A Story in Hiding: Dusty's Story

It's mid-February 1945 and 14 year old Trijntje Diemer is in cooking class at Musselkanaal school, in Northern Holland. During the conversation over the table one of her classmates remarks that "they've got the pilot, you know", referring to an allied fighter pilot for whom the Germans were searching throughout the area. Fortunately for the pilot, although Trijntje knew otherwise, she also knew better than to correct them.

The pilot is a New Zealander, William Lister Miller, better known amongst his airforce comrades as "Dusty". A fortnight earlier, Dusty had been looking forward to spending three weeks in London, on leave to celebrate his 27th birthday. However, when his second in command won a skiing trip to the French Alps in a competition, and thus requested leave for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Dusty had abandoned his plans to allow his flying officer's holiday to go ahead. If it had been any of Dusty's other men it wouldn't have mattered, but because one of the two of them had to lead the squadron, they couldn't both take leave at the same time. 
 
As a result, on 8th February, just three days after his birthday, Dusty is leading his RNZAF squadron 486 from their Southern Holland airbase on a mission to find and destroy enemy transport in West Germany. Once across the border the twelve fighters concentrate on targets in the Dortmund-Emskanal region. At the front of the attack, Dusty makes a hit, successfully destroying an ammunition barge. But suddenly, something goes terribly wrong. He too has been hit, but can't tell where it came from. His Hawker Tempest V is suffering severe engine damage, probably as a result of rubbish exploding from the barge, and he begins to lost height.  
 
After handing over command and telling his squadron to return to base, Dusty decides to head towards Holland, where he would fare better if he can manage to land safely. Climbing the plane as high as he can push it, he remains in the air long enough to cross the border, before making a forced landing between Musselkanaal and Tweede Exloermond, just narrowly missing the steeple of the Musselkanaal Reformed Church.  
 
Although one of his squadron follows him over to see where he went down, and knows that he had landed safely, Dusty is listed as missing because he had landed in occupied territory. (At this point of the war, southern Holland was liberated, but the northern regions were still held by the German army). 
 
Immediately he landed, sliding into and up the side of a canal, he saw a man running towards him. Roelie Groenewold, a student actively involved with the Dutch resistance, had watched him crash, and quickly went to Dusty, leading him away running.  
 
Although it was standard practice, Dusty didn't even stop to set fire to his plane. Considering that about 15 minutes later, German soldiers had gathered to look at the plane's remains, Roelie's insistence that they move fast and his ability to run so quickly wearing clogs were both matters for Dusty to marvel at and be thankful for.  
 
After running for hours, by which time they were hidden by darkness, they reached a small house which was to be their haven that night. It would seem that this house belonged to the Dijks family who were hiding Roelie, himself on the run from the Germans after fleeing his job in The Hague.  
 
At first Roelie told Dusty that he'd take him back, meaning he'd smuggle them back down to Sliedrecht, Roelie's home town in southern Holland. But Dusty's airbase was further south, across the Waal River, one of the most closely guarded waters in Holland, because it becomes the Rhine at the German border. Roelie was confident, given his local knowledge that they'd get through, but other members of the resistance told them that it was too heavily guarded, so instead Dusty resigned himself to staying in the area. 
 
Sometime during the next 24 hours, Dusty was moved to the farm belonging to the Windt family in Tweede Exloermond. Although this young couple spoke little or no English, Dusty was made most welcome. He spent the day hiding in the couple's bedroom, able to sneak into a panel in the chimney if need be. However, it was Mrs Windt's quick thinking that prevented him from being discovered here. She was pregnant, with the baby due in the next week or so, and that day the doctor visited to make sure all was well. When he suggested that he examine her as usual in the bedroom, she quickly told him it would suit her better if he could come back tomorrow, as she was so busy cleaning the oven and so forth. 
 
The sequence and details of the following few days are not entirely clear, as Dusty seems to have forgotten much. However, he remembers Mr Windt taking him out to the paddock, and telling him to wait by a pile of rubble. A short time later, another man appeared, saying "Kom me mit", and led him to yet another house, where Dusty spent the night sleeping under the floor boards. He spent the day watching traffic out the window across the canal. He remembers during the day asking his host who the men in green uniforms were. They were police, bad ones, he was told. But then who were the blue uniformed ones? He was told that they were good police, and to Dusty's surprise, his host said that these blue police knew about him, as the host had told them himself. Until now he had been fairly sure he was in good hands, but this news shocked him. 
 
