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75 stories, one for every year we have lived in freedom. Together they give a good impression of the impact the Second World War had on the people of Brabant. These stories form the starting point for a programme throughout Brabant and an(inter)national campaign called Brabant Remembers. Its aim is to allow as many people as possible, and especially younger generations, to experience these stories. The ultimate dream is to bring at least one life-changing story to life in every community under the title:Brabant Remembers – 75 personal life changing war stories.
After Combat: True War Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan. Of fighting in Afghanistan, and his real-world experiences seeing it in action.
The Derks family, comprising sixteen children, eight boys and eight girls, lived in ’t Hout in the town of Geldrop. The family was not well off and the sons sold potatoes to make a living. They showed a lot of dislike for the German occupiers during the war.
But eighteen year old Riek, one of the daughters, had different feelings as she was in love with a German Feldwebel (sergeant). The fact that he was married with two children did not deter her. Their sister’s behaviour was a point of contention for the brothers Henk (35), Gerard (24), Theo (?) and Christ (22). The Jewish community in Geertruidenberg was small, its few members met every week on the Sabbath in the synagogue that stood in the shadow of the majestic Geertruidskerk church. This was not far from the Koestraat, where Bethrina Kooperberg grew up with her sisters and brother. Records in Geertruidenberg show that the last major celebration in the synagogue was Jaap (Jacob) Kooperberg’s Bar Mitzvah.
By the time the Second World War broke out the sisters Netty, Betsy and Trijntje were already engaged or married, and no longer lived in Geertruidenberg. The oldest daughter Bethrina was still single and lived with her ageing uncle Salomon and her aunts Rika and Sofia (Fie) Kalker in the Stationsweg in Geertruidenberg. She could often be found at the Van Beek family where she looked after the young children Jet and Jan. The Battle of the Schelde was a large military operation in northern Belgium and south-west Netherlands. The operation was started by the Canadian 1st Army Division (including Polish and British units) on 1 October 1944 and continued until 8 November of that year. The most important aim was to liberate the River Schelde so that the allied supply ships could access Antwerp harbour. The harbour itself fell into allied hands on 4 September and was virtually undamaged.
But it was unusable for as long as the Germans had control of the Schelde. When on the initiative of the British Field Marshall Montgomery, attention was shifted to Operation Market Garden, it gave Hitler’s generals time to fortify the Zeeland islands and the banks of the Schelde estuary. There was a ghostly atmosphere in Asten in the night of Wednesday 20 to Thursday 21 September 1944. British grenade fire had caused total ravage in and around the church.
Asten was evacuated on the Thursday, followed that evening by the parish of Ommel, a favourite pilgrimage place to the Virgin Mary. ‘Das ganze Heiligtum geht kaputt’ (the entire shrine will be destroyed), the Germans had said. Many residents of Ommel were looking for shelter, but many stayed at home.
They did not see the need to leave. Things were tense around the village of Best from 18 September 1944 onwards. American soldiers were approaching from Eindhoven, German soldiers were entrenched in the tall church tower in Best.
Everyone was hoping for a quick liberation, but on the contrary things were getting more dangerous by the day: one day the village was in American hands, the next day it was back under the control of the Germans. On the orders of the Americans many people, and especially children, were evacuated from the area. In September 1944, the Allied forces started the largest airborne operation in history in order to free Europe from German occupation: Market Garden. A ground attack was started from Belgium and an airborne assault from England.The objective of the Allied soldiers was to secure a number of important bridges in the Netherlands, after which they would be able to push through to the IJsselmeer and then to the German Ruhr area. The operation started on 17 September, when thousands of Allied parachutists landed between Eindhoven and Arnhem and to the southeast of Nijmegen. British soldiers advanced via the Corridor from Belgium in the direction of Grave.
The fifteen-year-old seminarian Wim Boeijen lived near Reek in 1944. Reek was of strategic importance to the Allied military plan and was a significant crossing place for the river Maas at Grave in the direction of Nijmegen. Harrie van Daal, born in 1908, was a civil servant at the Municipality of Overloon–Maashees (later to become Vierlingsbeek). He had visited the battlefields in the Belgian town of Ypres between the two world wars and they had made a deep impression on him. Memories of the First World War were kept alive here in a poignant way. During the Second World War Van Daal continued his work as a civil servant.
He managed to prevent a number of men from being conscripted into the Arbeitseinsatz (Forced Labour Deployment) by making them members of the volunteer fire brigade, at least on paper.