Two service buddies and one child

The story of Veronique Dudek about her father Mart Moors

Our grandfather Martin was a military in the Dutch Indies. He and my grandmother went regularly for reunions of veterans. At one of those meetings my grandmother seems to have shouted to a man: “You have left your child in Indonesia”. It became a real hassle, because a lot of people were sitting around them. Why reacted she so upset, and who was that man she was so angry with? Was it just someone of whom she knew he had left a secret child behind? Or was it perhaps Jan Muller, the biological father of our father?

Grandpa Martin was engaged in the Netherlands when he went to the Dutch Indies with the Tiger Brigade, 5th Field Company of the Engineers Corps. It was probably in Salatiga that he got to know my grandmother, a true Javanese. She was called Wasini, grandma Sientje for us. In 1948, they married. Not long after, my father Mart was born. Their child, we always thought.

This marriage caused a lot of fuss at the time. Servicemen were not allowed to marry abroad. Even the intelligence service seems to have been involved in trying to stop the marriage. He was engaged in the Netherlands, maybe that had to do with it. Two months before the birth of my father, he had broken that Dutch engagement because of our grandmother Wasini. After his demobilization grandfather Martin also was not immediately allowed to travel to the Netherlands with his wife and child. Eventually they came to the Netherlands after 1951. My grandmother was already pregnant with their second child.

“He's not one of mine”

If grandpa Martin was drunk, he sometimes said “that one there is not mine” and then pointed to my father Mart. Obviously my father was not amused. And there were more such insinuations about him going around. But there it was never openly discussed. It was really a family secret. I tried to speak about it with my father sometimes, but his lips kept being closed. And yet you knew that something was wrong. I have always felt that we are different from the rest of the family. We have a different stance, a different character. We have quite a heated family, but my brothers, my father and I are just quiet types.
When my father died in 2012, rumors re-emerged: your father is not really from your grandfather. I thought, now I'd like to know what's going on.

A friend of your grandfather

My aunt, the sister of my father, went to Indonesia last month. I asked her if she would check with surviving older relatives about the rumors. She checked with the youngest sister of my grandmother. She agreed: "Indeed, your real grandfather was a friend of your grandfather Martin." This man, the soldier Jan Muller from Arnhem, regularly came to visit my grandmother and her parents. He was in the 3rd platoon Bridges, 5th Field Company T-brigade of the Engineers Corps. He and my grandmother were apparently friends. Or more. He would be the biological father of my father.

I found a picture of Jan Muller in 1947. The probability that Jan Muller is the biological father of our father is indeed very large. It fits more to our stature: he should have been a big guy. In this photo he is wearing a wedding ring. So maybe he had a steady relationship in the Netherlands and that's why he abandoned my grandma and their unborn child? Sometimes Jan Muller took his buddy Martin along with the visits to my grandmother. They were in the same platoon. Has my grandfather Martin also fallen in love with Sientje? Or did he feel sorry for her, being left and pregnant?
I found letters from my grandfather Martin to his brother in the Netherlands, from the period 1946 - 1951. After breaking his Dutch engagement he wrote for the first time to his brother: “I will become a father” ! That’s just weeks before the birth of my father. Why did he not mention that in previous letters? If you count back my father can indeed hardly be the child of grandfather Martin. My father Mart was born in 1948 in Salatiga and must be conceived in mid-November 1947. At that time grandpa Martin was in the hospital recovering from malaria, according to the letters to his brother. That's tricky, lying ill in a hospital in Semarang, while fathering a child in Salatiga.

During her trip in Indonesia, our aunt also checked with the brother of my grandmother, but he did not want to talk about it. He only told that my grandmother had been married off at a young age, but the marriage did not take place. Did this perhaps have to do with her friendship with the Dutch soldiers?

“Stop searching!”

After my aunt returned to Holland with the small portions of information on the possible biological father of our father, the family urged us: “stop searching! Whatever your grandmother did, she did it for her family”. But that does not fit with my Dutch curiosity. I do not feel I'm washing our dirty laundry in public. There has been silence too much and too long. The openness of me and my two brothers is very upsetting for our family. Our quest does not fit the Dutch-Indonesian family tradition. It is not my intention to discredit my grandmother or hurt anyone. But to go on as usual, with all that silence, dissolves nothing.
It is not extremely important to find our biological grandfather Muller or his relatives. It's more that suddenly a lot of puzzle pieces fit together, but we still miss some. We would really like to have the puzzle complete, also out of respect for our father.

Veronique Dudek, daughter of Warlovechild Mart Moors, also on behalf of her two brothers.

Contact information about Veronique Dudek is known by the webmaster of Warlovechild