Frank Dinger

Mr Dinger was only a young boy living in the Netherlands when war broke out and like many countries in Europe the Netherlands was occupied by the German Army in May 1940. Queen Wilhelmina and her family fled the country. So she went to London where she as the ‘Mother of the Nation’ supported the Dutch population in their resistance to the German occupation through speeches broadcasted via Radio Orange being part of the BBC.

Her daughter, the current Queen Mother Princess Juliana, her husband Prince Bernhard and her daughter Beatrix, who now is the Dutch Queen, went to Canada where they lived in Ottawa until the end of the war.

All Dutchmen had to hand over their radios to the Germans at the beginning of the occupation. These could be traced via a registered radio licence, which was required in the Netherlands before the war, similar to the licence you nowadays must have for using a TV at your home. However, some people had either a second radio set or got one made from available components, listening with headphones and hiding it in a metal wooden box in a cellar or loft. In this way they could listen to the BBC and Radio Orange without the Germans knowing it.

In the early days of the occupation domestic life was bearable, since a reasonable amount of food was available also in the more densely populated areas in the western part of the country, in the Provinces North and South Holland. However when the Germans started to isolate and deport Jewish people to what later became know as ‘concentration and destruction camps’ (now known as the Holocaust) the population put up increasing resistance against the occupiers. A resistance movement emerged whose members attacked and often killed Dutch people who collaborated with the Germans to trace and expose Jewish people who were kept in hiding by Dutchmen who wanted to save them.

In areas where these traitors were killed, the Germans summoned all able-bodied men to perform ‘watch duty’. This meant that men had to stand watch at street corners during evenings and nights for periods up to 6 hours at a time as reprisal for the attacks on collaborators. You can imagine what this meant to the watchmen who often had to stand in the freezing cold or pouring rain for hours.

With an increasing shortage of food and medicines many of them became ill and suffered ill health (just what the Germans wanted to achieve to break the resistance). However this action did not reduce the resistance even when resistance fighters were caught and killed by the Germans.

The war took a turn in 1943 when the Germans were defeated in Russia in the Battle of Stalingrad and in Northern Africa in the Battle of El Alamein. Germany was bombarded by allied forces with aircraft based in Britain. A number of airfields were located in Scotland. Between Inver and Tain you can see the remains of some of these wartime airfields.

Due to the bombardments the Germans started to suffer a shortage of materials and food and they removed much of what they needed from the occupied countries, also from the Netherlands.

There the people in the more densely populated Western part of the country started to suffer badly and had to go to the countryside to get food directly from farms. The situation became really serious after the allied forces had landed on the coast of Britanny in France to liberate Continental Europe.

The Germans were removing everything, public transport (trains and even electric trams) were no longer available and people went to distant farms to get food having to travel more than 160km (100 miles) at the time on a bicycle to get a few kilograms of wheat, a packet of butter or some sugar to feed their families. These long bicycle trips for food were often made by women since the men were commanded by the Germans to work in the war industry in Germany. Many men refused to go to Germany and were kept in hiding.

Since coal was no longer available there was no fuel to fire the power stations, so there was no longer any electricity. Many people became very inventive using bicycle dynamos to make a small wind generator on the roof of their house or moved a complete bicycle into the living room, placing the rear wheel off the ground on a stand, such that one person by sitting on the saddle could paddle driving the rear wheel and hence a dynamo which then could light one or two bicycle lamps such that the paddler could read a book and someone else could do work at the table with a second bicycle lamp hanging above the table.

Whereas in Britain bicycle lamps are powered by batteries, dynamos are still used on most bicycles in the Netherlands. The dynamo is attached to the front wheel fork. If you need light you release a spring which causes the dynamo pulley to rotate against the front wheel tyre. In this way you only get light when the bicycle is moving.

With coal no longer available people had to use, initially peat, but when that had finished, wood by cutting all the trees in their streets and gardens. During the winter of 1944-45 often called the ‘Hunger Winter’, there was so little wood left that some people started to dig up tree roots which they subsequently sold for a lot of money. After the war had finished all streets were completely bare without a single trace of trees apart from open spaces.

In the end it became too risky to get food from the countryside, since people were often stopped by the Germans who took the food off them. People also became too weak to make the long journey on their bicycles and tyres became so badly worn that they often had to improvise by using pieces of rubber garden hose around the wheels.

When the common foodstuffs like bread, sugar and potatoes were no longer obtainable people resorted to eating sugar beet pulp after extracting the sugar molasses through boiling. They also ate boiled tulip bulbs, horribly sweet! However, sadly, many people died of malnutrition not only the sick and the elderly but also many younger people and with no normal transport available; the bodies were often taken for burial on primitive pushcarts.

In the early spring of 1945 when the Germans realised they had lost the war and would have to surrender soon, they allowed food droppings by parachute from allied aircraft organised by the Swedish Red Cross. So at last the starving population got some relief in the form of white bread, margarine, army biscuits and later also some tinned corned beef. In order to ensure fair distribution of the food to the population the margarine was packed in 250gs (just over 1/2 lb) packets with 50gs marking on the side of the paper wrapper, such that the packet could be cut in equal portions. Even now 60 years later, many brands of margarine and butter in the Netherlands have these 50gs markings still on the paper, aluminium or plastic wrapping.

Sadly, following the food droppings and the end of the war a number of people having a very weak digestive system died of eating too much at a time, mainly army biscuits (supplied in large tins) followed by drinking too much water. Many of those who survived even today realise what it means to be free and be able to live a healthy life.