It turned out to be a beautiful revenge for the harm he had done me in years gone by.   We had our meals and coffee in the front of a pig barn.  No farmer would open the front room for normal living, under no circumstances.  These rooms were the holiest of holiest in the farmer’s world.  The rooms had beautiful furniture but were never used.  They  were kept  in emasculate shape and the women spent hours to keep it that way.
This sanctuary  had the illustrious name of ‘pronk kamer" (show room) and with good reason -- this was it's only function -- just to show off!
We did not even sit in the kitchen in the summer months. Even that was too good for us.
We had the unsurpassed blessing that we had our abode in front of the pig barn. 
There was a wall between the two rooms, of course.  But that did not keep out the flies.  There were so many flies on the white wash wall that the walls were more black than white. 
My friend Dick was always finicky about his food, and this was going to be his Waterloo.  Dick and his girl friend were invited for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.  Neither Dick, nor his girlfriend, could talk themselves out of it. 
He got a cup of coffee in front of him and had a fly in the coffee in no time flat. 
The first fly was joined by a second fly in no time, and Dick sat there, looking at the two insects, rowing away in his cup.  He could not bring himself to drink, until the farmer, said to him, ‘Your coffee is getting cold, drink it that so we can pour you another one!"   Dick pointed at his coffee and said, ‘There is a fly in the coffee."
‘Is that all?" replied the farmer and he scooped with his finger through Dicks coffee!
My friend turned green and rushed out of the door, after drinking the stuff.  I found him back behind the haystack, throwing up all he had in his system.  I did feel sorry for him, a little bit!  But I laughed so hard that I was bawling. It is natural that he never came for a second visit.   The farm community was made up out of all kind of characters and you had some dillies among them. There was a farmer in the neighborhood which person was awfully stingy.  He had a large family, but he for sure did not spoil any of them.  The man was so stingy that he sold all the cutlery when the black market prices were high.  It stands for reason that his wife became desperate and did not know how to serve food for her large brood of children.  Nevertheless, the farmer opened the way for untold opportunities.  He had the wife serve mashed potatoes.  All day, every day, seven days a week.  He told her to dump the mash on the middle of the table, make a hole in the middle, and pour some gravy in the hole.  Nobody needed cutlery in that manner of eating. 
This woman cried a lot.  I wonder why!
Nobody escaped the scrutiny of his or her fellow men in a closed community like this but it was no big deal either. Not to us anyway. On the contrary. We had our own problems to deal with.
There were so many flies in the cookhouse that it went too far for Marie.  She begged her father to do something about that, but even so she was very secretive about the procedure, and for a good reason.
The old man was very reluctant at first, but Marie talked him into it.  She made sure that I was around, on that fateful day, as she was stacking little bundles of straw in the cookhouse. 
Some great tempests of activity burst lose up on our weary heads. The table and all the chairs were cleared out of the house, and she invited me inside with her dad and the mean old dog of the family.  The farmer invited the other ones in also, but there were no takers, and he locked the doors as tight as Noah, s ark.  Then he set the little bundles of straw on fire, running around the room like a man possessed.  Marie and I were running in front of him and the German Shepherd joined the fray and bit my rear end to make it more interesting. The dog was acting according to it, s nature and you could not blame that animal for that but my nature and my rear-end were closed in the confines of that cookhouse
It was not funny.
 The idea was to burn the flies off the wall The intentions were good but it was all to no avail, twice as many came on the funeral, only days later.  Nothing good came my way ever from anything German, Not even from a German Shepherd dog.   Life was interesting indeed but we were still in a war-torn country. And the effects were all around us every day. Everything was in short supply and the danger increased by the day as the war was being fought with ever-increasing intensity.  We were made aware of that from day to day. Things got even more hectic on the day that we were on our way traveling to the milk factory. I was following the main high way when I got a lot closer involved. 
