by Gree van
Daatselaar-Somsen [53]
In
Indonesia, in former days the Dutch East Indies, there is an expression ‘Tempo
Doeloe’ which means approximately ‘the good old days’ or ‘formerly’. Bernard Somsen [1347], born September 13, 1925, a member of the Slagharen
Somsen branch, tells about the past, about the days that he was a soldier in
the Dutch East Indies from May 1946 to September 1949.
(See
also Somsen Omnes Generationes, p 82
– 83).
The
Indies Monument
The immediate cause for this reflection of a past that is far away is the foundation of a monument by the municipality of Hardenberg in commemoration of the Dutch soldiers of the area that were killed in action. They were killed at the time of the police actions in the former Dutch East Indies.
Immediately after the Japanese surrender in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, a very critical situation arose in the Indian Archipelago – for centuries a rich Dutch colony. In short: Fighters for freedom went to war to take over the power in their country thus trying to achieve their goal: the foundation of an independent Indonesian state.
In Holland soldiers were trained in great haste to be sent to The Indies to restore order and peace as it used to be called half a century ago.
1946
Bernard Somsen and his wife
Hennie Somsen-Schetsberg
[1348]
Bernard Somsen
Bernard Somsen from Slagharen, Overijssel, entered the gates of the Komput barracks in Steenwijk on May 2, 1946. He was told: You are to go to The East Indies’. Bernard and his comrades
and also his brother Johan Somsen [1350] got a five months’ crash-course. They were crammed for their service in The Indies.
On October 3, 1946, the whole regiment left for the Far East by boat, ‘The Tegelberg’. They sailed across the oceans for three and a half weeks until they disembarked at Priok. In big three-ton trucks the men were transported to Tana Abang, near Batavia, present day Jakarta.
The first outstation where the men were stationed was near a rubber plant. Soon there was shooting, but it turned out to be a false alarm. Fireflies in the dark tropical night were taken for people with lights…
Not much later there was a real gunfight at Tjisaoek. Fortunately there were no casualties.
But for Bernard Somsen the first real action took place on July 21, 1947. It was his duty to form a bridge-head together with others at the river Tjitaroem. Thirty-eight bombs under the bridge were defused.
Bernard also remembers how an unmanned train-engine was sent to the Dutch lines by the freedom fighters, causing enormous damage.
After eight or nine months Bernard moved to Pankalan by ox-cart. There planes provisioned the soldiers. Those droppings were not always carried out successfully. ‘Sometimes goods came fallings through the roof and sometimes the cans of butter seemed to drop from the palm trees’.
Consequently his platoon had to recover the droppings and parachutes by pony. That could be the reason that I found a job in the pony park Slagharen much later’, he tells us with a smile.
‘We experienced many dangerous moments and bad situations, but we also felt very close comradeship. ’From the boys of the platoon I got the nickname ‘Pa’. Why? Ask my friends, I do not know’, Bernard says modestly.
At the end of November, after that two men of his group had been killed, Bernard moved to Koeningan. This was his last outstation. In June 1949 he was taken to Priok by landing craft and from there to the well-known barracks at the Berenlaan.
Often he had to stand guard at the docks of Tandjong Priok.
In brief: the political situation became more and more clear. The State of Indonesia was proclaimed
and sanctioned by the two Governments and Heads of State.
The Dutch soldiers could go home.
The famous troops carrier ‘The Waterman’ brought Bernard’s group home to The Netherlands at the beginning of October 1949.
A homecoming that cannot be forgotten…!
‘Pa
Somsen’
‘I have often thought: We are a forgotten group. We had to operate under a very critical political situation at the time. Whoever thinks about that now anyway? Therefore I am very pleased with the East-Indies monument to commemorate the men who were killed in those days.
To me these years were no lost years. I have experienced much comradeship and loyalty. Good memories that stay’.
Bernard never got rid of his nickname ‘Pa Somsen’. At every reunion with his old friends of the third company, third platoon, ninth Regiment Infantry he is always ‘Pa Somsen’ for all his old friends.
Source: ‘Sallander’,
regional paper Hardenberg/Slagharen and surroundings, 5-8-1998.
With thanks to his son Chris Somsen [1382] for providing the data and
the photo's.
1999
In front of the Indies
monument, Hardenberg:
l.- r.: Bernard Somsen
[1347], his
grandson Bart [2811] and
his son Chris [1382]
It lies in everyone’s power
to build bridges
across everything that divides
people.
We are all leaves on one tree,
no single leaf is alike,
one is symmetrical, the other
one is not,
and yet
they are all equally important
in the whole.