side until my left wing was ahead of his right wing.
When he saw me, I pointed my left hand to the rear to
indicate that there was trouble behind us.
I turned sharply to the right and dove into a ravine
on the east side of the road, expecting that van
Helsdingen would follow me.
There was no room to make a 180 and no sign of
human habitation in the jungle-covered slopes
I hugged the terrain to stay below the cloud deck
hoping that the ravine's exit would not be obscured.
To prepare for the worst, I checked my attitude
instruments and was ready to apply full power to
climb into the overcast. As luck would have it, the
exit was open and I found myself somewhere east of
Bandoeng in rainy weather.
I was the last to land at Andir. Deibel's aircraft was
severely damaged in the dogfight. Scheffer's and my
aircraft were the onlyflyable Brewsters left. There was
no debriefing after we landed.
A mechanic came to my plane. The first thing he
said was: "Jullie zijn voor niets op geweest. We gaan
capituleren."
At that moment, I did not yet know that van
Helsdingen would not return and would remain
missing.
Deibel, Schefter, and I would become prisoners of
war for three and a half years. Jan Schefter died in a
prison camp....
We waited until it got dark when instructions came
that the two remaining aircraft had to be destroyed.
I took the small canvas first aid kit out of my
Brewster, thinking it might be useful in the uncertain
future.
Deibel drove home with me.
After I parked in front of his house, we talked for quite
a while about flying with the two serviceable Brewsters
to Christmas Island, south of Java.
Our flying maps did not show that island nor did we
know if the Japanese had already occupied it.
Years later, I heard that for several weeks our
transport aircraft had been evacuating people to
Australia from a road strip just south of Bandoeng:
the Boeah-batoe Road.
Deibel and I did not know about that strip.
I also found out that the night Deibel and I were
talking about escaping, a Glenn Martin took oftfrom
Andir for Australia. The wife of one of the pilots wus
one of the passengers....
We had not only lost the war, but I had lost my
commander without even knowing what happened to
him.
That thought has weighed on my mind ever since.
Van Helsdingen's son, who was bom a few weeks after
our last mission, visited us several times here in the
United States to talk about that day.
He still hopes that his father's aircraft and remains
will be found."
The following is from Tub's memoirs that he began
in 2002
"During my three and half years of captivity, I
managed to hang on to a small notebook, 2 V2 x
4 inches, in which I kept track of events as they
affected me. This was definitely not a journal in the
traditional sense. The reason I made some notes was
my hope that, somehow, the notes would find their
way back to my wife and my family, in case I did not.
At least that notebook would have shown them that
they had been in my thoughts until the final days.
Since that rationale is no longer valid, an inevitable
question arises: what is the use of reliving an ordeal
that took place sixty years ago?
Considering the many books and memoirs written by
survivors of similar and worse ordeals, I have nothing
new or exciting to add.
There is nothing spectacular about surviving while
silently undergoing the ultimate in degradation that
can be inflicted upon defenseless captives.
"Tub" Bruggihk, juli 2004
foto: via Luuk Boerman
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