The date was September 18, 1943.  I was on my usual milk-run and my little horse was having a hard time pulling the wagon up the railroad dike.  Then I heard the sound of heavy trucks coming from the other side of the dike.  I could see nothing but thought it might wise to vacate the premises.  It could mean only one thing.  The Germans were the only ones in those days who had fuel to run a vehicle.  The better part of discretion told me to get out of there, fast.  So, I slipped off the back of the wagon and landed in a cluster of willows' right in front of a culvert that ran under the road.  The opening was covered with willows and high grass, and I really went under ground that time, just in time too. 
A truck full of Germans stopped on the road and started searching the wagon and the surrounding area.  They left when they did not find anything.  I  in turn thought that it would be a good idea to get out of there also and leave the wagon for the honest finder.  Just like the farmer had instructed me to do.  The next farmer passing by would take care of the horse and wagon. 
I headed home to the farm, taking a short cut through the fields.  Some farmers told me that the Germans were searching for allied flyers. An airplane had been shot down, not long ago.  The town of Haarle was completely surrounded.  This complicated matters and I thought that the best thing was to stay out of sight until young John got home from the factory.  He would likely know more about the situation.   I came home in late afternoon and found an excited farmer.  ‘I got something now that is too dangerous to tell you," he said.  He grumbled around for a while, and then he said. ‘A strange man came walking in the yard ... he was holding a little rubber bag ... no one can understand that man ... do you know any English"?   I did, in fact.  My friend Dick had talked me into going with him to learn English about two years ago and I had picked up more than I realized.                                                                                                               So I looked at the man who was dressed in a blue flyer uniform.  It was hard to tell anything. He seemed like a queer bird to me since he had removed all markings and stripes that could give away his identity.  I walked up to him and started talking to him in broken school English. 
He was awful secretive at first but loosened up somewhat, after he realized that he had to trust somebody sometime.  It seemed that hey had been shot down over Dutch territory, and he had been walking for three days, living from the produce of the field.  He had also some chocolate bars that seemed to have a special meaning, but I could not find out what. 
The farmer and his wife were the first persons he had contacted in the last three days, and he was very touched by the kindness of the farmer and his wife.  They had given him milk and bread and a place to rest.   The options for the farmer were very little and there was always the possibility that the man was a German in disguise. The consequences would be deadly if that was the case .
It is hard to believe how quickly something unusual attracts the attention of the most unlikely persons. The mailman entered the farm yard just when the farm family was trying to decide about the course of action. He warned old John that the German soldiers were in town, less than a mile away from where we were then.
To make matters worse A neighbor came over and suggested that we turn him into the police.  ‘The Germans will shoot everybody in the neighborhood and burn our houses down, if he is found!’ He whined.   It was a grim situation, and I asked the farmer if I could go away with the man and try to reach England.  Jan got very angry at my suggestion and said, “The Germans will beat you to a pulp if they catch you and trace you back here, and the place will still be burned down!"  He did not want to turn him in and he did not want to keep him.
It would have been easier if we could have contacted the underground, but this organization was still very secretive at that moment in time.  There was no help there either.  The farmer decided that Bob could stay over night in a chicken coop, way back in the field. He was putting him, and his family, in deadly danger.   We brought Bob to a chicken coop in the field and made him as comfortable as possible assuring him that we would be back for him in the morning. The women also bandaged the blisters he had on his feet -- Blisters as big as a guilder[ the size of a Quarter] --
The man was still there the next morning and was willing to trust us apparently.  He did not have much choice, with his feet the shape they were in.  The most logical action would be to get him civil clothes and turn him loose, but he wanted no part of that that
 He claimed that the Germans would shoot him as a spy if he was caught out of uniform.  This made everything even more difficult, and I asked the farmer again to let me go home, say good-byes to my parents, and let me go with the man to England. 
