The following day Andrew ate breakfast with his family and then decided to brave the village. Leaning heavily on his cane (he did not want to be seen on his crutches), Andrew hobbled down the dike road. The people he met along the way had known him his entire life, yet as they greeted him, they were polite but distant. They made small talk and asked him where he had hurt his leg, but not how. No one mentioned the latest news that the remaining Dutch troops were preparing to be evacuated from Indonesia.
Andrew was embarrassed talking with his family and with the people he met in the village about his experiences, but he longed for someone to have a serious conversation with. Somehow he found himself walking toward the Whetstra home. Mr. and Mrs. Whetstra greeted Andrew like a long-lost son. Mrs. Whetstra bustled around making coffee and buttering buns, while Mr. Whetstra peppered Andrew with questions.
Andrew was relieved to find someone who was genuinely interested both in what he had been through and in the fall of Indonesia. After several minutes, Mr. Whetstra paused and then asked, “So Andrew, was it the great adventure you were looking for?”
“No,” Andrew replied, embarrassed as he thought back to his earlier excitement about joining the army.
“Well then,” Mr. Whetstra said, patting him on the back, “we will just have to keep praying for you, won’t we?”
Andrew looked down at his crippled right leg and laughed bitterly. “There are no more adventures left in my future,” he said.
The conversation went dead after this, and Andrew regretted his outburst. Deep down he longed to talk to someone about his life, or the shell of it that was left, but he could not bring himself to be honest about his fears for the future. Instead he muttered some excuse and left the Whetstras’ house.
“Come back and see us soon,” Mr. Whetstra said as Andrew left, but Andrew did not know whether he would. The Whetstras were just too nice for a young man who had done the things he had done.
As he hobbled along, leaning more heavily than ever on his cane, Andrew wondered whom he could visit next. Kees, his friend from the Resistance, popped into his mind. Andrew remembered Kees as a wild, daring boy. Surely, Andrew reasoned, if anyone wanted to hear tales of commando raids and ambushes in Indonesia, it would be Kees. When Andrew arrived at the house, Kees’s mother directed him upstairs to Kees’s bedroom.
Andrew half walked, half pulled himself up the stairs. He found Kees bent over a book, studying hard. Kees greeted Andrew warmly and cleared a space on the bed for him to sit down. After a few awkward moments, Andrew asked Kees what he was studying.
“I’ve found what I want to do with my life,” Kees said, holding up a Bible study book.
Andrew felt a fake smile freeze on his face. “What?” he asked, although he had already guessed the answer.
“I’m going to become a minister,” Kees announced enthusiastically.
There was a longer silence as Andrew tried to think of something to say. He wanted to scream, “But Kees, you were a daredevil, my boyhood hero. Don’t throw your life away on religion!” Instead he made an excuse about leaving and dragged himself down the stairs and out the door, mumbling farewell to Kees’s mother as he left.
Back on the dike road, Andrew felt an overwhelming pressure in his chest. Nothing was turning out the way he had thought it would. Most people were being polite, though they were not particularly interested in his experiences, and the only ones who were interested wanted to talk to him about God. Andrew had spent three years in Indonesia, longing to be home, and now home was the last place on earth he wanted to be.
Chapter 8
Letting Go of Himself
Andrew was relieved to say good-bye to Sint Pancras. The army had arranged for him to enter a rehabilitation program at a veterans’ hospital in Doorn, about sixty miles away. At the hospital Andrew found it strangely comforting to be around other young men who had suffered similar experiences to his. No one stared at his cane, and if someone wanted to know how he had injured his leg, the person would ask Andrew directly and listen without grimacing through the explanation.
The best thing of all about Doorn for Andrew was that it was situated not too far from Gorkum and Thile’s home. On his first weekend of leave, Andrew made a beeline for Thile’s house. But things did not start out well. The bus was so crowded that it had standing room only, and a woman stood up to allow Andrew to take her seat. Although he knew he could not stand the entire way, Andrew was humiliated to think that he looked so disabled.
When Andrew finally got to Thile’s house, things got worse. Although he had often imagined the wonderful moment of meeting Thile again, in reality their meeting was tense. Thile wanted to know how Andrew was doing with his Bible reading, and Andrew had to admit that he had not picked the Bible up since arriving home. Thile looked very disappointed. “Andrew, God is waiting to turn your life around and shape you into something new. Why don’t you let Him?” she asked.
It was the kind of question Mr. Whetstra might have asked, but Andrew was in no mood to reflect on his spiritual condition. Although he wanted to retaliate to the question with some wisecrack, instead he became sullen. Everyone, it seemed, had some idea or plan for how to “make him better.” Yet despite the unexpected turns in their conversation, Andrew enjoyed his visit with Thile and promised that he would return to see her again when he next got leave. It was several weeks, however, before Andrew got more leave, so he contented himself with writing to Thile.
About a month after his visit with Thile, Andrew had an experience that he could not put into words. It all started when a pretty, blonde young woman came into his ward at the veterans’ hospital. The woman invited Andrew and the other twenty men he shared the ward with to attend a revival meeting that evening. She announced that a bus had been arranged to transport those who wanted to go to the meeting site. The young men let out wolf whistles at her as she left the ward and promised that they would come to the meeting. Surprisingly, by six thirty in the evening, all of the men from the ward were dressed in their best clothes and were waiting in line at the hospital door for the bus to arrive.
