“It was the war, and the war diet, and the anxiety and the terror,” said Audrey of the ever-worsening situation under the Nazis in Velp.
As August turned to September 1944, the people of Velp heard Radio Oranje report that the shooting war was out there. Among the Dutch, illegal radios had been treasured and kept safe, and daily the baron, sometimes with Audrey, would hurry across the street to the home of the Mantels for the 8:00 P.M. fifteen-minute Radio Oranje update of the Allied dash across France into Belgium. Now, the reports said the British and American armies had set up camp just across the Dutch border to the south, a mere seventy-five miles away. And when the Brits and the Yanks marched north and ran headlong into all the Germans in Oosterbeek, Arnhem, and Velp, life would not be pleasant.
Ella had had her gut feeling long before she had done the arithmetic—all those Allied troops out there plus all these Germans around here equaled trouble. Ella knew she must think about life after the war and away from those who knew her here in the early days of occupation. It might have seemed logical to take Audrey to Amsterdam, center of cultural activities in the country; then after the war, probably London. She would go wherever Audrey’s dance career dictated. She would live for Audrey.
But instead of Amsterdam, she had chosen The Hague. Said Dutch historical researcher Maddie van Leenders: “Ella and her family had some connections to The Hague that might have made her desire to move there more explainable. For example, Ella lived in The Hague for a while after she married her first husband, Hendrik Quarles van Ufford, and before they set off for the Dutch Indies. They lived on the Koningin Sophiestraat 4. Besides, The Hague has always been a city that was ruled by old, noble families, as in the Golden Age. When you enter the name ‘van Heemstra’ in the digital pedigree system of the [municipal] archive, about 157 results pop up. I don’t know how they are exactly related to the baron or Ella, but it shows that there have always been some connections between the city and this noble family. In addition, The Hague was a more thriving city than Arnhem, and the Dutch government has always been established there.”
The same day that Ella’s classified ad appeared, 2 September, Seyss-Inquart read reports of the Allied army poised to strike north from Belgium into the Netherlands and saw the need to order all German Nazi civilians living and working in Holland to return to the sanctuary of Germany. The order terrified the NSB Dutch living in Arnhem and Velp and all across the country; these Nazi loyalists knew they would be arrested by the Oranje Dutch or worse if the Allies seized control of Gelderland. Those with the means packed up and headed east in case the Allies were to suddenly appear and unleash Dutch nationalism that had been heating up like a covered kettle in the past couple of years.
Three evenings after the “rooms wanted” ad ran in Het Vaderland came something that would be known in the Netherlands as Dolle Dinsdag, “Mad Tuesday,” when rumors shot along the countryside and waterways that the Allies had blown through the German front line at the Belgian border and were rushing northward into the Netherlands. The baron brought this incredible news home to the Beukenhof, and it seemed to be true since the flow of Germans through town had become a sudden flood, with weary, beaten soldiers stopping only long enough to loot some homes and steal what they could before they moved on. At times, gridlock occurred as thoroughfares crowded by Germans and every manner of escaping vehicle exceeded capacity.
But the euphoria of Dolle Dinsdag faded in succeeding days as no liberators appeared, and then the radio confirmed that the Allied ground forces remained stuck way down at the border of Holland and Belgium. Liberation remained a long way away.
Hoofdstraat in the center of Velp resembled a major European city, so crowded were the streets and sidewalks. Mother and daughter listened to a new sound, the Hawker Typhoon, a speedy British fighter plane that had been boasted of on the BBC. By this time every Dutch man, woman, and child knew the sound of each type of aircraft engine. They knew instantly what the Allied fighter planes sounded like, what was a Spitfire, Thunderbolt, or Lightning, and what was a German Focke-Wulf 190, Messerschmitt Bf-109, or Junkers 88. The Typhoon had a high and deadly buzz-saw growl about it. And Audrey didn’t find it a comforting sound, as it was the Allied planes that dealt death in Velp, the Tommies mostly, attacking moving trains or trucks or tanks riding along Dutch streets, and God help any Velpenaren who happened to get in the way. The Germans even put up propaganda posters about it around Velp. The poster showed bombs raining down from the skies with the words in red, van je vrienden—from your “friends” the Allies.
