Dutch Girl

by Robert Matzen

  The relentless shelling and shooting of grenades went on day and night. As soon as the sounds died out, another round began. By Saturday, 14 April, small-arms fire could be heard on the air mingling with the larger explosions. The sharp crack of rifles and rattle of machine guns raised hopes of impending liberation because it had to mean that ground forces were getting near enough to Velp that they were being shot at.

  Shells landed all about the Beukenhof and then a thunderous, heart-stopping explosion sounded very close by. From the cellar they could smell smoke and wondered if the villa above them was ablaze. During a lull Opa and Audrey left their shelter to try to make sense of what was going on, one of those occasions when Audrey said she would venture up to “see how much of your house was left.”

  They stepped outside into daylight. While the Baron surveyed the latest bullet holes and shrapnel damage to the structure and property, Audrey looked about her. Down the street toward the center of the village, a building blazed. It was somewhere around Thieles book shop—perhaps the shop itself. The other way, up the street toward the north, one house on each side of the street was burning, and farther up, somewhere around the intersection with Ringallee, a building was fully engulfed with black smoke billowing skyward. The magnificent old beech trees lining Rozendaalselaan had not been felled to block the way because the Germans needed those trees for cover. But great limbs had been sheared off by shells and lay on the pavement and sidewalk. Here and there could be seen small flags marking unexploded shells in yards and gardens. Some had even burrowed into the pavement without detonating, and these too were marked. Fighter planes circled in the sky above, like vultures above carrion, six, no, eight of them banking high in the blue. Somewhere off to the south a little ways, anti-aircraft guns thumped and shells exploded in puffs of black cloud above the planes.

  Other civilians began to appear to inspect their homes or the neighborhood.

  To a fifteen-year-old girl it was, more than ever before, with the flames swirling, with the hunters above and cannoneers below looking for anything to kill, as if she and Opa had been transported inside the gates of hell. Velp had been such an idyllic place, and the Villa Beukenhof had been but one beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood. Now look at it. Some houses afire, others already bombed out. All within the breadth of her sight was eerily still as the structures burned, because who would dare to venture out among flying bombs to fight the flames? In their ears were the drone of aircraft engines and the occasional snap of burning wood.

  Just then grenades began to sizzle nearby and explode and, as was standard practice for everyone in the village, Audrey and Opa rushed back inside and down to the cellar to try to stay alive a little while longer. Into the evening the pungent smell of burning wood filled the room where the van Heemstras gathered by lamplight, and the exploding grenades sounded the irregular heartbeat of a war that would not die. It was worst near midnight, when the grenade fire came fast and furious in the darkness. And then it grew quiet and for a little while, sleep could come.

  All over Velp there was but one thought, one utterance repeated over and over: The Tommies did not arrive today; surely the liberation will be tomorrow.

  But the dawn came to the accompaniment of exploding grenades. Then it grew quiet. Then a grenade. More quiet. They were few enough in number and distant enough in location that breakfast could be consumed upstairs in the kitchen, away from the confinement of the cellar.

  As they sat there into the afternoon luxuriating in moments of life above ground, they began to hear the far-off mechanical hum of what sounded like Tiger or Panther tanks and the squealing, puttering of other tanks or half-tracks. Were they in the south? To the west toward Arnhem? Who did they belong to—the Germans? Or was it the Tommies?

  Jan van Hensbergen heard them from his home just a matter of yards from the Beukenhof: “You can hear the humming of the engines and the rattling of tanks now from not that far away anymore.”

  And Steven Jansen also noted: “You hear already continuous noise in the distance. Seeming tanks coming from the southern direction.”

  Once in a while there would be the punch of a tank firing its cannon and a quick muffled explosion as the shell burst, then more maneuvering. All the people sheltering in their homes in Velp could feel they were living a moment of history, the death agony of the Reich. And once the heartbeat of the beast was finally stopped, its grip would fall slack and the Netherlands would be free.