Old Jan got even angrier that time, and I had to promise on my word of honor that I would stay on the farm when they went to church.  He would lock me up, if I did not make that promise. Not only that but he put the watch dog in front of the door so that we could not leave even if we wanted to for that was a mean old dog with only one person that this beast would listen to and that was Old Jan
I spent three hours with the flyer, as Bob recalled later.  He really opened up at that point.                 He showed me some maps of Western Europe, printed on silk, with most German troop locations.  He had several thousand German marks and as many francs. For use in France and Belgium
.Also, some Dutch money. Some kind of candies, to keep him awake and some chocolate to feed him in time of need.  He belonged to the RAAF and was a radio operator on a Lancaster airline.  He explained that he would like to reach Belgium and go to the Pyrenees Mountains from there, crossing into Spain and from there to England.   The farmer's wife had already suggested that we bring him to a canal that night.
This canal was going from North to South and would give him a bearing on the direction on which way to go.  So we devised a plan as best as we could between the two of us. 
It would be impossible to walk that distance with those blisters on his feet so I suggested that he should do the impossible.  Walk to the city of Zutfen,-A town about forty kilometers south from the farm-- bypassing the city of Deventer since  that city had heavy troop formations.  He was to walk in the local railway station, hand over ten guilders and ask for a ticket to Tilburg . A city that was  close to the Belgium border. 
I then taught him to say, ‘Enkele reis Tilburg" -- (One way Tilburg. )
He repeated that over and again until he knew it by heart and could repeat it, flawless, in Dutch.  He could still say it when I met up with him again in 1986.  (Right here in Canada.)   Everything went as planned.  We brought him to the canal that night.  He walked to Zutfen and repeated the words, ‘Enkele reis Tilburg,"
Boarded a train and traveled in full uniform on a public railway, right through the center of wartime Holland.  He even had a German soldier sitting next to him, with his rifle between his knees. The soldier never had any suspicion and neither did several other Germans that he met at one point or other .Not one member of the German armies had any idea that an n enemy soldier would travel on a public railway in British uniform.
He ended back in England right around Christmas.
That he had much more help stands for reason, but, you can read all that in a book, he wrote: ‘Path to Freedom."
It was not such a bad solution if you think about it .Bob would have ended in a prisoner of war camp if he had been caught but no one else would have been in danger up to the point that he reached Belgium,
He contacted the under ground movement in a monastery by the name of Abbey Pastel   Life turned back to normal for us after this episode, as normal as you can expect, in a war-torn country.
Soap had become a thing of the past and it was harder to keep clean.  We even had a run in with lice in the latter part of the war, but that was no problem yet.  The pesky little flea became ever more of a problem.  These little rascals can jump seven or eight feet and have room to spare.  They also can make a very fast getaway.  I have experienced that many times.  I believe that they had their breeding ground in the reed-covered roof but they sure did not despise a little warm hollow in the hidden places of human bodies. 
I learned that the most effective way to catch them was to roll them over the skin of your body.They would break their ruddy little legs and you could crack them between your nails of your fingers with a satisfying crunch.  I learned to perfect that technique when I sat on the milk wagon delivering milk to the factory.The only trouble was that they
–the fleas that is-- were worse than the Germans.  One would be killed, and a dozen or more took their place.   The stygian darkness was another major problem at night.  The whole countryside had to be blackened out, so that no light was shining anywhere.  No, one that has not lived in the Low Countries can imagine the total darkness on some nights. 
A person cannot see a hand before the eye, and that is absolutely true. 
This was even worse in the war when no lights were allowed anywhere, but every cloud has a silver lining even so and we learned to feel our way trough the darkest night.
Every thing became possible if we were in the right company and that company was never far away. There were always some ladies of the night who wanted to do a little experimenting as long as it stayed within acceptable limits.
And so it was on one of those dark nights that we were stumbling over a little country road, boys and girls, feeling our way through the darkness.  We figured if we could not see the Germans, the Germans would not see us, and we made a late night of it.
I was stumbling along with my favored girl, stealing a kiss off and on. 
It was at the height of passion that I heard something clicking on the other side of her. This was strange so I did a little feeling to the other side of the girl and found another lover, making time from the other side. 
This complicated matters a little and it was the first and only time that I was sharing a girl with another party. 
This was the end of our relationship, I may add.  It was disastrous for my macho image.  Women are an uncertain possession! -Here today and gone tomorrow-   Life went on in this manner and I learned to adapt myself to the most unusual circumstances.
