My Story 16.4

Yet another story from your favourite Freedom Fighter!! We were transported in the back of a truck to a remote place in Holland. Traveling in the back of a truck was the common way of transportation for us soldiers, the trucks had folding seat arrangements. We arrived at The Harskamp, a shooting range with minimal accommodation. Almost as harsh as it sounds.

There was no warm water, meals were very basic. As I remember, for supper we received each a tin can ration. You punch a small steam hole in it and throw it in the fire. After a while it is supposed to be warm. Then comes the real challenge, open the hot little can with the tools you have, or don't have, to get to the goodies. You find out soon enough that the outside was burnt, and the inner part ice cold. But we were hungry. I bowed my head and silently said grace: "Lord, Bless this food..." and adding: " That better work ". The Prayer, that is. This method of feeding your army was invented by an idiot!

It was cold. In the evening we had running water, in the morning everything was frozen. My cantine next to my bed had some water left in it, in the morning: ice!

I had gone to sleep without undressing, even kept my baret on!

We kept our self busy playing cards. Until our turn came up for the shooting range. We were handed ten shells at the time, and if you managed to get nine in the target, you were done for the day. One of our card playing buddies was a really bad shot. I think he missed the target four times. We decided to help him out. The next round we placed nine shots in our own target, then one in his. Our friend, the bad shooter ended up with eleven hits. Everything stopped, while the sergeant figured this out. We acted like we did not know what he was talking about, and we were soon playing cards again.

Apart from that nothing significant happened, except may be that our sergeant-major was nowhere to be found.The MP (Militairy Police) were called in to search and they soon found him together with a lady of ill repute. He was later demoted.