As daring as the episode with the cherry bomb had been, it did not satisfy Andrew. He had to think of something more useful than just annoying the Nazis with firecrackers. He soon came up with another plan. This time he would steal a Nazi gun and present it to someone in the Resistance. That should help me get into the organization, he told himself.
Andrew knew just where to find a German Luger pistol. As darkness was falling, he made his way to the home of a Dutch family who were collaborators. The man of the family served with the hated German SS. Andrew crept up to the window of the house and peered in. The man’s green uniform, jackboots, and belt hung by the door. And there on the belt was his holster with the Luger tucked in it. Since nobody was in the room, Andrew sneaked around to the door and opened it. He stood still for a moment and listened. A radio was booming in the next room. Probably a confiscated one! Andrew told himself. The Nazis allow themselves privileges that we aren’t allowed. I bet the whole family is in there, drinking good coffee and listening to the radio.
When he decided it was safe, Andrew stepped inside the house. He was relieved that the volume of the radio would cover any noise he might make. Andrew reached behind the door for the holster and slid the pistol out. The gun felt cold in his hand, and he was aware that his heart was beating furiously.
As quickly as he had entered the house, Andrew left and began to sprint down the road toward his home. He was breathless by the time he crossed the small bridge into his yard. But he was also excited. He had done it! He had stolen a German Luger pistol, and he could hardly wait to hand it over to the Resistance.
Two days later Andrew’s friend Kees told him about a Resistance cell meeting that was to be held in a nearby Christian primary school. Under the cloak of darkness, Andrew made his way to the location and knocked on the school door, using the secret code Kees had given him. A loft door swung open, and Andrew entered the world of the Dutch Resistance. His entrance fee to the meeting was the German pistol he had stolen. The meeting was already under way when Andrew arrived, and the eight or so young men were listening to Radio Orange, the Dutch Resistance radio station broadcast from London that Queen Wilhelmina had set up in exile.
As Andrew sat huddled with the others around the radio receiver, he felt a deep sense of contentment. At last he was one of them, the daring ones who were doing something to combat the dark cloud that had descended over Holland.
When the radio broadcast was over, the group discussed more ways to steal Nazi guns and bikes and how to counterfeit ration cards. Andrew also learned that the Resistance was helping many Dutch Jews who were secretly passing through Sint Pancras on their way to the coast, where they were picked up by boats and smuggled across the English Channel to Great Britain. It seemed that in the Dutch Resistance there was plenty of work for everyone, and Andrew soon found himself volunteering to disrupt Nazi transportation. He did not have the resources to blow up trucks or bridges, but Kees gave him instructions on how to ruin their car engines. This involved dumping sugar in the gas tank, which in turn would clog up the engine and cause it not to run.
The Resistance workers left the meeting one at a time, and when Andrew’s time came to slip through the door and make his way across backyards to his home, he felt satisfied. He told himself that the German lieutenant’s staff car was going to be the first gas tank to receive the “sugar treatment.”
Two nights later Andrew was able to accomplish his mission with little difficulty. However, he did notice his mother’s eyebrows raise when she went to refill the sugar bowl soon afterward. She said, “I hear some of the Nazis are having problems with their cars.” A smile played around her mouth as she spoke, and Andrew knew he had her blessing to take the family’s precious sugar ration for such a purpose.
Andrew continued with his Resistance activities, taking messages from one Resistance cell to another or escorting Jews to safe houses for the night. The stakes for involvement in such activities, however, grew increasingly high for Andrew and his coworkers. When, by 1942, the Nazis had dropped any pretense that they were in Holland to protect and liberate the Dutch, the ugly truth was there for everyone to see: the Nazis intended to take over all of Europe, and eventually the world, and their need for Dutch supplies and manpower had increased.
Soon the German lieutenant and his men who occupied the village were replaced by a much more odious group of German soldiers, known as the razzia. The razzia did not station themselves in the village but rather made raids on it. At any time of the day or night, Nazi trucks would roar into Sint Pancras, sealing off the route in and out of the place. Squads of machine-gun-toting soldiers would then jump out of the trucks and search every house. If radios or other banned items were found, the homeowner was marched off and handcuffed inside one of the trucks. Occasionally someone who annoyed the razzia would be shot on the spot.
The Germans were actually after able-bodied men. Andrew was fourteen years old now. He was lean and fit and just the kind of youth they were looking for. It became imperative for him and the other men of Sint Pancras to never let down their guard. Even when they slept, they did so with the window open and one ear listening for the rumble of truck engines in the distance.
Once the men heard the dreaded sound of approaching trucks, they had only a matter of minutes to head for safety—the safety of the swamp beside the railroad tracks. As the fastest runner in the village, Andrew always led the group as they ran for their lives across the flatland toward the dike on top of which the railway line sat. The men and boys would spread out among the swampy marshes at the foot of the dike and hide until the Germans left.
