A Reminder of Canada's Role in the Liberation of Holland in WW2

Celebrating with the Canadians at the end of WW2

Many people have no idea of the part that the Canadians played in liberating Holland from German Occupation in WW2. I only know because it was one of my Dutch mother’s strongest and most emotional memories after months of near starvation during The Hunger Winter.

I was reminded of how the Canadians did so much to boost morale this week, when I received an email from a Canadian reader. Tom told me that “our generation have no real idea of what our parents when through back in WW2”. He kindly “applauded” me for bringing the story of The HIdden Village to light.

Tom recounted how his father-in-law used to talk about his experiences when he served with the Canadian Hastings and Prince Regiment, known as “the Hasty P’s”.

‘My father-in-law was not forthcoming on such subjects generally speaking, quite understandably, and most people never broached the subject with hiim. However on countless occasions, me being his son-in-law, he was open and forthcoming. He and I would sit sipping coffee and I would ask him questions and it grew from there with my thoughts on what had happened back then.

‘Words are not easy to find to describe these events.

‘As he was part of the Canadian Regiment, the Hasty P’s, that went into Holland to help the good people of that country, it was one of the first countries I have studied.

‘He told me stories, he told me of the destruction and hurt to everyone living there, but just how beautiful a country Holland is.

‘Pictures of the waterways in summer and the miles of long skating on canals inspired me to look more and more.’

Canadian soldiers put on a Victory parade for the Dutch

My mother was 24 when the war ended. A few weeks after Liberation, the Canadians put on a Victory Parade and show in Delft and my mother went along with her best friend, Anneke. The crowds thronged, whooping for joy and children clambered aboard huge tanks and sat in Jeeps.

‘Then, one Canadian sergeant got his packed lunch out,’ she recalled. ‘Just as he was bringing a luscious white double-decker sandwich to his lips a silence fell -we were all transfixed by that sandwich. The sergeant froze, his mouth half open, ready to bite. Then his eyes swiveled round the bystanders and came to rest on a little boy of 3 or 4. All at once he went up to him and said, “Here sonny. You have my sandwich.” The boy beamed and we all cheered!’

Canadian boyfriends

A little while later, Anneke met a Canadian soldier who asked her to provide a few girl friends for a dance. My mother was ‘roped in’, (though I get the impression she was delighted to be asked) and soon became attached to a Canadian soldier named Eric.

All the girls knew one another and the men were all from the same regiment. They had been in the Sicily landings (10th July 1943) and had fought their way up the length of Italy. A true ‘Band of Brothers’, she called them.

They all got on famously and often visited my mother’s family. When it was her mother’s birthday, a few people came, but they still had very little to eat. ‘Then who should appear but Eric with a large box of wonderful goodies. Even tins of peaches and tins of cream, biscuits, cigarettes and a birtheday cake, baked by the army cook.’

Soon, the regiment was uprooted and sent to Loosdrecht. They often came back to visit in an army van (a so-called Hundred Weight) to collect the girls each weekend. ‘Marvelous parties with Glen Miller music, sailing on the lakes - it was just unbelievable,’ remembered my mother.

Then suddenly it was over. One after the other, the Canadians were demobbed and Eric was the first to go. It’s hard to know how upset my mother really was, for she merely said, ‘I had a charming letter from him in Canada to thank us for all our hospitality.’

The party was over and life in Holland returned to some kind of normality.

It’s hard to imagine what the Dutch people went through, but this window into my mother’s life as a young woman showed me the joy of freedom she experienced after years of oppression. And the liberating Canadians soldiers had so much to do with it.

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