|
 As a soldier I was posted for driver work in the construction of a military airport near Tjililitan, near Jakarta, in mid-1949. I got to know a girl there. Her name was Anita or Wanita, I did not figure that out quite well. Our relationship only lasted two months. But it was very intense.
I was just 15 years old when I left the Netherlands to go to the Dutch East Indies. As a soldier, that is! I had used all my bravado to go to the Schiekade in Rotterdam to sign up as a war volunteer. I had been dating a girl who had finished the relationship. And then you think “well, what will I do now? Well, let’s leave home.” They have accidentally forgotten to check about my birth date. And so I became a soldier.
I arrived in the Dutch East Indies in 1946. I got employed as a driver of the 23rd A.A.T. I started at 2.12 RI, then at 2.13 RI, and finally at the 23rd AAT: the supply and removal forces. In the end, I was stationed in Batavia as a driver of food supplies to the outposts. I did it all alone. Gun in the car, and there I went. I stayed the night in the outpost, and the next day back to the barracks again.
When staying at Batavia, I worked a while for a newly constructed military airport in Batavia, a spot called Tjililitan. This work was carried out by Chinese contractors. It is a civilian airport nowadays, but at that time it was a military unit. There were very small houses built together. I slept there with a buddy of mine, a driver who also had been posted to the job. And in the house next door lived two girls. One was full-blooded Indonesian, Javanese. I called her Anita, but later I thought, maybe that was not her name, maybe it comes from Wanita, meaning "woman". Anyway, her being Anita or Wanita, we had a love affair. That was in 1949.
I was young, just 20 years. The relationship was very intense. It lasted about six weeks in July and August 1949.
She herself originally came from Yogyakarta. She was married to an Ambonese guy. He was a KNIL serviceman, the Dutch Indies Army, and participated in military patrols. That's why she was living in that house next to us, who were part of the barracks. These men were often on patrol and then stayed away for a while, and their wives stayed behind in the huts.
I did drivers work for the Chinese. I drove a Studebaker truck. In the evening after work my mate and I sat outside on the porch, the covered terrace of our house. And those girls were in the cabin next to us on their porch. And so one came of the other. I took her with the Studebaker for a ride now and then. Then we went to visit her mother, who lived in a kampong near Tandjung Priok. Or we visited other people she knew.
At one point I got a bit stuffy. I thought: maybe that guy of her will start asking questions, and will discover our love affair. I asked my commander to transfer me to another region. And so he did transfer me. I got to work on the Salakweg, that was quite somewhere else in Batavia. That girl has never come to look for me. Maybe she did not even know where I was. I really think afterwards that my commander took me under protection a bit. I have not said goodbye to her, did not say that I left. I just quietly left without making a fuzz. And a few months later we left for good to the Netherlands.
Back home in Holland I had a relationship with an Indo-European woman, 17 years long. She had five children before I met her, and they have become my foster children. Later this relationship stopped. And now, I'm 79 years and think back on a lot of things that happened long ago. And then I saw your documentary on TV a few days ago. Apparently it happens quite often that soldiers had something with one of the girls there. And now I do think: could I have fathered a child? Our relationship may have lasted not very longtime, barely two months, but it's been very intense. So yes, I actually feel like I have something running around there. That just would not be impossible. Maybe even my grandchildren are walking around somewhere. That's why I told this story. Maybe someone there will recognize the situation I have described, and realizes I fathered him or her. And me? I'm also curious about it.
H.R., 79 years.
Name and address of H.R. are known by the editors of this website War Love Child.
Do you recognize yourself in this story, did you yourself father a child and had to leave it behind in Indonesia? Or do you happen to know someone who is looking for his child, his or her father, half brother or sister? Or maybe has found this person? Please let us know! |
The documentary