  The moments passed so slowly. A distant grenade. Stillness. A squadron of planes cruising through. Stillness. It was a time to reflect on almost five years of life under Hitler. Not that they had ever listened to his speeches or obeyed, but it had been life under the oppression of his terrible will and his twisted soul that they had endured.

  For Audrey, there had been moments that would live with her forever. Otto’s arrest, first and foremost. The dark days when Meisje had fretted for her man and traveled to be near him. Then that moment when they learned that dear Otto had been murdered, and Schimmelpenninck too. But there were so many more nightmares—the sight of Jews fleeing for their lives and herded along the street at gunpoint. And memories of the train station, the blank faces peering out of cattle cars. The closing of an Arnhem street for an execution and the crack of the rifles. The screams coming from the Rotterdamsche Bank. The refugees from Arnhem and other places. Poor little Ben van Griethuysen crying for his mama and so much suffering Audrey had seen at the hospital since the battle. And, oh, the hunger of the winter just past and how awful to watch her own young body betray her and fall apart.

  Yet as she herself had said, “Five years of your life can’t all be horrifying.” There was the ecstasy of dance. Learning from the wonderful Mistress Marova, whom she hadn’t seen since before the battle. Audrey could look back on her days at the Muziekschool and the discipline of the barre. Performances at the Schouwburg and perhaps the most wonderful night of all at the Musis Sacrum when she had begun her life as a public performer. Did it matter that the audience was made up of soldiers from the Wehrmacht? That it was the official newspaper, the Nazi newspaper, that praised her? No, because their assessment meant nothing anyway. She knew she wasn’t yet a praiseworthy dancer—Mother had told her that often enough. She had more work to do, and more and more, but still, the lights, the costumes, the music: These were the things, elements of the dance, that made life worth living. More than anything else, this shy soul, this girl who had been so wounded by lack of a father that she had nothing to say to anybody, had found a way to express herself through dance. And it was so glorious a feeling. All of this had happened during the years of the occupation, despite the occupation.

  At half past one in the afternoon, a thunderstorm of grenades made the van Heemstras grab food and water and rush back into the cellar. The blasts had been close enough that screams could be heard in the distance. Even the strongest could break down and cry at such savagery, but what was the point? Something even worse lay ahead—save your tears for then.

  As the cellar window revealed light thinning to night, nearby German artillery opened up with salvos that took the breath away. The Allied response sounded immediately and almost as close, as if to say, Oh yeah? Well take that! The night sky lit up as the shells exploded with flashes like lighting from a summer storm. Then came a sharp bang of something hitting too near the villa. Later there came the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, not only the German Spandau but what the ears of the Velpenaren had come to know from the battle for Arnhem as the British Sten gun.

  For hours the din of battle sounded all around, grenades, tank blasts, machine-gun fire, and a new sound—the dull thud of the hand grenade. It was deafening, terrifying, and it lasted through the night. The imagination tried to keep up with and make sense of every sound. One moment it would be a tank right outside on the street. Then shouts in German. Machine guns. The pop-pop of rifle fire.

  Audrey said that in these late hours, gallows humor once again took hold in the cellar of
the van Heemstra home. “I can tell you what that was like,” she said, “lots of giggling and laughing. It’s all we had, sleeping on mattresses and sitting there waiting for the shooting to stop.”

  Jansen said on Oranjestraat, “There is a nervous tension that dominates in the cellar. They must be very near. Whoever ventures above to look can see the flames of the shooting tanks between the trees.”

  Near the Beukenhof, a deep explosion rocked the quartet of van Heemstras, and another and another, renewing worry for the structure directly above. Sleep was impossible and, anyway, they thought bravely in their punch-drunk stupor, why would you want to sleep through your last moment on the earth?

  34

  First Cigarette

  “Early in the morning, all of a sudden it was total silence,” said Audrey, who gave a little gasp at the memory. “Everybody said, ‘Now what’s happening?’ because it was sort of frightening. You know, we had gotten used to the thumping of the shells.”

