It was going into the end of April 1945. For days we had heard heavy guns firing back and forth over the Rhine.
The evening before we were in the front yard watching the Germans leave. It was a pitiful sight. They left on foot, some carried their belongings in wheelbarrows or pushcarts. There was no talking among them. It was very quiet. I was reminded of the day when they entered the Hague five years ago, a motorized army and goose stepping soldiers!

Every day my mother or I went out on my bicycle with it's wooden tires to make the rounds of the farms. We would get some milk here, some bread there and if we were lucky some potatoes or beans. That day I met a friend of mine doing the same thing and we stopped to talk a while. We were listening to the guns. They had changed. It was no longer heavy artillery but machine guns. It sounded close. We decided we better make tracks for home.

My parents and I had been taken in by a nursing home after we were kicked out of our home by the Germans. We had a narrow room with just enough space for three beds on the fourth floor.
I was just rinsing out the milk bottles in the kitchen when the windows came flying in and 2 big trees toppled over. Our village was being shelled. We got all the patients into the basement and waited for the shelling to stop.

Then everything grew very quiet. My adrenaline was running and I just had to do something. Without telling anybody I took my bike and rode into the woods. Pretty soon I saw the tracks made by the Allied tanks and soon I came on the men. They were having a break and drinking tea. They were Canadians from Nova Scotia. Of course they chewed me out for getting in between two armies but they did give me tea and chocolate and cigarettes. I asked an officer why they shelled an empty village. They didn't know there were no Germans left. They also said they would enter the village at 6 o'clock sharp.
It took a lot of willpower not to eat all the chocolate on the way back, but I managed it and split it with my parents and friends.

6 o'clock: there was the rumble of tanks!!!!!!. People poured flowers on them and kids were taken for a ride. It was unbelievable where all the flowers came from.

Early the next morning there was a spontaneous gathering at the town hall. For the first time in five long years the Dutch flag was raised and the Wilhelmus, our national anthem was sung. There was not a dry eye around. For us the war was over.