The two organizers of Team The Netherlands Sander (PD9HIX) and Erwin (PA3EFR) are brothers. Before their father passed away some years ago he did put his biography to paper in an extensive document. As he was born in Arnhem in 1935, he was fully aware of the WW-II happenings, including food droppings over the heather fields of Crailose.
 | As his biography reads: “The last weeks of April all eyes were focused on the sky because for a few days food was brought to the Netherlands by air. The food situation was indeed dire. A great many people died, even here and there are no more burials because the digging required too much effort. So what was done there, I do not know: people had to dig a grave somewhere themselves? I myself did not see any deaths from hunger, but the people were seriously emaciated, what was edible was actually already gone and we ourselves had reached the “sugar beet phase”, but tulip bulbs, ground and cooked, were also eaten here and there as best as they could. With sugar beet pulp through the kale, instead of potatoes, I could have eaten three plates and an hour later I could have had more, but that was available. And I still have the idea that we did not come off the worst because from Grandpa and from all kinds of other sides, something still came in now and then. Aunt Gerda even walked and cycled to Overijssel once and returned with a dead chicken in her pannier. Party for a short while! And …… the goats did not experience the liberation either! |
At the end of April (1945) Harm and I walked from the Naarden fortress to the Brinklaan in Bussum with one of our carts. There, at a certain moment in the south, swarms of bombers appeared, like we also heard them during the nights that they flew over to bomb Germany. They made another wide turn and flew from the south-east to Bussum and suddenly… the hatches came loose and there it rained, I thought, and so used to from Arnhem, bombs. But whatever happened and however we waited, there were no explosions. And after the first wave of bombers, the second followed and so it went on for a while. And now again: no explosions. I didn’t understand that at all. However, when we got home we were told in great detail the story that food parcels had been dropped on the Crailosche Heide. From Sweden, help had arrived from the Red Cross with food and we were provided, despite the fact that the Germans were still in control here, with bread, real white bread, chocolate, legumes, and much more.
| The food parcels were stored somewhere but were also distributed very quickly. What a wealth of real white bread, real chocolate on the bar, tins of Canadian biscuits and butter. We could not get enough of our wealth. Yes, I got a whole bar of chocolate from Aunt Gerda and I was frugal with it at first, but later, behind the school in the Eendrachtspark, I ate it all. That was not wise. I was no longer used to anything and the result was that I was in bed that evening and the next day. I threw up everything and was as sick as a dog. That was of course over quickly; I distributed the next chocolate a bit better and that went well too. For a few more days flights were carried out and more food was dropped, but slowly the end of the war came closer. Even during those last days of April and in the run-up to May, the men at home kept track of the maps showing the progress of the fronts, with a particular focus on what was happening in the east of the Netherlands.” Knowing what we know today, these bombers must have been from Operation Chowhound as the heather fields of Crailose are located at number 8 on the map. |  |