I became one of the community and learned to deal with man and beast.
-A case in point- were the farm animals-. The farmers would treat their animals in much the same way as their children.  Spoiling them sometimes and correcting them when necessary.  This was a life stile that could lead to strange results at times. 
Jan was involved, at times, with the breaking of unwilling horses.  Jan and his sons would try their hand when other farmers had a horse that refused to pull. 
A licking would help sometimes, but not often.  That would happen only as a last resort.  Some other horse might be hitched to the rebel, and the striker would be pulled around the yard until he was willing to go by himself -- that did not work all that often either.--  Another farmer hitched the horse to the wagon and built a fire under the horse, but the horse was not crazy either.  He walked ahead until the fire was under the wagon and went back to what he was doing before -- nothing.-- 
Then they got a horse that would not be cured no matter what they did.  Old John was sitting on the wagon when he happened to look at the cookhouse where turnips were brought to a boil for pig feed, and his eyes lit up suddenly.  He walked to the cooking pot and fished a boiling turnip out of there with a pair of thongs.  He walked to the wagon and told young John to hold on tight and shoved the hot turnip under the tail of the horse.  The horse clamped down on the turnip in fear and exasperation. Then it took off as if a nest of hornets were after him.  The horse was cured and never gave any trouble again.
I thought that this was cruel, but you could not deny that a useless horse had been turned into a productive animal.  Not a practice that would pass by animal lovers, is it?   Something else happened as an example of the often unpredictable and colorful nature of these down-to-earth people. One cow was in heat and had to be served by a bull to be any good as a milk cow nine months down the road.  Hardly any farmers had a bull of their own in that part of the country, but the farmer had a bull that was ready to be shipped. This was a young animal and not all that tall.  He really could not do a grown mans job since the cow was almost a foot taller, but the farmer decided that they were going to do missions impossible. 
He had his son dig a hole of a foot deep and placed the cow with the rear legs in the hole.  Nature could take its course from that point on.  The bull jumped fearlessly and was somewhat on the same level and everything started to look promising. Until the moment that the cow jumped out of the hole and the little bull was thrown over backwards. 
-An untimely end to a budding romance –
I never found out if this endeavor was successful, because I was gone before the results were known, but I do remember that  the farmer lifted his hat, scratched behind his ears and remarked,
 ‘We don't want to do that too often or we will wreck the little rascal."   I enjoyed these things immensely but danger was always present and problems arose at the most unexpected moments.
An old school buddy of the farmer stopped in one day.  This was strange, because the man had left the country to go and work in Germany many years ago. 
Why would this man show up just at this time, after that many years? 
Fear of betrayal was underlying all our action and this was no exception. The old beggar was made welcome nevertheless and he sat at the table like one of us. The man asked “Are these your children"?
“JA,” the farmer replied, “except the young man over there" and he pointed to me.  “That is a boy from down south.  He has studied for a priest but had a nervous break down and is here to recover."
It was a nice story but it put me in great difficulties.  It was time to say the evening prayers and the whole family went on their knees to say the customary ‘Hail Marie’s and the Our Fathers." -This usually lasted about a half hour- 
I deeply respected their devotions but did my devotions in my own way. 
This evening was going to be different.  The farmer waved at me desperately.  I had to go on my knees with the rest of them in order to fool the old visitor.  There was nothing left but to listen and I sank down in a very uncomfortable position.  The old beggar was watching me like a hawk.  I did not know the prayers but grumbled along to fit in with the rest, hoping to fool the unwelcome guest.
I sat in a very cramped position with a chair crowding me in the back so that I was afraid to move and I had a very uncomfortable prayer session.
‘How did you do"? The farmer asked when it was all over.
‘Not all that good," I told him.  ‘I was in a very cramped position."
