This is Mark Cunningham. Today is August the
29th, 2014. I'm interviewing Mr. Neil
Burghout. The interview is taking place at
Waldenbrook Estates in Bryan, Texas.
The interview is in support of the Nimitz
Education Research Center Archives
for the National Museum of the Pacific War, the
Texas Historical Commission for
the preservation of historical information
related to this site.
May I call you Neil? Yep. I'm Mark. Mark. Okay.
All right.
Well first off thanks for agreeing to do the
interview. I've not talked to someone
with your experience so this is going to be an
interesting I'm sure it's going to
be an interesting experience for me. And right
off the bat, let me ask you, when
were you born? I was born October 21st, 1926.
Okay, so you were pretty young
when the war broke out. Yes, the war broke out
in 1940 for Europe. Okay, where
you born? I was born in Vlaardingen in the city
close to Rotterdam in Holland.
And tell me a little bit about your early life,
your parents, what were their
names? My dad was the same as me, Cornelis
Burkhout. Sorry? Cornelis Burkhout and my
mother Maria Van Rijn. Okay, did you have any
brothers and sisters? I had three
sisters, no brothers. I was the only son. Okay,
well tell me tell me about the
early days leading up to the war. Well, the
early days it was very good for me
and for my whole family. My dad had a very good
job and as a young boy I grew
up. I went to elementary school. I finished
high school and was ready to
called to college when the war was going on and
I had to stop going to college
because I had to leave my country. Okay, where
did you go? Well, I went to the lady
and lady. We had a job to do for the resistance
with four people.
Okay, let me back up a minute. You were at this
this is the point in time when you
remember the Dutch resistance? Yes. Okay, now
tell me about that. I went, somebody
met me in the resistance nobody had a name or
an address in case somebody was
taken prisoner by the Germans that they could
not tell that guy and that guy was
with me. Okay now I hate to keep backing up but
I just remembered something else
okay you graduated from high school but that's
when the Germans came and overran
Holland, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, so you
were under the occupation.
Occupation of the Germans. All right, tell me a
little bit about that. That was not
very nice. Everything was on restrictions. Your
food, you had stamps, you could not
do what you wanted and there was string curfews
at night and in the morning and I
still went to go could finish school, high
school. I have to admit the regular
German army was not bad for us but the Gestapo
and the SS were terrible for no
reason at all they would pick you up, put you
in jail, or put you for a short time
in jail in the city where you lived. But really
we were very, very restricted
from what we could do. Okay, you were about 18
years old, is that right? 17.
17 years old. No, when the war broke out, 16.
Okay, now how did you get connected
with the Dutch Resistance? The resistance
contacted me and I told you what about
that lady I have that she had somebody
contacted to contact me. Okay and what
were you doing with the resistance? To make
life for the Germans as miserable
as possible. Okay. Sabotage a lot of things if
he has a chance but one of the
main jobs for us was actually as young guys in
case a B-17 or any allied
aircraft was shot down trying to get the pilot
before the Germans could get him.
Okay, one shot down American airmen or allies.
It doesn't matter who it was,
British or who it was, trying to get him before
the Germans could get a hand on it.
on it. Okay, so this was in the very early days
of the war, 1931? Well, 1942 started it already.
Okay. Because it had to be organized and it was
well organized, the resistance,
absolutely fantastic. Okay, now where were you
living? Were you living at home?
No, I was living in a home in the southern part
of Holland, close to the
Belgium border. And that city had a tremendous
big railroad station. And the
Germans used that all the time because they had
a direct line from Germany to
my city, Rosendal, and from there you could go
north, not south, not west,
because that was the ocean, and then south,
straight through Belgium and France.
Okay. All right, now the stuff that you were
doing, the sabotage, tell me a little
bit about specifically what type of sabotage.
The most important job for us
was to get the pilots out. Okay. And we knew
what to do with them so they could
go back to England. And what would you do with
them? Hide them. Okay. In homes? No, not homes
because the Germans could check that too much,
but farmers, there were a lot of farmers who
were willing to hide them in Holland, willing
to hide them.
And then they would be severely dealt with if
they were caught, right?
Oh yes.
Particularly the farmers.
Yes, you went to a concentration camp, but we
were willing to take that risk and we took
care of it through the resistance. We knew how
to contact to take those take care of those guys.
We would tell him where he was hiding and you
guys take care of it. They did take care of it
very well.
Okay now I'm gonna ask you a tough question.
You started telling me about a
lady that helped you. Yes. Do you feel
comfortable to tell me about that story?
