Concrete Obstacles and Collaborators
Heroes Remembers - Liberation of the Netherlands
Concrete Obstacles and Collaborators
Transcript
Up in Holland where their highway,
they was always figuring the Germans
that they'd use aircraft to land on their
highways which they did,
but they put blocks up.
Cement columns, big too,
well the wall would be about two feet,
and they'd go up about four or five feet high and
there'll be one there,there be one here and
you're going down the highway like this.
We ended up taking a bunch of collaborators.
This was outside of Utrecht,
and we were there quite a while and
we were taking our drills, our wagon drills,
and we'd put dynamite in and
we'd blow them up. That's we're doing,
but the collaborators were doing this.
They were actually doing on the jack hammers,
putting the holes in and we'd take the
dynamite in the sticks and load them up
all around it and then put the charge and
blow them up.
So that's the idea of cleaning them all off,
we'd level them off as good as the floor.
You wouldn't think there was anything there.
Description
Mr. McCabe describes removing concrete pillars placed by the Dutch to deter German aircraft from landing on Holland’s highways. Collaborators were given the ‘grunt’ work such as drilling holes for explosives in the pillars.
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration:
- 1:29
- Person Interviewed:
- Eugene McCabe
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Second World War
- Location/Theatre:
- Netherlands
- Branch:
- Army
- Units/Ship:
- 30th Field Company
- Occupation:
- Sapper
- Date modified: