大象传媒

I was a young boy growing up near Amsterdam during the war. I remember one time the Germans had taken all our horses and tied them up. I climbed into a tree and threw chestnuts at the hoses. The spikes of the shells soon made the horses mad and they broke free and ran off. A German soldier saw me though and called me down. He stuck my head into the trough and kicked my backside. Then he told me to go and never go back. I knew I was quicker than him, and answered that 鈥淵ou will never win the war鈥�. He asked me how I knew and I told him that we listened to the English radio. When I went home I proudly told my father what I had said and done. He was very upset, as being caught listening to the radio would have cost us our lives. He buried the radio in the garden.

I remember another time the Americans were dropping food parcels. A German soldier was watching them with his binoculars. When he put them down, I pinched them and ran off. I swapped them for eight bars of chocolate!

Another time I remember about twenty Spitfires attacking the local German camp. I went on the roof to watch. My mother was angry and kept calling me to go in. I told her that I was perfectly safe as they were only attacking Germans, and so I remained there waving at them.

I have to say that at first the Germans were ok. It was only towards the end that they turned nasty. The resistance would kill leading Germans, and they would retaliate. At Putten they shot ten people in revenge for a resistance attack. They slit the bellied open and wrote 鈥渨e were terrorists鈥� on the bodies. I remember one German promising that when they left we would eat grass. And we did. We lived on nettles and bulbs after they went.

They introduced a six o鈥檆lock curfew and anyone out after that would be shot. They also introduced slave labour. My father, who was in his fifties hid in the chimney to avoid being taken away. At one time my mother put a sign over the door saying we had Dysentry, but it only worked for a short while!

I remember my brother and sister going up north to try and find food. They walked 180 km and came back with a sack of food. The weather was so cold though that the food was completely frozen. All that way for nothing.

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