He needn't have worried. The following day, a young man arrived at the house, and greeted Bill with the news that he would have to shave off his moustache. Why? Because Dutch men don't have them! This young man was Willem Diemer, who presented Dusty with a change of clothes, and a rusty old bike. The two then biked to the Diemer house in Musselkanaal, where Dusty was to stay from then on.  
 
Their ride was a risky one, particularly when the chain came off Dusty's bike. He was offered assistance by a passer-by, which he couldn't understand a lot of, before Willem noticed and returned to help. Crossing several canals on their way, they arrived safely, but within half an hour there were reports that German patrols were being set up on all the bridges in the area, as they were still searching for the pilot of the crashed plane.  
 
Writing of the event later, Willem Diemer remarked on "the arduousity" (sic) of an allied officer who together with a member of the underground was biking in broad daylight, just days after his crashlanding having the whole countryside on alert". The incident illustrates the trust Dusty had to have in those protecting him, as it would seem he had little other choice. Although they seemed willing to accommodate him indefinitely, Dusty knew that he would only stay a few months, knowing as he did that the Allied troops had advanced from the Maas River as far as the Rhine on the day he'd crashed. He ended up staying only three months with the Diemer family, as the north of Holland was liberated from the Germans in April 1945. 
 
The Diemer household now held 13 people. Mr Diemer had a carrying business, but was also very active in Socialist politics. Not only did he and his wife take in Dusty, but they were also hiding their own son, Geert, forced into hiding because he was of the age that he should have been in forced labour camps. (Geert had actually been sent off on the train once, but jumped off as it slowed for a bend, and ran home. Willem too was between the age of 18 and 27, the age of forced labour, but while in Berlin on a camp, he and a friend had altered their identification to put themselves as aged over 27, made themselves passes and train tickets to get themselves to the border, and walked from there.) When Willem had asked Mrs Diemer if he could bring home an allied pilot, she had agreed because of her own sons, in the hope that someone would have done the same for them if needed. 
 
With 8 children of their own, and others already staying, one wonders at her readiness, given that it must have been hard enough to feed them all on war-time rations without one more mouth in the house. Yet it is clear from Willem's writings that the family didn't view Dusty as a burden, but as "a very special guest". Willem records that "the last piece of bacon was saved for his ham & egg breakfast, the last piece of toilet soap lay next to his wash basin. And when father talked the drugstore owner out of a packet of tobacco ... that too was for Bill". 
 
A little digression - Willem mentions bacon, and this too has a story behind it. Not only were the Diemer's good at hiding people, they also hid a "silent pig". "Silent" because no-one knew about it, nor about the "silent butcher" who finally slaughtered it. Their reasons for this become clear when one learns that under German occupation, anyone who wished to keep a pig was made to keep two, one of which was forfeited to the German army to feed their men. Not surprisingly, Mr Diemer was vehemently against such involuntary support of the enemy, and so their pig was "silent". 
 
Dusty himself doesn't remember much about the everyday life at the Diemer's, not being a man who notices such small everyday details as what he ate for lunch. He does recall passing a lot of time reading, as the Diemers seem to have been a very scholarly family, with a good library of books in various languages. He read the only English ones they had - the complete works of William Shakespeare, and the writings of Sigmund Freud.  
 
Although most of the family spoke reasonable English, Dusty had to be careful after the three year old Willy (one of Mr & Mrs Diemer's grandchildren) began to speak English instead of Dutch! Dusty very quickly learned some useful Dutch phrases so that he could get by. As he recalls, it was sufficient if he were to be stopped and questioned by Germans, but not if his interrogators were themselves Dutch.  
 
Willem Diemer was fluent in several languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Dutch, enabling him on one occasion to mediate between Canadian and Polish armies of soldiers at a road block. At the end of his time, Dusty came away with two books given to him by Siniat Diemer, one of the elder sons. One is a Dutch-English dictionary, and the other is a copy of Siniat's PhD thesis on Nuclear Radiation. 
 
Although he was soon given an identity card with the name Maarten Drenth, a barge skipper from Groning, and knew how to talk about his "wife" and "ship", Dusty did not go out of the house a lot. For the first few weeks he was there, Willem would take Dusty and Geert (whose identity card revealed him as Jacobus, or Cobus) out about 7pm to walk along the canal, under the cover of dusk, returning before the 8pm curfew.  
 
