Check It Out: The heroic story that wasn’t taught in Canadian schools

By Joan Janzen

A youngster asked his grandpa, “After 65 years you still call Grandma sweetheart. What’s your secret?” His grandpa replied, “I forgot her real name five years ago, and now I’m too scared to ask.”

Sometimes we also forget significant pieces of Canadian history. In some cases, we may never have been told about them. As I listened to a Canadian WWII documentary, I discovered a piece of history which I knew little about.

As the comments poured in during the documentary, one Canadian recalled curling a number of years ago with an old farmer from Ontario who was wearing a Lancaster Bomber hat. The hat triggered a conversation with the elderly man, who relayed a story of crash-landing a Lancaster while flying over Germany. “They patched me up and sent me to Holland, but this time, when I opened my bomb bays, I was dropping food. Much better,” he recalled.

A Dutch Canadian born in Holland said he heard and read about this story as a child in Holland, but the heroic story was not taught in schools when he came to Canada. This is the story that was never told in Canadian schools.

In 1944, the Germans had opened the dikes in the western Netherlands, flooding massive areas in order to slow the Allied advance. The water surrounded millions of trapped civilians who were forced to eat tulip bulbs and sugar beets meant for cattle. It was called the Hunger Winter, when civilians were perishing from starvation in six Dutch provinces under German control, covering 16,000 square kilometres of cities and flooded farmland.

By April 1945, five hundred Dutch civilians were starving to death every day. The plan was for the Canadian army to assault across the flooded lowlands and eventually capture the cities filled with starving Dutch civilians and cornered German soldiers. It would take four months and 60,000 Allied casualties, and an enormous number of Dutch civilian deaths; however, the British generals accepted this as the price of victory.

But Canadian General Charles Foulkes proposed something that had never been tried before. He wanted to let the Allies drop food, and in exchange, the Germans wouldn’t shoot down the planes. Then, after the immediate starvation had ended, they would talk about surrender.

The 120,000 German soldiers were cut off in the Netherlands with no supplies and no hope of victory. They were also surviving by eating tulip bulbs. Germans were instructed to fight to the death and destroy everything in sight, yet they knew they were fighting for absolutely nothing.

The German general realized he would be executed for such a decision, but the Canadian general convinced the Germans by saying no one in surrounded Berlin would survive long enough to execute anyone for treason. He gave them the choice of watching millions starve or choosing to do what makes sense to save lives on both sides.

The German general capitulated and agreed to a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes. Within 24 hours, the Canadians began Operation Mana — dropping mana from heaven. On April 30, 1945, the first RAF Lancaster bomber flew low to the ground, bomb bay doors opened, and packages tumbled out with parachutes attached. It was the first real food many had seen in six months.

Within one week, the death rate dropped from 500 people per day to 50 per day. While the food drop continued, Adolf Hitler ended his life, removing the primary obstacle to surrender.

The statistics reported six provinces had been liberated in 72 hours with no one killed. In comparison, the Battle of Berlin took two weeks and killed over 160,000 people to capture one city. During the operation, 11,000 tons of food had been delivered, 100,000 Dutch civilian lives were saved from starvation, and 120,000 German soldiers were taken into custody.

The bond between Canada and the Netherlands grew stronger. By the end of 1945, Dutch families had adopted all of the 7,600 graves of Canadian soldiers and, over the years, continued to tell their children stories about these young men.

Every year since 1946, the Dutch send 20,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa as a thank-you gift and a living reminder of liberation. The Canadian Tulip Festival is one of the largest tulip festivals in the world.

An additional comment posted after the documentary said, “What I admire the most from the Dutch is they have passed this story down to their children.”

During this holiday season, I encourage everyone to pass a much more important story on to their children and grandchildren — the story of the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He too was sent as mana from heaven to save both you and I, and is a living reminder of our liberation. I wish all my readers a wonderful Christmas spent with family and friends, sharing good food and lots of fun.