Five Brothers and a War

School—Bertus

Bertus was not doing well in school. As he finished his first year, the eighth grade, at De Populier , he decided that gymnastics was his favorite subject, and produced the highest grades. In the academic arena, he had developed a keen interest in geography and history, including Dutch history, world history and Bible history. As a direct result of his interest level, his grades in those subjects were good. His grades in the other subjects were far lower, with German definitely unacceptable. The Dutch grading system still involves rating students on a scale up to 10. If a student received three scores of 4 on their report card, they failed. Bertus failed his year at De Populier and was forced to repeat it. The second time was not much different. He knew that he was coming in with two 4s, in German and biology. He also knew from his ongoing grades in French that he was hovering around the 5 level—but that before he took the final exam. He asked his French teacher if he still had a chance to pass the class, but the instructor answered, without even bothering to look up from desk work, “Of course, anyone still has a chance.” Having answered, he then apparently wondered with whom he was speaking, at which point he quickly changed his response. “You, van Pelt? Not a chance!” In a last-ditch, and futile, attempt to curry a little favor, Bertus cheerfully answered, “Sir, I’ll see you in church on Sunday.” This was the same French teacher, when entering the classroom would pause long enough at Bertus’ desk to say, “Van Pelt, you might as well get out now, before I throw you out in 10 minutes.” The bottom line was that in failing French, he had again hit the threshold to fail the year. The rule was that two failures of the same grade level meant expulsion from school. Bertus was expelled. Leendert and Marie were very frustrated. Making schooling even more difficult was the German military. The actions of the Germans in a couple of areas impacted the everyday lives of grammar and high school students. The construction of the Atlantikwall caused problems beyond the obvious loss of homes and businesses. It also caused a loss of school buildings. While the exclusion zone was relatively close to the North Sea in the Kijkduin side of Den Haag, it was much further away on the Scheveningen side, which caused thousands of families to relocate, including the Lammerse family. This in turn caused a lot of students to be displaced from their schools, and it thus meant that many of the remaining schools had to have students “doubled up”. But the Germans made matters all the worse when they took over sections of schools for their operations. One morning the principal called for an all-school assembly in the gymnasium, where they were told that the following week everybody had to abandon the ground level, and double up classes on the level above. The German military would be taking over the main floor. Of course, to make that work, the school hours would be shorter and staggered. One week a group would attend from 1 pm until 5 pm and the next week they would go from 8 am to 12:30pm. The other group would have to do the opposite.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

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