On Thursday evening, 5 April, Coevorden had been liberated by the Canadians. The following day, several Canadian armored vehicles drove from Coevorden to Dedemsvaart. They captured a number of German soldiers and then moved on to the grounds of the tram station.

The residents of Dedemsvaart believed they had been liberated. Cheering, they poured into the streets, displayed the long-hidden Dutch tricolor, and began hunting down collaborators. Soon, a number of NSB members and Wehrmacht auxiliaries were arrested and locked up in a school near the tram station.

It quickly became clear, however, that the celebrations had been premature. The Canadian armored vehicles were only part of a reconnaissance unit, which returned at seven in the evening to the main force in Gramsbergen, not far from Coevorden. They took the captured German soldiers with them. The detained NSB members remained in the school, guarded by two resistance fighters.

The situation was far from safe, as Balkbrug was still occupied by German troops. When they heard that the Canadians had left and NSB members were being held prisoner, they wasted no time and carried out a raid on Dedemsvaart. After a short firefight, Dedemsvaart was once again in the hands of the German occupiers—the liberation had been short-lived.

Around fifty people were rounded up in the tram building. Women and children were released, but about thirty men were taken to Café Leunge in Balkbrug. There, half were allowed to leave, while five others were placed before a firing squad. The squad consisted of Dutch members of the Grüne Polizei. They were ordered to execute their fellow countrymen. At first, they refused, but under pressure from their commander they were forced to fire. They shot so erratically that only one of the five men was killed. Amid the chaos, the others managed to escape, either by pretending to be dead or by fleeing.

To prevent the same from happening with the next group of ten men, it was decided to execute them with a shot to the neck, one by one. Of these ten, one managed to escape and another was wounded but not killed. Ultimately, nine men—whose only “crime” was to have celebrated too soon the arrival of the liberators—lost their lives on the evening of Friday, 6 April.

The following morning, Saturday 7 April, the residents of Balkbrug found the nine bodies lying in the street. The victims were ordinary civilians: fathers, neighbors, colleagues. The shock in the village was profound. In an outbuilding of Café Leunge, they were temporarily laid out on straw. That same morning, the Canadians returned and liberated Dedemsvaart for good. On their way to Balkbrug, however, they were confronted with two bridges over the Dedemsvaart Canal that had been blown up by the German occupiers, temporarily halting their advance.

Thanks to the efforts of Balkbrug’s civilian population in the following days, an emergency bridge was built, initially guarded by members of the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (Domestic Armed Forces), and later by French paratroopers who had landed in the area as part of Operation Amherst. By then, the situation was relatively safe, as the German occupiers had retreated overnight after destroying the bridges, moving in the direction of De Wijk and Meppel.

Meanwhile, work continued tirelessly to repair the blown-up canal bridge. Finally, on Wednesday 11 April, the bridge was restored, and with it came the liberation of Balkbrug. From the south, through Ommen, enormous convoys of vehicles crossed the repaired bridge, advancing northward to liberate Drenthe and Groningen.