In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-45

CHAPTER 6 The War in the West

Hitler started his ‘Plan Yellow’ campaign to the west, with the following speech to his troops. “The hour has come, for you, which will decide Germany’s fate. Do your duty! Go with the blessing of the German people”.

On Friday 10May 1940, this major offensive took its course from the North Sea to the southern border of Luxembourg. Weather conditions had caused postponements on more than one occasion. The 19th Army, with its 22 divisions, was under the command of General George Kïchler. He had support from General Albert Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, who positioned himself as the northern flank of the attacking force to the west, through Belgium to France. With the first morning light, at 5.30 am, German ‘summer time’, and in an early morning mist, the first advance troops marched over the eastern border of Holland.

From their air bases in Westphalia, German bombers started in a westerly direction, at 1.00 am, in clear moonlight. The experienced pilots wove their way around Holland’s searchlights and anti-aircraft fire. In a northerly curve over the Ijsselmeer, they reached their objective. At about 3.00 am, at a pre-determined point, they turned in an easterly direction, in close formation, over the North Sea to Holland. An hour later they reached their destination, i.e. Holland’s westerly aerodromes. The transport machines, the Junkers 52, fully laden with paratroopers, had another destination, the important strategic cities of Dordrecht and Rotterdam.

Nearly a year before, on 20 April 1939, on Hider’s fiftieth birthday, paratroopers filed past in a massive military parade in Berlin, marching past the High Command, as the Air Force’s youngest achievement. The world saw for the first time, this ‘élite’ troop in a new type of uniform. In military jargon they were called jump smocks, with aerodynamic steel helmets. A great many of the invited foreign military attachés present, at that parade, underestimated the efficiency of these troops in combat.

Despite Holland’s military experts having seen the performance of Germany’s paratroopers in Narvik, they stated, “We will skewer them on our pitchforks, in mid-air”. The nearer the Junkers came to their target, the stronger the anti-aircraft fire became. For the heavy slow-flying aircraft, it was dangerous. Already with the first approach, there were casualties. The company leaders jumped first, followed in seconds by the whole squad, the last man giving the cry of ‘Horrido’, and following his companions with the elegant spring of a fish out of water.

Hundreds of parachutes blanketed the earth like a meadow full of over-large white flowers. Everyone was his own assault-leader upon reaching the ground, until later they stormed the most important bridges and aerodromes together. During this mission, many of those courageous young men sprang to their deaths. Although the majority carried out their orders, it was there that the ‘Green Devils’ suffered very heavy losses.

Within the same hour, another Fallschirmjäger unit overran the 1,000 strong garrison within the mighty Fort Eban-Emael, in Belgium’s theatre of war south of Maastricht. Modern thinking held this to be an impenetrable ‘bastion’, at least from the ground. The Germans conquered the problem from the air, with two secret weapons. One was troop-carrying gliders, the other, 50 kilo hollow-charges to blow up the armoured defences, 25 cm thick.

The Fallschirmjäger had started from their base in Cologne-Ostheim and were towed close to Aachen, landing silently on the roof the fort. Within 24 hours, that Stormtroop ‘Granit’ made the bulwark non-operational. With dare-devil courage, they put the most important key position of the allied defence system out of action. 1,200 Belgians were taken prisoner and the advance into the heart of France, through Belgium, could now take place.

Many other strategies of war, some not so straightforward, were used to achieve a smooth passage, for instance, the removal of explosives from Dutch bridges. That was the immediate objective. The first groups, dressed as Dutch railway workers, went to work after dark. In other places, ‘Dutch Resistance’ escorted German ‘prisoners’ over the bridges, without being challenged. The Dutch suspected nothing.

There was another case, called a ‘trojan-horse’. A commando group hid in the hold of a Rhine-barge, using the ‘down valley’ stream of the river Waal, to destroy the Nijmegan bridge. One cannot say that those methods were ‘fair’ tactics of war. The Dutch did not behave any better when opening fire on German soldiers waving a white flag, as they were approaching a bunker that they were guarding. ‘A la guerre comme à la guerre’. War is war, was the motto at that time.

