“It was interesting,” Andrew offered. Then he paused for dramatic effect. “But I think the pastor preached on Luke 3:16 last month. Perhaps he should teach something from the Old Testament for a change.”
Andrew waited to see whether his father or Mr. Whetstra believed him.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Whetstra replied. “You are right, Andrew. It has been weeks since we have had a sermon from the Psalms. They are my favorite.”
The conversation then took a turn, and Andrew waited for another opportunity to insert a word or two, confirming that he had paid attention throughout the entire church service.
After the ritual two cups of coffee, the Whetstras were ready to leave. Mr. and Mrs. Whetstra shook Andrew’s parents’ hands, and then Mr. Whetstra ruffled Andrew’s hair. “It’s good to see you concentrate on the sermon,” he said. “Next time you pass our house, come in and visit with us. My wife makes the best cookies, and our stove is working flawlessly since I put in the new window pane.”
Andrew felt the blood drain from his face. Was it a coincidence that Mr. Whetstra had mentioned cookies and how well his stove was working, or did he know that it was Andrew who had put the glass pane over the chimney? Finally Andrew decided that Mr. Whetstra knew that he had done it.
A long, uncomfortable moment passed as the Whetstras gathered their coats and headed out the door. Andrew knew that if Mr. Whetstra had said anything to his father about the incident, he would be whipped. His father was not a man to tolerate practical jokes, especially on unwitting neighbors. Andrew was thankful that Mr. Whetstra did not say anything more about the incident, and he very obligingly helped his older sister Maartje set the table for lunch after the Whetstras had left.
“Andrew,” Maartje hissed as they worked together, “some people have the whole Bible in their heads but not one word of it in their hearts.”
Andrew kept laying out the knives and spoons. He hated it when his older sister got like this. She was just as religious as his mother and was one more reason why he knew he would never live in Sint Pancras when he grew up. He would be moving on in search of real adventure out there somewhere.
Chapter 3
Something Sinister Was Creeping over Europe
It was the last day of May 1939, and in recent days a sense of gloom had settled over the van der Bijl house. Bas had somehow contracted tuberculosis, and the doctor had said that he could not hold on much longer.
Andrew was heartbroken. He had celebrated his eleventh birthday just three weeks before, but with his older brother lying deathly ill in his parents’ bedroom, the celebration had been no fun. To make matters worse, only Andrew’s parents entered the bedroom to visit Bas and care for him. Since tuberculosis was a very contagious disease, everyone in the house was taking a risk being there, and Mr. and Mrs. van der Bijl wanted to reduce as much as possible the risk of their other children’s catching the disease. But Andrew did not care. In fact, he wanted to catch tuberculosis. He had decided that it would be easier to suffer with Bas and share in his fate than go on living after his brother had died. So one day while his father was at work and his mother sat beside her beloved radio, Andrew quietly opened the door to his parents’ bedroom and slipped inside, shutting the door behind him.
Lying on the big bed in the bedroom was Bas, though Andrew hardly recognized him. The outline of his bones showed through the blanket, and his eyes were sunken. Andrew climbed up on the bed and lay down beside his brother. He put his arm around him and cradled his head. He felt hot tears streaming down his face as he kissed Bas over and over.
For the next two weeks Andrew waited expectantly to feel tightness in his chest or experience coughing fits, but nothing happened. He stayed as healthy as ever, while behind the bedroom door Bas continued to grow weaker. Finally, one morning in early July, Mrs. van der Bijl emerged from the bedroom, sobbing—seventeen-year-old Bas was dead.
The funeral service for Bas was subdued, partly because everyone felt sorry for his short and strange life and partly because something sinister was creeping over Europe. No one liked to talk about it much, but Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, had become more and more aggressive toward her neighbors over the years. Finally, in March 1939, German troops had marched into Prague, Czechoslovakia, and had taken control of the place. Now the Germans were making territorial demands on Poland.
Normally Andrew would have been very interested in such events, but he had been so caught up in his brother’s illness that he had hardly noticed the changes going on in Europe. Then, less than two months after Bas’s funeral, the Germans invaded Poland. Two days later Britain and France demanded that the Germans withdraw their troops from the country. When the Germans did not withdraw, the British and French declared war on Germany. But the declaration of war did nothing to slow down the German advance. Within days the Germans’ superior military force had smashed the Polish army.
With this happening to Germany’s neighbors to the east, people in Holland began to wonder what might be in store for Germany’s western neighbors. During World War I Holland had prided itself on remaining neutral, but people were beginning to wonder whether that would be possible this time around. They could not ignore the fact that the Germans seemed to show little regard for treaties or the neutrality of countries, and it seemed unlikely that the Germans would make an exception for Holland.
Then one night, soon after the Nazis had invaded Poland, Andrew sat by the radio with the rest of his family, listening to the latest news. Andrew heard the startling news that all reserve units of the Dutch army were being activated and that all privately owned motorcars were to be turned over to the government for its use. This was stunning information, and everyone, including Andrew, knew that it would not be long before the Dutch would be forced to fight the Germans.
