The story of Bert Immink
by Duncan Brocket
Fifteen years ago I sat down with Bert Immink to record the story of his experiences during World War Two and of his emigration to New Zealand. The telling of this story took three hours and it was a time filled with a richness of verbal pictures, which are almost impossible to convey in writing. It is a story of incredible adventure and Bert’s most common statement was, “I was (or we were) very lucky!” How these things came about is a treat in store for you as you read this story. We know that you will enjoy it and we leave it to Bert to take up the tale of his life.
“I was born in 1923 in Leiden, a very old town not far from the North Sea coast. Leiden was one of the first university cities in Europe and its association with learning goes back four or five hundred years. My parents were both Christians and members of the Reformed Church. It was very much the old type of religion and very strict. Everyone went to church and mostly on foot. Probably only 10% of the people had cars but even they would walk to church on a Sunday. It was a day when you dressed up in your good clothes in the morning and remained in them until you took them off at night. No one was allowed to work on Sunday. You could go for a walk but you couldn’t buy an ice cream for in that way you would be causing someone else to work!
My father was a health inspector but lost his job during the depression cut-backs in Leiden so we moved to Maastricht further south, right on the Belgium border. The predominant church here was the Roman Catholic and it was equally strict. Maastricht was a big place so that, although the Protestants numbered only about 5% of the population, they were able to have their own school and “prevent contamination” by the Catholic teaching. I remember that we were the only Protestant family in our street and some of the other boys were not even allowed to play with me. Most Protestants were very anti-Roman Catholic and you could feel the hatred generated between the two groups. Because of the strong feeling, it was very hard to get jobs.
I was 17 when the war started. I remember the date very well. On the 10th of May we woke up to find that the Germans had moved in. The small Dutch army had resisted for about four days and had blown up all the bridges but could do little else. I was working at the time as an apprentice motor mechanic and soon most of the vehicles that we had to repair were those of the German Army.
For the next couple of years things moved on more or less the same. We were treated reasonably well as long as we behaved ourselves and there was sufficient to eat. But in 1943 things started to change. By this time Germany was becoming short of manpower as she tried to maintain her front lines and occupation forces. The Germans were taking 14-year olds into training in the Hitler Youth and by the age of 16 they were being sent into the forces. To get the people they needed to run the essential services, a policy of forced labour was instituted in the occupied countries. (One thing the Germans never did was force us to join their army – only volunteers would be taken for that. Throughout Europe there were many thousands who did volunteer and most of them ended up in the SS)
In early 1943, we were told that all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 25 must go to Germany to work. I had not long got my driver’s licence so put myself down as a mechanic-driver. I could have gone into the Underground but that would have meant just disappearing. It would have meant no ration cards for food and exposing my parents to retaliation from the Germans. Quite a few did go into the Underground but the useless wastage of lives was terrible.
It was funny and indicative of the German mentality that even although there was a war on, they would not recognise my Dutch driver’s licence and I had to go through lectures again to get a German one. This training was given at a special place in Holland under German instructors and about half of us passed the test.
Then in June 1943, I was sent with others to Berlin. I was quite happy about this because until that time, no bombs had fallen on that city. But two months later they suffered their first air raid. At the weekend some of us went to see where the bombs had fallen. There was not much damage but one of them had landed on a church. The Germans made much propaganda of this – so much so that other nations would not believe it but it was true. After that there were a lot more raids and they were to continue until after I left the city in 1945. Berlin was a big city and the bombers would hit different parts of it. If they were not attacking our part we would go outside to watch. The planes usually flew very high and the searchlights would be seeking for them. If a plane was caught in one, the other beams would turn on it as well until there was a whole cone of light. Then the fighters would go in and attack. One night we watched ten bombers brought down in this way.
When we first arrived in Berlin I was approached by a big fellow with a list in his hand and asked if I would work for him as a driver-mechanic. My thought was, “What choice do I have?” so I agreed. We were housed in a barracks type of camp and travelled to work each day by tram. This journey took about half an hour. We had a special passport stamp which gave us permission to drive anywhere in Berlin but not outside of it and we did all sorts of general cartage jobs for the boss.
Then one day I had an accident. We were unloading rolls of paper and one of them fell on me and injured my knee. I had some treatment for it but it kept giving me trouble and it was decided that it could only really be helped by an operation. So, in February 1944 I went into hospital for what should have been a stay of two to three weeks but which lengthened to three months!
This was a civilian hospital run by Roman Catholic nuns but it was very short of doctors. When I was recuperating after my operation, I soon found myself serving the other patients. The Catholic sisters, because of their strict Order were most unwilling to touch a man below the waist and I was being called upon to prep the male patients for surgery. The only instrument was a cutthroat razor and the doctor, a Czechoslovakian, remarked that some of the patients looked as if they had already had surgery before they even got to him!