In our new home in Soest, we could not but notice the signs of war. Before the night had ended, we were half-wakened by the monotonous drone of plane engines, becoming so loud that we were wide awake. We went to the window, to see a show in the sky that we had never seen before. Uncountable planes flew in close formation in a westerly direction over our town. With the flight-path coming from the east, we were convinced that there was a forthcoming attack on Britain.

More and more windows were opened by our neighbours. They looked in amazement into the skies where the stars were slowly fading. In great excitement, many gathered in the streets to talk to one another, with rumour and presumption making the rounds. As darkness faded we could recognise the black swastikas on the tails of the planes, flying like migrating cranes to the west. It was not until we saw individual fighters, those small, lightning machines, leave the formation, that it dawned on us that we were the target. The planes circled over the military aerodrome of Soesterberg, six kilometres away.

Very soon we heard confirmation over the radio. Radio Hilversum broadcast a Cabinet-formulated proclamation, a flaming protest against the German ‘raping’ of Holland’s neutrality. Wilhelmina ordered her people to do their duty, as would she and the Dutch Government. The Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs had received a memorandum from Germany, with a long list of accusations that I will explain later. Who was right?

While bombers and troop-carrying squadrons flew at dawn to their destinations, Panzer and infantry regiments prepared for their advance to the West. The German High Command ordered the motorised units of the Waffen SS, as spearhead, to overrun the Dutch border forces. From their starting positions in Eltern-Westphalia, the ‘Der Führer’ regiment reached the river Ijssel, east of Arnhem, shortly after 7.00 am. Dutch engineers had however, destroyed the bridge in good time. Crossing the river had to be carried out using rubber rafts which they had brought with them. Without a moment’s hesitation, the men started to cross the river under very heavy fire, reaching the other side and landing on a very flat, barbed wire barricaded riverbank. They suffered very heavy losses.

For the young Austrians among those men, it was their first campaign and also their baptism of fire. Perhaps the Catholic archbishop, Count von Galen, had a premonition as to the high price in blood that the Waffen SS would pay with that campaign. He withdrew his consent to give the troops his blessing, shortly before the fighting began.

Resistance however was not encountered everywhere. In some parts of the border areas, the war began like a day’s outing in May for the German soldiers. Some of the Dutch commanders learned about the war beginning only hours after it had started. The news transmission, despite the short distances in that small land, left a lot to be desired. So the invaders only met farmers in many villages, on their bicycles on the way to milk their cows. They looked surprised, as they were greeted with “good morning!” from the soldiers.

As daylight came, people gathered on the streets to stare in astonishment at the kilometres-long military column. They sat on chairs to sunbathe in front of their houses, as the Germans marched by. Some of them, not knowing any better, mistook them for the British. Others, in their naive way, offered them bread and coffee, for they thought that the ‘boys were certainly tired, having come such a long way’.

There were many, who having been influenced by many years of campaigns against Germany, were suddenly overcome with panic and burnt their anti-German literature. It was very noticeable, during that warm May weather, that days later smoke was to be seen coming from the chimney-pots in Holland. Five years later, also in May, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was to be the cause of the smoking chimney-pots.

Almost unhindered, the German advance was precise. It progressed rapidly, with only a few exceptions. Already on the first day, there was the impression of the disbanding of the badly equipped Dutch Armed Forces. The Dutch government confirmed with the Commission of Enquiry, set up after 1945, that the failure of large parts of their troops, in particular when having to fight against the Waffen SS, had been a catastrophe.

A totally unnerved Dutch general placed machine-guns and entanglements of barbed wire, behind the backs of his defenders, in order to prevent the panic-stricken flight of that ‘pitiful and cowardly bunch’, which was how he described them. Similar hair-raising cases of defeatism or neglected duty, were compiled in books of official ‘war-reports’ and skilfully detailed by the Dutch Imperial Institute of War Documents. In his research, a chronicler found that it had been Dutch troops and not the accused German soldiers who had plundered articles of gold from jewellers in the evacuated border areas. “One saw soldiers walking around with watches strapped on their arms, and trouser pockets full of gold rings”. However, to lay that military ‘fiasco’ only at the door of the Dutch soldiers, in those tragic and critical days, would be unreasonable.

