by Paul Morden for the Sarnia Observer

“Restraint” is the word that was used to describe Sarnia’s VE Day celebrations, 70 years ago this month.

Days after Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, Germany’s military surrendered, bringing the Second World War in Europe to an end.

Victory in Europe was officially celebrated by Canada and its allies on May 8, 1945, and Sarnia’s observances included a parade through downtown streets decorated with flags and streamers, according to the City of Sarnia War Remembrance Project.

In the evening of VE Day, several thousand city residents danced in the streets to the music of Ken Williamson’s orchestra.

When some complained that the city celebrations weren’t flashy enough, Mayor W.C. Hipple replied, “I sincerely believe that those who clamored for a more extensive celebration were persons who have not been bereaved in this war, or who do not have any relatives still overseas.”

When a national day of prayer and thanksgiving was observed a few days later, a crowd of more than 6,000 watched a mile-long parade to the cenotaph, where parents and families of Sarnia soldiers, sailors and airmen who died in the six years of fighting were the first to lay wreaths.

Some seven decades later, memories remain vivid for some of those of lived through the war.

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Sarnia’s Bert Hoogendam was five years old and living on his parents’ farm in the small community of Achterveld in the Netherlands when the Germans invaded in May 1940.

The Dutch army fought back, but Hoogendam said, “Within five days the whole thing was pretty well sealed.”

His family evacuated for several days, but returned to the farm after the country surrendered, and lived out the remainder the war there.

Hoogendam remembers taking the train with his mother in 1943 to Amsterdam for a family event and seeing a massive air battle between the Allies and Germans in the skies above him. Hoogendam said he remembers seeing one plane after another being shot down.

“They dropped like apples from a tree,” he said.

A year later, the Allies were fighting across Northern Europe and launched Operation Market Garden, an attempt to secure a series of bridges leading to Germany that inspired the movie A Bridge Too Far. The bridge in the movie title was in Arnhem, a city not far from where Hoogendam was living, and close to a farm owned by relatives were a fierce battle was fought. Because of that, relatives from Arnhem were evacuated and lived out the remainder of the war with Hoogendam and his family, increasing the size of the household from 10 to 26.

That came during what is known as the Hunger Winter, when food became scarce in parts of the Netherlands and thousands are said to have died.

“My parents on the farm, never sent anyone away hungry,” Hoogendam said. “We were able to share with those in need, plus we were able to feed ourselves.”

But the experience of those days has stayed with him.

“To this day I cannot tolerate when people leave stuff on their plate.”

At one time, a cousin in the resistance was hiding at the farm. Germans were raiding farms in the area to root out the Dutch fighters, but the Hoogendam farm was never raided. Hoogendam said he remembers how German soldiers he saw late in the war were becoming more and more demoralized.

“They knew, blooming well, the end was in sight.”

And then, word reached the farm one day that the Allies had arrived, and Hoogendam and other youngsters rode bicycles to a nearby town being liberated by Canadians.

“The tanks just rolled through the place, it was just phenomenal,” he said. “We were liberated.”

Fighting continued and the Hoogendam farm was in no-man’s land for a time, with German and Canadian patrols moving across its fields. He remembers one Sunday afternoon in particular when Canadian soldiers crossed the pasture to attack a German patrol.

“They just cleaned them up with such efficiency.”

Later, he saw German solders after they had surrendered. “They were as scared as rabbits,” Hoogendam said. “You could see the fright in those young soldiers’ faces.”

Hoogendam said his family had relatives in Chatham, so they were familiar with Canada, and the bond they had with the far-off country grew stronger with the liberation. In the mid-1950s, Hoogendam came to Canada where he lived and worked in Nova Scotia, Chatham and Sault Ste. Marie before settling for good in Sarnia where he ran his own insurance business until 2003, and raised four children with his wife Frances.

Looking back 70 years, Hoogendam said, “I vividly remember the Canadian boys liberating us.”

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John McCartney grew up in St. John, New Brunswick where he met his future wife, Helen, before shipping out to the war.

He had enlisted in the navy at 18 and served on HMCS Huron, a Canadian destroyer escorting supply convoys through icy, dangerous waters to Russia. Often, days were spent chipping ice off the ship left by 30 and 40-foot waves in the northern seas.

McCartney remembers watching with other sailors as the last German pocket battleship attacked their convoy, and was sunk by capital ships of the Royal Navy. Only 36 of the German ship’s 1,200 crew members survived.

“That must have been a terrible death in those waters,” McCartney said.

Later in the war, he was on HMCS Huron when it escorted troop ships to the land beaches on D-Day.

When victory in Europe came, McCartney and the ship were among those sent to liberate Trondheim, a city in Norway where the Germans had built a U-boat base.

“It was quite an experience, I can tell you that,” he said.

HMCS Huron was joined by several Royal Navy ships, and HMCS Haida, a destroyer that is now a national historic site in Hamilton Harbour. On their way up the fiord, the ships took the surrender of German submarines, and when they arrived at Trondheim, sailors unloaded extra food carried in for the city’s residents.

“They were pretty glad to see us,” McCartney said.

McCartney said he and other Canadian sailors were able to leave the ship that day and have a look around the newly liberated city.

“We boarded a couple of German ships, just because we were curious more than anything.”

He said they also saw what the newly liberated Norwegians did to those who had sided with the Germans during the occupation.

“They dispensed with them pretty quickly.”

After that, McCartney and his shipmates returned on HMCS Huron to the British naval base at Scapa Flow, “feeling rather sad” they were missing the celebrations going on in London.

It didn’t take long after the end of the war before McCartney was home in St. John, where he was reunited with Helen, nicknamed Bunny, and the young married couple moved to Sarnia. McCartney worked at Ethyl Canada for 30 years and they retired in the city where they raised three children.

McCartney said he and Bunny travelled to Trondheim 30 years after the liberation.

“We got a wonderful welcome,” he said.