On 9 September, a Saturday, British planes strafed a train and ammunition dump in Wolfheze, nine miles to the west just past Oosterbeek. Both the train and munitions went up in explosions that boomed for an hour within easy earshot of Velp.
But even though the air attacks were increasing by the day and the Americans and Brits ruled the skies with no German fighter planes seen anywhere, the German retreat seemed to have stopped. German troops were gathering around Velp. Ella knew who they were because she remembered them well: They were Waffen SS from the Panzer Corps. Lots of them suddenly appeared in the village. Gaunt, stone-faced, battle-scorched men lazed about on Rozendaalselaan. They sat and talked, smoked cigarettes, ate food that the Dutch could only dream about, and enjoyed the renowned shade trees, their tanks, cannon, and half-tracks dented and bullet-riddled from combat in Normandy. The worst thing about them—they weren’t passing through. They were said to be gathering in Arnhem, digging in north of Velp, and requisitioning buildings and villas in town and up by the Burgers’ Zoo and Openlucht Museum, and east in Rheden and beyond, all along the IJssel.
Word had it there were at least a dozen tanks of the II SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem-Velp area—Audrey had seen a number of them parked in front of the Beukenhof before they rolled up the boulevard and into the woodlands.
There was a hint of autumn—herfst as the Dutch called it—in the air with cool evenings and a touch of orange in the edges of the leaves on the trees. The breezes carried conversations among the Germans of the Panzer Corps to Ella’s ears as they discussed the joy of being in a peaceful place after the hell of their time in Normandy.
But the word peace uttered by anyone threatened bad luck, and sure enough, on 10 September the gun emplacements in Westervoort just to the south hit an Allied fighter plane that Audrey heard screaming overhead just before it exploded into houses on the Kerkallee, the street just a few blocks to the south past the railroad tracks. Five Dutch civilians were killed.
Then came yet another new worry. On the evening of Saturday, 16 September, after dark the Dutch Resistance set off a bomb that damaged a railway viaduct between Arnhem and Velp. It seemed to be just another random event in a series of random events—Deelen bombed repeatedly, Spitfires buzzing overhead as if looking for something, and now an act of sabotage by the Resistance. If only Audrey had known what was to come, that the events weren’t random at all. Even Dr. Visser ’t Hooft and the L.O. with all their connections had no idea about the bomb this evening or the plans for tomorrow. But really, what could they have done about it? There was nothing the civilians could do now as, far away in England, the Allies were setting their sights on Arnhem. No, the Dutch could do nothing but risk some precious plastic explosives to blow up the odd rail line. It was likely the Resistance arm known as the L.K.P., the Landelijke Knokploeg, the local saboteurs, that had set that bomb, and they wouldn’t dream of letting the L.O. know about it. Such operations were need-to-know only.
Locals awoke on Sunday morning to learn that the Germans had reacted as the Germans always did, with posters nailed to the message boards of Arnhem, Velp, Apeldoorn, and other towns in the area: The saboteurs involved in this cowardly bombing must present themselves at Utrechtseweg 53 in Arnhem—the notorious headquarters of the SD—by this afternoon, or hostages would be chosen at random and shot. The pronouncement iced the blood in the veins of the women of the Beukenhof as it brought back those August days and the death of Otto, and Audrey could but sit alone and wonder: Would Opa be next?
The inhabitants of the Beukenhof had spent a restless Saturday night worrying about sabotage and reprisal. All Velp remained on edge through Sunday morning because the saboteurs did not surrender themselves. But the baron was not one for worry. All along he had remained civil to the German officers who tried to befriend him. He collected stamps, and so did they. So few gentlemanly pastimes remained in this violent world; surely the mutual love of collectible postage stamps that he shared with the Wehrmacht men must shield him from harm, mustn’t it? No, of course not, because decisions on this scale were political and not based on who was friends with whom. They came from Seyss-Inquart himself, based on how the wind was blowing. Or they came from General Christiansen, of whom Seyss-Inquart said, “We got along together very well in our work,” or from the most evil decision maker of all, Rauter. Any attempt to arrest the baron would come out of the blue with a knock at the door, and so the logical thing was for him to go underground at once—the very last course of action the baron would ever consider.
The baron was above all a practical man and it was Sunday morning, which meant they must all dress for church. With thoughts of reprisals and death in the air, they pulled on their worship clothes not knowing that life for the village and for the country would change in an hour and never be the same again.