The results of twenty years of that ‘broken-weapon’ propaganda, by Government and press, had chiselled away the will to fight, and produced that catastrophe. All at once, the insufficiently trained Dutch soldier, the subject of defamation, should be the perfect and morally upright attacker and an example of steadfast fighting spirit.

Despite this, there were some units under the command of courageous officers. They put up dogged resistance, despite the German air-raids and concentrated artillery attacks, thus delaying the advance of the German troops. They found bitter resistance, for instance, from well-built casements at the entrance of the 30 kilometres long dam, separating the Ijselmeer from the North Sea, and hindering their entry. The bitter resistance of that strategically important barrier was the only military accomplishment that emerged from the three northern provinces. Like an egg without its shell and just as defenceess, the green lush flatland provinces of Groningen, Drente and Friesland, fell to the invaders. From Friesland to Ijsselmeer, the hunted Dutch soldiers fled on bicycles or buses, and in private cars. Those they had commandeered, in order to flee over the narrow, now congested end-dam to try to reach the province of North Holland, not yet endangered from the war.

As in Poland, the Dutch were then left to their own devices, with the excuse from 10 Downing Street, that “Unfortunately, we do not possess a flying carpet”. In this precarious situation however, British assistance presented itself in great haste, in the form of ‘demolition groups’. Their machines of destruction destroyed the Dutch harbours, locks and sluices, and burnt their gigantic oil reserves. But the ultimate form of their support came in the form of transportation of Holland’s gold reserves and politically endangered persons, to Britain.

Although geographically in a better position than their British brothers-in-arms, French troops did not produce an effective military performance in their efforts to stand at the side of their Dutch counterparts. A joint effort to take and hold the strategic bridgehead of Moerdijk bridge, collapsed under the tough defence of German paratroopers, who had already landed. On the evening of 11 May, the demoralised Poilus retreated over Breda to Antwerp, accompanied by chaotic conditions. The inhabitants in the southern border regions came to recognise very quickly another side of those French and Belgian warriors. They were ‘freed’, not from the German invader, but from their gold and silver. It is not to be wondered at, that they longed for the German advance, in order that the plundering by the Allied soldiers stopped. They did not have to wait long. Hitler’s tank formations rolled through the Ardennes with an unbelievable speed on a ‘Tour de France’, in the direction of the Channel coast.

Although surrounded by simple field positions, we were endangered, by being within distance of one of the most strategic and important defence-lines, the Grebeberg Wall. Therefore a total evacuation was ordered by the authorities.

Instead of the shopping in preparation for the usual Whitsun holiday, we hurriedly packed the 30 kilos of essentials per person that we were allowed to take for that journey into the unknown. Nearly ten thousand inhabitants, walked, cycled or used the bus to reach the station in Soest-Soestdyke, where special trains waited to take them to safety. Already underway on our bicycles, we ducked our heads, as high above us, we heard the rat-tat-tat of the machineguns, as fighters fought with one another, leaving lightning tracers in the sky.

My brother Evert had gone to war the day before. The events of war in Rotterdam however had caused him to miss his ship, in which he should have departed as an apprentice of the Engineer School. He shakily told us of his ‘horror trip’ when returning to Soest on a motorbike. He passed dead paratroopers hanging in trees, and the wounded from shot down transport planes, or those having made an emergency landing. ‘Lady Fate’ had held her hand over him, for we were to learn later that his steamer had been sunk.

