As mentioned, I want to start a thread about from one side the experiences of the members of this forum or their family in the occupied territories as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and hopefully from Per about Denmark and on the other side the members and their families from those, who liberated Europe.

To start with a survey from the Guardian, which I find very interesting and which covers also the start up of the Cold War and answering many questions that Dirk just mentioned on the other thread, as Churchill wanting to start a push to the Balkan and also a fair survey of the other side of the liberation: the many civilians who had nothing to do with the war, killed as "collateral" damage for the good of the goal: the liberation.
The article mentions more French civilian victims in the first days as in the total of victims in Britain during the whole war (if I recall it well, have to reread the article). Further in the thread I will perhaps mention the civilian victims in Belgium due to Allied actions (as nearly I and my parents in 1944)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/second-world-war-liberation-europe

And on the French forum I had some exchanges about the difficult cooperation between de Gaulle and Roosevelt with Churchill in between the two. The whole war, there was friction, Roosevelt more in contact with Pétain than with de Gaulle. And indeed there was a lot of trouble as the invasion of the two islands Micqelon  and ? and later the invasion of Dakar? backed by Churchill and an inhumiliating failure (all of the top of my head)...
Leading from the side of Roosevelt to the fact that de Gaulle was only briefed about D Day two days in advance, there were only a mere 130 men stark French army at the side of the British on the D day landings. And the Americans are treating with AMGOT...but once de Gaulle was landed in France even Roosevelt had to bow for the celebrity of de Gaulle among the French...A fair survey from an official French site (that I already many times consulted and in my humble opinion thrustworthy)
https://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/french-6-june-1944

About the experiences of my parents (I was to young at the time, but I heard about the stories from 1949 on)
Our small town as in 1940 had a huge burden to carry. The town changed four or five times of occupant. My father lay on the ground to look through the split of the gate of our store room to look to the kind of boots, which passed, if it were German ones or others.
Our house lay between two cafés. After the liberation there were confrontations my mother said between English soldiers and Canadian ones. They fought to each other with the chains of their tanks (whatever those chains may have been). And later I found out after checking that it were Scottish soldiers (while there were no Canadians in the liberation of our town. So far for the oral history and that you have always have to check from other sources ...

Kind regards from Paul.

Belgium was in a relatively short time freed from the Germans
http://users.telenet.be/Atlantikwall-15tharmy/Liberation.htm
But then it stalled on the estuarium of the Scheldt and the Canadians had the difficult task to conquer that gateway to Antwerp
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/canada-belgium
I remember that my family of Ostend and Bruges told me about the Knokke pocket incorporating Zeebruges. Bruges and Ostend were already freed, when the Germans still resisted in the West of Zeeuws Flanders...see the map in the Canadian site. Knokke only liberated on 3 November
And I always thought that Knokke was liberated from Bruges on, but I see now that it came along the left bank of the Scheldt in Zeeuws Vlaanderen from Breskens on...
http://www.army-armee.forces.gc.ca/en/news-publications/national-news-details-no-menu.page?doc=knokke-heist-2012-a-legacy-of-commemoration/hhlny88g
And it prepared the way for the conquest of Holland with still fierce resistance of the Germans in the North of The Netherlands, preparing as Dirk said for the Hunger winter of 1944-1945. I read that some civilians cooked wall paper, while the glue was starch...

Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

As mentioned, I want to start a thread about from one side the experiences of the members of this forum or their family in the occupied territories as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and hopefully from Per about Denmark and on the other side the members and their families from those, who liberated Europe.

Since you've asked for personal memories ... here's a version (very-much-edited-down) of the relevant bit of my father's wartime service from D-Day until VE-Day. It includes some quoted passages from when I formally, well sort of, 'interviewed' him, just a couple of year's before his death. The rest I have glossed from what he said at the time or on a few other occasions. Whilst he had never much spoken about the war whilst we were children, in his eighties, once I'd finally managed to get him going, the anecdotes never stopped. His memories are here recorded ad verbatim but are also augmented (and slightly corrected, especially regarding dates) from my own research, using his RAF service record, general RAF records, my mum's diaries, some letters etc. The pictures are from the Imperial War Museum's photographic archives but with my captions.