A wide grin split his face, and he replied, ‘That's good, Hank that makes for a really good confession."   The old peddler was not a very high standing man at that.  He asked me that evening if I wanted some condoms to make out with the women. It is hard to say what he was up to but my parents had brought me up different, and I stayed away from this degrading behavior.  I mentioned that I would tell the farmer if he kept after me, and we have never seen him again and that was just fine with us.
It is not so much that we were innocent of the facts of life, far from that. We had seen the German soldiers standing in line waiting their turn with the really professional ladies of the night in the lesser streets of the City of Munster.
The dock-workers of Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the forced labor camp had given us an education that was second to none. Even so! There was something in our upbringing that kept us from sliding to a much lower level .
The example of our parents was a mighty strong force in that respect.
I can't say that I was sorry when the old peddler left a short time later. We did not have time for that because the community threshing machine came to the farm. 
This machine was going from farm to farm, under the supervision of a government inspector. -A man who had to make sure that all the grain was turned over to the authorities.-
Some tricky negotiations were in an order and old farmer John was just the man to do this.
The inspector got invited in for coffee half ways down the proceedings. He could also get something a little stronger. It was a matter of your hand washes my hand and we both get clean. Although: Farmer Jan was not very clean in body and soul but that was beside the point at that critical moment of time . There was work to be done and money to be made. An amount of grain could be held back in the time that the man was gone.
This was an arrangement that would work with some inspectors -- but not with this one.  -He had his own coffee and intended to stay with the machine, come hell or high water.  The guy was young and awfully stubborn. He was absolutely incorruptible.  He was a German hireling to perfection well trained in the ways of German conduct.
Old Jan and this man got in a fight that was unbelievable.  We thought for a while that they would come to blows .Even so! Jan made enough distraction that his sons could steal part of his own grain back from the government.  Old Jam kept screaming like a man possessed for his dear life, and for as much grain as possible.
 He was heaping abuse on the man, his present and past generation, and the ones to come.
The farmer told the man that his name would be remembered for use after the war. 
He even got the dog involved and that was enough to scare the most lions' hearted. - But all to no avail.-  The farmers portion of grain remained pitifully small, and the inspector departed with the solemn vow that he was going to return with more help. 
Farmer Jan was in big trouble because the inspector told him that he would be back to check out the farm for black market produce.
It should be noted that Old Jan was a great sinner.  He had stashed away a lot of stuff that should have been reported.  All farmers were involved in this more or less but Old Jan was bad.  “A little pig here, and a little calf there.  Produce - produce everywhere”
-- Just like -Old Mac Donald’s children’s song  
We, that were young John and I, had to hide stuff that evening all over the countryside.  My little palomino horse was working overtime.  It was as if the little critter could understand the importance of these moments.  I have never seen her work like that evening.  She was doing the work of two others.  This might sound funny.  It's true nevertheless!
We had to hide stuff in hedges and bushes, in culverts and in old sheds, all over where a place would stay dry. It turned out to be a very long day indeed and it was a couple of very tired and unhappy young men hit the sack in late evening.  We had to thresh all day long and now we had to carry those heavy sacks all over the green acres and stubble fields.   ‘There is nothing that will get me out of bed again," said my partner in crime after it was all finished” Famous last words.”  We bedded down in flea country, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that the day was not yet done and, sure enough, we woke up when we were still in our first sleep.
Some thundering sound rumbled by over the roof of the farm.  It sounded like a freight train passing over the house, followed by a thundering explosion, and later by several more.  Neither John nor I had much to say about the matter.  We had been thrown out of bed while half asleep.
“So much for the accuracy of Johns predictions and the promise of uninterrupted bliss full sleep”
It sounded like the whole farm building was collapsing around our ears while the dust of generations was swirling around the building and the acrid smell of explosives was hanging over the whole neighborhood.  Dark, billowing clouds drowned out the relative light of a tempered moon landscape.
Fires were burning not far away and voices of consternation and fear could be heard in many places.  A damaged bomber had dropped her load over the defenseless country side. She must have ejected her bomb load trying to gain an altitude after some bad damage on her trip to a German city.  Things like that happened often in those days.  ‘That's the way it's got to go!" Someone said not long before that and that sounds nice, until you come on the receiving end of a bomb load, and then you learn to think a little different.
