Traveling Mercies

Both churches and the two schools in our town were protestant.  The church and school I attended were the stricter ones.  The kids that attended the other school were always singing and having a good time when they passed on their way home, but we, on the other hand, were taught that that was irreverent.  We only sang in church, and maybe at home, and then only hymns, or patriotic songs.  Nevertheless, both schools were protestant.  We had learned that somewhere in our country were catholics, but they were generally a sinful lot and not true believers.  In fact, the Pope, it was said, had horns on his head.

Our country has historically been divided between the catholic south and the protestant north and that was still the case.  The large cities, i.e. the population centers, are in the south.  During the winter of 1944, they were isolated and cut off from the rest of the country.  The Germans did not allow anything to enter the cities.  Food, which had been scarce to begin with, now became completely unavailable. People began to starve.  Soon there was no grass left.  Cats and dogs and even rats disappeared.  Finally, people began to leave the cities to go north.  There was no means of transportation and they came on foot, some pushing wheelbarrows or pulling carts loaded with whatever belongings they could manage to bring.

Suddenly, they were no longer catholics coming north; they were countrymen who needed help.  The protestant north threw open its arms and took in its brethren from the south.  All doors were opened.  Catholics were welcomed to worship in our churches.  People took in families and we began to realize that catholics weren’t so bad after all. A thaw set in and a dialogue began to take place.  People began to get along as they never though they could.  The Hunger Winter of ’44 became the unifier of the north and south!

As we moved into 1945, it became clear that the war would soon be over, and it wasn’t long before it looked like the Germans were getting ready to leave.  We feared the worst, thinking they might make last minute incriminations, but one morning we woke to find them gone.  It was early April.  I had just turned eleven.

The day after they left, Canadian tanks came into town, only six of them - small ones.  They were rather agile.  They came down the main road, heading east, doing mop up operations, when they were confronted by seventeen or eighteen Dutch Nazis, coming down the road on bicycles, wearing their black uniforms, and armed with rifles.  Dutch people who joined the Dutch Nazi Movement* were especially hated.  Now, here came a little group, valiantly confronting the tanks, obviously not prepared for the consequences.  They intended to stop the tanks, and indeed, began to fire on them.  The forward tank let go a burst from its machine guns, and the result was, well, it was carnage.  Afterwards, they were laid out in a nearby meadow to see if anyone could identify them.  My dad and I went to look.  Most of them were beyond recognition.  Some of them had their faces shot off.  A mass grave was dug, and without further ado, they were dumped into it.  They sacrificed their lives willingly for a cause lost long ago.

Meanwhile, a lone German came down the road.  He had somehow become detached from his unit and was trying to escape.  He was an S.S.er, the most hated of all.  He had managed to evade the tanks, but when he came down our road, they spotted him.  As he was running, one of the tanks turned and lined up its guns to face down the road.  He saw a bike in the neighbor’s yard and grabbed it, but the neighbor lady, who had seen him come, ran out and grabbed it, too, and would not let go.  They wrestled over the bike, but when she heard a burst of fire, she let it go and fled to the house, while he took off, riding right down the middle of the street.  The tank fired haphazardly, setting several roofs on fire in the process, but never hitting the S.S.er.  They finally quit firing and let him go, without going after him.

  He peddled down the street to the next town, where the people were....