Proof

 

To become a member of the Victory Services Club I needed proof that dad served in the RAF.
Just that.
It's not important what he did.

As everything of him was destroyed I had no proof.

I told Sarah what I needed and she had a look through the archives which were not digitalised yet.

And came up with this.

And then it turend out the rules for membership had changed....

Photos of 1980

 Found some old photos.

    

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A reason to leave?

Young people went into hiding during WW2 because the Germans took them from the streets and transported them to Germany to work in the war industry.
My father was at a much desired age, so we never doubted it was one of the reasons he went to England.

Another problem was that his face was spotted at different places in town at a regular basis. The Dutch just noted it (I was told by someone in the neighbourhood), but the Germans took notice.
He became a danger for his resistance group.

So we always thought those were the reasons he left the country.
He used to say: "to free our country from the sky."


Roaming online to learn more about the resistance in a rural area nearby I found a name I recognised from the conversations between gram and other family members who were in the resistance.
I tried to reconstruct his activities during WW2 and then suddenly saw our family name.

To make a long search short:

One of the family members was a priest working at a cloister south of the city.
He had been hiding people and his cloister was also a hub in the escape route of RAF military on their way home.

He was betrayed.
The Nazies interrogated him, but as the resistance group was his own family he didn't say anything at all.
They tortured him, but the lives of his family members were far more important than to break.
As they couldn't get through to him, they shot him.

That was end 1942.

So maybe that was also a strong reason for my father to leave the country and go to England.

A long time ago someone told me dad went with one of the aircrew on the escape route and went with him all the way.
There is no proof of that at all. Or is there?

He knew the way through small streets in Paris.

He was transported to Nova Scotia in spring 1943.

So he went through Europe in the winter....HOW??

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Training in Canada

Only once my father mentioned he had been in Nova Scotia.

In my small child's mind I imagined him struggling through the Northpole snow as Nova Scotia for me sounded like the end of the world.
That he arrivd by boat only added to the ideas put in my mind by my interest in the polar expeditions.

Later I found out it was not the end of the world, but a place in Canada.

Researching the disembarkment lists one by one of all the ships that arrived with military from the UK, finally resulted in finding my father. (Later confirmed by someone who had a look at those lists too.)

His name was changed into Geartson, but date and place of birth were right and his other names were not too far from the real ones. It was him.

He arrived in Nova Scotia in spring 1943.

I copied the list.

Lost it before I was able to print it due to a computer crash.


I couldn't find anything else. Not where he trained, no photos with him.

He must have gone to the wireless school. He had a wireless badge and when he returned to The Netherlands he immediately found work as a wireless operator for the National Telephone and Telegraph Company (PTT)
He has also menioned he worked as a flight mechanic/engineer.

I haven't found any lists of people who trained in Canada (yet).

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We will remember

 

Here in The Netherlands we remember our war deaths at May 4, but when my father was dying I promised him to remember him, his friend Ron and Father Richard Stoffels at the same time as the English remember those who gave their lives for freedom.

I still don't know which squadron(s) he served, even though I've spend many hours searching.
But in my mind's eye, the photos are engraved, and the memories these men created are still with me even though they're all long gone.
They're so close, that often I feel like I could stretch out my hands and lay them in theirs.

They gave us freedom, and they're still walking in that freedom with me and my family.

It's sad that I want to go to England so much, but I'm never able to go there.
I want to lay a wreath of poppies at one of the war memorials.
They deserve it.

The lost men of WW2 deserve to be acknowledged.
Not all lists are complete.
A lot of work needs to be done.
Sometimes I'm able to find a face and a name together. because of the way a man looks, because of his hair, or because of s smile.
Sometimes veterans can't be found in the records, and they're denied the place in the old veteran's home they deserve.
That makes me so sad.

Each year the tears in my eyes find their way to express how deep I feel about what all these men and woman have done to create freedom.
And I'm glad to say that my children also feel the deep gratitude we all should have.

Many young and also older people are not aware how important it is that tolerance and respect are central in our behaviour.
We should always have peace as a central goal in what we say and do. Other people are not our enemies, but when we're not able to make them our fellow fighters for freedom, they might become our enemies.
Never ever should we need to send so many men and women to free so many people from oppression.
That means that we have to guard our attitude each and every moment.

I try, because their love for peace and freedom has grown in my heart too.


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For the Fallen

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

By Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), 

published in The Times newspaper, September 21 1914.

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Richard Stoffels SJ.

 

Talking to veterans always leaves a huge impression, but none so huge as when I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Stoffels.