One murder can never cancel a previous murder, and one bombardment cannot cancel the former one.  It's a vicious circle that has no end.
“He who pulls the sword will be devoured by the sword."  This is what the Master said, when he was on earth.  ‘If someone ask you to go one mile, go also the second."  ‘Return good for evil," etc.   Did the Jew have the better way after all?  The Jew was driven in concentration camps and slaughtered like sheep, just like their native Son so long ago.  He had the perfect army on call and, yet, He choose another way.  -The way of sacrifice . He could overcome death to a life that will last for-ever. Opening that way for you and me if we only believe. 
We have fought two large wars and many smaller ones to protect our rights.  And the net gain is a World that is moving further away from God.  A World that is indulging in self-gratification and self-glorification. Humans are willing to go to all sorts of violence to protect that way of life.  Would I do it differently if I had to do it all again?  I really don't know.
Will future generations see the great tribulation that the Bible talks about?  Will we have to walk the way of total submission?  -The way of the first Christian church?- The blood of the martyr is often called the seed of the church.  Is that the better way?   Let's go back to the story.  The unloaded bombs must have been of very heavy caliber indeed -- the so-called air mines.  These bombs have explosions with much air displacement.
No houses were hit but seven heifers were killed in one pasture.  One cookhouse was moved about seven inches from the foundation.  Most remarkable if you consider that this was a brick building.  All the furniture in the house was blown all over creation and the doorknobs were pulled out of the doors.  And the greatest miracle of all was a Mother Mary image under a glass dome.  It was sitting on the mantle piece, unhindered and undamaged, in the middle of all this destruction.
There was little that we could do.  Every thing might be under control as much as this could be under the circumstances and we left that place of desolation to try and get some sleep.
John and I ran into the dead heifers on our way home, We stopped for a moment and then went further to tell the men in the neighborhood about the dead heifers.   Was that ever  a great mistake,
We should have kept our mouth shut for they made fun of us right away.  We could have cut some meat off the dead animals before someone else got at them.  A cut in fresh meat would not have shown and the animals would go to the emergency slaughter house any way.  We were reminded again about our place in life! Many endearing words came our way.-Babes in the wood, look in the world', peep in the world"?- And more disheartening words like that.  John and I felt like worms, ready to be squashed into an unsightly puddle of misery. 
Little did we know that the big boys were reacting to their own fears and unloaded their frustration on the first ones they met. and that were John and I.
Two disappointed and chastened sinners went home to check on the possible damage on the rest of the place.
Our own farm had only a little damage to the roof, and life went on as before after a little repair here and there.   The days were getting shorter and the evenings longer.  Winter was close and the days turned colder and wet. We had to walk most of the time beside our wagons on our milk hauls to the factory.  Partly to save the horses and on the other hand to keep a warm trough unwanted exercise. These moist, wet days could be mighty chilling and the trips on foot started to affect my performance.  The trundling trips on wooden clogs produced some mighty painful calluses right under the balls of my feet.  The wooden shoes became instruments of torture, and this got worse by the day. Bitter is life indeed when you are a little boy who is lost in a war that he did not want trundling along in unforgiving footwear while being tortured by fleas and all kinds of unknown species including some wild-eyed women. There was nothing for it but to grin and bear it a. I got plenty of practice in grinning and bearing as time went by.   But there were also some bright spots, other things in our lives that made our lot easier to bear.  The evenings made up for a lot of grief and suffering.
One bright spot was the evening that we went walking with a group of young folks of the neighborhood.  It had snowed all day and six inches of snow covered the ground. 
One boy had a wooden leg and he was drilling neat little holes in the snow with every move he made.  We were moving along at a fairly good clip, with some enterprising girls in tow. 
The boy, with the wooden leg, was hanging on for dear life to a solid built farm dame.
