Caught in the crossfire: The Dutch in Wartime, Survivors Remember

By Mokeham

The Dutch in Wartime, Survivors Remember is a series of books containing the memories of Dutch immigrants to Canada and the USA, who lived through the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
Book 7, Caught in the crossfire, covers the experiences of civilians living in the area where Allied paratroopers landed during Operation Market Garden. The towns and villages in which they live have become the battlefield. They are bombed, shelled and shot at. But despite the danger and destruction, they welcome their liberators and help them where they can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mokeham
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777439620

Book preview

You’re hired!

André Schabracq

We left Holland in 1942 to live in Paris, where we blended in more easily. We are both Jewish, and during the terrifying days of the

German occupation that was a death sentence. I lost my father in Auschwitz concentration camp. Paris was liberated by the American army on the 25th of August, 1944. We were, of course, very happy, although this is not the right word. We were overwhelmed with this new reality of finally being rid of the deathly German occupation.

We were standing on the sidewalk of the Boulevard St. Michel with my brother and some Dutch friends, yelling and shouting in Dutch to each other, when the troops came marching by. With us was an American soldier, who touched me on the shoulder and asked us, Are you people Dutch?

It turned out he was of Dutch parents and still used Dutch in church in Michigan. We started a conversation and he told me that his assignment at the moment was to hire people to work for the American army. He asked if I was interested, and inquired about other languages I spoke. I told him, French, German, English, and of course, Dutch.

You’re hired! he almost shouted. Three days later I was picked up by two soldiers and taken to Mirecourt, a small town close to Reims. There I was put in officer’s uniform with the title of Civilian Technician. My first outfit was with black soldiers, the 377th Engineering Company. Two months later I was transferred to the 151st Engineer Combat Group, and soon thereafter we were on our way to Berlin.

Berlin is another story. Too many new impressions and a totally new experience in the city where the Nazis planned for the Final Solution to the problem of Jewry.

Guiding the ‘Tommies’

Charles de Greef

The Battle of Arnhem in September, 1944, was one of the great mistakes of World War ll. My hometown became the place where a war that was almost won, was almost lost. I was there, a 17-year-old schoolboy living only six blocks from the bridge that was the major Allied objective.

September 14 was a Sunday, the day picked as the assault day for the Allied operation called ‘Market Garden’. It would launch the greatest armada of troop-carrying aircraft ever assembled, and it would be one of the most daring and imaginative operations of the war. An airborne carpet of Allied troops would be laid across the big rivers of the lowlands, seizing the bridge crossings so that an arrow-like thrust could be launched in a northerly direction into the centre of Holland and the north of