The Resistance in Midwoud Meets Cecil "Tuck" Belton

On the eleventh of January (My name is Dickey), my birthday came and went again. Now I am eight. Another flock of American bombers was thundering overhead one that day when we heard a curious noise within the general furor.

We looked out the door to see this: one great dark B-17 flying fortress, out of control, directly toward our farmhouse. For a second, my breath went away. Then we were all scrambling to get clear of the house. The troubled bomber would barely miss our home. But we watched in horror as it passed close overhead. The plane was on fire. Maybe the men had tried to evacuate too quickly; I don't know. But something had gone desperately wrong. Parachutes had snagged on the broad wings and stabilizers trailing behind them, in thin air, helpless crew members. The doomed airplane swooped so near to us, for a few seconds, we could hear the screams of young American boys. A moment later came a vast explosion with lots of smoke. We ran toward the scene. Within minutes the Gestapo, the Grüne Polizei, and the Wehrmacht converged on the area to search the smoldering wreckage for valuable documents. They were casually throwing the body parts of eight perished young men around. I was sickened. But we didn't see what happened. Next, we had to run because the Gestapo began rounding up the locals who had run out to try and help. Grietje, my new big sister, was just now at the prime of her life and a fine, strong young woman. But every time she got close with some young man her age, he would either be deported or murdered by the Nazis.

Then I went to the bedroom. Years later, I learned that one of the airplane crews had survived that awful crash, the captain of the plane Cecil Belton. Eight other crewmen had perished.

Belton was able to escape with the aid of a resistance group. I spoke for years with Cecil until his death in January 2014 - Wednesday, the fifteenth of January 2014; Cecil had told me that "we encountered a lot of flak and got hit in our number two engine. Something happened to it, and it started to run away - prop run away - which means it was out of control. I tried to feather it, which you can do and still fly the airplane. But in the meantime, we had developed a fire in one of the oxygen tanks; I think it was if I remember correctly. It's been such a long time. We had hydraulic fluid leaking in the cockpit all over the place. Everybody was pretty busy. We never did get our number two engine feathered, and I think before we got an explosion, the number two engine prop may have flown off; I'm not sure of that; it may have flown off. And then in all the scurrying around and everything, as I recall, I was telling everybody to bail out, 'cause it looked like we were in serious trouble."

"In the meantime, we had lost altitude, and we had fallen back. Of course, when you do that, you are prime prey for German fighters, you know, to pick on you because you are all by your lonesome, and you don't have the firepower from the rest of the group. Anyhow, whatever happened happened, and things flew apart about that time. I was floating around out in the sky the next thing I knew. And of course, there was a heavy undercast, which was only about - as I learned when I came down about 400 feet off the ground - a lot of snow on the ground."

"In the meantime, I had (trails off). The day before, a friend of mine had told me how to rig my parachute up by cutting the [stitching on the] straps on the right shoulder and making a little harness to hang it on the side of the seat so that I wouldn't have any weight, you know, on my shoulder. We used chest packs, and it was impossible to wear chest packs while flying the aircraft. So luckily, when I went out and came to, my chute was dangling above my head five feet probably, roughly four or five feet. And, my first instinct, of course, was to get the chute open. Well, I had to get a hold of the chute first, so I pulled the chute down and tried to engage the second "D" ring. The first "D" ring - the one on my right side - was engaged, and I never did get the left "D" ring engaged. And I didn't know how high up or where I was - of course, there was a lot of trauma and shock involved and trying to put your head together and everything, but, anyhow, I finally pulled the ripcord. And I remember seeing the chute come out."

"The next thing I know, I went through the undercast, which was below me, of course. When I went through that undercast, I was practically on the ground. Maybe two, three, four hundred feet high, no higher than that. And, of course, it was all snow-covered. I hit the ground, spinning. I remember the wind was blowing and, on the one strap, of course, I was spinning around, around, around. I tried to stop the spinning so that I could fall like we were taught in a parachute, which I couldn't control at all. When I hit the ground, the chute was inflated, of course, and it kept pulling me in the snow probably, oh I don't know, maybe thirty, forty, maybe fifty feet before it collapsed. I couldn't get on my feet to get it collapsed or anything."

