My grandfather was a daddy soldier

Unlike most of his military comrades who returned home with the promise to their warlove girls to take care of them and bring them to the Netherlands, 1st class soldier Jan does not want to leave his pregnant girl behind. When the troops leave, Jan stays with her ​​in Indonesia. Only after their baby is born, they can make the trip to the Netherlands together.

In love

My grandfather, born in the year 1918,  was engaged to a wealthy farmer’s daughter from Drenthe, a province in the north of the Netherlands. In WW2 he had been hiding in the home of that family because he did not want to work in Germany for the Nazi’s, and he apparently fell in love with the daughter of the house. Not long after the war in the Netherlands ended, he volunteered in July 1945 as one of the first war volunteers to liberate the Dutch Indies from the Japanese. He was assigned to the Transport Troops. The Dutch troops got their military training in England, and were shipped to Indonesia halfway 1946.

At the end of 1949 he would be returned to the Netherlands, his service was done. But  he had met a girl in Indonesia who had become pregnant by him. Grandpa thought he had to take responsibility and wrote a letter to his fiancee, the farmer’s daughter in the Netherlands, that he quitted the enagagement. But when his platoon was to be shipped to the Netherlands, he was not allowed to take his girl on the boat. Apparently he did not want to leave her alone, so he stayed there, with his pregnant girl.

To the Netherlands

Finally, a year later, in April 1950, they left for the Netherlands together: my grandfather, his girlfriend (my grandmother), their youngborn child and a brother of my grandmother. Because of the fact that this brother looked very Dutch, it was considered too dangerous for him to stay in Indonesia because of the anti-Dutch feelings at that time. So they took him along.

My grandmother was of Dutch-Indies offspring. Her mother had been the babu (housekeeper) in a Dutch family in the Dutch-Indies, and one of the boys of the family had tampered with the babu. My grandmother was the result.
When my grandfather met her, she worked for the Dutch intelligence service at the barracks. That was not very welcomed by the Indonesian independence fighters, and my grandfather had cared for her and arranged a safe house near the barracks, where she could stay. Every night on of the Dutch soldiers slept in that house to protect her. And my grandpa and she fell in love.
My grandmother’s life was always in danger because she worked for the Dutch and was dating a Dutch soldier. She was nearly killed twice. At one time she was at the river, when Indonesian fighters surrounded her and wanted to murder her. The commander knew her personally, however, and made them let her go. The second time was on the patio at the house. A hand grenade was thrown at her, but it did not explode.

What has been, has been

My grandparents have always stayed together. My mother was their second child. However, it has not always been easy. My grandmother was heavily traumatized by the Japanese occupation. She had been forced to live in a concentration camp, her father was murdered, and she had had a terrible time. That past has always haunted and influenced her, and it infected her personality. It also has had a lot of influence on the marriage of my grandparents. She did not allow my grandfather to talk about the past. All Dutch-Indonesian records were then pulled out: "What happened, happened. Don’t look back. Don’t keep on whining," etc.

You were not supposed to talk about the past, emotions were not to be shared. My grandmother did not want her children to dig in her past. She wanted to forget Indonesia completely. She had removed all photos in the book of my grandfather about his military service in Indonesia. When my grandmother died, my grandfather was willing to tell a little bit more than nothing about their experiences, but he died one year after my grandma. So actually we know very little about their lives and lovestory in Indonesia.