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Eyewitness Story: Kees Meulpolder
Kees Meulpolder was 11 years old when World War II began. He lived with his parents and his older brother Stoffel in Driewegen, Zuid-Beveland. When the Germans rode into the village on motorcycles, he stood with the other villagers watching. “Those Germans were just boys, not enemies,” Kees recalls.
Kees worked on a farm where German soldiers were quartered. One of them gave him binoculars to watch English planes. At thirteen, he left school to help his father on the farm, but when his father passed away, Kees became the breadwinner. “The pastor said, ‘Kees, your childhood is over now.’ That hit me hard.”
Worries About Brother Stoffel
In addition to the worries at home, the Meulpolder family struggled with fear and uncertainty about Kees’ older brother Stoffel. Stoffel was serving in the Dutch East Indies and regularly sent letters home. But when the war broke out, the letters suddenly stopped. The family had no idea what had happened to him. “We didn’t know if he was still alive or not,” Kees recalls. The silence from the Indies weighed heavily on the family, and the lack of news caused much anxiety. It wasn’t until more than a year after the liberation that the Red Cross brought the tragic news that Stoffel had passed away.
The Battles Around Driewegen
On October 26, 1944, the battle for Zuid-Beveland was in full swing. Kees and the other villagers could hear the fighting between the Scottish troops, who had landed near Baarland, and the Germans, who were entrenched in and around Driewegen. It was a dangerous time, but Kees and his friend Jaap saw an opportunity and decided to steal bicycles from the Germans, a daring act. “They were Belgian bicycles that the Germans had looted,” Kees explains. “But we knew that if we were caught, we would be shot.” After the fighting subsided, Kees went to investigate and came upon a horrific scene. Eight Scottish soldiers lay dead in a field, neatly lined up. “It was an image I will never forget. Some were horribly mutilated,” he says, visibly affected by the memory.
Kees Meulpolder
Read below the story of Kees Meulpolder, a boy from Driewegen, who had to take on the responsibility for his family at a young age after the loss of his father. Despite the dangers of the occupation, he took risks, such as stealing bicycles from the Germans, and was confronted with the horrors of war when he found eight dead Scottish soldiers. His story is a testament to courage, loss, and the resilience of a boy in wartime.