大象传媒

My mother was aksed by one of her grandchildren for a short account of her wartime experiences for a junior school project. This was the result:

The War in Holland

England and France were already at war with Germany while Holland was not, as it was a neutral country and wanted to stay that way as it had been in the First World War. Germany had no intention of respecting the neutrality and invaded Holland. They just walked in with canons and guns and everything they had at their disposal. Many aeroplanes also appeared over the country. Their first target was Rotterdam. They bombed it without any warning, killing thousands and thousands of people. There was nothing left of Rotterdam.

Then the parachutists came. They thought they were in Norway as they had not been told where they were going. These soldiers had to be billeted somewhere, so they had to go to civilian homes. The people did not like it but they had no option, you had to take one. If you had no room, you just had to make room.

By now we were really at war and getting quite used to having soldiers in the house and everywhere. Some of them were real Nazis and you had to be very careful what you said. Others were quite friendly and did not like what they had to do.

There were notices everywhere, always in German, telling us what we were not allowed to do. Food was rationed and very bad quality as all the good stuff went to Germany. Rations were very meagre and the coupons were often useless as there was nothing in the shops. The butcher used to write down how many coupons we had given him just in case he got some meat, but he never did. All he had for his window display was a big aspidistra.

Coffee was made of bulbs and barely drinkable. Money was not worth anything as there was nothing to buy. Shops wanted to be paid with food. For two or three potatoes, if you were lucky, you could get a haircut or some bread which was very sticky inside.

Towards the end of the war the army was getting very short of everything which gave us hope that the end might be in sight. By then we had two soldiers billeted in our house. They, too, were getting short of things, including clothes. They had no underwear any more and had one overcoat between them which they wore in turns, even though it was mid-winter. It was very cold with lots of snow but they just had to suffer in silence.

We never heard any news as we had been made to hand in all our radios, but we could see that things were going very badly for the Germans. The troops were pulling out of the south of Holland, which pleased us very much as that was where we lived, but the north was still having a bad time.

The dyke across what used to be called the Zuider Zee had not been blown up as they knew this was now their only escape route out of Holland, and we were only too pleased to see them go. We certainly did not say 鈥渁uf wiedersehn鈥�.

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