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62 pages

English

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As a child growing up on a farm in Eastern Ontario, Henrietta listened intently to dinner table stories about her parents' lives before and after WWII.
She never tired of the accounts of the family legend, Bill O'Neill, a Canadian soldier who briefly stayed in her parents' tiny home in Holland during the war. Impressed by his kindness and evident bravery her parents gave him a copy of their wedding portrait as a souvenir.
As she grew up, Henrietta did not forget those stories about Bill. The time had come to find him and let him know how much he had influenced her life.
Focusing mainly on the past, but relevant today for anyone seeking proof of the indomitable human spirit, Finding Bill shifts in time between the 1940s in Holland, the 1950s to 70s in Canada, and the present.

Sujets

Histoire

Military

World War II

History

Informations

Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456602192
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0388€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Finding Bill

by
Henrietta T. O'Neill

Copyright 2011 Henrietta T. O'Neill,
All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0219-2

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Prologue

We met quite by chance at a National Farmers Union gathering in Toronto. My mother was there because she was a staunch supporter of the Union. My brother Morris was there because he had to drive. I was there because I was curious.
During the course of the meeting, I was treated to the sight of a young man standing up to ask some very pointed questions of the politician in attendance. From afar I admired his intelligence and his clean-cut look.
That evening I managed to meet the young stranger. When he introduced himself to my mother, she asked if his surname, O'Neill, was spelled with a double “L”. It was. Did he know a Bill O'Neill who had been in the Canadian army and in Holland during W.W.II?
My mother, I knew, was thinking back to her world in 1945 and I did not need to be reminded how important the O'Neill name was to our family. Although this particular O'Neill's answer was no, his name guaranteed that (even without his good looks )I would be interested in him.
Joe O'Neill proved to be an avid storyteller and spent much of the evening regaling me with anecdotes about childhood escapades. I was soon absorbed in his world, one that was both fresh and familiar. Joe told about growing up on a farm near Lucan, Ontario as the third child in a Roman Catholic family of ten. Along with his siblings – six boys and three girls, he helped out on the farm. Joe often watched his parents struggle to keep their family fed. In spite of the hard work and low economic expectations, he wanted to continue to farm. As he spoke, the storyteller and the listener learned they had much in common.
After a brief long-distance relationship, we married, but for Joe, some understanding of how important the O’Neill name was to me, came more gradually. He began to tease me about marrying him for his name while I, undeterred, would insist that he had married me to provide himself with a captive audience for his stories. Thus, Joe was drawn into the family history, ensuring that the den Otter-O’Neill saga, which began before I was born, would continue into a new generation.
Today, after six children and over thirty years, our marriage survives, but one question still begs resolving: “Did I marry the man or the name?”

This book is a journey through time back to the European front in WWII. It chronicles the parallel stories of a young Dutch couple and a Canadian soldier… and the remarkable destiny that is created when their paths briefly cross.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot

Part I: Holland 1940 - 1945

Chapter 1: The Portrait

I balanced first on one skinny leg and then the other, contemplating the old photograph that was as familiar as my own face. The man had thin, slicked back blond hair, prominent ears and nose, a straight mouth, light brown eyes and eyebrows, almost invisible eyelashes, and a medium-sized chin. Nothing in his expression or clothes hinted at a particular type of personality. There was no evidence of his glasses, his small stature or that he always followed his wife’s lead.
The woman looked out from under the classic tilt of a fedora. Her eyes, dark with heavy eyebrows, were wide set over a fairly prominent nose. Wavy black hair was tucked behind her ears, highlighting smooth skin over the oval contours and high cheekbones of her face. Her mouth, although drawn in a straight line, held just the hint of a smile. This, along with the dimple in her chin, and an up tilt on the end of her nose, softened her face. In my childish mind, my parents looked beautiful and romantic. I thought their portrait was attractive enough to be a promotional still for an old movie. I also sensed a history in this picture. If I could only decipher it, I might understand the events which brought my parents and by extension, me, from Holland to a remote farm in eastern Ontario. I vowed to someday piece their story together.
In the meantime, I remembered that I had come to the photo for a dose of courage. The last days of October 1963 had just given way to a cold, damp November. A close friend and classmate had handed down some clothes that were too small for her. I was pleased with the dresses for I had not had any like them before. Yet, I was aware that wearing them to school was going to present a problem since the other kids would know they had been hers. On the other hand, refusing to wear them would hurt my well-meaning friend and upset my mother. So here I was, an eleven-year-old, bouncing impatiently in front of my parent’s photo wondering what I should do. Somehow, looking at the angle of my mother's hat did it for me. That hat had the look of determination and spirited defiance. I would put on one of my friend’s hand-me-down dresses, hold my head up high, and go to school.

