Five Brothers and a War

Homecoming

The next day, Thursday June 14, almost exactly two years after his departure, Jan was finally home, and the entire family was together again, despite all odds. Everyone resettled into bedrooms, with the five sons sharing four bedrooms. By this time, Leen was 24, Piet was 23, Jan was 21, Kees was 19 and Bertus was 17. When Kees came home, he first reclaimed his room and property, then figured that he needed to find some form of work. It quickly became clear that there was an urgent need for security guard work. War is not very conducive to maintaining a proper sense of values. When people are in danger of starving to death, laws tend to be ignored. After five years of war, there was a period of time necessary to re-order society. The Canadians were present to maintain general order, often having to intervene when citizens took out their wrath on NSBers. The Dutch armed forces were brought back on line as quickly as possible, and in short order, the Canadians turned over government functions back to the Dutch. The real soldiers were there to mop up any Germans they could find and they had no interest in spending their time guarding property, unless that property contained Germans. In the meantime, the Nederlandse Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (“Dutch Interior Forces” or perhaps better, “Dutch Home Guard”) took over from the various elements of the Resistance. The NBS (not to be confused with the NSB) consisted of many different individuals, eager to help out wherever it was needed. Before Kees had time to make all the needed life adjustments, he had been talked into joining the NBS, or just the BS, as it was called, probably in order to avoid any similarity with the NSB. The BS were very informal, on the whole. The members were basically friends or family or a mixture of the two. In the case of the motley group the van Pelts created, the group consisted of Piet, Kees and Bertus, who were joined by Jan Siegers (a neighbor a few doors down the street), Wim van Rossum, and Piet’s friend, Tjomme Alkema. Outfitting these groups with actual uniforms was out of the question. Each member wore what he was able to scrape up for the purpose, although they were given armbands, similar to those “MP” armbands worn by military police. In their case, however, they were given “BS” armbands, which might have been accurate on more than one level. What that ragged-looking bunch lacked in appearance, they amply made up with zeal to arm themselves. Not that it instilled any more confidence in the population. As these were all “make-believe” soldiers, they needed some form of authority to pretend to maintain law and order. Guns were out of the question. The weapons they chose had to be handmade, and could not involve firearms. So they came up with short lengths of rubber garden hoses filled with sand. Each length then had two holds poked into one end to allow string to pass through, thereby allowing for the “weapon” to swing from a wrist. While a solid smack on the head with a rubber hose might hurt, chances are that few criminals were dissuaded from their dastardly deeds for fear of being hit with a rubber hose. Perhaps having no weapons would have increased their apparent authority.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

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