It was this same doctor; however, who arranged things so that I could stay on longer at the hospital while I had treatment and physiotherapy. At the same time I took meals around, delivered dead patients to the mortuary (I couldn’t sleep the night after the first one but got used to it) and rolled up bandages that had been washed for re-use. The sisters got used to me being there and gave me more and more to do. I had a white coat and had to follow the doctor round the male wards with a wagon loaded with instruments – me, who didn’t have a first-aid certificate!
On one occasion a sister sent me to insert a catheter into a man. I protested and said it was work for the doctor but was told he was in the theatre. The nun refused to do it herself but would tell me how it was performed and as the man was in agony, I agreed. I was shown how to use the instrument and then left! My first “operation” was successful but I later learned that if I had pushed too far, the patient would have been killed! Another time I was sent to help the doctor in the theatre. The sisters said it was O.K. because I had watched the doctor at work while doing orderly duties. I went and was given a pump to operate. I had to keep the abdomen flushed out while the doctor worked on the patient’s bladder.
But time moved on and the doctor could find no more excuses for keeping me. So I had to give up my clean room and comfortable bed and return to driving the trucks.
One night after I returned to our sleeping quarters, the barracks were attacked with incendiary bombs. We didn’t stay out to watch that raid but ran to the shelter. This was a long narrow building with seating along each wall and it was packed with people. The bombing was terrible and two of the firebombs broke into the shelter, filling it with smoke. As soon as we could, we got out of there and went up to see what had happened. All the wooden barracks were in the flames as were the houses and buildings round about. I was lucky that I had my luggage with me and not much was lost.
But this raid and subsequent ones meant that the trams that we relied on to get us to work were unusable. The next day, therefore, it took us two hours to get to work. The boss wasn’t very happy about this at all and set out to do something about it. He was in the S.A. (the Brown Shirts) and had quite a bit of influence. He was able to get permission for two of us to stay in a small room at the back of the garage. This was quite an improvement for we were able to gather up some things and install a stove to help make ourselves comfortable. We were issued with ration cards and could buy our own food and clothing. We were paid for the work we did and had sufficient money, and as we drove around the town, we could see what shops had the supplies we needed. On the whole we were well treated and we could go out to the pub or pictures at night if we wished.
The winter of 1944 was a bad one and freezing cold. One morning we had to repair a vehicle and it was so cold that we could hardly hold a spanner or a nut. We had the fire going in out room and would go in there frequently to warm our hands. The boss started moaning about us spending so much time off the job and eventually locked the door to the room. I got uptight and told him what I thought of him!
“You have insulted a German”, the boss said, “I will go to the Gestapo!” I thought he was joking but he was serious and we went to the Gestapo. There he read out a whole list of complaints and small accidents spreading over six months but which he had not mentioned until then. I tried to explain what had happened but was ignored and put in a cell. There was no such thing as a trial or a sentence – you were just locked up until someone decided to let you go. The barracks were just one stage better than a concentration camp and the conditions were terrible. We were heavily guarded with wire and gun towers all around us and I was also kept under lock and key all the time. We were given one slice of bread in the morning and another one in the afternoon with sometimes the merest scraping of butter. Then at night we received soup – at least that was what they called it. It had no meat or salt and was almost pure water. For the first two days I couldn’t touch the soup and gave it away to the other prisoners, but after that I was glad to take it!
I was fortunate; I was released after three weeks. About half of the prisoners were there for political reasons and the rest, like myself, hadn’t been able to keep their temper. By this time the Russians were advancing and space was required for the more serious prisoners so we were told that we would be released before our time. If you are healthy you can stand that sort of treatment for a few weeks but one man I talked with had been there for three months and his flesh was deteriorating. It was not a good place.
When I was released, I went back to work for the same man. Meanwhile, the other Dutchman, William, had fallen in love with the boss’ daughter and she had become pregnant. The boss found out about William and sent him off on a long delivery – to the Russian front! I seemed very obvious that he intended him to get killed but William came back at a time when the boss was away. He and the daughter started plotting to get rid of the father by denouncing him to the Gestapo for hoarding tins of meat and chocolate gathered from his customers and hidden in his house. The Gestapo must have been busy for it took them a few weeks to get round to raiding the place. In the meantime the boss came back and William had to cook up some story of how he survived the Russian front.
The Gestapo eventually came and took the boss away but released him a short time later on a suspended sentence. This put a definite crimp in the young couple’s plans but it didn’t do me any good either for the boss obviously had suspicions that I was involved in his arrest. He didn’t say anything about this but put me on a train out of Berlin and sent me to the west. I ended up in Dresden with a group of other drivers in February 1945.
Dresden had been bombed for the first time about three weeks before with nearly 300,000 casualties. It had been a beautiful old city and there was no sense in its bombing. Huge graves had been dug outside of the city and when we arrived, the bodies were still being carried to them. I just missed being delegated to this carrying task and instead was given a joint-driving job on a bus. Each bus had two drivers, one German and one of another nationality; one to drive and one to stoke the gas-producer that provided fuel.
