Elisabeth and Ebbie:

A Dutch Girl and a New Brunswick Soldier
April 1945: Life in Beverwijk, Holland had been extremely tough for the last several years.  There was just nothing to buy to eat and the Dutch people were starving.  Her uncle had rigged up a garden hose as a tire on her bicycle but it was so hard for the 18 year old Elisabeth to peddle even a short distance to barter for supplies.  Food coupons provided one ladle of mashed turnip or kale or red cabbage per person per day.  Her family was hiding her brother carefully from the Nazis so there was no food coupon for him. Everyone was thin with hunger, cold, wet and worried sick.  The Germans had flooded the lands.    Another brother, who had been studying to be an electrical engineer, had already been taken by the Germans to Germany. Claude Ebbett (Ebbie) was a wireless operator in a signal truck.  His regiment in the 1st Canadian Corps had been in the centre of Holland since March 1945. He had been in Algiers and then Sicily.  From France, they came through Belgium towards Arnhem and Apeldoorn, Holland.  When the war ended on May 8th 1945, his regiment went by convoy to Beverwijk to disarm a Steel Factory that the Germans had turned into a munitions factory.  They had de-mined a field and set up a camp there.  The liberation of Holland had begun. On the morning of May 9th, Els and two of her young girlfriends were pretty curious to see these Canadians who had just arrived in her home town.  What did Canadians look like?  Eskimos? Claude and a friend were playing catch when they saw the girls looking on. Not to give this story proper justice but for the sake of brevity, Claude and Els met there and fell in love.  They were married on December 12, 1945.  Claude left to go back to Canada on the R.M.S Mauretania the next morning.  It was not until August 26, 1946 when Els sailed into Halifax on the “Brides Ship”, The Lady Rodney Red Cross Ship, that they were reunited. Els had tried to learn a bit of English. This year (2005), they will celebrate 60 years of marriage and now reside in Sackville, New Brunswick. Claude Ebbett is a member of the Sackville Legion.  

photo: September 14th, 2005
Mount Allison University, Sackville
Catbird presentation at the Swan Pond