He had a tough time of it, since his wooden leg kept sliding sideways every step he made.  It did not seem that his acts of desperation were always that genuine, if you ask me, but that was beside the point.  We struggled on and the joyful throng ended in a straw stack of the stingy farmer who sold all of his wife’s cutlery.  The stack of dry straw did not seem all that solid but that was overlooked in the heat of battle. 
We climbed that mountain and settled down for an entertaining interlude.  I was in deep conversation with my favored girl. We locked eyeballs and the light reflections of the silvery moon in her eyes were fascinating beyond compare. I could not get enough of it
The boy with the wooden leg tried to get a point across to his well-formed companion, while some others had a wrestling mach. going on in the dim background. It was a night full of promise and suspension until the interlude was cut short. The whole straw stack fell apart and all the contents scattered all over creation, boys and girls included, so that we had to move onto other more stable endeavors.
We did regret the wrecked haystack.  Most of us had enough farmer’s pride and decency to stay away from other farmers property, but it happened in one of those forlorn moments that can't be called back.  The deed was done and there was no honorable way to make the amends without getting in more trouble.  So we tried to make up for it, doing some work for the man later.    The boy with the wooden leg was a very likeable person.  His disability did not bother him at all, and he had a beautiful disposition to carry him through the flat spots. 
He had one leg that had stopped growing when he was about one year old, leaving him with the foot of a child, just below the knee.  He showed me once, because he was not a bit inhibited about his misfortune.
He really cut a big figure when he participated in a play later.    The family had asked me to write this play when I mentioned my experiences in an unguarded moment.
So I went to work with enthusiasm and unwarranted optimism.
The first play was a comical act --very inexperienced written -- but hilarious like you won't believe.  It was about a farmer lying in bed, recovering from an illness.  He was somewhat delirious through the effect of a fever.  His wife was sitting next to him, stuffing goose feathers in a pillow.  There was also a pot of honey sitting on a chair beside the bed.  -Don't ask me why! - It just was there. 
I forgot to mention that the man was baldly headed. “ A dried cow bladder painted in flesh colors created that effect “
The man started fighting in his delirious state and fell head first, in the pot with honey.  His wife tried to help him but that made matters only worse, and they started to struggle together right into the pail with goose feathers.  Two persons covered with honey and goose feathers were the result of this little wrestling match.  It was ridiculous and out of this world and the audience laughed until they cried.
Everyone had a whale of a time, with coffee and refreshments after the play, and a call for another play to be held around Christmas.
Of course : The Germans would have had an even better time if they had raided that little convention of careless sinners.   A serious theme was requested for the next play: The audience thought that it would be nice that a person would die on stage. A priest would have to do the last rites and the man would have to be carried off, accompanied by the sound off church bells.  A small choir would have to sing the requiem -- a Catholic funeral song -- and that would be the end of the play.
It was along those lines that I wrote another master piece with Cleopatra at my elbow to give expert advice on her background education of the sacred rites involved in matters of this nature   The play was ready on schedule, beginning December, and the whole neighborhood showed up to have an evening of entertainment. 
Our fame had spread far and wide and many more people wanted to participate.  A wagon bed had been brought in the barn with a lot of hard work and good will, and the stage was set for a command performance.  And some performance it turned out to be. The stage had one serious flaw and that was that the floor was made out of wooden slats with slits of about one and a half-inch apart.  This turned out to be the Achilles heel of the whole performance. 
Our priest – who was none other than the guy with the wooden leg -- kept dropping out of sight every time he stepped on one of the cracks in the floor. The colorful tablecloth that served as his priestly raiment would ride up to his mousy, priestly head. Only the cloth and the skullcap he was wearing could be seen for a space of time until he managed to pull his leg out of the crack to be back on even ground.
The patient did a good job of dying and the priest did okay to that point in time, but he dropped out of sight just before the critical moment.  The church bells were passing all expectations.  They were the nicest bells I ever heard. 
We had taken a scarf off the big bomb that had fallen in the neighborhood not that long ago, about two feet in length and one foot wide.  This was hung on a piece of rope.  Young John had the impressive task of hammering away on that with a four-pound hammer. 