And so ...

From the beginning of 1944 my father had been in RAF RSU 417 (an aircraft recovery and salvage unit). In the run up to D-Day he was based at Lasham airfield in Hampshire, where he was employed configuring and fitting out new aircraft for Mosquito squadrons. The basic aircraft arrived from the factory and they were then modified and fitted out for their destined job, whether as bombers, night-fighters, reconnaisance etc. 

But, although now dead, he can still speak for himself... 

"In the week immediately after D-Day I was seconded from Lasham to Benson [RAF Benson, near Oxford] to do another job for a reconnaissance squadron. We had to modify about a dozen Mosquito aircraft to take high altitude/high angle cameras. Strictly we were engine maintenance crew but it was an urgent job clearly linked to the allied invasion, although obviously we were not told exactly what it was about. There were some civillian engineers from De Havilland [the company that built the Mosquito aircraft] with us for a day to show us what to do, but then they left for the weekend. When they arrived back on Monday morning they were amazed that we'd completed four aircraft already and then with two teams working around the clock we had done the lot within a week."


Reconnaissance Mosquito aircraft at RAF Benson (Oxfordshire) early in 1945.

"I was then sent to Salisbury Plain where we were put to modifying hundreds of 3 ton and 5 ton lorries to make them reasonably amphibious for landing in France. We were given unlimted supplies of plasticene and insulating tape and set about sealing engines, extending exhausts, raising the distributors, whatever it took, so that if necessary the lorries could operate semi-submerged, or at least very wet, for a few minutes during landing."

He eventually went over to France/Belgium in early November 1944. 

"We sailed from Tilbury on the Thames but because of the masses of shipping and the limited space at ports in France and Belgium, we were held up, and actually ended up moored in the Humber estuary for four or five days, with us stuck below decks. Thankfully it wasn't rough but the LST [Landing Ship, Tank] still rolled around while we were at anchor. I volunteered to work in the ship's mess, peeling potatoes, making tea and washing up. It smelled better than the cramped quarters below, it was warm and there was even a small porthole you could see out of."


A British LST Type 3. The type was not available for D-Day itself, but came into operation later in 1944. They were of course intended for the transport of vehicles, rather than men or freight, and were designed not to need port facilities but could land tanks and trucks directly onto suitable beaches. I'm fairly sure this is exactly the type of ship on which my dad was transported to the continent.

Eventually they crossed over to the Belgian coast but were again held offshore there. Initially they were intended to land at Zeebrugge but another ship had been bombed where they were supposed to dock. The problem was their Queen Mary aircraft transporters which were very long, articulated vehicles, capable of carrying an entire airframe, but which required long, gently-sloping ramps.


An RAF 'Queen Mary' transporter of RSU 417.

In the end they landed onto a sandy beach near Oostende (through a path cleared of mines), but it was not without difficulty as the heavy trucks sank into the sand and the transporters risked getting grounded as they passed over the dunes at the back of the beach and so onto the coast road. From there they moved by stages down to the airfield at Cambrai/Epinoy in northern France. He remembers them going through Arras where local women who had "gone with Germans" during the occupation were being tarred and feathered etc. Word was sent down their column that they must just keep moving and not attempt to get involved. They were based at Cambrai for some months, although for a week or so in late November/early December he was attached to a unit which operated a temporary airstrip for small reconnaissance aircraft, on one of the wide boulevards in central Brussels.

He was again in Brussels in January 1945 arriving at Melsbroek airfield on the morning of January 1st, just hours after the Bodenplatte raids on airfields across northern France, Belgium and southern Holland. 


Burning aircraft at Melsbroek airfield after the bombing on the morning of 1st January 1945.

"There was debris and burning aircraft all over the airfield and it might have taken days to clear it had not the Americans turned up with a fleet of bulldozers. Within a day they had pushed all the wreckage off the runways into a big jumbled pile up against a railway line from where it was gradually carted off over the following weeks."