  They had just experienced Velp’s longest and most violent, night-long thunderstorm of bombs and rockets. Now, nearing dawn on 16 April, the storm seemed to have passed, but life under occupation had instilled in Dutch minds the discipline to await the next terrible thing, for it would surely come.

  Audrey crept to the window, with inky night opposite the pane, and put her ear to the glass: “I could hear the sound of shuffling feet—very strange, because at such an early hour, no one ever went out onto the streets.”

  She could make out the sounds of what seemed to be a great number of people moving outside, and she began to catch a whiff of something in the air. “The very first thing I smelled—I didn’t see, because we were in our cellar where we had been for weeks because at that point our area was being liberated practically house to house.”

  What she smelled was the aroma of cigarette smoke. They were real cigarettes made of tobacco, no mistaking it. There hadn’t been such an aroma in Velp for most of the war; only ersatz cigarettes made of oak and beech leaves had been available. These smelled awful and did smokers next to no good at all. And now she smelled genuine tobacco.

  What happened next became one of her favorite stories to tell in interviews for the remainder of her life. The four van Heemstras tiptoed up the steps from the cellar to the first floor of the Beukenhof and then dared to poke their heads into the morning air. Instead of the jaunty Tommies she remembered from the battle for Arnhem, she ventured out to a horrifying moment facing soldiers pulling back bolts on Sten guns and ready for a fight, “their eyes glittering and their guns pointed straight at me,” she said.

  She blurted out some words in elegant English and “the instant they heard me speak their own language, they let out a great yell.”

  One of them bellowed, “Not only have we liberated a town—we have liberated an English girl!”

  For the first time in five years the men with the guns weren’t German. It was the moment the people of Velp had expected 211 agonizing days earlier on 17 September when British Airborne parachutes had filled the air. “Liberation!” they had shouted expectantly on that bright autumn Sunday, only to have the dream shattered.

  This time the soldiers looked like Tommies and wore their uniforms, including some not in helmets but in those lovely red berets. Their shoulder patches did not show a Pegasus in white on a red field. These patches showed a white polar bear. They were in fact Canadian First Army troops, and the vehicles passing slowly by on Rozendaalselaan belonged to the 5th Canadian Armoured Division. Just a day ago German Tigers had been parked there.

  “The guns, the tanks, the trucks, the jeeps, and the men came rolling into town,” said Audrey. “Cecil B. DeMille could not surpass the spectacle.”

  Street by street they cleared out the Germans and Green Police. “I inhaled their petrol as if it were priceless perfume and demanded a cigarette, even though it made me choke,” said Audrey. For the girl not quite sixteen, smoking suddenly became a delight that connected her to the incredible feeling of liberation and that first cigarette began a lifelong habit, one central to her personality.

  Neighbors poured out of every house. Onderduikers who had been in hiding for weeks, months, and in some cases years tumbled outside to breathe free air.

  Jews of all ages began to appear for the most unlikely of reunions; people thought to be long dead in concentration camps had gone into hiding, aided by brave Velpenaren who for years had shared risks and rations. Even the closest of friends and neighbors in the next house over were shocked to discover that individual Jews or whole families had been concealed just yards away through the course of the war. Now these people too breathed in the freedom of liberation.

  Red, white, and blue armbands imprinted with a single word, ORANJE, designated members of the Resistance. They brought rifles into view and became an impromptu security force. Citizens donned any piece of orange clothing that had survived the war. Red, white, and blue Dutch flags waved proudly, hung here, draped there, tacked to tree trunks and telephone poles. Bottles of wine and brandy and champagne set back with great determination in 1940 were dusted off and uncorked now. The citizens shoved precious bread and cheese into the hands of the soldiers, who handed out cigarettes and candy in return. The euphoria of the moment made everyone in sight drunk, with or without spirits, and before long every single person on the sidewalks and in the streets and gardens, equal parts Canadian soldiers and Velpenaren, had broken out in laughter. Joyous, tension-shattering laughter gripped the village like a sudden spring madness. For all of them, whether from this side of the Atlantic or the other, there was one ultimate realization: I have lived to see this day!

