From August 1944, Dutch men of the Princess Irene Brigade landed on the beaches of Normandy to compete for the liberation of Western Europe. Among them were many young men from Noord-Holland who managed to stay out of the hands of the Germans as soldiers in 1940. Or Englanders who could escape to participate in the battle. Not everyone came home unscathed again.
An exhibition is set up in Spaarndam in which Sergeant Heimen Germans gets a role. Germans lost his life in the last battle of the Princess Irene Brigade near Hedel. On April 25, 1945, just before the end of the war, he was shot by the Germans.
“Someone else from the south had come to Spaarndam to tell his wife my mine that he was doing well and that he would soon come home. But then it went wrong. The next day a field preacher came to her to tell that he had died,” says Wim Koelman from the historic working group Spaarndam.
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Koelman went to Hedel a few days ago to see where the battle took place and to lay flowers at the monument for the fallen. “That was very impressive. I can also remember the stories from that time. Heimen was reburied in Spaarndam soon after the war. My parents still heard the salute shots.”
Heimen’s body was brought on a truck from Brabant to Spaarndam. Before he was buried, his coffin was first in the Rhinelandshuis, near the place where Soon the exhibition can be seen. “Thanks to men such as Heimen, we can talk to each other here. He therefore deserves all the attention from us”
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Abraham du Bois from Heiloo is also one of the North Hollanders who is killed in the battle. In the May days of 1940 he fights against the Germans in Peel in Brabant and manages to escape to England after the Dutch surrender via France. He takes equipment and men.
“He was in the front everywhere and was a born leader,” says curator Hans Sonnemans of the Museum of Princess Irene Brigade in Oirschot. He has studied the story of Du Bois for years. “In Canada he helped set up military training there. He also had contact with Juliana.”
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Killed after attack
Du Bois goes with the American troops during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. He was later involved in a rescue operation to get surrounded troops to the Waal. When that failed, he started training the resistance how to deal with weapons. Sonnemans says on December 4, 1944.
“At the German invasion of a farm he was taken prisoner. In addition, his leg broke. Because they were afraid that he would flee, they later broke his leg again. He was finally executed as a retaliation on 8 March ’45, along with other men after the attack on the highest SS’er in the Netherlands, Hann’s Rauter. He could still not stand him.”
Only on July 25, 1945 did his family hear that he had died. Abraham du Bois was buried in Mausoleum de Paasberg in Ede. In total, at least eight North Holland men of the Irene Brigade are killed in Western Europe.
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“This was just another battle of people,” says Hans Sonnemans of the museum about the Princess Irene Brigade in Oirschot. “I talked to a lot of men about what they have experienced. In the meantime, nobody lives anymore.”
Sonnemans is particularly impressed by their decisiveness, the feeling of having to do something. “To give an example, the story of a farmer’s son. He was the occupation. Step on his bike to France, Spain and made the crossing to England from Lisbon. Then he joined the brigade and three years later he walks into his village again. They were just special men.”