Incredible experience .........

[Derk 265]

On the closed RNNAS at Valkenburg , just a few miles down the road, in the biggest hangar they have there (the base is still intact) ,they are playing the musical "Soldaat van Oranje" (Soldier of Orange).

It is the story about the Dutch war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema.

He was a 23 years old law student at (nearby) Leiden University in May 1940, got involved in the resistance movement, escaped to England in a spectacular way, made a considerable number of trips by Royal Navy MTB back to the Dutch coast , actually going ashore time and again unmder the eyes of the Germans to deliver personnel and radio equipment to his old student friends, He eventually got into the RAF and flew Mosquito's with the Pathfinders. At the end of the war he was the adjudant of HM Queen Wilhelmina and very much a personal friend of HRH Prince Bernard.

He recieved the highest military order we have (the "Militaire Willemsorde"), did a lot of different things after the war and died September 2007 on the island of Hawaï where he lived. . http://en.wikipedia....lhoff_Roelfzema

 

For the musical they built a stunning theater into the hangar, with a huge round platform seating about 1200 people, that turns through 360 degrees , revealing no les than 8 or 9 different and spectacular stages, including, the town of Leiden, the bombed Alexander barracks in the Hague, palaces in London and the Hague, a student society, the Scheveningen Kurhaus, the Rotterdam harbour, the beach including a lot of sand, water and waves, an execution place in the dunes etc. The effects are fantastic with actors riding motorbikes around and projected on screens lots of historic movie material and- with a simulated Mosquito cockpit in front -is a noisy and spectacular bombing raid on Berlin with heavy flak, enemy fighters and the Mossie doing all sorts of manoevres.

The most surprising and incredible scene of all is near the end: all of a sudden the platform makes another turn and through the opened hangar doors you look straight outside at the real world with the floodlighted apron of the airfield, where a REAL C47 Dakota taxies in, bringing Queen Wilhelmina back into Holland in 1945, .........

The musical ends with Hazelhoff blasting away in the darkness out on the airfield on his motorbike

Although it is a musical, deviating from the book Hazelhoff wrote and from the 1977 movie (still the best war movie we have in Holland ), the music is great and the acting even better. Weapons, uniforms and other clothing are very convincing and the effects are spectacular. It really brings back the desparate atmosphere of those days

And it is a quite moving tribute too to what happend almost to the day 66 years ago, also at Valkenburg itself in May 1940, where a 5 day battle raged between German paratroopers and the Dutch Army. Hazelhoff crossed right through it on his motorbike on his way from Leiden to Wassenaar (where his parents lived) and the Hague.

And for me it is moving because it all happened right at my doorstep. It is home base for me, I lived at the same places as Hazelhoff, experienced more or less the same things as a student (not a lot changed in student life after the war untill far in the '60's compared to the pre war period), and it must have been a devastating thing to experience the complete desintegration of society, your student club, your sportclub and everything you're involved with, with thousands of Jews being taken away, with your friends being murdered by the enemy or in other cases turning into traitors, collaborating with that same enemy, forcing you to make heartbreaking choices.......

Thanks for reading,

 

Derk

Edited April 23, 2011 by Derk

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

I've seen the movie only once more than 20 years ago, and I still remember the strong impression it made on me. The couple Verhoeven-Hauer was one the most worthy values of Netherlands - before sinking for some times in worthless blockbusters.

 

Hard times indeed. On the one side, many brave Free Dutchmen fighting in England in the Navy and the Air Force, courageous informing underground seen in "A bridge too far"... On the other side, two Dutch SS divisions both named Nederland. Between, one of the densest Jewish communities in the World, and an overpopulated country easy to starve, which happened during Winter 1944-45. Each occupied country had such stories, but here, it seems more paroxystic.