  “Oh, God, I could scarcely believe it,” said Audrey.

  A block away, Steven Jansen and his fiancée joined the celebration. “From all side streets one runs to Hoofdstraat. A flag! There a flag hangs. We are free! Congratulations! Congratulations! Embracing each other. The traces of the misery still on the face, but also the happiness to experience this moment. We are free! With tears clouding our eyes we see the long-hidden fluttering tricolor flying proudly.”

  But yes, the misery did hang on the air. The people let loose even more welled up emotion as they remembered those who could not celebrate this day because they had been shot by the Nazis, or killed in a bombing raid, or carted off to a concentration camp, or felled by typhus, or diphtheria, or starvation in the winter just past.

  When the laughter receded, the anger welled. It was time to reckon with the collaborators—those who had been in league with the Germans or too cooperative to the Reich. These people were rounded up and pushed along to the center of town by the Oranje Resistance men with rifles. The accused were forced to run a gauntlet of their neighbors—the great majority of the population who had remained loyal to the queen. At the police bureau on Stationsstraat, women who had fallen in love with German soldiers or otherwise helped them over the long years of occupation were punished by having their heads shaved. Fists of Resistance men clenched the shorn locks of Dutch women who had been sympathizers and held them high on the balcony like Iroquois holding scalps. Below, the crowd cheered.

  To Audrey’s shock, a Canadian security officer accompanied by members of the Resistance asked Ella to go with them, and the Baroness van Heemstra was led away. In an instant the most wonderful feeling, breathing free air, became a sensation of not being able to breathe at all.

  At Canadian headquarters, Ella sat for questioning by an officer identified only as Captain James, a field security man. During their conversation, Ella claimed she had done work for the Allied intelligence services; James duly noted her assertion. She listed her accomplishments on behalf of the Resistance, most notably her family’s sheltering of a British paratrooper along with work tending the wounded of Velp. There was also the period during which she participated in the zwarte avonden—the secret dance performances—with her daughter.

  On this day of retribution from the Oranje Resistance when Dutch women collaborators were being scalped r
ight and left, Ella van Heemstra walked out of headquarters with her hair attached. For Ella it must have been vindication that she had finally been accepted as a supporter of the Allied cause, which she most certainly had been for three years now. Captain James noted that, to him, the baroness was neither dangerous nor suspicious. Instead, he—or perhaps the Resistance men at his shoulder—found her to be onnozel, an old Dutch word meaning “silly.”

  To the relief of the Dutch girl, her mother returned unharmed as tanks and armored troop carriers continued to roll down Hoofdstraat, kicking up great clouds of dust, spent gunpowder, and ash that coated every surface, especially the pavement. The fine grit got into mouths and nostrils and eyes and yet it didn’t matter at all: Liberation!

  In the afternoon, military bulldozers appeared and swept out of the way the giant felled trees of Velp, which the Germans had believed would keep the Allies at bay for weeks. The mechanical monsters pushed all of the trees aside in just that afternoon.

  Men with mine detectors then swept every inch of town for buried explosive devices and booby traps planted by the Germans in previous weeks. There were so many mines along Hoofdstraat in the eastern half of the village that “the Germans had told me where it was safe to walk,” said Ben van Griethuysen. At this stage of the war with defeat likely, they didn’t want their mines blowing up children.

  The center of Velp seemed to be the center of the world on this day, with all citizens dressed in their Sunday best and walking about simply because they could. For the first time in five years they were free to be seen out of doors without a purpose, and without an Ausweis. The Canadian soldiers were everywhere, “millions of them,” it seemed to Audrey, and all morning and through the afternoon the military vehicles rolled through, on their way to liberate the next town over.

  “I stood there night and day just watching,” said Audrey. “The joy of hearing English, the incredible relief of being free. It’s something you just can’t fathom.”