"While I'm there laying on the snow, why - it was just a very few minutes it seemed like - here come a bunch of people. And I was trying to put two and two together, where am I, where, you know. And they're all chattering away, and I'm trying to figure out what they're saying. Of course, I couldn't understand anything. It happened that I was in friendly territory, of course, in Holland, North-Holland, up close to a little town called Midwood, and these are citizens of this little village that had seen the plane coming down and scattered parts and so forth. And they come running out into the field to help me. They got my parachute off and drug me through the snow, helped me up - I couldn't get around very well. They took me into a farmhouse, real close, oh, about a quarter-mile away, I'll say."

"The lady there in the farmhouse was raising cane and hollerin'. I didn't know what she was talking about or what was going on, but she was telling those guys that the Germans were close by and they were coming and she didn't want me in her house when they got there, thinking that they would think that she was sheltering me, you know, which would put her in serious trouble."

"So they drug me right outside almost immediately, and one of these fellows set me on the back on a bicycle (called a fiets) I didn't know. Finally, I came to understand what he meant, can I ride a bicycle, and I shook my head yes. They stuck me on this bicycle and I just fell over on the road in the snow. So they got on each side of me, two fellows, two husky guys (well, they are both passed away now), and stuck me on the bicycle. And down the road we went, one on each side of the handlebar, and the snow was like I say several inches deep. They took me outside this little town, Midwood, and into a bulb barn; that's where they store tulip bulbs, you know after they dig them up. And anyhow, we went in there, and I met a fellow. He started peeling off all of his clothes and started jerking all of my clothes, my flying clothes, boots, and everything, except - and I stripped down, except I had some long underwear on which I left on and put his clothes on. He took mine. They got me dressed, including a pair of wooden kloppers, which are wooden Dutch shoes that were quite popular still at that time. And they stuck me on the bicycle, and off we went again to a farmhouse down the road, I don't know, a couple of three miles or so.``

It was a pretty good size farmhouse with a thatch roof on it. And this family took me in there and took me up in the loft on the second floor. And there I stayed for oh - and then they all left, they left me in this farmhouse. They were a part - they were part of the good guys, the underground people. They knew the good people from the quislings, as they called them, the people who would help the Germans. So I stayed in that attic for, oh I don't know, I'm going to guess maybe three days - I don't remember just exactly. And that lady there at the farm, the farmhouse, she'd bring me up a bowl of porridge now and then. It was porridge. They called it porridge. It was like oatmeal or cream of wheat, or some cereal like that. They'd put hot water in it and eat it like that."

"And then the fellows who rescued me when the plane had crashed, they were part of the group in north Holland. The Dutch people organized the underground into what they called the district. And they came back and picked me up and took me to their headquarters, which was a building - I called it the chicken house. It was about ten-fifteen feet long and divided into two rooms. One room had straw on the floor where we slept at night, and the other room had a big table with hot water in it and ate it like that."

"And then the fellows who rescued me when the plane had crashed, they were part of the group in North Holland. The underground was organized into districts, and they were in what they called the district. And they came back and picked me up and took me to their headquarters, which was a building - I called it the chicken house. It was about ten-fifteen feet long and divided into two rooms. One room had straw on the floor where we slept at night, and the other room had a big table.

Later, I found out that in the group, the internal military forces of the Netherlands were the son of a member of the internal military forces of the Netherlands.

The View from the Ground

Achildunderground, a copyrighted monograph titled a child underground: memories of a boy who lived in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Achildunderground brought flowers to the eight crew members who had perished.

Pictures of the six crew members who had perished.

Son of William Bakker was a resistance fighter who was worried about Dickey Kramer Elias Max Cardozo