Five Brothers and a War

Leen and Kees— Onderduikers

Toward the end of 1944, as the Hongerwinter dragged on, the local food supply was now becoming critical. Leendert and Marie were forced to make the most difficult decision in their lives. With Jan in Germany for more than a year-and-a-half, and Bertus only 15 years old, they decided to send Leen, Piet and Kees away. All three were subject to being sent to Germany at any point, and they had no idea whether the razzias would let up or get worse. They certainly knew that with food rations continually being lowered, their hungry boys would not be able to survive. So they decided to see if they could break out to the liberated south portion of Holland just across the big rivers separating the liberated from the still-occupied sections of the country. It would be a desperate undertaking because no one was allowed to travel outside his or her place of residence. Anyone found doing so would be immediately arrested, and sent away—Jews to concentration camps and others to slave labor, usually in munitions factories. The idea was to get to successive rivers, then arrange an underground ferry crossing. Of course, the edge of a war zone is extremely dangerous as the two opposing armies are intent on finding opponent soldiers and scouts who attempted to gain access to their territory. Crossing bridges, where they were still intact, was not possible as they were heavily guarded, particularly after the Allied misadventures in Operation Market Garden. Leendert had many contacts throughout the country as a result of his work, but no one was ever sure just how trustworthy they were. He also had no way of calling ahead to make arrangements, so all he could do was to give instructions to the boys as best he could. He let them know of a person who was just on the north of the liberated side. Having helped them in every way possible, plans were complete. In addition to the three van Pelts, their cousin, Piet Homburg would also make the trip. The trip would be attempted on bicycles, but bicycles were almost always in poor shape, not least because along with almost everything else, all rubber was used exclusively for the war efforts, and there was none available for tires. The Dutch have always found ways of using wood where others would use rubber, as can be noted in their wooden cl ogs , “ klompen ”—which were, and in some cases still are, used in place of gardening boots. Similarly, they devised ways of providing tires for their bicycles without using rubber, particularly by fabricating wooden tires. There are two obvious challenges in using wood— it would be tough to get over the rims, as wood is not very flexible, and it would absorb no shocks for the same reason. The ingenious Bruynzeel solution was to create multiple layers. The first layer would be placed inside the rim edges, covering the ends of the spokes. Then small slats of wood would be attached on one end to that initial piece in such a way to allow for hinge-like movement. Finally, another larger band of wood would attach to the other end of the small slats, also in a hinge-like way. The net effect was that the outer “tire” would compress against the slats when the wheel reached the bottom of its turn as it carried the weight of the rider and the actual bicycle. Needless to say, there was no sound attenuation, and with Hollands unending cobbled streets, bicycle travel was a noisy undertaking.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

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