Day after day Andrew stood under Bas’s elm tree and watched the traffic. It seemed like everyone in Holland was on the move. Cars zoomed north and south, and large trucks carrying troops thundered by. Andrew wished that he were old enough to be a soldier in one of the trucks—that would be a real adventure. But he was only eleven years old and had to resign himself to following the progress of the war by listening to the radio.
The war soon drew closer than Andrew could have imagined. In April 1940 the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway under the guise of protecting these two countries from Britain and France. People in Holland knew that it was now only a matter of time before German troops marched into their country. The Dutch government decided that something needed to be done to slow down any German advance into Holland. It decided that one of the ways to do this was to destroy the polder lands. The polder was the name given to the low-lying land that had been reclaimed from the sea and was kept dry by dikes. Much of the land to the northeast of Sint Pancras had been reclaimed from the sea and was known as the Wieringermeer Polder. Andrew climbed to the top of the roof of the van der Bijl house to try to catch a glimpse of the dikes being destroyed. He did not see much, but he could hear the huge explosions as Dutch troops blew up the dikes.
Once it would have been Andrew’s fantasy to see such explosions, but the results of blowing up the dikes was no fun for him. All of the people who lived on the Wieringermeer Polder streamed into Sint Pancras as their land was flooded. Every home in the village except the van der Bijls’ housed a refugee family. Since the van der Bijl house was the smallest in the village and the family was one of the largest, the house had no room for another family. Andrew’s mother compensated for not being able to take in a refugee family by cooking night and day. The soup pot was continually on the stove, preparing food to help feed the refugee families. Andrew’s job was to peel endless amount of potatoes, carrots, and onions to go into the pot. There was never enough food for everyone who had sought refuge in the village, and for the first time in his life, Andrew would leave the table after a meal without feeling full. But he knew better than to complain about the situation; everyone was stretched to the limit.
Flooding the polders did not stop the German army’s eventual advance into Holland. The Germans did not initially come on foot overland, as the Dutch had predicted, but came by air. On the night of May 9, 1940, Holland’s prime minister addressed the nation by radio, trying to reassure Dutch citizens that Holland was still neutral. Andrew, like everyone else in Holland, wanted to believe the prime minister’s words, but the words seemed hollow, given all that was happening across Europe. Andrew was still thinking about Holland’s fate as he drifted off to sleep that night.
In the early hours of the morning of May 10, Andrew was awakened from his sleep by what sounded like a thunderstorm in the distance. He listened to the booming for several minutes, and then he heard another noise—the voice of someone yelling outside.
“It is not thunder,” the voice yelled. “It’s bombs. The Germans are invading!”
Andrew’s heart thumped as he climbed out of bed. The rest of the family was up as well, and they all gathered around the radio, trying to hear news of what was happening in the country. They tuned to a radio station in London that confirmed that the Germans had indeed begun their assault not only on Holland but also on neighboring Belgium and Luxembourg. German planes were bombing airports all over Holland, and German paratroopers had begun parachuting into the country. The matter-of-fact voice on the radio from London noted that the Dutch were hopelessly outnumbered by the Germans, and it would be only a matter of time before German tanks began rolling over the eastern border into Holland.
When the sun came up, the stunned residents of Sint Pancras stumbled out into the streets to discuss the situation in the country. Suddenly airplanes—German planes—appeared overhead! The residents fled back indoors, and moments later the explosions began. The van der Bijl family huddled together as their house vibrated to the percussion of the blasts.
“The Germans are attacking the airfield,” Andrew’s father said in his booming voice.
Halfway between Sint Pancras and the town of Alkmaar, located five miles to the south, was a small military airfield. When the bombing was over, the German warplanes had reduced the place to a pile of rubble.
The airfield was not the only place in Holland to be reduced to rubble. Four days later, frustrated by the stubborn Dutch resistance, the Germans launched a massive bombing assault on the city of Rotterdam. They bombed the city mercilessly, destroying most of it. Adolf Hitler then threatened to do the same to the city of Utrecht if the Dutch did not surrender. On May 14, the Dutch prime minister surrendered the country to the Germans. It was a sad day for the Dutch and for the van der Bijl family. The only good news was that Queen Wilhelmina of Holland had managed to escape to London the day before the surrender.
With the surrender, German soldiers goose-stepped into Amsterdam while German tanks began crossing the border into the country. The occupation of Holland was complete, and it was not long before a radio announcer speaking in Dutch with a heavy German accent declared, “The German army is here to assist Holland. You are now part of the glorious Third Reich. We will keep you safe from the aggression of the French and British troops.”
“Ha!” Andrew’s father yelled when he heard the announcement.
A shiver went down Andrew’s spine. All the German troops, tanks, and airplanes now in Holland did not make Andrew feel one bit safe. It was clear to him, and to everyone else, that the Germans, not the British or the French, were the aggressors.