Wedding portrait: Hendrikus (Harry) and Antonia (Tony) early 1945.

Antonia was finally satisfied with their appearance. Although she and Hendrikus had been married months ago, wedding pictures remained at the very bottom of her list of important things to acquire. Safety, food, warmth and shelter were the necessities that kept her mind and body occupied throughout that cold Dutch winter of 1944. But in the dawn of 1945, fighting moved north and east into Germany. Against her own inclination to be thrifty, Antonia had allowed herself to be convinced to sit for pictures by her older sister Miet, who had been married in January.
Antonia was relieved that her black wedding dress still fit. They were expecting their first child in late June, and the bulge of her pregnancy pushed against the soft material. She wondered if the photographer would take a head and shoulders picture. Glancing across the room at Hendrikus, Antonia realized that this angle would serve a double purpose since it would also hide his small size.
She thought back to the day of their wedding, July 26, 1944. She had become Mrs. Antonia den Otter at a nine o'clock morning mass in St. Servatius, the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Schijndel, Holland. Antonia and Hendrikus both sprang from the bosoms of large extended families whose names were in the town books as far back as records existed. However, theirs was not a showy wedding; it was a ceremony as restrained as the simple gold band which Hendrikus slipped onto her finger. This wedding ring had been made from a melted-down gold cross once part of a necklace and earrings set proudly worn by Hendrikus's deceased mother. Antonia had seen these in family portraits taken of Helena and Marinus den Otter.
Prior to their wedding, Antonia and Hendrikus had been fortunate to find a house for rent. A converted chicken coop, it consisted of four low ceilinged rooms with cement floors. Its two front doors were an oddity; the building had once been split between two unmarried brothers. Each man had lived in two rooms, and each set of rooms had its own exit to the outside. A huge brick fireplace and chimney made up most of the interior dividing wall, while an interior door allowed access to both sides of this unusual duplex. Only a hatch in the ceiling or a high exterior door offered entry to an attic and Antonia had taken steps to disguise its use. On the inside ceiling she had tacked cardboard here and there making the attic floor look unstable. Outdoors she laid a broken ladder along the house foundation. The attic could not be searched without effort. In the yard, a shed divided into a pigpen, rabbit shelters, and an outhouse was available for their use. The lot was large, and in it Antonia could already envision a vegetable garden containing potatoes and cabbages. Although highly populated, Schijndel was still considered rural, and growing food on small acreages was quite common.
With rent at two guilders a week the price was right, as was the location. A wage freeze in 1940 meant Hendrikus was working for only 17 guilders a week. But as a farm laborer at the School for the Deaf and Dumb in St. Michiels Gestel, he was close to his work. At B103 Broekstraat, Gemonde, Schijndel, they were living just two houses down from Marinus den Otter, his widowed father. And Antonia's family lived only a short bike ride away, on a farm in the Venushoek, just west and south of the town of Schijndel.
Antonia looked around her small home at the few possessions they had brought with them. The front room to her right held a table, four chairs, and a wood cook stove, while the back room contained only their bed. On her left, the front room held a cupboard for dishes, and a small stove for heating the house rather than using the less efficient fireplace. A small table holding washbasin and shaving equipment was the only piece of furniture in the back room on that side. All wedding gifts had been carefully put to use — 1,500 guilders, 4 liters of coal oil, 2 liters of rape seed oil, 1 bed sheet, 30 pounds of peas, rye, gladiola bulbs, 6 spoons and forks, 1 woolen blanket, and a sewing machine. These were practical presents from friends who understood only too well where the needs of a household lay. However, they could only guess how important some of these items would eventually become.
Antonia pulled her mind back to the present. Hendrikus had finished combing back his red-blond hair and looked quite dapper in his only suit. They were ready for their picture-taking session and since they were walking,