Andrew and his friend Pier, who shared the bed next to him in the ward, hung at the back of the line. Earlier in the afternoon Pier had sneaked into town and bought a bottle of gin, and now he and Andrew stood in line, taking large swigs from the bottle. By the time the bus arrived at seven to pick the men up, Andrew was feeling the warm, comforting buzz of the alcohol enveloping him.
Andrew and Pier continued swigging the gin throughout the bus ride that took them to the outskirts of town, where a large tent had been erected for the meeting. Inside the tent Andrew and Pier found a seat at the back and drained the bottle of gin while they waited for the service to begin.
The service began when a man with deep-set eyes and a narrow face took the podium. To Andrew the man’s face looked like that of a rat, and Andrew began to laugh out loud. Pier joined in the laughter, and the two men were still guffawing when the opening hymn ended. Andrew had no idea how disruptive his and Pier’s behavior was until the rat-faced man announced, “Brothers and sisters, we have two men here tonight who are chained by the powers of a dark world.” The man then began to pray out loud for Andrew and Pier.
As the man prayed, Andrew tried to control his laughter until his sides hurt. Finally he lost the battle and was soon guffawing louder than ever, so loud, in fact, that he drowned out the rat-faced man’s prayer. Andrew watched in drunken delight as the obviously frustrated man gave up his prayer and told the choir to sing. The choir stood to its feet and began singing the song “Let My People Go.”
When the choir reached the chorus to the song, everyone in the tent joined in the singing. By now Andrew and Pier were laughing uncontrollably. In fact, Andrew could not recall a time when he had laughed so much. It felt good to laugh, even if the laughter was alcohol induced.
The choir sang on through the second verse of the song, but when the audience again joined in for the chorus, Andrew noticed a curious thing. As they belted out “Let my people go,” the words suddenly had a sobering effect on him. Andrew stopped laughing and listened to the words being sung around him. But instead of hearing “Let my people go,” Andrew seemed to be hearing “Let me go,” as though it were Andrew addressing some force outside of himself.
Andrew sat silently on the bus ride back to the hospital, contemplating the words of the song. What could they mean? And why had they seemed to speak to him?
The following morning Andrew awoke with a hangover. But he also awoke with something else—a deep desire to read his mother’s Bible. All that day he carried the Bible with him, reading it whenever he had a spare moment. And much to his surprise, he wanted to read more the following day, and the day after that. Soon he had set himself a schedule to help guide him systematically through the whole Bible.
As a result of his Bible reading, Andrew had a much more enjoyable visit with Thile the next time he went to see her. He now wanted to discuss with Thile what he was reading in the Bible, and he enjoyed Thile’s comments and observations. He enjoyed his conversations with Thile so much, in fact, that he decided he would ask her to marry him as soon as he was released from the army and had a steady job.
Andrew’s release from the army and the rehabilitation center came in November 1949. The Dutch government gave Andrew a small severance allotment along with his discharge papers. Andrew used the money to buy a bicycle. The weeks of rehabilitation therapy had improved the strength in his right leg, but he still had a long way to go if he was to walk without a limp. Andrew decided that riding the bike around would both help to strengthen his leg and get him out onto the polders on which he had loved so much to run.
Since Andrew had nowhere else to go after his release from the hospital and the army, he went back home to Sint Pancras and moved in with his father. Although Andrew did not have a job, he did have a way to fill his days—he went to church, one service every night and two on Sundays. Some of the services were at the Reformed church in Sint Pancras, while others, such as the Salvation Army service in Alkmaar and the Baptist prayer meeting in Amsterdam, were a long bike ride away. Andrew did not care what denomination people belonged to as long as they believed the Bible and wanted to have fellowship with him. At the services he attended, Andrew took careful notes during the sermons and reviewed them the following day, rereading all the Bible passages mentioned and reflecting on their meaning and the meaning of the sermon to his life.
The van der Bijls were staunch members of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Andrew’s church-attending actions did not please them. At first Andrew was oblivious to their concerns, until one day when his sister Maartje brought him a cup of tea. Andrew was sprawled out on his bed reading a psalm.
“Andrew,” Maartje said shyly, “I know you have been through a lot, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I am worried about the amount of time you spend in your bedroom. It’s not normal. And all this riding around to churches. You never used to go to service even once on Sunday, and now you go every day. Don’t you think it’s a bit much?”
Andrew stared at his sister. “I just feel like I have to, Maartje. I wish I knew what was happening to me.”
Maartje sighed. “Well, we are worried, and Papa especially…” Her voice trailed off. “Papa says it’s shell shock.”
Andrew did not know what to say next, and Maartje put down the cup of tea and quietly left the room.
As he thought back on his behavior since arriving home from the rehabilitation unit, Andrew had to admit that it probably did look strange to people. But am I in danger of becoming one of those religious kooks ranting on the streets in Amsterdam? Or even becoming like the Whetstras, quoting Bible verses for every situation. Is that what I’m turning into? These were sobering questions, and Andrew’s tea grew cold as he pondered them. In the end he could not come up with an answer. All he knew was that he felt powerless to resist the fellowship of Christians wherever he could find it. He decided to discuss his family’s concerns with Thile. Surely she would know what to do. But Thile proved to be anything but comforting.