On one of these risky outings the three are approached by a German soldier, who addresses Willem in a questioning tone, while Dusty, standing by, waits for a tense few moments which seem much longer. Then the soldier turns and walks on. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dusty asks Willem what the soldier had wanted. Willem nonchalantly replied that the soldier was just asking for directions! However, as the days got longer, they also got lighter, and so they had to abandon this practice. 
 
At night, Dusty would sleep with Mr Diemer, while Mrs Diemer bunked down with her two daughters Trijntje and Geesje. The reason for these seemingly complicated sleeping arrangements was that in a raid, Dusty could go into his hiding place in the parents' wardrobe (inside it there was a hole through the floor leading under the house), which could then be covered by a coat, and Mrs Diemer would resume her place in their bed. Then there were no extra warm places for the soldiers to find, and therefore no indication of another person in the house.  
 
It seems amazing that the Diemer's had this hiding place in their house and the identification all arranged ready for Dusty almost as soon as he arrived. Yet he recalls that there were many such houses around belonging to people who were linked to the resistance, and all were ready and willing to take men in at any time. Once under the house, Dusty could wander through a tunnel until he was under the neighbour's property, taking his scent as far away as possible. The neighbour was a relative of the Diemer's, but knew nothing about Dusty until after liberation. Apparently she was most upset to have been kept out of the secret when she was eventually told! 
 
To enable them to keep up with the Allies movements and progress, Siniat decided to make a radio. This sounds somewhat intriguing until one learns that Siniat worked before and after the war at Philips in Eindhoven, and later (in the early 1950's) was involved in making the first televisions. Within an evening he had constructed a simple radio, enabling them to receive BBC broadcasts and various other programmes. The whole thing was able to be dismantled in seconds in case of a raid. 
 
One of the most frustrating things for Dusty during his months with the Diemers was the knowledge that no-one in his squadron or even his family knew he was alive, as they would all have been told he was listed as missing. It wouldn't have been too difficult for them to have thought the worst. However it was impossible for him to send news to anyone while he was in hiding. At one stage he wanted to send news to some Dutch people he knew in the south of Holland near the squadron's Volkel airbase, as they would have been able to pass his news on safely, but even this was out of the question because of the extreme risk. He had to consider not only his own safety, lest he be imprisoned, but also that of the Diemer family, who were already putting their lives at risk for him. 
 
Fortunately, with the aid of Siniat's radio, it would seem that they knew the war (in Holland at least) was very nearly over. By April 15th, Dusty was free to go, as Holland had been liberated. Eager to get news of his wellbeing back to his squadron and also his family, Dusty didn't stay on long with the Diemers. After helping round up some of the local German collaborators, (of course, he had a fair idea of some cunning hiding places now!) he rode on the back of a German army motorcycle to the nearest intelligence post at Emmen.  
 
The first officer he saw was Czechoslovakian, who after seeing Dusty's "Dutch" ID card, called in another officer, a Dutchman. This second officer promptly declared the ID to be false. When the first officer asked how he could tell, the Dutchman replied that it was because all Dutch ID's were false! 
 
From Emmen he was taken in a light truck towards the Canadian Army camp. This journey was not without incident either, as they crashed into a larger truck carrying ammunition to the Headquarters of the 1st Division of the Canadian Army. Dusty transferred to the cab of the larger truck, which obviously fared better in the crash, and headed in a slightly different direction than anticipated.  
 
Soon after, and without further delay, he returned to England, where he immediately had three weeks much appreciated leave. Before his three weeks were up, VE Day arrived, and he was free to go home, unless he wanted to be part of an occupation force, not surprisingly a prospect he quickly shunned. Instead, Dusty headed to Brighton to join the masses waiting for a boat back to New Zealand.  
 
During this time, he met another soldier who was planning on heading back over towards Holland to look for his lost kit bag and tags. Seizing the opportunity Dusty also took a fortnight's leave and went back, with the intention of visiting the Diemers. After a little difficulty obtaining permission to borrow a vehicle, Dusty eventually turns up in Musselkanaal with a Jeep, overloaded with food and goods "borrowed" from a mess tent somewhere, no doubt to the great surprise and delight of the family who had stretched their minimal provisions even further for his sake during the previous three months. 
 
