Five Brothers and a War

Bertus Caught in the Exclusion Zone

One Saturday afternoon in 1942, 14-year-old Bert and his buddy, Eddy Keilholz, the other “enfant terrible” in his school class and his partner-in-misbehavior, were taking cover from a rain shower in an old house where the inhabitants, by order of the German authorities, had been evacuated, as were the people of the entire block. As the two boys were whiling away time, a police officer (who, like so many were either complicit with the Nazis or were outright NSBers) came by and, after some frivolous questions as to what they were doing, ordered them away from their rain shelter. The two told the officer the reason they were there and asked him if they couldn’t stay until the rain stopped since they didn’t have raincoats. While this seemed to be a reasonable request, he wouldn’t hear of it, apparently believing they were up to no good. Remarkably, as a testimony to their youth, they refused to follow the order, which resulted in the officer coming towards them with his club in his hand seemingly ready to use whatever physical force might be necessary to get them out of their spot. Bertus determined that the man was out of order, and again using not the slightest common sense, took matters into his own hands. Since the cop was holding his police bike with one hand and his club in the other, Bert decided to pop the guy in the snoot while yelling, “RUN!” to his buddy. The police officer fell backwards onto his bicycle and Bertus quickly leapt over him, grabbed his own bike and jumped on it on the run, biking as fast as he could to the end of the block. When he got a safe distance away, he turned to see where Eddy was, and only then realized that Eddy had been caught by the officer. Bert wondered what he should do. One option was to go back and face the music. Before he could act, he saw that Eddy and the cop gotten on their bikes and were riding away. Curiosity made him follow them from a safe distance, which to his surprise ended up at the local police station. Of course, that quickly led to panic when he tried to figure out what to do. Despite being in near-constant trouble, Bertus had never encountered a situation like this. He was old enough though to know not to let his best school friend take the rap by himself, so he decided to walk into the station to turn himself in. When he saw the cop up close, he immediately looked to see what damage he had caused to his face. He noticed, and was either relieved or disappointed, that there was only a slight pink mark on his cheek where Bertus hit him. When the cop saw Bertus up close, he instantly recognized him. A thorough interrogation was called for, and did in fact occur. The tone and scope of the questions quickly resulted in both boys being scared out of their wits, leaving Bertus with none of his well-developed bravado. He took everything the officer handed out simply in the hopes that it would soon end, and end without any other ramifications. After a while, the police chief entered, and the cop explained the situation to him. Through his description, it had become abundantly clear that Bertus was the main culprit—not particularly hard to understand for anyone but Bertus. Moments later the chief let Eddy go with a stern warning—again not surprising considering the fact that Eddy really hadn’t done anything seriously wrong other than giving the officer a bit of “lip”, as opposed to Bertus who had almost given the officer a “fat lip”.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

Page 382