Five Brothers and a War

The First Razzia at the van Pelt Home

Leendert, who did not often go upstairs into the boys bedrooms, saw this problem and corrected it immediately by telling Kees to think of the ramifications of his scorekeeping. Thereafter, the national flags disappeared and the pins were simply color-coded— apparently in a way that even an intelligent German soldier would not have understood. The other issue that was interesting was that Kees also had a knack for building scale models—something that would be used throughout his professional career as an architectural scale model maker. In these early years though, his interest lay in building British Royal Navy battleships and British Royal Air Force planes. It is doubtful that even a German with normal intelligence and observational skills would have missed this. However, by now it was also doubtful that the German Wehrmacht misunderstood the hostile attitude of the Dutch population toward the Nazis.

van Pelt

Kees’ room, with one British Royal Navy ship on the desk, and the mast of another Royal Navy vessel below. Also notice the pellet rifle alongside. This photo was taken very shortly after the war, as can be determined by the RAF Lancaster bomber on top of the cabinet, which was still being built.

Five Brothers and a War

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