In overcrowded and darkened compartments, our train journey took us hours on end. We passed through a polder that had been flooded for defensive purposes, appearing almost ghostly. Seldom with any pause, our train steamed its way over the miles to the North Holland province, into safety. In passing Amsterdam, we had seen a red horizon of flaming oil-tanks, set alight by the British, and illuminating the sky. The last station of our journey was the small, sleepy town of Enkhuisen, nestling directly on the Ijsselmeer. Our family of ten had to be billeted separately, the small picturesque houses not able to house us all. That was where we spent those May war-days of 1940, in safety. But our peace of mind was clouded with fearful rumours about the situation in Soest.

The German Military Directorate decided to send their most recently formed units, the Waffen SS, to the Grebbe-line. Just three days after marching over the border, they managed to break through the core of the Dutch fortress, which Holland’s military experts had estimated would be their strongest form of protection. They believed it would withhold an enemy invasion for up to two and half months. After the attack, a Dutch soldier gave the following account of the German soldiers. “They gave a devilish impression in their colourful ‘camo’ uniforms, with stick or ‘potato-masher’ grenades stuck into boots and belt”. That description was to be confirmed later by a Dutch officer who said, “with an iron discipline and unprecedented fighting morale, this ‘go-getting’ modern force, although being at a numerical disadvantage, were in comparison to us, far, far superior”. Around 5,000 Dutch soldiers were taken prisoner at the Grebbe-line, having fought with two divisions against the ‘Der Führer’ Regiment. Those two divisions consisted of the cream of Dutch-Colonial troops, who with few exceptions, fought bravely, and with tough determination.

During those turbulent times a newsflash shook our land to the core. Queen Wilhelmina and the whole Cabinet had deserted and fled to England! Her plea to her people, ‘to do their duty, as she and her Government would do’, was forgotten. They had left the day before, being the second day of the invasion. On command of the mother-in-law of the active Prince Bernhard and his wife Juliana, together with her two other daughters, Beatrix and Irene, they boarded the British destroyer Codrington.

The population was shocked and angry at the desertion of the House of Orange. Demonstratively, officers tore their medals from their uniforms and soldiers threw down their weapons. It was an advantage that not all of the front-line soldiers were so quickly informed. General Winkelman of the High Command described the situation as “shameful”, in referring to the desertion of those controllers of state, who had left the already burdened General complete power of government.

In contrast, we were to learn a few weeks later that the Belgian King, Leopold III, although capitulating on 28 May 1940, had not left his soldiers or his people, to their own devices. He allowed himself to be interned in the Laeken Palace near Brussels, according to his status and the interests of his land, and according to the conditions laid down by the ‘victors’. This honourable and moral code of behaviour, was however turned against him after 1945, he being made responsible for Belgium’s defeat. Worse still he was accused of collaboration with the Germans. He was made a scapegoat, and forced to give his crown to his son Baudouin. One can only say, ‘unusual morals, unusual politics’.

A bridgehead was made by German soldiers during the night of 10 May. They had taken off from Zwischenahner Meer near Oldenburg, in twelve He 59 seaplanes, and flew into the heart of Rotterdam, where they landed. The heavily laden biplanes landed on the Nieuwe Maas, the river in the middle of Rotterdam, and in front of astounded inhabitants. It was what can only be called a ‘suicide mission’. A battle flared around the most important Maas bridges. Very soon, the mission was given support from paratrooper comrades, many landing on the green spaces between the tangle of houses and the Feyenoord football stadium. There they gathered together before the attack. Speed was the order of the day and without further ado, they commandeered a tram parked in front of the stadium. They ‘roared like the devil’ through the empty streets, fully loaded, to the shrill ring of the tram’s bell. They went to one of the disputed war zones at the Wilhelms Bridge. Not long before, paratroopers had sprung from the Junkers’ transporters to their targets, ready to begin their battle.

Very strong Dutch resistance hindered the advance of the Germans into the core of the town. In order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, the deploying Wehrmacht General ordered the Dutch commander to surrender, threatening air-bombardment if he refused, but also relieving his own hard-fighting soldiers.

