Dutch charity and a revelation

Heroes Remember

Dutch charity and a revelation

Transcript

We were billeted with a Dutch family and they spoke no English, we spoke no Dutch, no German and neither of us spoke French. We found that we could sort of get by with a little bit of German and they were terrific with us and we had an old school house that we had taken over, he had been one of the school masters and when we came off, of course we worked. I don't know we just worked and worked and worked until we went back and had a little bit of sleep and then came back again and always there was a little glass of wine beside our beds for us when we came off. Then the war in Holland came to an end and, of course, the signing was in Appledorn and they said to us, would you be interested in seeing how we got some of your airmen back to England so they took us to this house and we went into the bathroom and they turned the toilet around and had a ladder down into a room where there were a couple of beds and a table with magazines in English and they would keep them their until they got word they could go on to the next step. And this is one of the places they got them through but really it was fantastic.

Description

Ms. Drean describes being billeted with a Dutch family and always finding a glass of wine in her room after a long day's work. Her host family then shows her a secret room used to shelter escaping airmen who had been shot down.

Jean Drean

Jean Drean was born in 1916 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was the second of three children, all of whom were home-schooled. Ms. Drean studied nursing at St. Joseph's Hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, graduating in 1940. She enlisted in January, 1941 with #16 Canadian General Hospital and went overseas in June, 1942. In England, Ms. Drean served at #15 and #16 Canadian Field Hospitals. In France, she worked in a field surgical unit at a former German hospital in Saint-Omer, treating friend and foe with equal empathy. Lastly, as part of the Army of Occupation, Ms. Drean treated Russian and Polish POWs at a field hospital in Sogol, Germany.

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