long cartridge clips, sent us all back inside with the simple words "In Keller" (Into cellar). They were extremely nervous. Occasionally you would see some of them creep along the houses with anti-tank shells.
No one was allowed outside. Only members of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) carrying only what was absolutely necessary, were granted unopposed withdrawal.
The Canadians arrived at about 2:30 in the afternoon, standing on their tanks and carriers, armed with sten guns and rattling machine guns. The Germans immediately returned fire.
The Krauts now thought it time to blow up the bridge. A tremendous explosion demolished both the bridge and many of the houses in its vicinity.
The Germans on the other side of the bridge were now cut off from their comrades. So they had to fight. They were still just boys, some of whom were more fanatic than others and who therefore pushed the others on.
The tanks and other armoured cars drove calmly over the Esschenbrug Dike into Coevorden. Shots came firing out of a few farms. One of the tanks immediately turned around and set them on fire.
Two young Krauts had hidden with their antitank shell in some bushes in Eendrachtstraat on the corner of Schoonebeekerweg. When the first armoured car was about 20 metres away, they shot at it, setting it on fire. Two Canadians died in the flames; two others were able to get out on time and take care of the Krauts.
At approximately 6 o'clock, Coevorden was occupied by the Canadians on one side of the bridge and so they decided to rest for a while. But shots were still being fired from the church. Two well-placed canon shots took out the whole middle section. Three Germans would never see their Heimat again.
The last Germans did not withdraw until about 9 o'clock that evening in the knowledge that it was no use to fight another day and so they tried to save their skin by running for it.
That evening many of us crawled across the devastated bridge to welcome the liberators and.... to smoke a Sweet Corporal.

ZEIST
Or as they say in Dutch, “Snoes”.

Entertainment Committee of the Netherlands,
Zeist department.
Attempts to entertain Canadian soldiers in
1945.
By R.P.M. Rhoen
‘Only hard-hearted puritans and moral

apostles could fail to understand this’
was the reaction by the Dutch women so strange in the initial months after liberation? On 9th  May, a journalist of the Zeister Post newspaper described the British soldiers as being: ‘Fresh young chaps, healthy, well fed, the type of young men we no longer really knew. Modest, broad shouldered lads, attractive and well-tended faces, composed in their gestures and attitude. Sporting, masculine and elegant in their clothing: khaki with a distinctive trace of colour here and there, the dashing beret with its copper badge. We felt like tired, skinny old men compared with these strong and radiant young people.’ The liberators had so much to offer, even if it was only chocolate, cigarettes and soap.
                    Beset and beguiled.
The women were attracted by the British and Canadian soldiers of course, who were either considered sexually attractive or a source of hope for those women who believed their contacts with the allied soldiers would help them in some way, materially speaking. It is probable that a number of them were looking to marry a soldier and emigrate to a more affluent country. On 14 December 1945, ‘The Maple Leaf’, the newspaper for the Canadian soldiers, wrote that 7,000 Dutch women were waiting to move to Canada as wives of Canadian soldiers. No doubt Wim Petri had also read that article when he drew his cartoon. The estimate of 7,000 was possibly a little high. In 1946, approximately 2,000 Dutch women moved to Canada to be with their soldier husbands. They were among a total of 50,000 European women who wed Canadian soldiers and made a new life for themselves in Canada.
Many women travelled from other parts of the country to Zeist to come into contact with soldiers. There were regular reports in the local newspapers on this, which read something like this:  ‘There are apparently considerable numbers of under-age girls roaming around. A 17-year old was picked up in Huis ter Heide and taken back home to Rotterdam. There, five were apprehended and returned to their homes in Leiden and Amsterdam. ’ (Zeister Post 1st August); ‘Among the Canadians. In a property at the Laan van Beek en Rooyen, an under-age girl from Zuilen was arrested and transported back to her home town.’ (Zeister Nieuwsblad 2nd October:); ’Zeist was once again the backcloth for a round-up, but this time round by the police, with the assistance of the military provost marshals, to round up girls who travelled to Zeist from all over the country, most of them under-age, with plans to have fun in the company of the Canadians, who were still very much top of the bill. Fortunately, the police were able to find them, sometimes in a job lot of three or four. The extent to which more and more girls are attracted by such mischief, while the shame of being arrested by the police seems to make little or no impression, is made clear by the worrying results of the raid, which kept the police busy from eight o’clock in the evening until one-thirty at night

and which was termed a great policing success. By blocking off a number of military accommodation premises in order to prevent the girls fleeing, no less than 56 girls were discovered and subsequently taken to the police station for questioning.
               ‘For Loesje, Lien and Let’
Besides carrying out their military tasks, the allied soldiers also helped with distribution of food and rebuilding of the Netherlands, such as restoring the infrastructure. In August 1945, there were 5,000 Canadians working in the Netherlands, 60% of whom in the agricultural sector. The soldiers did not get a wage for their efforts; instead it was contributed to an official Dutch recovery fund. Besides working, playing sports and participating in victory parades however, they also wanted to have fun. In the first flush of victory, many women had sought contact with them. The ‘Annual Revue of the main events in Zeist in 1945’ described the situation as follows in June: ‘the girls go out with Tommies, the Dutch boys wait and see.’

The following simple poem, which was published in the Zeister Weekblad of 26 June and which translates as ‘For Loesje, Lien and Let' speaks volumes on the moral situation:

What’s in the bag
Carried by Loesje, Lien and Let
A piece of chocolate,
An English cigarette,
A photo of Billy,
Of Edward, John and Jack,
A packet of biscuits,
A few sweets and a little crack.
A notebook full of names
Of Freddy and of Pete
And of many others,
Whom she no longer even recalls.
Dear little Let and Lientje,
And my favourite little Loes,
It’s nice to be called: “Sweetheart”
Or as they say in Dutch, “Snoes”.
But leave it at that.
Don’t go too far, my dear.
Or you’ll be “laughing” now,
And later on perhaps “in tears”.

Foundation of the Zeist department of the Entertainment Committee of the
Netherlands

The Entertainment Committee required civilians to have a reasonable understanding of English. That may sound silly nowadays but before the war, English was not widely spoken. One of the first advertisements published in a local newspaper after the war offered a course in English lessons by the J.W. Kraal bookshop. Many people only knew a smattering of English, as shown in a newspaper article of 16 May. A number of people had requested fuel from the Canadians for their lamps. They had mistakenly asked for ‘petrol' instead of ‘paraffin’ and consequently received the wrong fuel!

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