Interview with Robert Van Trichtveldt

I'm Robert Van Trichtveldt and during the war I had a friend whose father and his brother were in the underground. At 12 years old we used to take books, pamphlets and guns to groups of the underground. After liberation I joined up in Antwerp with the Underground Brigade on the Velderme Avenue and we went from there to Holland regularly to work in hospital tents to give food, medicine, first aid and, later ammunition to the Canadian soldiers and all the soldiers who was fighting on our side. We are regularly under artillery barrages and sniper fire and we supplied food to the soldiers mostly. Now I made an awful lot of Canadian friends over there. One for sure stands out in my mind he was Didier Beliveau. He was from Trois-Rivieres in Quebec. He was a soldier who, one day we talked a lot about the family and my family and the next day he brought me a helmet. At that time I didn't realize, it, it's only later that it came to me. To think that the boy from 30 years old would think about another boy in a Boy Scout's uniform, to bring him a helmet, is an awful gesture. To think that the boy we see in the battle fight would think to bring him a helmet to protect his head. That was one of the things that, later on in my life, I start to realize what a good boy, this ... had been to think about another boy who was just dishing out food. So were there many Canadians who looked after us. I had friends from the Dutch Underground, from Belgium underground and they all looked after me because I was only a 13 year old boy and I shouldn't have been in the battle, but they took care of me. At one time I remember very well, there was a Dutch Underground person who threw me in the corner of the building where we had the barrage from artillery on the house... he threw me in the corner and covered me with a mattress. These was gestures of friendship you can't understand. Only later on you understand the friendship those persons showed. All of them on the battle field. They were all brothers. They were more than brothers. They were the best of the best friends. They would give their life for other people. I met a tank commander, he was from Alberta, he saw me with the big helmet and he brought me a tank helmet who was much lighter in leather, to cover my head, that fit me much better. Those gestures from those persons were so unbelievable kind, at such a miserable time. Later when I volunteered for the Belgian Army, I had operative training in ... which is in the ... in Belgium, where we took training there, and we were to prepared to go to the Congo. And at that time we had to go and liberate some people in Leopoldville. But many of those troops were killed by the Kawatis. But we got out the Europeans. We got them all out.