More than Cigarettes, Sex and Chocolate: The Canadian Army in the Netherlands, 1944–1945

More than Cigarettes, Sex and Chocolate: The Canadian Army in the Netherlands, 1944-1945 MICHIEL HORN* On a brilliant spring morning a wildly excited boy of five stands along a highway with his parents and brothers, waving a little flag and cheering. Trucks and tanks roll by; in them are the long-awaited 'Tommies.' The noise of the tanks is almost overwhelming; so is that of the crowd, yelling themselves hoarse as they welcome the liberating forces into their town. Later in the day a column of jeeps and trucks park in the boy_ 's street, and he joins other children in decorating the vehicles with flowers. Soldiers offer chocolate to the children and cigarettes to the adults. The boy picks up an empty package lying near a truck, and he will never forget the image on it: a bearded sailor. Years later he will learn the brand name: Player's Navy Cut. I was that boy. The town was Baarn, then a community of some 15,000 souls located in pleasantly wooded country 38 kilometres southeast of Amsterdam. The Duke of Wellington's Regiment of the English 49th (West Riding) Division, part of the First Canadian Corps, liberated Baarn on May 7, 1945. Later in the month units of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division , which itself had ended the war in Germany, replaced the English troops. For the remainder of the year 1945 Baarn was host to a succession of Canadian units. Among them were several with Scottish traditions, such as the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. It was then I first heard bagpipes and developed a liking for-their weird sound that has persisted to this day. I turned six at the end of a summer that seemed like one long feast. The celebrations culminated in Queen Wilhelmina's birthday in late August, the first time since 1939 that the Dutch had been able to observe this event. Of those celebrations and that summer the Cana156 dians were an integral part. By early 1946 almost all of them had left, but they were not forgotten. The tumultuous welcome that some of the veterans of 1945 received in the Netherlands in 1980 is proof of the continuing gratitude felt to the Canadians. It is a gratitude which I share and which has contributed to the writing of this article. I The relations between armies of occupation and the civilian populations among which they find themselves are always problematic. The relationship is usually, if not invariably, that of a superordinate armed force and a subordinate population. This opens up great possibilities of abuse of power. Military disc~pline needs to be firm, indeed, to prevent soldiers from constantly preying on civilians. And military discipline can hardly prevent civilians from seeking to use soldiers for their own ends. Fraternization of several kinds is bound to take place, even in the presence of orders specifically prohibiting it. Where fraternization is permitted and even encouraged , however, the problems in the militarycivilian relationship may not diminish; they may increase. An army of liberation is a peculiar type of occupying army. One tends to think of an army of occupation as placed among a population that is hostile in law and in deed, whereas an army of liberation is friendly almost by definition. It is not necessarily so in fact, of course. Popular sentiment may diverge from public policy, particularly in countries where past or present governments are unrepresentative. Moreover, if the liberating army is ethnically very different from the populace it will probably meet with coldness and suspicion. Even members of an officially hostile armed force may meet friendly civilians, for reasons ethnic, ideological or political, commercial , sexual or purely personal. During the war there was a good deal of fraternization between Dutch civilians and German soldiers, fraternization that among the former was not limited to adherents of the Dutch Nazi movement .• However, most of the population had as little as possible to do with the Germans, the Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 16, Nos. 3&4 (Automne-Hiver 1981 Fall-Winter) enemy. The Canadians were friends and allies. Although its contribution was small once the Japanese had occupied the East Indies in late 1941, the Dutch...