Excerpt from In the Shadow of the Cathedral  Part of the first chapter       The day we were forced to evacuate was a Sunday, Mother's Day and Pentecost all combined. The war was in its third day. Early in the morning we started out on foot. My parents and my brothers pushed their bicycles. The bikes were our pack mules. Rolled-up blankets hung from the handlebars and bags had been fastened to the carriers with leather straps. I was glad we'd left most pots and pans behind, because the few we did bring clanged loudly with every move. We each carried a rucksack with a change of clothes, except for my grandmother who was dressed in a gray ankle length dress and black leather shoes. Her broad-brimmed straw hat, also black, sat fastened to her white hair with a dainty pin. She and I closed the ranks. I slipped my hand into hers and never let go of it. I was her namesake: Titia.      The food we'd bought two days before was left behind, as was everything else we owned. Boer Jansen and his family stood in the doorway of their small farm and shook their heads as they waved good-bye. I noticed my mother was acting like herself again. There was nothing more she could do to prepare for the eventualities of war and evacuation. As she closed the door of our house, she took a deep breath and said, with resignation and energy, "Let's go." She didn't look back.      We followed the cobblestone road Napoleon had built during another war, in another century, to move his troops. In those days, the French soldiers had marched in to conquer. This time they came to protect. Their tiny Renaluts, hastily painted green, were totally unimpressive. They looked like dinghies being rowed upstream on a river of human beings. More and more people funneled into the road to Belgium. A couple with five children, the three oldest each with a heavy rucksack, walked ahead of us. The youngest child was a baby. I couldn't see it, but such loud wailing came from underneath the bags and blankets piled in the baby carriage, I had no doubt a baby was tucked somewhere in there.      When I think back on that day sixty years later, I can still smell the sweat that clung to my cotton dress and mixed with the aroma of spring flowers and pungent pine trees. I feel the safe grip of my grandmother's hand that urged me on, even though it was hot, and dusty, and scary. I see people carrying their belongings on their backs, others driving horse-drawn carts bulging with beds and bedding, a teenager whipping his poor goat to pull an overloaded kid-cart, cars stranded by the side of the road, unable to move an inch in the frantic congestion. I taste again my parched tongue that would only be relieved by an occasional peppermint from my grandmother. I hear the sound of a strange language shouted at us by the frustrated French soldiers who wanted us off the road even though they were the ones who'd told us to evacuate. I feel the earth underneath my belly and the weight of my grandmother on top of me when bullets came whistling by from German planes overhead and we had to seek cover in the ditches by the side of the road. The sounds of machine guns...blood gushing from wounds...shrieking...moaning...bodies lying motionless...the noise...the bewilderment...the awful fear...      Repeatedly, the German airplanes came back and rumbled toward the exodus that moved like a slow stream of lava. The French soldiers and refugees alike were easy targets. It wasn't safe anymore to walk on the road, so we pushed forward through the woods beside it, diving into a ditch each time we heard planes coming.      We almost made it to Belgium that day. When it got dark we stopped in Achtmalen, a tiny village on the Dutch side of the border, and we asked a farmer if we could spend the night. "For a sum," he said. He let the refugees sleep in his cow barn, as many as it would hold. Fresh straw was spread over the uneven brick floor that reeked of a winter's worth of manure. The cows stood gawking at us over the barbed wire fence of their pasture. Supper was a plate of boiled potatoes.      On the coarse straw stranger touched stranger. I lay wedged between Oma and Mammie. We felt more displaced than we had walking all day. Sleep wouldn't come. There was no sense in asking where we would sleep tomorrow night or what would become of us. Yet those questions went around and around in my head, and I could tell the same questions kept my parents from sleeping. Before we took off on this march, my father had asked my mother to tuck our passports inside her generous bra. He carried the papers that proved he was a pharmacist and had his Ph.D. in chemistry under his shirt. He'd lost his temper when he saw my mother hang pots and pans from our bicycles. "Hannie," he cried out, "For God's sake! The only things we really need are these papers." The pots and pans were left behind. The passports and diplomas were taken. It was a sure sign they didn't expect to get back to Breda. Now I heard them whisper to each other, worrying about what lay ahead.      The night was long and restless. A dentist - my parents knew him well - had a terrible nightmare. He screamed, "Annie, Annie, stay with me!" But many who lay on the straw with him, including his wife, knew his wife's name wasnt' Annie. It was the name of his mistress. The man was awakened by laughter. Hans, Herman and I wanted to know what was so funny, but we weren't told until the war was over.      The morning sunlight peeked through the cracks of the crudely constructed roof in so many places, I felt like I sat beneath an upside-down colander. As everyone clustered around the well, waiting for a turn to let an empty bucket down and pull it back up with water so we could at least wipe our faces, the topic was escape routes. What would happen to Belgium? Would it be better to push on to Portugal, a neutral country? The strangers around the well felt the bond of having a common enemy. They shared whatever information they had until a young man ran into the barnyard, waving his arms and shouting, "Germans!"      "Are you sure? How do you know?" people asked.      "The farmer next door saw them with his own eyes. The French turned back during the night."      For the next five years, this was how news traveled.      My father went to check it out - he was curious by nature - and returned with rumors of Holland's surrender. There had been a devastating bombardment north of the great rivers, de Rijn and de Maas. Queen Wilhelmina had left the country. This news had a great impact on my parents and, of course, on everyone else in the barn. Leaving our homes behind, stepping into a vacuum, hadn't been easy. But to face defeat was worse. Our Queen, the symbol of our country, had fled. German occupation was now a certainty. All the adults were faced with the same decision: Should we press on? Was there a safe place left we could walk to? Close Window