Behind the Fireplace: Memoirs of a girl working in the Dutch Resistance by Andrew Scott

Author:Andrew Scott [Scott, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Fears that the Germans might have infiltrated the Resistance continued to grow, so operations were regularly abandoned and code names continually changed as the effect of betrayals became evident and key people were mysteriously captured or arrested. Kees became increasingly worried and discussed his apprehensions with Kieks, wondering whether they should risk planning some more big operations.

The high price they might have to pay for being involved hit home a few weeks after the raid, when the one person from the earlier operation that Kieks had got to know, Kareltje, was cornered in a Gestapo raid. The story Kieks heard was that, as he scrambled across the rooftops trying to escape, a shot caught him. He fell to the street, dying. Deciding to make an example of him, the Germans had left his body where it lay, with a guard nearby to stop anyone trying to remove it. It was left there for several days, rotting.

Kees was increasingly troubled by the thought that his group might have been infiltrated by a traitor, and he talked to Kieks about the earlier events at The Hague that had surrounded the collapse of his previous group. He didn’t want another group jeopardised by betrayal. He pondered on a recent spate of arrests, which seemed to point to spies in their midst.

A few weeks after Dolle Dinsdag, he asked Kieks to act as housekeeper for another operation. She carried out her usual duties, bringing in the food and chatting to the people about nothing much. One of the team passed the time by asking questions about her contacts and whom she worked with. She made light conversation, but alarm bells went off in her head and she asked herself: Was this a man who wanted to have her shot? She went straight back to Kees to alert him, and half-an-hour later he announced that he was calling the operation off and everyone was to go home.

The first operation where they had succeeded in stealing the weapons had been completely successful and undetected. However, the Allied forces had been halted in their advance and there was no battle for the Resistance to fight, and no use for the ammunition. A few months later, Kieks would hear that the Germans had been shown the location of their stolen arms cache – still hidden in the inspection pit. By then, so much else had happened that she was not greatly surprised. Later in the war, the German tanks did start to run out of fuel, and when Kieks heard this she was pleased and hoped that perhaps their work might have contributed at least a little to the shortage.

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