Crossroads - The Story of the medical care in the Main Dressing Stations near Schoonoord Cross Roads

It was a very honour to have been asked by Hendrika to proofread her book. I had read the Dutch edition, as far as my limited command of the language would allow, but I was held spell-bound by the English version sent to me by Hendrika. This book is her own translation, (she is a teacher of English), and as she writes it is possible to relive with her those days in September, 1944. My job has simply been that of proof-reader: apart from altering an occasional word or phrase I did nothing: what you are reading is a Dutch girl telling her story in English with her own words, and how well and how movingly she does it.

There are many books now available telling of the Battle of Arnhem from the point of view of the combatant but this is the first book I have read, written from the point of view of the Dutch civil population. One has read of the tidal flow of battle in and around Oosterbeek, fighting as severe as any one could imagine, yet Hendrika van der Vlist and the other Dutch girls were in the thick of it, and, though not trained nurses, doing what they could to help the wounded from either side. There was minimal equipment, shortage of water and the battle raged around them as the building changed hands more than once, a building which, by the way, was the hotel owned by her father.

I met Hendrika in the barracks at Apeldoorn, as she recounts, and for a time we worked together. We did not meet again till the fortieth anniversary of the battle, and then quite by accident at a reunion at the barracks. We have kept in touch ever since. After Apeldoorn I was a guest of the Dutch underground and experienced at first hand some of the conditions she describes in the latter part of the book, as well as the feeling of living in a country under the domination of a ruthless enemy. But we were largely protected by the kindness and extreme bravery of the Dutch from the severest privations described by Hendrika. It is a salutary lesson to members of the armed forces to read of what happens to the civil population in an cccupied country in wartime.

I hope that many of those who took part in the Battle of Arnhem, as well as others, will read this realistic account of those events seen from a different standpoint, that of a Dutch girl flung into the midst of it all without warning or preparation.

T.F. Redman Capt. R.A.M.C., 133 (Parachute) Field Ambulance (At the time of the battle).