After his return home to Invercargill, New Zealand, Dusty's life quietened again. Working as a sales manager for Wright Stephenson, he married Betty, (who had been told by Dusty's brother Hugh that he was missing in action, but wouldn't believe it) and the two raised four children on their small farm at Makarewa, on the outskirts of Invercargill.  
 
At first, they received a few letters from Mrs Diemer, and wrote in return. Mr Diemer died about 1953, and when Mrs Diemer died some time afterwards, Dusty & his wife's letters were returned, marked simply 'deceased'. By now all the Diemer children had moved on, and it seemed that Dusty and the Diemers had lost contact, perhaps for ever. 
 
Although he is sure that he would have told his family on his return in 1945 about his time in Holland, the plane crash and hiding with the Diemer family, it seems the incident was mostly forgotten after the two families lost touch. Dusty's daughter Ann doesn't recall knowing a lot about the Diemers during her childhood. The only clue was the presence of a Dutch/English dictionary amongst the sparse book collection on the shelf, and the vague memory of a greenstone cross, which Dusty sent to Mrs Diemer as a gift. It would seem, like many other returned soldiers, that Dusty preferred not to talk about the war years, but to keep those memories to himself. 
 
Some 45 years after Dusty left Holland, in 1991, Ann and her husband Tony McGlinn were planning a trip there to visit Tony's brother and sister-in-law, Mark & Sonja. Recalling the little she knew about the Diemers, and knowing that the town was called Musselkanaal, Ann determined to try and track down the Diemer family. Fortunately, Mark and Sonja had been living in Holland for a few years, and Sonja was from a Dutch family, so they had the ability to communicate reasonably well in Dutch. Arriving in Musselkanaal, the first place Ann thought to look was the phone book, which listed an H Diemer (Hendrick, the eldest son, who wasn't actually living with the family in 1945). Hendrick had died recently, but his widow was still living in the house. However, when Ann & Tony, Sonja & Mark went to visit, she was not home, as she had gone to visit her daughter after Hendrick's death. 
 
Sonja decided, having come this far, to try the neighbours. She knocked on the door, and explained the situation. The response was positive, and although the only word in the conversation that Ann & Tony could understand was the word "pilote", it occurred so frequently that they knew they'd had some success. The neighbours invited them all in to afternoon tea, most excited that the daughter of the "British" pilot had arrived, as it seems the whole town knew of the pilot who had crashed near the town and been hidden there till the end of the war. The neighbours could even remember the event from when they were younger. 
 
Fortunately, the neighbours not only recalled the event, but knew how to track down Geesje Panman-Diemer, who lives in nearby Borger. They rang her, and she invited Ann & Tony, Sonja & Mark to Borger for that evening's dinner. Geesje, who had worked as a translator, spoke very good English, and her husband Dick spoke some, so for Ann & Tony, this visit was a lot more interesting. The following day, Geesje & Dick took them all on a tour of the Musselkanaal area, including the town square, named "Diemer Place". She also directed them on to Geert and his wife Jet, and also the eldest sibling, Kees and his wife in Rotterdam. Although they arrived about 8pm in Rotterdam, Kees immediately invited them to stay, and cooked them a meal. Then he asked Ann what she thought her dad would be doing at that time because he wanted to ring Dusty. When Betty answered the phone, Kees said to her "This is Kees Diemer. My sister was your husband's girlfriend!" Finally, after 45 years, Dusty was able to talk with one of the Diemer family again. 
 
After staying with Kees, Ann & Tony headed to Ouren, on the borders of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, to find Siniat. Although they had a street address, they weren't too sure of finding the right house, as the streets were numbered rather differently. Ann knocked on the door, which was answered by a young girl, and said in English "I'm looking for Siniat Diemer". The girl replied in English, much to Ann's relief, that he was her father, and she'd go and get him. To Siniat, Ann said "I'm Ann McGlinn from New Zealand", and he immediately interrupted, saying "Do you know Bill Miller?" After this great start, to Ann's relief not much more explaining was needed, and over the next few days they learnt even more about Dusty's time in Musselkanaal. 
 
Once they returned home, Ann & Tony were determined to see that Dusty revisit Holland and the various members of the Diemer family. Although it took almost two years of persuading, eventually in early 1994 Dusty and his wife set off overseas, first to visit Ann & Tony and their children in Bahrain, and then to Holland to see the Diemers. The reunion was eagerly anticipated, especially by Willem Diemer, with whom Dusty was perhaps closest during the three months of 1945. Willem's wife had recently died, and so helping to arrange Dusty's visit had given him something to look forward to, despite his grieving. Sadly, when Dusty & Betty arrived in Bahrain, Ann had to tell them that they wouldn't be going to Spain to see Willem, as he too had passed on. 
 