The ‘tragedy’ of Rotterdam ran its course through more than one misunderstanding. The ultimatum was not accompanied with the necessary name and rank from the German General. So, that order was refused by the Dutch commander, who did not know that it was done to veil the strength of the enemy troops, nor that it was the usual code of conduct.

The slow-moving terms of ‘capitulation’, plus the bureaucratic conditions from the Dutch commander, led to a catastrophe in the end. The deadline of the hand-over, was cancelled however, as the bombers were already underway. Through insufficient communications, the taskforce could not be stopped.

An ocean liner that had been burning for days in the port, had produced a blanket of smoke for the pilots above, obscuring their view. The red flares, lit by the Germans to prevent them jettisoning their bombs, were seen therefore only by a few. Their own soldiers down below were also not spared from the oncoming bombardment.

In order to attack their target, but spare the civilian population, the bombers flew at the very low height of 750 metres, despite strong anti-air-craft fire. It was especially tragic that in one part of the town, where not even one bomb had fallen, damaged gas-pipes caused fires which spread rapidly through the old and closely built houses in a storm of fire.

It was a chain of unlucky circumstances which had caused the deaths of 600 innocent people. The Dutch Government however declined to prosecute, on charges of war crimes against Germany, after an investigation in 1947. After 1945, it had not been easy to assess who had caused the most damage to the Rotterdam Haven that was one of the most important to Holland. Five bombardments had followed that of the Germans, from both British and American bombers, that were far heavier.

In order to avoid the enormous consequences of further defence measures, which really were without hope, General Winkelman ordered an immediate surrender. He asked for ‘Terms of Surrender’. They were sealed with his signature and that of General von Küchler, for the whole of Holland, on 15 May 1940, in Rysoord. In that ‘five-day’ war, 2,032 Dutch soldiers lost their lives, nearly 20% falling in the defence of the Grebbe-line.

In Rotterdam, the town which had experienced the shock of war in all its reality, the inhabitants danced in the streets with relief and happiness. It was only natural after such an inhuman experience. After a few weeks Hitler released the Dutch prisoners of war from a north German prison, allowing them to return to their homeland. There they were enthusiastically greeted as if they were the victors.

Paris has fallen! The headline of the Hamburger Fremdenblatt on 14 June 1940

The operations of the Wehrmacht then progressed, concentrating on Belgium and France. ‘Lady luck’ threw her dice to their advantage, allowing them to break through French lines, with an army of tanks, which in size, mass, manoeuvrability and power had never been seen before. On the fifth day of the invasion, they advanced into the rear of the Allies in haste, to the English Channel.

On 24 May, German divisions would squeeze together both the surrounded British and French armed forces at Dunkirk. There is no doubt that they could have either destroyed, or have taken, the whole of the British Expeditionary Force prisoner. Among them was the core of the professionally trained army. There were also 400,000 French officers and men, but something extraordinary happened, ‘the miracle of Dunkirk’.

It was for friend or foe, an unexpected and fateful turn of events, as Hitler himself, in a love/hate relationship and as an admirer of Britain’s Empire, who stopped the offensive, giving the British the chance to escape. An enormous fleet of ‘sea-goers’, large and small, rowing-boat and ferry, boat and ship, answered the call to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force from the beaches, to take them back to England and to safety. All that was wished for from Britain, was that they recognised Germany’s place on the Continent. The target of coming to peace with Britain, in all honour, had motivated Hitler to spare the British, had however clashed with the opinions of his generals.

The English military historian, Liddell Hart wrote after 1945, that the German Reich had absolutely no plans for war against Britain. Hitler always believed in the significance of the British Empire’s structure, representing world discipline. Germany had imagined itself as a very important partner for Britain. Together they could oppose the Kremlin’s global machinations. Britain could have been an important ally to them, in a critical moment in their history, with which they could be content.

After the expulsion of the British Armed Forces from the continental mainland and the Belgian capitulation at the end of May, the second phase of the Western Offensive, the ‘Battle for France’, began on 5 June. Once again it developed into a ‘Triumphal March’ which was without precedence.

