Shoot the guy

Heroes Remembers - Liberation of the Netherlands

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Shoot the guy

Transcript

Ya, there was a lot of hunger in cities and like, the dairy farmers, they, the cows go in the, in the, in the field. They stay out in the fields, like in Canada. They, they bring them in for milking time. But down there, they watch that all the time. And they had a watchmen with, with the herd overnight. People used to go from the city with little pails and pans and bottles, and they milk one quart . . . they used to get milk. And, and, on the grain farms, when, when, when the, the harvest was removed, people used to come and they, they scoured the field for little grain hatch what they ( inaudible ). The farmer, when, when, whenever they . . . at threshing time, they had an inspector, and you were, you were pulled in by, by the government, by the German Government. And every bag which came off the threshing machine was marked down. So, there was this one place, and he had a truckload of his wheat, was supposed to go to the city, and, and the inspector wouldn't let him go. And one guy says, "Shoot the guy," you know, and this was my neighbour. And he says, "Well," he says, "I, I have to have permission. I can't just go ahead and shoot him." So, my neighbour, he went next door to another underground fella. I guess he was his commander, or something, and once he left the farm a shot was fired. So, my neighbour, he turns around and he went back to the barn, and here was the inspector. And he got the blame for . . . he was in jail for a number of years and, finally, the Dutch court-marshalled . . . they said . . . He said, "You handled as a soldier," they said. They set him free. But in the meantime, at the same night, some people took the body of the inspector, and they put it in a big burlap bag, and they throw it in the ditch. And, and his bike, they throw it in another ditch. So, the next morning, somebody comes around, and they saw this bike in the water. And then they went, he went to pick up the bike, and he found papers and so on it. So, he took it to the police, which he should have never done. So, he took it to the police and some guy was arrested, and he was shot in the, in the shower at the police station. And after the war, of course, the family wanted to know what happened, and they dug it all up. And that's why my neighbour ended up in the, in the coop, and he was set free because of he was handled as a soldier. I don't know if he did it or whether somebody else did it, but he, he was linked to it. So, after the war, they went to Australia. He said, "I'm never gonna stay here," he says. Well, I think the Lancaster, the bombers, come and they drop food. But in our part of the country, you know, people came and pick it up. And they, they flew low to begin with and, and the, the doors on the bottom opened up, and then all these parachutes fell out with boxes and cartons and things, and they landed on to the ground. And people came and picked it up, and they shipped it to the city. And there was, was quite a few planes involved in this, 10, 15 at a time, one wave after another.

Description

Mr. Lammers discusses food shortages and the involvement of the Dutch underground and Allied air support for supplying the cities with food.

Henk Lammers

Mr. Lammers was born near Amsterdam, Holland, on March 11, 1926. At the time of German occupation, he was 14 and worked on his and his neighbour’s farms. He offers numerous perspectives on life in Holland during the Second World War. In 1946, Mr. Lammers joined the Dutch Army and served a tour of duty in Dutch Indonesia, namely Sumatra and Java. Mr. Lammers now resides in Ayton, Ontario, where he has been actively involved with the Cadets.

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