大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Rick Allden of the CSV 大象传媒 Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Joyce O'Kane and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions'.

From the moment the car journey began, I felt a sense of apprehension. It was the final week of a pleasurable visit to my Dutch pen friend, Sielska. She and her family lived in a small town called De Bilt near Utrecht. The month was August and the year 1939. My parents had turned down my request to stay in Holland until the possible war between Britain and Germany was over 鈥� 鈥淲e will flood the dykes, she will be much safer in Holland鈥�.
Towards the end of my stay, a visit to an elderly aunt of Sielska having been found obligatory, I joined the family, albeit with some reluctance, on a trip to a village I had never heard of. Our journey took us through the familiar flat landscape and several pleasantly wooded areas. Quite uneventful, but the feeling of unease increased:

鈥淒oes your aunt have a small wrought iron balcony at the front of the house?鈥�
鈥淵es she does,鈥� said Sielska.
鈥淎nd is the house enclosed by a thick laurel hedge?鈥�
鈥淵es, you have described it just as it is. But how did you know?鈥�
鈥淚 can just picture it,鈥� I said with unreasonable foreboding.

After the usual lavish supper, we were shown to our room. Tall windows opened onto a wrought iron balcony. The claustrophobic hedge wrapped us round. I fell asleep and immediately became enmeshed in a weird and disturbing dream. I was in a wood; upright young trees grew thickly, the trunks, which were quite slender, planted too closely for any orchard but with some semblance of symmetry. I became aware of approaching shapes drifting through the trees 鈥� young men 鈥� tall young men wearing strange helmets, not like the shallow tin hat that my father had brought back from World War I, but deeper, enveloping the head, netted on the top and crisscrossed with straps which held and supported the chin. The uniform 鈥� for they were all wearing the same 鈥� something like overalls patched with green and brown in an irregular pattern. The men were tall, young and beautiful but with haunted, drawn faces.
I awoke with a great shudder and made an impossible leap from my bed to that of the now seriously annoyed Sielska, who must have wondered who was attacking her peaceful domain.I couldn鈥檛 wait to return to the cheerful family home in De Bilt. The family who had got it so wrong, who couldn鈥檛 possibly have realised the extent of the infiltration of the Fifth Column who sabotaged the flooding of the dykes, the family who barely survived the war. Five years had gone by and sitting at my breakfast table in Britain, in comparative safety and eating a limited but adequate breakfast, I opened my daily newspaper to see a familiar face, a grim, handsome face looking straight into the camera lens, fearless but hopeless, one arm extended in what might be a resigned gesture of surrender, the other arm supporting a wounded comrade. The caption read 鈥漈he Most Courageous and Bloody Battle鈥�. I recognised the face, I had seen him in my dream on my first and last visit to Arnhem.

This story was donated to the People鈥檚 War website by Joyce O'Kane, of the Leam Writers. If you would like to find out more about Leam Writers call 0845 900 5 300.

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