Victims of St. Antoniusstraat 3

van der Geld Family

Sint Antoniusstraat 1

After the liberation of Loon op Zand, the Highlanders pitch their tents on Saturday night 28 October 1944 at Roestelberg, located south of Waalwijk, in what is now National Park the Loonse and Drunense Dunes. To drive off the last Germans, shells fly over Waalwijk a day later. It was then Sunday 29 October, the day when the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of Christ King.Already during early mass, the Scots are firing away briskly. ‘The church was shaking,’ said an eye witness. ‘Many people no longer dared to stay and went home.’ Across Waalwijk, the parish priests decide to forgo high mass. Meanwhile, the local Red Cross has already picked up the first wounded and the sick and elderly are taken to the various shelters.Around midday, a shell hits St Antoniusstraat. The house of the Berkelmans family at number 95 is hit. The damage is enormous, but miraculously no one is injured, as yet. At number 81 in the same St. Antoniusstraat, mother Marie van der Geld is just then standing in the back garden having a chat with neighbour Koos Pennings. ‘Come Marie, let’s go to the cellar,’ Pennings responds startled. Both quickly run in through the back door of their respective homes to go to the cellar under St Antonius Church, located a little further away, together with their housemates. Then another shell hits. At number 81, at the home of the Van der Geld family. Mother Marie (66) and daughters Stien (25) and Corrie (24) are fatally hit, son Nico and youngest daughter Marie are seriously injured.The same day three more young children are killed, this time in St.&nbsp; Crispijnstraat right behind St. Antoniusstraat: Henk Henkelman (9), Rietje Lommers (7) and Cor Sleenhoff (10). Six-year old Reintje van den Broek, who lives just around the corner on the Tweede Zeine, slips away from his mother’s attention and walks to St. Crispijnstraat to play. He, too, is hit by shrapnel. Initially he does not appear to be wounded too severely but in the end he also succumbs to his wounds. He dies on Christmas Eve. Like many towns and villages in the south, Waalwijks pays a hefty price for its liberation.

Friendly fire?

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