Part 1: Clash of arms

CLASH OF ARMS
Written by Bert Plomp

We are in the year 2021. Could it become any quieter during the national Remembrance of the Dead on Dam Square than it has already been for over a year due to the coronavirus? A few years ago, it was some loudly shouting lunatic who disrupted the commemoration; now it is a virus blown in from China that is spoiling the tribute to the fallen. For months, there have been few if any people to be seen on the streets. Apart from the occasional honking by musicians offering some encouragement from the street to the ‘prisoners’ in care homes, it is deathly silent everywhere. One might even fear that, because of this silence, the two minutes’ silence for the fallen would go unnoticed. Fortunately, there is the serviceman who, with his Last Post, trumpets the end of one silence and the beginning of another.
At the time, the virus caused quite a stir, not only misery. The sense of solidarity in the Netherlands received a tremendous boost. You could hardly switch on the television without being reminded how well we were all doing together. The same applied during the Remembrance. Everyone was encouraged to blow along to the Last Post with a small trumpet and, as a grand finale, to sing the Dutch national anthem, Het Wilhelmus, at the top of their voices from home after the two minutes’ silence, whether from their own balcony or from the threshold of their front door. It was truly marvellous. When I think back to all those full-throated voices, I once again find myself carried away.
In my parents’ home, Remembrance of the Dead was always a very special occasion. Not that my parents particularly encouraged me on that day to reflect on the suffering of the Second World War. Not at all. Above all, there was a sense of anticipation for the moment supreme: the then customary one minute of silence at eight o’clock in the evening. In those days, it was considered a mark of good Dutch citizenship to show respect for the fallen on the fourth of May, naturally only for those who had fallen on ‘the right side’ of the conflict.
In the Plomp household, however, Remembrance had an additional dimension. My father had been involved in the ‘underground’ during the war. By that I do not mean that he worked on a metro line: Utrecht, for the record, had no metro during the war, and regrettably still does not. I mean that he was part of the Resistance, the illegal movement that fought against the German oppressor, against Nazi Germany.
At home, anti-German sentiment reached its annual climax on the fourth of May. That aversion extended equally to anyone who had collaborated with the Germans. It was as if, on that day, the ‘Krauts’ had returned, marching once more with much clashing of arms through the streets of the Napoleonplantsoen. This was all the more imaginary given that the Napoleonplantsoen was a post-war residential development, built on former farmland. During the war, there was nothing there to march through, let alone with clashing weapons. The only creatures that managed to make any kind of clatter there at the time were cows: grazing cattle that splattered their dung across the fields. Yet, with the ominous image of our eastern neighbours in mind, the mood at home would always intensify as we approached the one minute of silence.
Whether my father’s role in the Resistance justified his fierce anti-German stance is difficult for me to judge. He did take part in the Resistance, but when, for how long, and to what extent, I do not know. Many of those so-called ‘resistance heroes’ only appeared on the scene after the dirty work had long been done, once the much-hated Wehrmacht had already disappeared over the eastern horizon on my grandfather’s bicycle, almost back with ‘Mutti die Frau’. Perhaps my father truly was a genuine resistance hero, a man who preferred to remain silent about the sacrifices he had made for his country and his people.