A year later, in 1943, the situation in Sint Pancras became even more desperate. The Nazis turned the electric power off to the village, making everything damp and gloomy. Food was desperately short—the last of the precious tulip bulbs had long since been eaten—and people scavenged for swamp weed to eat. Andrew was particularly distressed when the people of the village needed firewood so badly that they cut down first one, then two, then all of the elm trees that lined the dike road. He recalled how Bas had loved to stand under the elms and watch the world go by, but now he was almost glad that Bas was gone. The Nazis had rid Holland of the weak and infirm, and Bas would have been taken away and killed for sure. As it was, in their search for able-bodied men, the razzia were now after not only Andrew and his younger brother Cornelius but also Mr. van der Bijl, and they all had to dash to safety in the swamp when they heard the rumble of trucks in the distance.
After spending hours in the swamp hiding from the Germans, Andrew’s father often coughed all night. Also, Andrew’s mother was growing weaker each month, and there were times now when she stayed in bed all day. Andrew watched as she turned away food at the table so that others could eat. He wondered whether she would starve to death.
By now all of the excitement of being a member of the Resistance had drained away in the harsh light of Nazi oppression, and Andrew wondered whether the war would ever end.
Chapter 5
Sure That He Had Found His Future
At last the radio hidden in the narrow crawl space at the back of the loft began to offer some rays of hope. The Americans, who had joined the Allies in the war in December 1941, were apparently planning with the British to attack the Germans in occupied France. Fearing such an invasion, Hitler had sent a huge contingent of forces to the northwest coast of France to repel the Allied forces.
Days went by, then weeks, and everyone in Sint Pancras began to wonder whether the proposed invasion had just been a malicious rumor. Then in the summer of 1944, the balance of power began to shift in favor of the Allies. On June 6 the rumored invasion finally began. Allied forces stormed ashore on the beaches of Normandy on the north coast of France. By August they had taken back Paris!
Soon hundreds of Allied bombers were flying over Sint Pancras on their way to bomb Germany into submission. It was a tense time for Andrew and his family. While it seemed inevitable that the Allies would liberate Holland, everyone was aware of just how dangerous—and desperate—the Germans had become. The people in the village were all wondering the same thing: Would the Germans shoot everyone in the village as they retreated? And would Allied bombs meant for the Nazis also fall on them? They had no way of knowing for sure, and everyone waited tensely to see what would happen.
By February 1945 the Allies had taken back all of France and were positioned along the border of Germany, all the way from Holland, south of the Maas River, through Belgium and Luxembourg.
Then on May 1, 1945, the radio reported wonderful news: Adolf Hitler was dead. Four days later his successor surrendered Holland and ordered all Nazi troops to leave the country. Word quickly spread that Canadian soldiers had pushed into Alkmaar and that the Germans were hurriedly packing up their belongings and fleeing. Suddenly and unceremoniously, Sint Pancras was liberated!
When Andrew heard the news, he raced outside. People were weeping and celebrating in the street. But Andrew did not join them. He sprinted off to Alkmaar to find the Canadian liberators. When he got to Alkmaar, he begged for food for his mother. A Canadian soldier told him to wait a moment. When he returned, he held a bag of bread crusts, which he handed to Andrew. As far as Andrew was concerned, the bread crusts might as well have been gold as he tucked the bag into his shirt and sprinted home to share the crusts of bread with his family.
Andrew was overwhelmed with emotion as he watched his mother eat a crust of bread. Tears streamed down his mother’s cheeks as she ate. Andrew cheered himself with the news that soon everyone in Holland, including his mother, would have enough food to eat.
Two days later a strapping twenty-one-year-old strolled through the door of the van der Bijl house. It was Ben! No one had heard from him during the five years of the occupation, because it was not safe to pass along messages. Now here was Ben, standing in front of them all, once more making the van der Bijl family complete.
After the euphoria of the liberation of Holland and the end of the war wore off, it was time for the family to take a realistic look at what to do next. The younger children went back to school to try to catch up on all the learning they had missed. Andrew, however, did not know what to do with himself now, since he was too old to go back to sixth grade. He liked to run every day, and he helped his mother with work around the house, but he knew that eventually he would have to find a direction for his life.
Andrew’s father was apparently thinking the same thing too, because one day during the summer of 1945 Andrew’s sister Geltje met Andrew at the door with the news that their father wanted to see him in the garden. Mr. van der Bijl was tending the cabbages, and when he saw Andrew approaching, he straightened up and leaned on his hoe.
“You wanted to see me, Papa?” Andrew said, almost shouting.
“You are seventeen years old now, Andrew,” Mr. van der Bijl boomed back.
A lump formed in Andrew’s throat. The conversation he had been dreading was about to take place, right there in the cabbage patch and loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“What are you going to do with your life?” his father asked.
Andrew did not know what to say. He had thought about the question himself, although nothing he thought of filled him with any sense of excitement. But he knew one thing for sure: he was not going to spend the rest of his life in boring, old Sint Pancras. Somehow he was going to see the world. But how would he tell his deaf, old father this?