I'd like to hear. Yes, she was a very very good
friend from the whole family and
special my dad and my mom they loved her and I
knew where she lived and I had an
idea that she was in the resistance too because
she was supposed to marry one of
my cousins and she canceled that and that was a
sign for me I knew how she
was I knew how she hated the Germans but I had
no 100% proof but I
took the chance to go to her when I run in
trouble and she took me in and she
took care of it that I got different papers,
legal, by the Germans.
What kind of trouble did you get in?
One evening we had to go completely out of the
city to a certain spot and we came there.
This was a resistance work? Yes.
We had to go to a certain spot and we met four
other people.
And a little bit further down,
we had to go to another spot and we met our leader.
Nobody knew names, we all had code names.
We had to say a special word
and they answer with another word.
And if they don't flick, don't bother.
And he brought us to a way out of the city to
an open area.
And he said, you guys stay here.
And about five or six minutes later,
an aircraft came over pretty low and he singled.
And they came back and they dropped about six parachutes
with explosives, weapons, ammunition.
For the resistance.
With these American troops.
And we took care of that in a hurry
because you never know when the Germans can
come or fly over.
We were too far out of the country
that they didn't have patrols over there.
But we knew where to bring that stuff.
And we did it in no time.
Hit the parachutes.
Most of the time we dug a hole and put them all
in there
in places where the Germans never come.
And then we went home.
And on our way home, I went with three guys and
the other two guys went another way.
When we were back in the city to go home, we
met a patrol from collaborators from Holland.
Two guys. We were with three.
So they didn't stop us because they knew damn
well that we had weapons too.
And I recognized one of the guys that was an
ex-neighbor from us and he recognized me.
And I asked one of the guys, look back, he
said, yeah, he's looking back, he said, okay
you guys, you go where you will, I have to go
somewhere else, I cannot go home.
And I went to that lady.
And she helped you?
And she said, what the hell are you doing here, Neil?
I said, nevermind, open up.
And I told her what happened.
She said, okay, stay here.
Don't go in the backyard.
Don't go in front of the windows.
Go nowhere.
You stay in your room. And-
How long did you stay there? Huh?
How long did you stay there?
She wanted me to get rid of me in three days.
But I asked her if I could stay for two weeks.
And she asked me why, because she knew the
Germans had surrounded my house at 4:00 in the
morning and went through the whole house.
Where your mother and father were?
Yes, and my sister.
And your sister?
One sister, the other two sisters were in
Northern Holland.
And they went through the whole house.
Looking for you?
Looking for me.
So this guy was working for the resistance, but
he was a...
He was not there, it was the Germans.
He went to the Germans and told Mosleke what happened
and they surrounded the house
and surrounded everything over there. Wow.
Did they harm your parents?
No, no.
Did they search the house looking for you?
Search the house for everything.
They took everything around, all the corners,
in the yard.
Okay, now she got you new papers, new identity papers,
that to do? The lady? Yeah. Okay. How long was
it before you could go home?
A week and a half. Oh, not go home? Never.
Never. The Germans, because the Dutch
collaborator lived pretty close by my house, so
I never went home. Okay, now how
long were you with her? It was about... Well,
when did you get to go home? After the
war? After the war. Okay, but your parents and
sisters survived the war? Yes, yes.
My dad knew because the resistance has contact,
that lady had contact with
England and because the resistance, even if I
was in the resistance, when I came
in England I was taken by the police. I was
treated really well, but they had to
make sure that I was not a German collaborator
and they had contact with
the lady who sent me over and they had contact
with each other.
Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, she got you
papers to get out of Holland so
you could get to England? Yes. So that was the
end of your career with the
resistance? Yes, that was the end of the career
and it was well organized because I
I could not leave Holland.
She had, when I left,
she put me on a train to Paris.
With burgers.
With German papers.
With German papers and name and everything.
And over there, a lady would pick me up.
And that was a code name too.
She would come to me and say a word
and I have to answer her with another word.
Okay, now, let me back up now.
Where was she, I'm missing?
The lady that you had to get code to?
The lady that you had to give the code to?
In Paris.
When I got off the train in Paris.
All right, now you're going in the opposite direction
from England.
How'd you get to England?
Well, they knew the resistance from Holland,
well, from Norway.
Denmark was so-so, Holland, Belgium was so-so,
but France had an excellent resistance.
Okay, so you're going to the French resistance.
Yeah, I went from, the train went to Paris.
And there a lady picked me up.
And she brought me to a convent
where the Catholic priests and nurses are,
because they would never have searched those.
And two nights later, another lady picked me up
over there and brought me to another convent.
And so slowly I went all the way out of the
city where I was supposed to go.
And you were operated in France?
