door Jan » 03 aug 2005, 13:07
Hey,
Ik heb vandaag bericht gehad van Frank. En hij zei dat het niet in Boxmeer was, want hij herkent niks van de foto's.
Boxmeer: No, on first sight nowhere looks familiar. The pictures are beautiful and do please thank whoever took them. No my memory is clear of the Y road pattern and the church with a square tower on the left of the approach road and with buildings on either side at the junction and beyond it. Along the road which goes off to the right, in the distance, was a tall girder type arrangement like those where a road crosses a canal. I will go over the pictures again, but I cannot think that after that stage of the war the place where I was could have been so badly damaged as to be rebuilt so differently.
The tall wall I mentioned was on left along the street with buildings either end.
You ask which direction the plane flew. Well the best I can give you is that when we watched it we were standing at the apex of the road junction and facing back the way we had come (toward the church) and the aircraft was flying on our right in that direction, maybe one or two km away.
There are two other reasons why I remember this place so clearly. Firstly was a lady dressed in dark clothes who called my colleague and I and we went with her down a short small road between buildings on the right just before the apex of the roads. She took us into a small house on the right and indicated a steaming copper and rubbing her hands over her face and pointing to the copper and sink by a window indicated that we could wash ourselves. Well, we were delighted and in no time were both having our first shave - mine the first for three weeks because since then I have run a test much to Mary's objection and the stubble on my face was lovely and silky in just three weeks, the same it was then ! Anyway, just as we were finishing the the whistle blew and we had to dash back to our comrades ... and I think I might have left my razor there!!
Second memory is of a young lad, maybe 12-15 years old, who was hugging and kissing each of us and was delighted to see us. He said he was going to go to Burma to fight the Japanese but we told him to forget about it! These two meetings were unusual because we hardly ever saw and Dutch civilians. We never saw the place again.
Dus ik denk dat het dan toch Sambeek is. En dat dacht Guido ook.
Jan
Hey,
Ik heb vandaag bericht gehad van Frank. En hij zei dat het niet in Boxmeer was, want hij herkent niks van de foto's.
Boxmeer: No, on first sight nowhere looks familiar. The pictures are beautiful and do please thank whoever took them. No my memory is clear of the Y road pattern and the church with a square tower on the left of the approach road and with buildings on either side at the junction and beyond it. Along the road which goes off to the right, in the distance, was a tall girder type arrangement like those where a road crosses a canal. I will go over the pictures again, but I cannot think that after that stage of the war the place where I was could have been so badly damaged as to be rebuilt so differently.
The tall wall I mentioned was on left along the street with buildings either end.
You ask which direction the plane flew. Well the best I can give you is that when we watched it we were standing at the apex of the road junction and facing back the way we had come (toward the church) and the aircraft was flying on our right in that direction, maybe one or two km away.
There are two other reasons why I remember this place so clearly. Firstly was a lady dressed in dark clothes who called my colleague and I and we went with her down a short small road between buildings on the right just before the apex of the roads. She took us into a small house on the right and indicated a steaming copper and rubbing her hands over her face and pointing to the copper and sink by a window indicated that we could wash ourselves. Well, we were delighted and in no time were both having our first shave - mine the first for three weeks because since then I have run a test much to Mary's objection and the stubble on my face was lovely and silky in just three weeks, the same it was then ! Anyway, just as we were finishing the the whistle blew and we had to dash back to our comrades ... and I think I might have left my razor there!!
Second memory is of a young lad, maybe 12-15 years old, who was hugging and kissing each of us and was delighted to see us. He said he was going to go to Burma to fight the Japanese but we told him to forget about it! These two meetings were unusual because we hardly ever saw and Dutch civilians. We never saw the place again.
Dus ik denk dat het dan toch Sambeek is. En dat dacht Guido ook.
Jan