Driving a bus was a good job but it had its hazards, as most vehicles were targets for Allied aircraft. We had seen the damage they could do on our way to Dresden – there were burnt-out vehicles all along the motorway. In Dresden there were two railway stations about seven to eight miles apart and because the trams were out of action, we provided the cross-town transport. However, our buses were so valuable that they had to be taken out of the city at nights and were driven to a small village about twenty miles away. This meant we got good meals and reasonable sleep.
After a month to six weeks of this, Nuremberg was bombed and we were sent there to do a similar driving job, supplying transport between stations. The Americans were coming closer and one day the drivers were told that the Army wanted the two fastest buses to take troops to the front. My German partner warned me of what this could mean and asked me if I could “fix” the bus. This I did and when the Germans tried it out, they could only get 10 miles per hour from it! Two other buses were taken – one of these was shot up and many, including the driver, were killed. We had to go out the next day and tow the wrecked bus back so that it could be used for spares.
Once again we were travelling home to a village at night. Allied planes were everywhere by then and we always drove with the spare driver sitting on the mudguard as lookout for a pending attack. If one came we would leave the bus and race for caver. On one occasion I was sitting on the mudguard when a plane came over. It was so low that I didn’t even have time to move and as it passed I saw the features of the pilot. I thought we had had it but he passed right on without firing a shot. I wondered why and looked to see where he was going. He had spotted a railway train and felt it was a much better target. Indeed it was for he sent ammunition and equipment sky-high while we made good our escape!
We stayed in that village until the Allies arrived although we had to work some skullduggery to do it. For some strange reason we never drove our buses at the weekend so had free time to spend in the village or with the farmers with whom we were billeted. There were four Dutchmen among the drivers and we got together. One Saturday when it was obvious that the Americans were not far away we found out that our buses were to go to Munich the next day. We had no intention of going with them so planned a picnic. We told the people that we would be going for a walk in the bush, took our lunch and left at 6.00am. When we returned at 10.00pm all the buses had gone!
We went to the mayor of the town who agreed that it was hard luck that we had been left behind and suggested that we stay in the village on a mutual co-operation basis. They would shelter us if we would help them get some food from a nearby factory – it was more dangerous for them to be on the roads than us. We set off with a handful of papers and a small trolley and eventually brought back a load of cheese and other goods. These were distributed and we settled down to wait for the Americans. They came one night with a little shooting and the sound of heavy vehicles. The Germans stayed in their homes but we went out and met the tanks and shook hands with the soldiers.
We should have gone into a camp with others to be sorted out and eventually repatriated home but we couldn’t wait that long. We were about a thousand miles from home but we set out on foot hoping to hitch-hike. After some time we found a small truck in a ditch. It was a two-cylinder DKW and we pushed it back onto the road. We found it had no petrol and no battery but we were reluctant to leave it so pushed it down the road to a farm. There was an American soldier there and we told him what we needed. At his suggestion, we took the battery from a tractor and what petrol we could find. It was enough to get us about a hundred miles.
We came up to a petrol station, which was locked and deserted. We broke the locks and got enough to enable us to carry on to a dump where there were literally thousands of jerricans – all empty! The guard let us loose among them and after a couple of hours we had drained out enough to fill one of them.
Each night we stopped at a village and went straight to the mayor. We would tell him who we were and where we were going and he would find us a billet for the night. These people were very good to us and helped us all they could.
One day we were stopped by American military police who told us that we should be in a repatriation camp. They gave us directions on how we should get to the next one, which we noted very carefully and just as carefully, ignored. The next time we were stopped we were hundreds of miles from Nuremberg and the Americans would not believe that that was where we came from, even although our number plates said so. They sent us to the next camp with two armed motorcycles as escort. The gates were opened, we drove in and the motorcycles left.
I had gone over to talk to a man in the camp but the other three stayed near the truck. Shortly I saw them gesturing me to get on. We drove up to the gates, which just opened, and we went out! I was sitting on the back and half expecting an armed motorcycle at any moment but we got clean away.
At the next town we stopped at a garage for petrol and some repairs. There was no gas there but we were told how to get to a supply normally held for village emergencies. We managed to fill our tank and jerrican before we were surprised and had to make good our escape.
We carried on until we reached the River Rhine at a point less than a day’s journey from my home. All the bridges had been blown but there was an army pontoon at this place. We fell in with a convoy of trucks going our way (most convoys were going in the other direction) and moved down to the bridge. We were such a small vehicle that the military police couldn’t see us until we were right on the approaches and then there really was a commotion. Civilian vehicles weren’t allowed on the bridge and the whole convoy had to back up to let us get off! We then started driving up the east bank of the Rhine looking for another crossing point.
We were stopped once more on our journey and taken to a senior American officer who said it was unbelievable that we had been able to come across war-torn Europe the way we had. He said he wouldn’t stop us but would let us go to see just how far we could get. We got right to the Dutch border and there our own people confiscated our truck. We had been driving varied distances each day for nearly two weeks. We were placed in a camp just inside the Dutch border while we had document and medical checks and then we were released. There was no way of letting my people know where I was, so all I could do was go home, knock on the door and say, “Here I am!”