Richard Stoffels S.J. was the army chaplain of the Dutch forces in the RAF.
He was born in Amsterdam as Richard Marie Paul Stoffels in 1906, at april 1.
He became a Jesuit at september 7th of 1925, and was eager to study and to deal with people.
In 1938, at august 27 he became a priest. He became a retreatleader until 1954 and then worked at the Oostpriesterhulp.
In 1975 he was decorated as Ridder van Oranje Nassau for his work during 1945 until 1948 as army chaplain for the Air Forces.
He died in Nijmegen, at december 23 1999 and is burried at the cementry of Jonkerbos.

He was the first army chaplain for the Dutch Forces and he set the standard very, very high.

The connection with our family dated from the time my uncles visited Canisius College. Richard Stoffels worked and studied there from 1930 until 1935.
I don't know when he saw my father again, if my father was part of his "boys" or they saw each other again at the streets of Wolverhampton or Birmingham.
Fact is that Richard Stoffels took my father under his wings and never ever let him go out of his sight and prayers.

Later they could sit and smoke with a small glass and talk about the good old times and the lesser old times and the lessons they both learned about themselves and other human beings.

Richard Stoffels, Father Stoffels to me, was part of growing up.
We didn't see him often, because he visited all his others "boys" and families too, as far as possible driving his car, but when he was at home my mother gave him "her" chair and he always moved it a few centimeters aside with a small child's pleasure, knowing she hated his harmless way of dealing with her obsessive cleanliness and neatness. She could never get mad, because he valued every little token of welcome. A biscuit beside a cup of coffee was praised as if he got a whole expensive cake all for himself.
Later he would pop-in, unannounced and ask for the remote control. He would call me and ask me to watch TV with him, putting on a program I liked to bits pretending he came especially for that program, knowing my mom wouldn't have granted me to opportunity to watch it if he hadn't been there,

When I married he said he couldn't come because he was expected elsewhere, but soon after he visited us at our own home.
I seemed to have become one of his "boys".

In 1984 he came to live near my parents in Berchmanianum.
"Now they consider me old and I should go a bid mad", he often said, "They fuzz about my health, tell me I use too much paper and spend too much time devoted to "my boys". Guess they want me to pray all day and put up the perfect picture of an old priest waiting to go to heaven.
I can't and God will understand."

He was elated when my first son was born in 1986 and grieved with me when my little daughter died soon after birth. He sat with me, my hand in his, said nothing at all, but slowly his tears dropped on the floor.
Now I understood even more how important he had been for all those soldiers who were in his care during the war.

He became more of a granddad for my children than my father's army chaplain.
More boys were born, and finally two girls.
As long as he could drive his small car he would visit us unannounced, whenever he felt to it, and when the children were already asleep he silently visited their rooms and put three crosses on their foreheads. They couldn't have been more blessed.

When the oldest grew up he enjoyed playing with them.
Physically he couldn't do much anymore, and as he became deaf he had to find new means of communicating with them. That wasn't a problem.
because my father told father Stoffels used to sign his name in a drawing he showed it to my children too.
They were fascinated by it.

He told us a lot about he dealt with all the birthdays and anniversaries of "his boys". Each year he wrote all the data in his agenda, so he couldn't forget one, and he wrote them all cards.
Then at one evening he was very sad and a bit mad. We didn't know him like that. He was impatient with his tea. Finally he told why. Someone had told him to stop sending cards to his men because it was too expensive for the place where he lived.
One of the children gave him a hug and that made him a bit calmer.

Not too long after that he expressed more unhappiness.
He had been visiting us and when he came back he was told that they were about to report him missed.
He wanted to keep his independence, but at the same time he felt his life came to an end.

That was the time he started to share his own experiences.
Like when "his boys"came back from bombarding Dresden.
Most of them were very shocked and he decided to go with the first reconnaissance flight so he could see for himself.  He was able to describe his own shock in such detail that I could see it all through his eyes. He made me understand how the soldiers and he were burdened by the knowledge of having killed so many people, but at the other hand they had to find ways to end the war.
He talked about lots of aspects of war my father never had been able to talk about and it enabled me later to talk with veterans about the most intense aspects of being at war.

His visits became more intense and personal, and also more louder as he wanted to bridge his deafness and keep "normal".
The strong man with the enormous presence became an old man who saw he should stop driving his car.
When we wanted to visit him he had the nurse tell us he wasn't at home.
I envisioned him sitting at his desk with his agenda in his hand, looking which one would be the next having a special day.

He died at the age of 93 in 1999, two days before Christmas.
Since then I draw three crosses on the forehead of the little baby Jesus each time I prepare our house for Christmas, to honor "our" Father Stoffels.

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