His unit's main base however remained at Cambrai/Epinoy, but because they were a mobile RSU, recovering crashed aircraft (his unit worked mostly on Mosquitos and Spitfires) and then transporting them back to base for salvage or repair - or at least the all important Merlin engines - they operated over the whole of northen France and Belgium, often away from base and living out of the trucks for weeks at a time.

"My over-riding impression of Belgium and northern France was of grey skies, pouring rain, and grey towns and villages apparently inhabited only by children or the very elderly, and everyone dressed in black or wearing black armbands. It was very desolate. Sometimes we had to take a truck into Cambrai itself to pick up distilled water and battery acid from a small factory there. It was one of the most run-down places I've ever seen, in a partly destroyed and largely abandoned industrial complex. I don't know how good their distilled water was; it might have just been rain-water for all we knew. No-one ever said anything to us. The foreman or whoever he was just grunted when we arrived and grunted again when we loaded up and signed for the carboys."

He also recalled several occasions of taking the road past the Menin Gate.
"There was a cafe on the small square were we could get egg and chips [frites]. It was warm inside and the owner and his wife were always cheerful, and the food was better than anything in our RAF canteen. Once we had to pick up some equipment from a US base and while we were there we went into their canteen for breakfast. We were completely amazed at the amount and quality of food there compared to our usual stuff - they had everything and in such huge quantities too. Unfortunately we didn' get to visit US bases very often."

For some while in early 1945 he was yet again working at Melsbroek and Evere airfields and he was then billeted in a convent on the outskirts of Brussels.
"The whole place was divided into two - one half for the RAF the other for the nuns. The entrance hall had two desks opposite each other - an officer at one, a senior nun at the other. Every morning we'd tramp out one side and head for the airfield, and the nuns filed out their side to go and care for the poor and the sick. We had our bunk rooms and mess hall, and they had theirs. The only part of the whole convent that wasn't duplicated was the toilets. The toilet block was a separate building at the back consisting of a row of narrow cubicles - a bit like a row of old-fashioned bathing huts. There were no locks but in each cubicle the seat faced away from the door so that if you accidentally entered an occupied cubicle some modesty was preserved. Of course we were all, airforce as well as nuns, dressed in drab grey and so from behind it was really only the nuns' starched white head-dresses that told us apart."

"In May I got a two day leave pass - drawn from the hat - and so got a chance to go and see Paris. I went with my good friend Harold - he had been the pianist with Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra - and was always good company. If you could find him a bar or cafe, however small, but with a piano - he'd soon have everyone singing along or dancing. We had a superb time and while in Paris VE day was declared and so of course the whole city turned into a big party."

Then in mid May 1945 his whole unit moved its base to Wahn, near Cologne, but that's another story. 

However I will just post this final picture: it's my dad (in the middle) with his crew, working on the engine of a Mosquito aircraft at Wahn in 1946.

Meles meles,

that's it. That is "pile"on (I learned it on the French Passion Histoire).
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/pile
That was exactly what I expected and thank you for sharing your father's memory. I will all read it in detail.

Thanks again and kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles,

"In the end they landed onto a sandy beach near Oostende (through a path cleared of mines), but it was not without difficulty as the heavy trucks sank into the sand and the transporters risked getting grounded as they passed over the dunes at the back of the beach and so onto the coast road. From there they moved by stages down to the airfield at Cambrai/Epinoy in northern France. He remembers them going through Arras where local women who had "gone with Germans" during the occupation were being tarred and feathered etc. Word was sent down their column that they must just keep moving and not attempt to get involved. They were based at Cambrai for some months, although for a week or so in late November/early December he was attached to a unit which operated a temporary airstrip for small reconnaissance aircraft, on one of the wide boulevards in central Brussels."


"as they passed over the dunes"
It can't have been at Bredene, while there are dunes you can't pass through. I guess it has to have been at Mariakerke, while there you can pass from the beach to the coast road with nearly no dunes.


