Joe English (centre) and his Lancaster crew volunteered for the Dutch Food Drops in April 1945.
He didn’t have to do it. Still in an RCAF uniform and duty-bound to King and Country in April 1945, nevertheless Joe English stepped up. He and his entire Lancaster crew had completed the requisite 30 operations, a full tour, over occupied Europe. They all had done their bit in the war, but Joe and his entire crew volunteered for one more flight.
Operation Manna delivered 10,000 tons of food to starving Dutch civilians.
“The Germans say they’ll permit bombers to fly in low over the big Dutch cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, the Hague,” their RAF commanders told them. “People are starving there. They need us to drop tons of food.”
“As far as I was concerned,” Joe said, “it was about improving people’s lives.” (more…)
John Birnie Dougall, a Canadian third mate aboard British merchant vessels. Jane Hutchison photo.
I never met John Birnie Dougall. But I came to know him this week, 79 years after his death. He spoke to me by way of his letters – letters he’d written as a Canadian merchant sailor keeping the supply of food, oil, munitions and hope flowing to Britain during the Second World War. As an example of his correspondence home, Dougall characterized the fate of Britain, in 1940, when it seemed Hitler’s U-boats would choke Britain’s shipping lanes to death:
“Even though England may be doomed,” he wrote in a letter to his mother Rachel, “each of us has fixed determination to do or die – a spirit that will not be beaten.” (more…)
WWII glider pilot, Martin Maxwell, attending Dutch Liberation observance, in 2015.
Early in May, almost 75 years ago, a Second World War glider pilot named Martin Maxwell tasted freedom for the first time in nearly eight months. On Sept. 17, 1944, during his second airborne operation, he had delivered British soldiers and equipment in a controlled crash landing near Arnhem, Holland, during Operation Market Garden, only to be wounded and captured days later. But on May 1, 1945, with the Germans surrendering all over Europe, Maxwell regained his freedom.
“A British tank came into our POW camp,” he said, “and we were liberated.”
This May of 2020, Martin Maxwell, a 96-year-old WWII veteran, will relive that moment, three-quarters of a century ago, as he re-joins me and our Merit Travel group for a 12-day tour marking the 75th anniversary of the Allies’ liberation of the Netherlands in 1944-45.
You can join us. Our tour plans include visiting the place where Maxwell was captured at the “Bridge Too Far” site in Arnhem. We’ll participate in the emotional “Silent March.” And we’ll tour the Scheldt estuary where 5,000 Canadians died clearing the way to the port of Antwerp and the final push against German Armies to liberate Europe.
Canadian vet Martin Maxwell receives adoring cheers and handshakes in VE Day parade at Apeldoorn, in 2015.
To this day, Martin Maxwell recalls every moment of liberation. Even with the war officially over after May 8, 1945, and now freed by advancing Allied armies, pilot Maxwell found ways to assist the oppressed people he encountered in former Nazi-occupied Europe. To speed their way home, he and a friend traded a navigation watch to a Russian officer for a jeep and six containers of fuel. They packed the jeep with biscuits and cheese and soon came upon Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“In a small corner of the camp, called Kinder Heim (children’s home,) we found dozens of children dead and dying. A little girl ran up to my friend, threw her arms around his leg and called out, ‘Papa! Papa!’”
A woman in the home informed Maxwell that Hannah, this little girl, thought anyone in uniform was her father. Maxwell promised to return the next day with food and provisions for the children. He even traded four cigarettes for a doll he planned to give to little Hannah.
“The next day, we handed out the food and water,” Maxwell said. “And I searched for the little girl to receive this precious doll. A woman emerged shaking her head. Hannah had died in the night.”
The Second World War left deep scars on civilians and soldiers. That’s why veteran Martin Maxwell, at 96, insists that neither the freedom he and his comrades restored, nor the sacrifice Canadians made for peace, can be forgotten. If you’d like to join Martin and me – May 1-12, 2020 – seats on our Dutch Liberation Tour are still available.
Uxbridge Oilies hockey club got some unexpected news at end of the old-timers tourney.
We were just peeling off our hockey gear. We were considering a little refreshment after what we thought was a Pyrrhic victory; in others words, we had won our final game of the oldtimers’ tournament, but figured we were out of the running to win the championship in our division. Then, suddenly, in came the tournament organizers – members of the Uxbridge Islanders hockey club – and they were carrying what looked like a box of prizes.
“You guys won!” they told us. “The other team got too many penalties in their last game and you won on points.” (more…)
He felt compelled to act. He could not hold his tongue. He sensed that if he didn’t step in and say something, all the evils of the past might be repeated. That’s why during a neo-Nazi meeting in the Netherlands about 1960, Heiman de Leeuw demanded entry to the meeting as well as a voice to express his concern.
“You don’t deserve to be living in this country,” he told the supporters of fascism assembled in the hall. “I refuse to keep silent.” (more…)
Barclay Craig (waving from truck) celebrates a victory and a birthday during VE Day parade in Apeldoorn, May 9, 2010.
Canadians were featured prominently that day. Grateful Netherlanders lined the streets, at first, in an orderly fashion. They waved, cheered and tossed tulips – the first blossoms of that bittersweet springtime when six long years of war came to an end. They celebrated the end of Nazi occupation in their country and embraced their liberators. It was May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe (VE) Day. Among those liberators marching in the Apeldoorn parade on the receiving end of all that adoration was a young lieutenant from Arnprior, Ontario. Barclay Craig remembered being told it would be a half-hour parade.
“It was actually the eve of my 25th birthday,” he told me this week. “The Dutch were so excited to be free again, they crushed in around us in the parade. I never shook so many hands in my life.”
