Pensioner from Deeping St James recalls the day his home town of Vlaargingen near Rotterdam was liberated on VE Day in 1945
On the morning of May 5 1945 Maarten Moerman was sent off to school as normal in his German-occupied home town in Holland.
He and his family had endured life under Nazi rule for five years with soldiers living in their farmhouse and barns in Vlaargingen, in the west of the country.
But when he arrived for his morning lessons he and all the other children were immediately sent home by the headmaster, who had an important message for them.
“He said ‘the Germans have gone’, we’ve won the war’, so I turned around and went home again,” said Maarten, who has lived in Deeping St James for 50 years.
“You would never have believed how things can change in the matter of less than an hour. The flags were out and people were dancing in the streets.
“There were so many I couldn’t find my way home. When I did though my dad’s farm was full of people drinking bottles of Dutch gin that they had been saving. Everyone was so happy!”
The Second World War had officially ended with Germany surrendering to the Allies and British troops marching in to liberate Vlaargingen.
The party went on for some time, according to Maarten, 82, who was just seven years old at the time.
“I was just a little lad but the memories have stayed with me,” he said.
He had been living on his family’s dairy farm with his parents and older sisters Liete and Heni when the war broke out in 1939. A year later their country was under German control.
Two senior officers commandeered the spare room in their home while other soldiers made themselves comfortable in the hay barns.
“My mum put two mattresses on the floor and some garden furniture,” said Maarten.
“She was quite a forceful lady and told them that they were to stay in there and not come anywhere near her family.”
He added: “The Germans were okay with us kids but they weren’t very good to women and girls, not to put too fine a point on it.”
Life went on as normally as possible but Maarten recalls a number of skirmishes between the occupying forces and the Dutch resistance fighters.
On one occasion on the way back from school he and his mother were caught in the crossfire between the two sides but somehow managed to avoid being injured.
“We didn’t have a scratch,” he said. “We were very lucky.”
Maarten also has memories of how Jewish people in his country were treated by the Nazis.
“They were taken away in cattle trucks to the concentration camps where they were gassed,” he said.
“When the Germans took over everyone had to be registered and religion was part of the questions. That’s how they knew where the Jews lived. They just rounded them up and they had to wear yellow stars.
“When I look back it was really frightening. It was really horrendous.”
Maarten also remembers the supply drops by the RAF during the war.
“The planes dropped food parcels for us,” he said. “There were a lot of hungry people in Holland at the time.
“Dad was lucky because we lived on a farm and had access to milk, so we used to make cheese and butter.”
A keen horticulturist, Maarten moved to the UK in 1957 to work with his uncle near Bourne. He never looked back, getting married and going on to have two daughters and four grandchildren.
He raises his nation’s flag in his garden every year to mark VE day, in memory of his countrymen who lost their lives.
“Putting the flag up this year, on the 75th anniversary, made me feel quite emotional,” he said. “I was lucky that my family came through the war when so many others didn’t.”
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