No . 136
The Trusty Servant
Johannes , Johan and Jan
Tony Wood ’ s daughter , Liisa Springham , reveals the poignant story behind her father ’ s favourite keepsake :
My father , Tony Wood ( Ho Do G , 65-73 ), died very suddenly of a heart attack in June 1987 at the age of 63 . Among the projects he had been working on was the so-called “ Family Saga ,” which we found on his desk after his death . It was a story of his life until the early 1950s and like all his books , it was handwritten in biro on Winchester College exam paper .
In 1944 , my father was called up while studying for his undergraduate degree at Oxford and became a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment in charge of a platoon operating four Vickers guns . The platoon survived the Normandy Landings and fought their way through the fields of France and into the Netherlands , where they helped liberate a grateful and suffering Dutch population . In a brief respite during the fighting , they stayed in the Brabant town of Gemert with the family of Johan Spierings .
Johan , the son of a clog-maker , was one of nine children living in a small house on the outskirts of the town . The soldiers were there for about a week before resuming their onward push into Germany and Berlin . They were grateful for the warm welcome provided by the whole family and ate their rations in the family kitchen . As a souvenir of their stay and in recognition of the gratitude felt by the family , my father was presented with a small pair of finely-made clogs . My father was not a man to collect or keep souvenirs but he always had these clogs in his study , his favourite room in the house . And they fascinated me as a child . Amongst all his big heavy , serious-looking history books , they seemed sort of fun .
I now live in Amsterdam , and after the death of my mother , Maija- Liisa , in 2008 and my older brother , Nicholas in 2015 , I now own that pair of decorated Dutch wooden clogs . Philites of a certain era and sharpeyed historians may remember these clogs sitting on a pile of books in my father ’ s study .
They attracted the interest of some Dutch friends of ours , Maurice and Liesbeth de Gruyter . Written inside each clog is the name Johan and there is some faded writing on the base of one . You can just make out the name of Gemert , which is a small town in Brabant . Maurice wondered if the family would still be there and whether Johan might still be alive . In his writing , my father talks about the head of the family being the village cobbler , which translates into shoemaker in Dutch . What my father should have written was clogmaker - a rare mistake . Once this had been cleared up , Maurice found the Spierings family who still live in Gemert .
Maurice made a phone call and found himself talking to Johan . It turned out that Johan was a spry 87-year old and willing to meet us , so off we set from Amsterdam one sunny April day and drove south to Gemert . When we arrived , we were warmly welcomed by the Spierings family but it quickly became clear that Johan was not the maker of these clogs . He was too young in 1944 / 45 and the confusion had arisen because the popular name Johannes can be shortened to Johan or even Jan . More likely , the maker was his uncle , aged 28 and also called
Johan . He was a Catholic priest who had returned from his mission in Curacao to assist his family in the clog business during the war . But young Johan remembers lining up with the soldiers for his share of hot food . He wanted to be a soldier one day .
However , there could be a twist here as the Spierings had been harbouring a Jewish escapee from Nazi-occupied Arnhem : they kept him concealed in the cramped roof of the house . He was known as Jan and worked during the day painting the decorative patterns on the machine-made clogs . Perhaps he had marked his name in the shoes ? Following the Liberation , as peace resumed , Jan returned to Arnhem .
Whoever made and signed the clogs , we are tremendously grateful to have this little piece of history . I know my father was very fond of them . Also , I think children tend not to think of their parents as ever having been young , but researching this story took me back to a time when my father was just twenty-one years old and to a time of war , when so much was expected of the young .
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