The rest of the play was not all that bad either, but the critics said that the first play was a lot better.  The whole plot was a little too sad, and they had enough to worry about, without another reminder of life’s futility. 
Fickle is the public, and hard to please.
Many stayed behind for a cup of coffee and exchange of the latest gossip. A good time was had by most of the folks in spite of the harm we had done to their refined tastes.   Now we come to the sad ending of my adventures with these colorful and good-hearted folks.
My stay with the folks in Haarle was coming to an abrupt end, not all that longs down the road.  But several things happened before I left.   The company of young folks around the district had accepted me as one of them and that was very unusual because dating was very restrictive in those closed communities. 
No one from outside the settlement was allowed to date a native girl.  This was strictly enforced!  Whole battles were fought about the possession of local girls.  It has happened that outside boys have been thrown in the canal, beat up, or even carved up with knives. 
One group of defenders used a very sophisticated piece of equipment -- a two-and-a-half cent copper piece -- the size of a quarter.  It was sharpened to a razor blade edge.  This was held between thumb and finger, and many intruders had the back of their Sunday coat cut in two halves, all in protection of the honor of the local girls!   Then came the one-day in the year that the women had total control dictated by age-old laws.. - The men had to obey them in everything the women demanded for one full day during the fall season and this made for impossible situations.  Old Jan told us that a bunch of girls had chased him throughout the house and into the barn when he was young  These girls  intended to strip him naked.
This was serious business and the women had their mind set on doing just that, and nothing less! They cornered him behind the cows, in a corner of the barn.  He was so desperate that he jumped in the trench filled with cow manure and he started throwing the green manure all over kingdoms come, just to save his miserable skin! He might have acted like a real man but deep down he was a brazen coward.   It was not nearly that bad on the day that we celebrated that feast, but bad enough.  We were chased through the barn while pails full of water poured over us, from the ceiling and from the haystack and any other place you can think of.  We were pushed in the pigpen, the bullpen, the playpen, and every other pen, real or imagined. 
The girls that were not all that good looking had a hay day, because we had to kiss on command, like it or not.  Punishment was swift and without mercy if we dared to disobey.  The women were in complete control until evening when the festivities reached the boiling point.  At that time the boys were expected to slap hands.  One would hold up his hand and the challenging boy would slap the outstretched hand with all his might.
The winner had first choice of the girls and it stands for reason that the biggest guys got the pick of the crop.  Not a very nice arrangement because I ended with a scrawny little girl, since I was so small and scrawny myself.
It was an age-old custom, and not all that bad, if you think it through.  Many girls, or many boys, got a date with the unlikeliest partners, with some good results, sometimes!   My Waterloo was nearby on the day that another guy came on the farm.  This unworthy person was also on the run from the Germans, so he said. It was a seedy looking character who did not make a very favorable impression on any of us. Not on me and not on any of the girls either but it was some more low cost labor for the farmer.  He was appointed to drive the second run to the factory. 
We picked milk in separate wagons in the sand roads where the pulling was heavy and loaded the cans on one wagon when we reached the hard surface road, continuing to the factory together. It was in this way that he was taken up in the select group of fellow sufferers.   All farmers of the milk run were allotted a share of butter in proportion of their herd.  Our job was to deliver this butter to each farmer on our return trip with the empty milk cans.  The butter was kept in a cardboard box on the front of the wagon box, in full view of anyone passing by and nothing was ever missing.  It was that kind of trust prevailing under the milk-haulers.   The new man was accepted in this routine with no questions asked and this became my Waterlo. It had a disastrous result for my trusting personality. It is hard to believe but two kilos of butter were missing on the end of my run!  I never made a connection then or even after but I had to face the music and the farmer was very unreasonable. He told me that I had to replace the butter, out of my own pocket. --Twenty-five guilders for each kilo of butter.--  Hank was out of two-months wages!  Farmer Jan was very upset with me and not nice at all.   Life carried on in the old way after that in spite of this disappointment.
Even so: The shine was taken out of things and I did my work faith fully but it was different from before.
Then the new guy hi