Arrested for his wartime sweetheart. A poem

A young Marine asks permission to marry his Indonesian 'sweetheart’. His commander is not amused and orders his immediate departure for Holland. The Marine leaves the barracks the day before his departure to join and unite with his love, but he never reaches her: he is arrested. During his imprisonment, between the cockroaches and mosquitoes, he desperately scratches a poem on the wall:

(East Java, 1949)

How long will I have to stay

within these four walls,

paying fines for a crime

committed for you alone

My love that exists only for you

but was misunderstood by my parents

when I had to go home, I decided to defect,

No bond tied me to my home anymore

because I loved you, I tried

to build: a family and a home for the two of us

But God, after only a few days, I was caught

and now I am in this miserable cell

with your lovely face in my mind

as a shiny drop of water in this hell

as beautiful as you always have been for me

Oh, Sumira, I can not miss you

my love is for you alone

God will lead us once, ... he will decide ...

you to me, or me to you ...

Poem by a deserter (written down by L. van der Waal)

This 'poem by a deserter’ I copied from the wall of a prisoner’s cell, or rather a mandi-loft, where we - by default - temporarily locked arrested military until they could be transferred elsewhere.

Recently I came across the poem again when I was cleaning my home: the yellowed copy of the poem, written by the deserter we had caught. It was a 20-year old service Marine who had taken off together with a mate soldier. Under the direction of the indigenous people - who did not really know how to deal with these in their eyes weird people - we could finally arrest the deserters fairly simple.

We locked the youngest Marine, let we call him De Pruyter, in our washing-room of 2x4 m2, and the Marine man Mau(...) was locked in another scorching place.

On September 15, 1949, around 17:00 I went for a bath. I found that De Pruyter had scratched a poem on the wall of the mandi-room. There was no electricity, so the light was low: the poem was difficult to read. I was furious with De Pruyter because he had scratched the poem in the stucco with a nail, that he had managed to take out of the roof. If he had committed suicide or had done bad things with that nail, I would have been punished myself! In short, I could have gotten in trouble myself, so I cursed him stiff and swore that henceforth he would have to stay handcuffed in his sweltering loft. But before I had found the handcuffs, I had to suddenly pull up to a nearby Chinese shop that was set on fire by the PKI (Indonesian communists Party).

That night I did not sleep. My stomach turned around when I thought about the killed children in the burning Chinese toko. Also the first lines of the poem of De Pruyter - a nice guy, who in his life probably had not hurt a fly, constantly haunted my thoughts. He had asked his commander permission to marry his beloved Javanese. His major had burst out in a furious rage: "Have you totally gone mad! Bastard! You go back to Holland with the first ship! Basta! "

The last day before his forced return home he was gone, not as a deserter to the enemy, but because he loved Soemira and not want to abandon her:

At three o'clock in the night I got up and asked the duty officer for the keys to the mandi-room. He looked at me suspiciously. "I'm terribly worried," I sighed. "I am afraid the prisoner will commit suicide. "So what!" Said the duty officer, "an asshole less!"

De Pruyter was awake and was sitting on the edge of the mandi-box. I had a notepad and pencil and asked him to write down his poem on paper and scrape the words on the wall away. I promised in exchange to pley a good word for him.

The next day I asked him if I could have the poem in order to add the official report. He resolutely refused. That poem was something between him and Soemira (the beautiful girl from the desa) and nobody was allowed to come in between. He did not seem to realize that the poem could serve his defense.

When I reported the matter to the captain, he scolded on me, because I dealt amicably with prisoners. And the poem he found complete bullshit. Nevertheless some days later, just before De Pruyter was discharged to Surbaya on September 19, I confisqated the poem while my commander was away, because I still considered the poem relevant as an "annex" to the police report. The Pruyter I have never seen afterwards.

Many, many years I managed to forget this event. But by reading the poem the whole story appeared in my mind again as if it happened yesterday. It is now some time since I laid my eyes upon the yellowed pages of the poem again and since then I wonder: "What has become of De Pruyter?" I'd really like to know.

And was his action really so criminal? I do not think so! Nonetheless, I - to avoid direct recognition – changed his name somewhat in this article. But insiders will immediately know who I mean. In the Netherlands live more than three thousand people with his name. So every "De Pruyter” may claim that he was not.

In short, who can tell me how the affair De Pruyter has developed, or who helps me at the address of the Marine who served in the Dutch Indies 1948/1949?

My phone number is known to the people of this website: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Thanks in advance,

L. van der Waal

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