For a long time, I thought that my parents only met after the war, but by reading my father’s biography a few years ago, I learned that they first met at the beginning. I gathered that Peter was instantly smitten with Sabine. Whether she felt the same way, I do not know. At Christmas in 1941, Broer Moonen organized a dinner at his parent’s house. He had invited the whole Resistance group, including Peter. Peter did not want to go, but since Sabine was going, he agreed to go too. To his disappointment, she only had eyes for Gerard Vinkesteijn and, upset and jealous, Peter left halfway through the dinner.
After Peter’s secret arrival in Holland towards the end of 1941, he needed a safe place to hide. Sabine first organized a short stay for him with Taro’s mother, after which he came to stay in her house for a month. Due to his departure for England and her imprisonment in Germany, they had no further contact until after the war, when they met up again and within a short time got married.
Like Sabine, Peter was born (1920) and brought up in the Dutch East Indies, with his younger brother, Jan, by his mother, Helena, a schoolteacher, and a very strict and overbearing father, Jan.
Peter, even as a child, was a free spirit, always breaking the rules. By the time he was eighteen, he spent his time drinking, partying and chasing girls. His parents despaired. Whatever career they suggested, Peter was not interested. Then his father suggested the navy, in the hope that they would teach him some discipline.
At last, Peter was thrilled. He envisaged an exciting life at sea, but discovered very quickly, to his immense disappointment, that he would be land-based for the first year or two and be learning drills and theory and discipline.
This did not appeal to him at all, and after the first disastrous year, by mutual agreement it was decided that he was better off finding a different career.
In 1939 he went to live with his uncle in the north of Holland and joined the maritime school there. Shortly afterwards, war broke out, and Peter immediately determined he was going help fight against the invaders.
He tried several times to reach England but was unsuccessful, so instead he joined the newly formed Ordedienst and started carrying out assignments for them in the form of intelligence-gathering and sabotage. But before too long, by June 1941, he was on the German radar and was advised by the Ordedienst to stop his activities. The danger to himself and the others in his group had become too serious.
Instead, the head of the Ordedienst sent him on a new mission: to make his way to England and make contact with the British Secret Service to ask for help and support for the Resistance the Ordedienst was organizing.
Peter decided to look for a job at a shipyard in Rotterdam and soon discovered a Swiss ship, the St. Cergue, which was flying under a Panamanian flag and was waiting to be released to ship grain to the United States. Peter got himself a job on board as a maintenance man.
The St. Cergue was finally ready to depart on June 30, and after some problems with the existing crew being too drunk to sail, Peter was taken on as crew. Another young man, equally keen to get to England by any means, had also found a place as a crew member. This turned out to be Sabine’s childhood friend, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema. As soon as the harbor was left behind, the ship turned north towards Iceland, and before too long, a third young man was found on board, as a stowaway, Bob van der Stok. Both Erik and Bob were students. Peter was the “Indonesian boy with a gold necklace,” as Erik described him later.
Nearing Norway, a patrolling British cruiser insisted on inspecting the cargo, and the three young men decided to take their chance and asked to be transferred to the cruiser, which would take them England. The captain of the St. Cergue was not pleased to lose his crew, but agreed to let them go.
After having been deposited in the Faroe Islands, the three men made their way via Scotland to London, where they arrived at the end of July 1941. They immediately made their presence known to the Dutch authorities, who interrogated them for a few days and then let them go, despite their offers of help. Peter was itching to get back to Holland and play an active role in the Resistance. But the Dutch government was not impressed by the constant stream of Engelandvaarders turning up and demanding action. Queen Wilhelmina, by contrast, was delighted and insisted on meeting all those who made it across the Channel personally.
Seeing no prospect of any action by the Dutch authorities, Erik and Bob devised their own plan to set up contact between England and Holland, involving a wet suit, a dinner suit, a top hat, a dinghy and a bottle of brandy.
Bob left after some disagreements, and Chris Krediet, another Engelandvaarder, took his place in this madcap scheme. It was some time before the plan was approved, but in the autumn of 1941, under the guidance of Colonel Euan Rabagliati, a British colonel attached to the Dutch section of the British Secret Service, better known as MI6, it was finally put into action.
The plan was to set up a communication system with the Resistance in Holland to find out where and how they were operating. The organization fell to Erik and Chris. Peter would be the secret agent who would be dropped off in Holland.
This was a role he was very suited to: action, adventure and danger. The operation would be called “Contact Holland.” The plan would be to cross the Channel by motor gun boat (MGB) and drop off Peter, as hopefully the first of many secret agents, on the beach near The Hague. His task would be to set up a network of agents and radio operators.
Several attempts to cross were launched and failed due to bad weather and engine trouble, but eventually, on the night of November 23, 1941, they managed to reach the Dutch coast around 11 p.m. The MGB dropped anchor some distance from the coast, and Erik and Chris rowed Peter towards the shore until they were fifty meters out. There Peter and Erik, both wearing wet suits, slid overboard into the sea and waded towards the beach in temperatures of –20°C.
The promenade of Scheveningen, a seaside resort of The Hague, was forbidden territory between the hours of 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. German headquarters were based in the Palace Hotel there, and the Germans feared an invasion aimed at that part of the coast. It was therefore heavily patrolled. It had been decided that Peter, should he run into a German patrol, would pretend to be a drunken student oblivious of the curfew. A not unnatural role for him.
As soon as they reached the beach, Erik quickly helped Peter out of his wet suit, to reveal a dinner suit including a bow tie, a top hat and black shoes. A bottle of cognac appeared from Erik’s pocket and was sprinkled over Peter while they both took some large mouthfuls to fortify themselves after the icy trip and drown the fear of what lay ahead. Erik returned to the boat, and Peter turned into an almost legless student, lost after a party.
After a short walk across the beach and the promenade, he made it safely to the big square just behind the Kurhaus Hotel, where he took the first tram passing and made his way to the house of Dr. Krediet. While paying on the tram, he realized by the reaction of the inspector that there was something wrong with his money. Unbeknownst to London, the Germans had changed the coins from silver to a cheaper metal. The old money was out of circulation. Luckily the inspector pretended not to notice.