Starving Children in Holland

Heroes Remember

Starving Children in Holland

Transcript

To me, it's civilians. Kids was the worst thing for me. You know, in Holland, during the winter of Holland in, when I was, when we were in Holland, little kids coming around, seeing them, you know, coming to the garbage, you know, scraping around. They'd come early in the morning cause they knew that when, you know, breakfast is being served. In order to get a piece of bread or a piece of toast or whatever was thrown out, you know. See little kids, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years old, you know, scraping for food. Course you always have somebody that's, a little girl, she was, and she said, she could talk pretty good English and she said, “Papa very sick”. So another guy and I we went, she said, where do you live? So she lived about two miles across the field there on a farm. We went over there and her dad was, I don't know what he had, he probably had TB or something because he was coughing terrible and he was lying in bed, coughing, and she said, “Papa's very sick.” Course the mother, she couldn't talk English either, but we brought as, you know, as much food as we could, you know, like biscuits and stuff, maybe a can of [inaudible] or something but I don't imagine he lived very long, you know. But you know, little kid scrounging food like, for her dad, you know, he was dying.

Description

Mr. Bruce offers a sombre reflection about the starvation he witnessed in Holland, particularly its effect on children.

Robert Bruce

Robert Bruce was born on February 11, 1922 at Sturgeon Valley, Saskatchewan. He was the second youngest of eight children. After they were forced to sell their farm when his mother was widowed, the community built Mr. Bruce’s family a new house across from the local school. He left school at fourteen, didn’t qualify academically for the air force, and eventually joined the army, where he served as a truck driver. Mr. Bruce served in post D-Day Europe from France to Germany. After the war, he returned to Canada and worked on the railroad.

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