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Some
of the bandmasters enjoyed the experience so much that
they eventually immigrated to Canada.
Courtesy of www.worldmilitarybands.com
DE MARNE
The Canadians fired a few rounds
Excerpt from the book entitled The Second World War in
De Marne. Published by Uitgeverij Profiel in Bedum in
2004
Liberators on Electraweg with Jaap de Waard, Jan
Stoutmeijer and Dirk Postma
Jelte Toxopeus was subsequently drummed up; he had to
help. The party finally sailed off. Toxopeus was allowed
to disembark at Lange Hoofd.
The Germans then proceeded to the isle of
Schiermonnikoog where they stuck it out for several
weeks following May 5th, 1945.
So after the rest of the Netherlands was already long
liberated, it was finally Schiermonnikoog's turn.
Several fishermen from Zoutkamp transported the Canadian
soldiers to the island. Jan (“Jannie”) Toxopeus, Aldert
Buitjes and Pieter Visser remember Pieter's father
saying that the Canadians were incredibly casual in
their treatment of the Germans, who were still quite
dangerous, on the return trip to Zoutkamp – the
Canadians had already gone through so much during their
operations in Europe....
On Sunday, April 13th, the Canadians liberated Zoutkamp.
They came from the direction of Friesland. Towards
11:30, Van der Zee was at café Het Hoekje, where Aaltje
Westra was employed. Through his binoculars he could see
the Canadians arriving by way of Nitersweg. The
Canadians fired a few rounds towards the harbour of
Zoutkamp, hitting K. Abbas' house in Havenstraat. The
Germans fled to the dock area. Jan Stoltmeijer and Jan
Visser could speak English, so they greeted the
liberators at the bridge and pointed the way to the dock
area. There they captured the Germans who offered no
more resistance. Some boys accompanied a group of
Canadians to neutralize a German post between Electra
and Houwerzijl. There, too, the Germans did not resist.
Two older Germans manned the post and they were only too
happy the war was over.
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ERMELO
Ermelo’s inhabitants were forced to dig trenches
It
is 60 years since Ermelo and the surrounding region were
liberated from the German occupier. At around two
o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon the residents of Ermelo
greeted the armoured regiment, Lord Strathcona´s Horse.
Ermelo had been freed. The armoured regiment was closely
followed by the motorcycles and sharpshooters of the
Westminster Infantry Regiment and tanks of the 8th
Princess Louise´s New Brunswick Hussars of the Canadian
5th armoured regiment. The liberators came from the
direction of Putten and part of the force then advanced
to Harderwijk.
Several days of enormous tension preceded the
liberation. De Hoge Riet, the sanatorium that the
Germans had commandeered and set up as a field hospital
several months earlier, was evacuated on 16 April. The
occupiers had also started the evacuation and
destruction of the Stellung Haasse radar post on the
Weisteeg. Many of Ermelo’s inhabitants were forced to
dig trenches. Even the hated Landwachters, who had
terrorised the region for a year and had been staying in
the former Roelofsen hotel, had suddenly disappeared.
The roads were crowded with fleeing Germans.
In the morning there was still heavy fighting between
nearby Putten and Voorthuizen. Four allied soldiers lost
their lives in the combat. In Steenenkamer eleven farms
were destroyed that afternoon in fighting. The Germans
tried to escape to the west through Nijkerk. Thanks in
part to the intervention of resistance fighters there
were no skirmishes in Ermelo and Harderwijk. In the
course of the afternoon some tanks headed in the
direction of ´s Heerenloo and Palmbos, where the Horst
firing range was located. The firing range had been out
of use for several months. At Spiek on the
Buitenbrinkweg dozens of Germans were captured after
refusing to give themselves up to the resistance. During
the evening four more Germans who had hidden themselves
on a farm were taken prisoner. On the evening of 18
April Ermelo was liberated.
HEELSUM
KABOOM!
Farmsound Studio and World War II.doc
Sweeties,
Here is my "contribution". I hope you don't mind getting
it one day later than promised. We have a much better
dictionary at work than at home |
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and there were two words
I did not feel comfortable with.
Now, feel free to do whatever you want with it.
When I had finished writing it, Wil said: Ha! You forgot
the best story of all, the one about the bomb. You know,
that sand road where the tractors always hit that bump
in the bend of the road....kaboink, kaboink.... it went
on for years!
After a severe thunderstorm a lot of sand was washed
away, and it turned out they'd been kaboinking over a
heavy aeroplane bomb all those years.....The bomb squad
was called in; they constructed a straw barrier around
it and let it explode : KABOOM!
Straw all over the place!
Love,
Judith and Wil
Farmsound Studio and World War II
I’m glad to say that we are post-war children, and we
want to keep it that way!
But when your home is situated in between Arnhem and
Oosterbeek you just happen to live right in the middle
of where operation “Market Garden” began in the early
hours of September 17th, 1944. Each year, this battle is
celebrated in the municipality of Renkum as a grand
victory together with “our” veterans and their families.
Our studio contributed by recording the “live
commentaries” for the splendid dioramas at the
Hartenstein War Museum in Oosterbeek. When our family
moved here in the 1970s we had no idea that we lived in
the middle of a historical battle scene. Although our
parents knew better, for us kids the war happened long
ago and far away. In the hayloft in the barn (which has
now been converted into the studio!) we found a large,
very heavy coat. The sleeve bore the orange coat of arms
of the Netherlands: the roaring lion that warns you: Je
Maintiendrai! “I say," our mum said, “that coat must
have been lying there for almost forty years, and it
hasn't even lost a button. They don’t make quality like
that nowadays….” She scrubbed the coat for us and we
played tough little soldiers with it for years, until it
came to rest in a private collection. It makes you
wonder who left his coat there, and why? Under the roof
over the studio we found an old passport and some travel
documents that belonged to an eighteen year-old boy from
Renkum. “I know that boy!”, grandma G. from next door
said, “that's “Red” Gerrit!” Gerrit preferred to take
the chance of hiding his papers and himself than go to
Germany to work for the enemy. He survived, and was very
amused to see his old passport again after forty years…
Grandma G. remembers lots of wartime stories: ”At the
end of the war we were evacuated, most of us to
relatives in the north. You really couldn’t take much
with you, just as many clothes as you could wear on your
person and all the bags you could carry. And the mess
when we returned after the war! The farmhouses here
where badly damaged by the shooting and the Germans, who
dug themselves in behind the farm, took all the |