In what appeared to be a seamless combination between tanks and dive bomber squadrons, they advanced in sickle-like, semi-circular movements, closing in on the enemy forces, until they were surrounded and beaten. The German concept of Blitzkrieg had been perfected in the western theatre of war. Co-ordination imperfections and other mishaps, which had happened in the Polish campaign, were improved to near perfect co-ordination between Army and Air Force. The demoralised French could do nothing to stop the powerful advance of the German Army. In less than two weeks, the German infantry marched by the ‘Arc de Triomphe’ in Paris, it having been declared an ‘open city’.

They had a daily march behind them of between 50—60 kilometres, in the dust and the heat of a strange land. (Napoleon’s troops in comparison, managed only half as much in a day). Only a few days later, Marshall Philippe Pétain, France’s national hero from the First World War, asked for Terms of Surrender, after the occupation of his land.

On 21 July 1940, Hitler and his high command, waited to receive the French Peace Delegation, in the forest of Compiegne. The negotiations took place and were sealed in the same fox-red, railway salon-wagon as had been used on 8 November 1918 for the Surrender Treaty of the German Empire. However, it was certainly no repeat performance of humiliation as had happened on that autumn day. Then, the German envoys were treated with abuse, and already as prisoners of war, by the French Marshal, Ferdinand Foch. However, in July 1940, Germany’s ‘brave opponents’ were treated with military honour, the negotiations were handled correctly, and with a view to the future.

Incidentally, it was the same Marshal Foch who had, after the signing of the Versailles Pact declared, “This is no peace, but a laying down of arms for twenty years”. He was right. War had begun again 1939, but now, the roles were reversed.

In a campaign which had taken no less than seven weeks, three countries had been defeated by the German Armed Forces. Europe’s coastline from the North Cape to the Pyrenees were now in German hands. However, that did not mean they had held the upper hand with a 3:1 superiority of strength in the west, which military experts had assessed to be the ultimate requirement. Germany had fought with 136 divisions against 144 of the Allies, and with 2,245 tanks against 3,063. Only in the air was Germany supreme, with approximately 4,000 planes in comparison to 3,400 enemy machines.

War was at an end in the west and the German people now hoped for peace. The fighting forces were rewarded with holidays and it was suggested that no less than 35 divisions be demobilised. The return of Hitler’s forces from the western battle-zone was celebrated with a triumphal parade through Berlin. Every bell in the city was rung and an indescribable cheering from the population accompanied the column of cars driving over a carpet of flowers, from the Anhalter Station to the new Chancellery. The German people were overjoyed. In the few weeks of the war, very few had fallen, in comparison with the awful years of First World War which had cost the lives of millions.

On 19 July 1940, Hitler tried once more for conciliatory negotiations with his British opponents, in order to avoid unnecessary suffering and misfortune. But Churchill remained resolute. The war moved into the next round, Churchill being determined to fight for a ‘knock-out’.

German submarines were having one success after another at sea. The Royal Navy suffered considerable damage and losses. In the first year it was at a rate of 10 to 1 to the Germans. Instead of concentrating their efforts at sea, Britain became active in the air.

The first bombing mission by the Royal Air Force took place on 4 September 1939, 24 hours after Britain’s declaration of war. From aerodromes in East Anglia, the target of 29 bombers was Wilhelmshaven and German warships, which they wanted to destroy. Weather conditions were far from ideal and ten of the planes returned to their base, not having found their target, because of rain and heavy clouds. Three other planes wanted, mistakenly, to attack British warships but recognised their signals and turned around. One plane jettisoned its load on the Danish town of Esbjerg, being 180 kilometres off target through a navigation failure. In the actual bombardment of Wilhelmshaven from the other fifteen machines, five Blenheims and two Wellingtons were destroyed, from a heavy anti-aircraft barrage. All in all, they had only produced the minimum of damage. In broad daylight, those bombing crews were faced with flying a distance of 430 kilometres, from the British coast, in order to find their targets, which half the bomber force had not managed to find. It was a very disappointing beginning, luckily without heavy loss of life, but Britain learned very quickly from those mistakes.

