THE SCARRED OAK. William Walraven
be on, and all the racers would ride two times around the village. The first prize would be one hundred guldens; second, fifty; and the third, twenty-five.
This event was highly advertised by the village announcer, who, after ringing his big handbell about every one hundred yards, shouted the latest news. Naturally, this race would be quite an event, and when the day arrived, most of the villagers watched this spectacle. It was a beautiful summer day, and at 2:00 p.m., approximately twenty-five men arrived at the start line in front of the church.
One man shouted, “Get ready… Go!” And they took off.
Already since the announcement, Tom had shouted and proclaimed that he would be the winner. It would be a cinch. He quickly paddled to the front because he knew that at the first corner, some people would slip into one another. After the first round, Tom was ahead, as everyone expected. There were about ten riders left. The remaining fell around the corners or gave up.
Piet had started also, but halfway through the second round, he was far behind and drove into an open barn door, as planned. One man standing at the last corner would give his brother, Alex, a sign to get on his bicycle as soon as the racers came around the third corner. Alex was dressed identically as Piet. When Tom made the last corner, short of winning, he saw that “Piet Vlodrop” was in front of him.
Unbelievable! How could that have happened? he thought.
Perspiring very heavily and with his last power, Tom tried to beat Piet, but he finally lost by one bicycle length. He was so upset that he didn’t even wait for his fifty guldens for the second prize winner and drove straight home. This was such a disgrace for him that he didn’t join people at the stoop for several weeks. When he finally showed up, he was a changed man, and some of the organizers felt really sorry for him. But they decided not to tell him until many years later.
Eric, standing on the finish line, was also very surprised that Piet had won the race. He also didn’t know what had really happened until some weeks later, when he overheard the whispering of some of the men.
By now, the Americans had entered the war and from their English bases, many night, the heavy bombers would fly over Holland to flatten cities in Germany. When the sirens blasted waves of back-chilling sounds over the village, everyone ran for cover to their basements. Eric’s basement was very strongly built with steel beams in the ceilings, and every time the siren went off, Willem, his two sisters, and his father (Willem’s mother had been dead for several years) would come over to hide out in the basement until the danger passed.
The basement had a stuffy, humid smell. It had a dirt floor, and besides the racks full of preserves, which his mother had made (some of them were years old), half of the basement was covered with potatoes and apples. Also, a big clay jar filled with brewing sauerkraut stood in a corner. This gave the air a sour smell.
Most of the time, it lasted an hour or so before the siren would blast again to deliver the message the danger had passed. But once in a while, the bombing came very close. Some of the German cities bombed were within forty-five kilometers or about thirty miles from Eric’s village. The vibration of the heavy bombing made the jar of preserves shudder, and the thundering noise of the explosions made everyone plug their ears with their fingers. On most of these particularly dangerous nights, his father was not present, as he was working afternoon and evening shifts. But then Eric sat beside Willem on the wooden bench against the wall. Every time a heavy explosion occurred, Willem, who had his arm around Eric, would pull him closer against his body as if to protect him. Eric felt these automatic muscle spasms in Willem’s arm and felt safe.
In the middle of the bombing, amidst the crying of the females and the loud praying of everyone involved, Johann’s nervous bladder always gave way, and quickly he interrupted the whole shebang by standing there, jumping from one foot to the other, asking everyone gathered to find an empty jar or can for him to relieve himself of his agony. Paul, Eric’s younger brother, was at that time only a few years old, and he sat most of the time on Martha’s lap, not knowing of the dangers involved. He would yell at every explosion “Boom!” while looking as if he had discovered something new.
One evening, however, when the sirens again blasted the surroundings and Martha and her three sons were already in the basement, Willem opened the basement door and shouted, “Martha, come up and take a look! The whole neighborhood is lit up, and it looks like daylight. Look, these airplanes are throwing out white lighted balls on parachutes.” This produced such a light that the whole neighborhood changed from darkness to nearly daylight. Within minutes, all hell broke loose. It rained bombs, and the earth shook so violently as if the world was going to end, nearly destroying all civilization. Crawling and falling over one another, they made it back into the supposedly safe basement. The constant eerie whistling of the bombs followed by tremendous explosions, which shattered and broke the jars of preserves, dumping their contents all over the floor, made this panic-stricken group of people scrunch so closely together, waiting for the inevitable. For the first time, Eric felt the seriousness of their situation and expected at any moment the final explosion. Even Eric’s little brother, Paul, held tight on his mother’s lap, felt and saw the panic. He scrunched himself so closely to Martha’s body that later she witnessed pinch marks of his tiny hands all over herself.
Wave after wave of bombers came over, dropping their bombs. After about twenty minutes to a half hour, which seemed like an eternity, a stillness unequalled came over the area, and it was as if the earth was holding its breath for a last onslaught. Everyone sat there, not yet believing that as if by some miracle, they were safe. Only the candlelight was playing games with the shadows on the wall. The shock of stillness was broken when the door of the basement swung open, and John came stumbling down the steps. His whole body was shaking. He fell into Martha’s arms and then collapsed onto his knees on the basement floor. His clothes had been torn to shreds, and he was bleeding all over his body. Cuts on his face and a deep gash on the side of his head had transformed his whole head into a bloody mess.
“Thank God you’re all safe,” he uttered, still out of breath. This incident broke the tension, and now everyone realized the bombing had stopped.
“My god, John, what happened? Are you badly injured?” Martha cried and, with Willem’s help, pulled John to his feet.
“No, I think there are only cuts and bruises of the many times I fell down on the way home. They were bombing the coal mine. I had a feeling of what was going to happen when the whole area was lit up. I immediately left my job, jumped on my bicycle, and tried to make it home, but I guess I was too late. The bombs were falling all around me, and the shockwaves of the explosions threw me many times off the bicycle, besides falling over the residue of exploded houses. All around me, the buildings were on fire, and many times, I ran, fell, and got up again, carrying the bicycle when it was impossible to ride. It was hell, and I didn’t believe I would make it home, but I had to. Somehow I had to.”
When finally the siren signaled that the danger had passed, they came out of the basement and witnessed the red sky of the burning houses and buildings close by. Except for two barns and one elderly farmer killed, his village had miraculously escaped destruction. The villages around the mine were all aflame. Hundreds and hundreds of people were killed, and many parts of the surrounding villages were completely wiped out. It could have been a real disaster if some of the bombs had hit the main shafts of the coal mine. It would have trapped thousands of coal miners still working underground. It still took them nearly twenty-four hours before enough emergency repairs were made on top of the mine to get the lifts in operation again and bring the miners to safety and into the arms of their crying loved ones.
Not until years later after the war did the Dutch government finally get the answer to this bombing from the American government. It had just been a mistake. Instead of bombing the German coal mines on the other side of the border, they had bombed the Dutch coal mine.
Nearly every evening, Eric would help Willem by milking cows and feeding all the animals, including his best friend, Max, the horse. After the work was done, they would sit together in a stall on a large wooden feedbox, talking about the happenings of the day.
One evening in July 1943, Willem said, “Eric, you better go home. It is already dark outside,