Excerpt 13: the Depression hit Friesland hard too, only to be followed by
WWII. Meindert Boorsma becomes its unfortunate
victim twice over.
“Meindert, you’re turning into
quite a young man, you should become a member of the NSB [National Socialist
Movement] like your dad!” The
encouragement comes from farm wife Tryntsje Deddes, the wife of Rintsje Haagsma,
born in 1890, stockbreeder on the Tow Road in Workum. Haagsma and his wife don’t just say it, they
shout it from the roof: on the black roof tiles of the barn red letters
proclaim: N S B, letters large enough for people in Parrega, two kilometers
away, to read.
“I’m not doing anything, Mrs. Haagsma!”
Meindert doesn’t want to belong to anything.” …
The Depression takes its toll, there’s massive unemployment.
…
The analysis of Johannes Boorsma in “The Swan”: “It won’t be long
anymore, and a farmer will hang on every Frisian tree.”
…
As the Thirties go by and there’s
muttering about a war-minded Germany, resentment and distrust become more and
more prevalent. …
Meindert in the meanwhile has
become a senior farmhand of eighteen, almost 6’3”, strong as an ox, and
entrusted with all kinds of farm work.
The work comes easy to him: he’s both handy and quick.
“Those were good years in that small community,” he will often say
later. …
In Eemswoude he discovers the
cute and charming Kubaard milkhauler’s daughter Jetske Hiemstra. She’s a farmer’s maid on a farm about seven
hundred feet farther on.
Meindert and Jetske fall in love,
dream of better times, of a good-looking modest laborer’s home with a chicken
run, a nice household, freedom, a permit to catch birds.
…
The tenth of May 1940, at a
quarter past four in the morning, Meindert is milking a cow in the milking-yard
with his sight toward the east. And
there it rises: a majestic sun which separates itself like an egg from
stepmother earth. A new day. …
Right through the sound of the spurts in the milk bucket another sound
is audible; it is the droning high in the sky.
Surely not airplanes? In a milk
yard farther on someone calls out: “It is war, I heard it on the radio
myself!” Meindert stares into the
heavens, sees airplanes like flights of plovers flying to the southwest.
When the milking is finished and the breakfast table ready, the milk
hauler says to Meindert of Johannes Kaiser as he passes by him: “And you,
Meindert, just tell that German old man of yours that he betrayed the crap out
of us.” With that it becomes clear to
Meindert what kind of position he can expect in the coming days.
The Pentecost holidays are coming
up, and Meindert and Jetske have been planning for the last six months that
they will enjoy two free days together.
… But when he is going to pick her up, she acts very dismissive. Why, in heaven’s name? That evening he tries once more, but now she
won’t even make her appearance.
It’s as if the ground disappears beneath him; it feels as if they once
again pushed him into the corner of the schoolyard, making him desperate. He had always been able to fight himself
free, but this war is already lost. His
confusion and uncertainty turn into panic.
He has to get out of here, but where to?
To Mom in the houseboat?
…
With the leaping pole on his shoulder he wanders through the fields,
avoids the paved roads. Along the
uncertain path between peace and war. …
There’s no red, white, and blue flag on the houseboat. Dad, his eyes gleaming in victory, stands in
the houseboat door, not in euphoria but sure enough in his new suit. Clean-shaven, white collar, wearing a tie,
the moustache – graying a bit – neatly trimmed.
“They’re here,” he calls out.
“They asked for this in The Hague, but don’t worry, not a sparrow will
fall, Friesland has already surrendered.”
Meindert goes to his mother who keeps herself deep inside the
houseboat. “Mom, it’s all over,” he
says.
“It is war,” he repeats, “it’s all over.”
And on the road ahead of him, from the direction of Bolsward, hundreds
of armed Germans approach, in a relaxed march.
With horse and wagon, cars, small artillery, armed vehicles, and a
motorcycle soldier zooming around the whole procession. At the Nijhuizem bridge the Wehrmacht sings,
and on the side of the Tow Road Johannes Boorsma sings along….
A good week later. No shots are fired anymore. The Netherlands capitulates. …
When sometime later on a Saturday evening, the farmer gives each of them
an extra couple of guilders because of the rise in milk price, Meindert quits
his job with the words: “There is no place here for me anymore.” He can no longer stomach the fact that in
another milk yard nearby the milkers position themselves under the cow so that
they won’t have see Meindert. …
He mounts his bike and leaves the
neighborhood. When he bikes past the
yard of her parents, he sees Jetske Hiemstra sneak into the barn. He has resigned himself and keeps pedaling on
his heavily loaded bike. The sun sinks
down, not a creature is heard anymore, not a hand waves goodbye.
The next day, Sunday morning at ten o’clock, he takes his leave from his
parents and sisters in the houseboat. A
day later … he also takes leave of the land of his citizenship. Three times he’s stopped, and each time he
successfully hauls out his dad’s Addressenbuch [address book] and nice
Prüfungzeugnissen [certificates]. Yes,
he’s biking into Germany to get a milking job.
A day later, just before bedtime, he arrives at the farmer Hermann
Girke, an invalid, in the town of Hollenbeck, not far from Muenster.
“By golly!” the crippled farmer
exclaims, “this Meinhart looks just like his dad Johannes!” There are so many sons in arms that there is
a howling shortage of milkers. That damn
war. Yes, his dad Johannes was a
fantastic milker, Girke brags. “Like
father, like son?”
One evening Meindert Boorsma is caught by the police while he’s secretly
listening to a British transmitter. They
suspect him to be a spy, and he lands in a cell on the Hindenburgstrasse 78 in
Muenster. All he needs to do is say
“yes,” but he keeps insisting that he’s not a spy. Endless days and night follow with brutal
interrogations, until he’s ready to climb the walls.
One night a somewhat older military man comes and says calmly and
convincingly: “You are free, my boy, we put you on the train tomorrow morning,
then you can go see your parents in Friesland.
All set! All you need to do is
sign this paper.” He signs.
The next day he’s indeed on the train.
Destination: the training camp of the Waffen [weapons] SS near Graz in
Austria. By sheer coincidence he manages
to avoid the blood-type mark on his underarm, but the SS-sign is tattooed in
his left arm pit.
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