When Churchill came to power, the air-warfare escalated. Liddell Hart’s comment was, “the world has not seen such an uncivilised form of warfare from the War Office, since the devastation by the Mongols”.

The ‘Blitz’, i.e. the air raids on London, began only after Britain had continuously bombarded German cities for three months. The first German bombs fell on the Island Kingdom from the German Air Force in June 1940.

Pointless restraint was at an end. At the opening of the Organised Winter Relief on 4 September 1940, Hitler declared, “they come in the night, indiscriminately dropping their bombs on residential areas, and I have, after three months, not retaliated. I believed that such madness would be stopped. We are now answering night for night. If the British Air Force drops two, three or four tons of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150, 250 or 300 tons. If they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground”. He then secretly lifted the embargo on London.

In the aerial battle of Britain, the ‘Battle of Britain’, it very quickly became clear that the young German Air Force was not equipped for aerial warfare, particularly for bombing raids on a large scale. They just did not possess any large bomber-type aircraft similar to those of the British, or those that the Americans used later against Germany. The bomber squadrons were very quick to recognise that they had a problem. They and their accompanying fighters could only cope with a tenth of the range needed to reach Britain’s island territory, in which, almost undisturbed the production of planes continued, as well as the training of their pilots. The war, as far as the German Air Force was concerned, was ill-timed, its conception not having been completed. They really did not have a very good chance to fulfil all that was expected of them.

Despite this, the air raids in the late summer and autumn of 1940, caused fear and anxiety for the 7 million inhabitants on and around the Thames. London, as the nerve-centre of the War Office, the Royal Woolwich Arsenal and munitions factories, with the Battersea power station, commercial docks, warehouses and trade centres, was of a very high strategic importance. In the first attack, 306 Londoners were killed.

We boys often cycled to the neighbouring aerodrome in Soesterberg, from where the German squadrons flew their missions over the Channel. We wanted to take a look at those gigantic birds. We were just fascinated by both flying perfection and technique. There were no security measures as such and we were able to walk over the grass to the crews sitting in the shade playing ‘skat’, to while away the time, the sun shining on the glass cockpits of the He—111s. Somewhat amused, but always friendly, the crews talked to us, giving information for which we had a real thirst. Enthusiastic and just as relaxed as those heroes of the air, we listened intently, as they told their stories of the battles with the ‘Sons of Albion’.

With the extension of air warfare, the Royal Air Force began to attack the small aerodromes in the Netherlands, including that of Soesterberg. Gigantic searchlights, shooting fingers of light in the night sky, encircled heavy 8.8cm calibre anti-aircraft guns standing in the middle of our village, for our defence.

The ‘ack-ack’ went into action at the approach of the British planes, flashes of fire spitting from the muzzles over the darkened houses. We heard shrapnel hitting roofs and tarmac quite clearly and night was turned into day for minutes on end, from parachute flares, silently floating down from the enemy planes. We saw flashes of lightning in the distance from exploding high explosive bombs and when the nightmare ended, we boys returned quite happily to our beds. It did not however quite end there. The ‘God of War’ gave encores, with a devilish plan, in every sense of the word, for the next day. He had another iron in the fire with a delayed reaction. Phosphorous strips, dropped by the British, ignited in the rays of the hot sun, which set harvest and hay stacks alight and which was a positive danger for us living in our thatched roof houses.

The air battle over Britain was not decided with bombs, but with dog-fight duels between the fighters. In this, the British had a clear advantage. Although the German planes were quicker, they suffered from the handicap of only being able to operate for no longer than 75 minutes. As accompanying support, they could only operate for between five and fifteen minutes, even when over London, their primary target. This amount of time was definitely too short. There was no absence of death-defying courage on either side, the opponents proving to be equally matched in their mercilessness. Without doubt the brave Royal Air Force pilots in their Hurricanes and Spitfires were the saviours of their country. Churchill said, “Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many, to so few”.