"where local women who had "gone with Germans" during the occupation were being tarred and feathered etc."
Overhere it was the women heads shaved bald...
http://users.telenet.be/johan.delbecke/school/ges5/woii/repressie.
https://www.belgiumwwii.be/
https://www.belgiumwwii.be/nl/belgie-in-oorlog/artikels/volksrepressie.html

My father and mother spoke about it afterwards, that it were always the "kleine luiden" (the common people), who were always the victims of the represailles.
As the doing of the laundry of a German soldier billeted in the house for some money...of course the gossip...and even for food...while food was a constant nightmare during the war..., while the big fishes working with the enemy had their money from the black market and their collaboration put in the convents. With the law from "Gutt", every Belgian could only exchange to a certain amount, if I recall it well billets of 20 and 50 Belgian francs for new money, but the convents were excempt. So they did a gift to the convent together with their black money and received it afterwards back in new money without the gift. At least I am told it that way.
But of course the atrocities were nothing in comparison of the passed war and certainly not with what happened later in the 20th century...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

".... where local women who had "gone with Germans" during the occupation were being tarred and feathered etc."

Overhere it was the women heads shaved bald..

Yes, I think that was more usual. I recorded my father as saying "tarred and feathered" but I suspect he was using that expression somewhat figuratively rather than literally; that is to mean a general mob-shaming of such women. I have read of instances, in France, where such women did have to suffer the indignity of having their (very roughly) shaved heads then painted (with ordinary house paint, creosote or any similar staining product), and sometimes were also otherwise abused with things, such as feathers or straw, or just grit, sometimes being plastered onto the wet paint, but I don't think actual 'tarring and feathering' was all that common. Of course others, men as well as women, who were suspected not just of collaboration but of actual betrayal of their fellow citizens, were often severely beaten-up, lynched or simply shot.

The negative cultural image/association of a woman's shaved head is however still strong. A lady in the village here who briefly lost nearly all her hair following chemotherapy to combat cancer, confided in me that it was particulaly unpleasant - apart from all the health worries, of course - because she felt she now looked like "une salope ou sale poutain" ie a tart or a dirty whore: and that's obviously not a whore still in business, but rather one who had been publically shamed and disgraced. My friend however still refused to wear a wig, but did sport a variety of chic hats, turbans and other natty head-coverings.

PaulRykier wrote:

It can't have been at Bredene, while there are dunes you can't pass through. I guess it has to have been at Mariakerke, while there you can pass from the beach to the coast road with nearly no dunes.

Thankyou so much for that little comment. I keep trying to confirm and enhance the details of my father's history (and indeed my whole paternal-line family history, which I have currently traced back to 1765). When I interviewed Dad he was in his eighties and nearly blind - though his mind and memory were still sharp. While I might have liked him to have proceeded chronologically, he rather rambled-on, pursuing memories and themes as they came to him (and though I sometimes queried things I just let him talk). So it then fell to me - using official records, diaries etc - to try and put all these ancedotes and memories into their correct historical context. Accordingly little details like the exact beach he landed on near Ostende can actually be quite important.

Indeed, just recounting this here has made me question and re-evaluate some of my previous conclusions/assumptions ... and maybe I was wrong.

In my above recounting of dad's story, I said that he crossed over to Belgium in November 1944. However while it is true that his unit, RAF RSU 417, did indeed (at least officially from RAF records) transfer to Cambrai/Epinoy airfield in early November, I now have a suspicion my dad only arrived in December - and it was probably because of those problematic Queen Mary transporters. My current doubt/suspicion partly rests on the rapidly changing status of the liberated ports (you yourself, Paul, have mentioned that the port of Antwerp and the Scheldt estuary were then still under German control), but also something else my dad had mentioned almost in passing. He said that on the night before their departure from Tilbury - while they were "all loaded-up, battened down below decks", and ready to depart - the docks at Tilbury were "hit by a V1".

Now, because of their size and their massively destructive, 'one-off' nature, all V1 and V2 strikes were very well recorded. I've just checked the online records: there were no V1 hits anywhere in the Tilbury area throughout the whole of the Autumn/Winter period of 1944/45. But there was a single V2 strike which hit Tilbury Docks, and did considerable damage, on the 12 December 1944. And so I now think Dad left on the 13th December and therefore,  given the few days of delay while they were held in the Humber estuary, he didn't actually land in Belgium until just a few days before Christmas 1944 ... then to go down to join the rest of his unit at Cambrai, but then almost immediately up to Brussels, just in time to witness the aftermath of the German's Bodenplatte raid on January 1st.