When they arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, Siniat and Trijntje were waiting to meet them, and, because they hadn't seen Dusty for almost 50 years, they were holding a placard with his name on it. Dusty however, walked straight up to them and told them to put it away, because he had recognised them without it. This meeting was not only significant for Dusty, returning after so many years, but was also the first time in nearly 30 years that Trijntje and Siniat had been together. As a result of his leaving his first wife Annie to marry his second wife Lucienne, Siniat had been practically shunned by the rest of his family. Trijntje in particular had been a very close friend of Annie, so Siniat's decision wasn't well received. Because of Dusty, they were able (at least on this occasion) to bury their differences, enabling a most joyful reunion. 
 
Over the next few weeks Dusty and the Diemers spent a lot of time remembering their time together back in 1945, sparking and rekindling memories for one another, which after 50 years were beginning to fade. Dusty and Betty stayed mostly with Geesje & Dick Panman-Diemer in Borger, enabling them to revisit many places in Musselkanaal. They were able to see the official police report, which incorrectly recorded two pilots running from the crash scene of the one-seated plane, and also to visit a small museum which had actual pieces of his plane on display. According to the records, an Italian team had recovered the parts of the plane after it crashed. The largest surviving pieces include part of the canopy and the front engine cover, which had apparently served for several years as a dog kennel. They also had various other smaller pieces of metal which they believed to be parts of the plane, which they were eager to have identified by Dusty, much to his amusement, given the impossibility of such a task. 
 
During their visit, Dusty and Betty were also taken by Geesje to visit Mrs Windt, with whom he had stayed before reaching the Diemers. She was delighted to see him again, and was anxious to know if he recognised her too. His witty reply was that yes, he did but he wouldn't recognise her baby now! (That 'baby' would now be 49 years old).  
 
Roelie Groenewold, the young man who had first arrived on the scene to lead Dusty away was another important person to visit. At first, his wife was unsure if Roelie would be well enough. After helping Dusty to safety, Roelie had been forced to flee again himself, only to end up in a labour camp in Germany. He escaped, but was captured and put into a concentration camp. Now, 49 years later, his ill health is largely due to the suffering and emotional scars of this experience, one which, according to his wife, he rarely talks about, because of the pain. He was, though, most delighted to see Dusty again, and the reunion was by all accounts a highly emotional one. Betty vividly remembers that, although she had never before met Roelie, seeing Dusty and him sitting together after so many years brought tears to her eyes. 
 
As well as catching up with many important people who had been part of Dusty's earlier journey, Geesje & Dick took the Millers to see the old Diemer home at 38 Marktkade. Met at the door by a young boy, who knew all about the story of the pilot when Geesje began to tell it, they were shown through it. The following day, the young boy's father, Mr Allemekinder, telephoned them, amazed that Dusty had come to visit. He also wanted to ask Dusty to come and talk at his school. He was the principal at the local Roman Catholic St Antoniusschool, and as is customary, the pupils were spending the months of April & May focusing on World War II. In fact, they had just that week been talking about the "British" pilot who had crashed near the town, and Mr Allemekinder was most excited at the prospect of having him come and tell his story. Dusty obliged, and spent a morning talking with the pupils, making their history classes literally come to life, giving their teacher cause to proclaim this happy coincidence to be "a small miracle". 
 
Thanks to Geesje, this event was recorded by one of the local newspapers, "De Nieuwsbode". Three other articles in different papers also appeared, two of them front page stories and photographs. When Geesje had phoned the local editor of one paper, suggesting that she had a small story worth perhaps a paragraph somewhere, the editor had replied enthusiastically that it would be on the front page, without question. As a result, an article also appeared in the local paper for Invercargill and Wanaka (where Dusty & Betty now live), The Southland Times. Finally, thanks to Ann's detective work, and Geesje's confidence in its news-worthiness, it seems that after nearly 50 years, the story of Dusty's time in hiding has been revealed itself. 
 

Further References

Hurricane MkIIA 
Half Second Over Horsmonden 
Bibliography Hurricane MkIIA by Ian Brodie