Father Jeff Leever from Wieringerwerf posthumously honored as a Normandy veteran

“I think it is a piece of reparation that also belongs to him,” says Jeff Leever about the ceremony today at the barracks of the Garderegiment Fusiliers Princess Irene in Oirschot, “I think that such a person deserves all respect. If this is the final piece of history from my father, then I look back on that with pride.”

For Henry Leever, the war starts immediately with the German invasion of the Netherlands. He then defends the Maasbruggen near Rotterdam as a marine. “He helped ensure that the royal family could safely leave for England,” says Jeff Leever. “After that he went to London himself.”

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During the war, Hendrik Leever was posted to the gunboat Flores, which was at the front during the Allied landings in Sicily, together with her sister ship Soemba, to shell the German positions. “My father did tell something about that. They shot at a German panzer unit. For that he received the Bronze Cross from Wilhelmina.”

In 1944, because the British did not consider the Irene Brigade strong enough, the marines were added to the Brigade. At the beginning of August, two months after the first Allied landings, the Brigade reached the Normandy coast. Soon the men are deployed at St. Côme. The British and Canadians have already renamed the area Hellfire Corner because of the heavy German shelling and poor conditions.

Injured

“My father was seriously injured there. He had shrapnel in his leg,” says Leever, “His parents in the Netherlands had even received a message via the Red Cross that he had died. When my father came from Tilburg with a Jeep after the liberation. As he drove up, his father was sitting outside in the sun with his wife beside him. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. His mother passed out and his father was gray the next morning.”

After the war Henry Leever stopped talking about fighting from the Normandy coast until the liberation of the Netherlands. “It was a closed book for him. Of course we wanted to know more. But for him it was something that he no longer remembered. He was also invited to commemorations, also in Normandy, but he never responded.”

Today the award was presented at the barracks in Oirschot by Regiment Commander George Dimitriu of the Garderegiment Fusiliers Prinses Irene. The history of the Brigade is kept alive at the Major General De Ruyter van Steveninck barracks. The family was given a tour of the museum with a lot of historical material.

At the ceremony, Hendrik Leever’s Invasion Cord was briefly dipped in a glass of Calvados. On arrival in Normandy in 1944, members of the Brigade found two barrels and it has been the unit’s traditional drink ever since.

Reparation

The fact that the Invasion Cord has now been handed over after 78 years is mainly due to Mike, Jeff’s younger brother. He found out that his father had never received the cord and knocked on the door of Defense to get it done. “Suddenly he came to the right place and was told that it was being investigated. And it was correct and then a thousand apologies followed. Now it is time for it to be restored,” says Jeff Leever.