Family history is always interesting like that - trying to piece together what happened from very scanty records and occasional oblique references. I love it.

Meles meles,

"have mentioned that the port of Antwerp and the Scheldt estuary were then still under German control), but also something else my dad had mentioned almost in passing"


No Antwerp was freed nearly immediately (3 September if I recall it well) together with Brussels, but it was the estuarium of the Scheldt, which was closed till the Canadians freed Knokke and Zeeland on 3 November if I recall it well again.
It all in my links above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KiGdOG3bxU&app=desktop


About the landing possibilities on the beach of Ostend?
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/HM_LST-420

Excuses MM have tapped on the send instead of the preview

Addendum to the previous message.

As said: the landing possibilities at Ostend beaches
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/No._47_(Royal_Marine)_Commando
"On 1 September again moving by road the brigade was moved up to Cany Barvilleand on 2 September occupied Fecamp which cut off the German garrison in Le Havre;^[16] the advance continued on 15 September and by the night of 17/18 September No. 47 were in the area North of Dunkirk taking over positions in Ghyveldefrom the Canadians. Here they remained until 26 September when they were relieved by 7th Black Watch.^[15] After being relieved they moved to Wenduine by the 27 September and prepared for amphibious operations. Training with L.V.T.'s was carried out in the sand dunes between Wenduine and Ostende and the Commando was brought up to full strength. Also a detachment from No. 2 (Dutch) Troop, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando arrived. The training had been for Operation Infatuate the invasion of the island of Walcheren and at the end of October No. 47 moved to Ostende and embarked in Landing Craft Tanks.^[17]"

And as said: Mariakerke and Middelkerke lay between Wenduine and Ostend
Strand (beach) Mariakerke:


MM,
"Family history is always interesting like that - trying to piece together what happened from very scanty records and occasional oblique references. I love it."
That is it for me too. Got nearly berserk as the explosion of the submarine base in Ostend in 1944 wasn't mentioned on the mighty google, despite all kind of combinations of words and all seen after the war and part of our family history. But will start that in an apart message.

Kind regards from Paul.

MM, after more than half of an hour narration of family history about the submarine base in Ostend, due to not be used yet with Google chrome lost my "post in" window and my message. It will be for tomorrow...but I found it all...and my family story I know from the top off my head...

Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles,

about the submarine base in Ostend as part of my family history.

Episode one.
I think I already mentioned our experience in fishing in nordmann's Shakespeare wobble fish or something like that (no time to seek it back).
As said a short experience...as my father saw it always great, he bought three fishing lines. I see them still before me...one expensive one for him in dark shiny varnished "bamboo?" and one for me in yellow nature colour bamboo I guess a lot cheaper and the third as spare part...
And we went fishing to the exploded Ostend submarine base... after a first trial without fish and the next week only one small fish after three hours two persons fishing, the new hobby was finished and he told my mother that he had sold the lines, but I guess that he had given them in exchange for another service of the many people that he knew...especially from the grey zone...

Episode two.
Many years later...hmm...let us say some five years later...we again at the submarine base...my father knew the fore man...and we could in the weekends...while there was never nobody there and as we needed the iron bars from the exploded concrete girders used as quai-wall and I think also from the concrete building...and they were all piled up in one big mess, as a firm was cleaning the site...and we needed them to make girders in concrete for our new house...
With sledge hammers we broke the concrete and made the bars a bit right to move them at home...and the fore master had us learned to use a tube in a concrete pylone to rectify them a bit...but it were steel ones instead of iron ones...not easy to handle...and at home one had to hammer them further to make them right enough for use...but all went well and over some weeks we had a whole pile of steel bars at home...but one weekend a girder turned over on his toe...toe broken or split...in the plaster...but as an independent (middenstander) no big insurance from the state...only one quarter of a Euro per day (of course in money of those days)...and he had to work in the fish hall and store with a plastic wrap around the plaster, each day a new one while it stank...

Now about my search for that seemingly not existing submarine base in Ostend (and not the one seemingly from WWI), I will do it in an apart addendum, to not lose my message again.

Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles,

after nearly gone berserk after searching with all type of combinations of words first in English and then in Dutch and being sure that everybody after the war in youth spoke about the "duibootbasis" (the submarine base) and I even mentioned our family links in the above message, I finally got a glimpse with Dutch word combinations...and I first thought that my family was speaking about the WWI submarine base at Ostend...
"En toen was het oorlog: verhalen van de kleine man in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (And then it was war: stories of the small (common?) man in WWII) by Julien van Remoortere
https://urlzs.com/kqJwL
There are no page indications, but I think the link guides to this text:
Camile Keters Torhout: Four German soldiers were by car returned to Ostend to blow up the submarine base...
The daily life in Ostend during the, occupation 1940-1944 by Roger Jansoone

[url=file:///C:/Users/Paul/Downloads/304187 (1).pdf]file:///C:/Users/Paul/Downloads/304187%20(1).pdf[/url]

Interesting for Dirk and for me as it tells the stories of the Ostend fishers during that period and also speaking about "a good German"...
On page 235: "especially blow up the "snelboot" (speed boats?) and the submarine base"
And in this paper of the University of Ghent they speak also about a big blow up with a reference to the archive of Ostend but they don't specify what blow...

And ultimately I found here that the site of the "snelboten" (speed boats?) in the "volksmond" (they translate: in popular speech) was called: "duikbootbasis (submarine base) and perhaps (have to do research with an oldie of Ostend) was the original submarine base of WWI?
https://www.beeldbankkusterfgoed.be/m/5a3835b2c24f4870a0bfedc84208e61d24de78ba343442a0a44ff78ddc0555c4
"In het dok (kantine) bouwde de bezetter een versterkte betonnen overdekte schuilplaats (in de volksmond: de duikbootbasis) waar die S-boten beschermd waren."


Kind regards from Paul.

I see that the pdf don't work...put in google: "Het dagelijks leven in Oostende tijdens de bezetting (1940-1944)"
Especially for Dirk.

Kind regards from Paul.

And for Nielsen,

and I wasn't aware that Denmark was only freed on 5 May 1945 with the armistice...
and the same as overhere in Belgium and in France about the woman with a "supposed!" relationship with the Germans...
https://www.thelocal.dk/20180504/germans-surrender-denmark-marks-70th-anniversary-liberation

And the message from London on 4 May 1945
https://www.thelocal.dk/20180504/germans-surrender-denmark-marks-70th-anniversary-liberation

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul and Nielsen:

"and I wasn't aware that Denmark was only freed on 5 May 1945 with the armistice...
and the same as over here in Belgium and in France about the woman with a "supposed!" relationship with the Germans...""

Yes , the same happened in Holland .
As soon as towns / cities were liberated resistance movements and local people were quick in rounding
up those who were known as German sympathisers and were interned.
Females who had been fraternising with  members of the German army were picked up and had their hair shaved off and upon times paraded through the streets..
But is also well known that in quite a few cases Allied army soldiers intervened and stopped the public from humiliating these women.

However nothing of the above happened to the families of the Dutch nobility who at the beginning of the occupation welcomed high ranking German army officers they had met either when visiting Germany before the war or on business trips/ study years etc. And of course some of them had family connections.
 Some of their daughters (and even wives) were often seen with German officers attending functions.

Yes,  from about 1942/1943  they realised that Germany would eventually loose the war and although they kept up their associations with their German friends the very rich under them started to give financial assistance to underground /resistance movements.
Thus playing in both fields and sitting on the fence and making sure that they could be considered as having been good patriots.


Dirk

Dirk,

thank you for this comments about The Netherlands (we too say Holland , but some Dutchmen say that that is only a "province" of the seven ones  )
Yes overhere the same: the big shots have always a way out, while the common (wo-)man is always the "pineut". I have that word from a Dutchman, we say: the "dupe". In English too: "dupe". For me, pineut and dupe, both in Dutch and in English have rather a connotation of "victim". And as I guessed it came from the French "la dupe", there it has nevertheless the connotation of : the deceived (de bedrogene)...?

Kind regards from Paul.

PS: Nielsen, where are you?