In France, yes.
In the French Resistance?
Yes, I was in the French Resistance.
They took care of me.
Okay, I want to stop here. I want to go back a
minute. You said your primary
activity in the Dutch resistance was trying to
save downed pilots.
How did you find them? They come out of the
plane. Is somebody spotting them?
Well, I can tell you one thing what happened to
us that we had to take care of.
In Roosendaal was a very important place for
the railroad and the Germans were
going to put the 88 millimeter guns in. The
first shots they did, they
pulled a shot in V-17 down. Okay. And we saw
seven parachutes coming out. And later
we found out that three were in the cockpit
were killed. But anyway, we got
all seven, the whole group, not just me, it was
a whole group always waiting for
them and they were flying. We got seven people,
seven pilots, flight
personnel out before the Germans got them and
they never got them. We had them
in different farms and all over the place, stored.
Did you try to get those guys back to the
Allied lines?
They all went back to the Allied lines, while
at that time there were no lines yet.
They had to go the same way as I.
Right, so that way of Paris?
By different connections and sent them back to
Paris and they would take care of it that he
went back to England.
It was quite an organization, unbelievable,
that was quite an organization.
I've never heard any of this.
Okay, now they got you to Paris and you got you
to the French Resistance. Yes.
Okay. Now, how long were you with the French Resistance?
Altogether five days.
But every night in a different place.
Okay. Now, was your career in the resistance
over at that point or? Yes.
When did you get to the British Army and how
did you get to the British Army?
Well, one evening a lady came and said,
okay, Neil, this is the last time I go to move
you somewhere.
And we went way outside the country
and we went to open space again
and there were four, no, six other people.
Three were British pilots, three were American pilots
and one was a resistant from France.
he had to get out of the country.
Okay, this was in France?
In France.
In the Paris area?
Yeah, way out of Paris.
Okay, in the country.
And the leader of us said,
okay, you guys stay here and don't move.
And about ten minutes later,
an aircraft came over pretty low.
The leader signaled.
He said, okay, be ready to run.
And the plane landed.
He turned around right away,
so he was in the right position to take off again.
We all jumped in the aircraft and off we went.
So you and three British airmen and three
American airmen.
American airmen and a Frenchman, eight of us.
Okay, and so you ended up in England.
In England.
Okay, did you have anything other than the clothes
on your back with you?
No, nothing else.
I had some underwear with me,
Well, they got on the way from the resistance,
what they gave me, and that was it.
Wow, holy mackerel, what a story.
Okay, you got to England, okay.
Tell me what happened when you got to England.
How'd you get to the British Army?
Well, when the plane landed,
there were three or four different people,
for the American pilots, the British pilots,
the guy for France and one for me. He said, are
you Neil Burkhardt? I said, yeah, that's
me. At that time, I had my regular name back.
And he said, you have to come with me. It
wasn't, later on I found out in civilian, a
police officer from the Royal Canadian Police
or whatever it was and I stepped in his car and
he brought me to the police
station and said everything is okay, he said
don't have to worry, he said but we have to
keep you here till we have confirmation from
Holland that you are not a German
spy. He said, okay. He said, you want my code
name? Yes, he said. I said, well, I'm Wildcat.
You're what? Wildcat. That was my name. How do
you say that in Dutch? Wilde Kat.
Okay, well, it's pretty close. We used English
names. Okay. It was Wildcat. Okay. And
They kept me there in the police, in the jail,
if you want to call it, got good food, got
treated well, during the day I could walk
around in the station and everything.
So you were just housed until confirmation, you
weren't under arrest or anything?
No, no, just staying over there that I was not
a German spy.
And see, they contacted that lady who sent me
off, because she was in contact with England
all the time. I found out later and one day he
came back he said well Neil you
are alright you can go. He said but where do
you want to go? I said well we had in
London Prince, Prince Bernhard. I don't know if
you ever heard of him. Prince who?
Bernhard. He was a member of the royal family
because the Dutch. Of Holland?
Holland. Because the whole royal family from
Holland cut out, they cut them out,
the Navy cut them out of Holland. The whole
family, kids and everything, and
they were in England. And I got in, they
brought me to him. They had contacted him
that I was from Holland. He just came in and he
wanted to see me. His first
questions were, how is everything in Holland?
He said, well, when I left, terrible.
The Norman life was disturbed because you could
not do what you want and stuff
like that. And then he asked me, he said, what
would you like to do? I said, well, I would
like to join, if it is possible, the British
Royal Air Force and become a
a pilot and he contacted them and an officer
from the Royal Air Force came
over and talked with me. He said, but I have to
disillusion you, you cannot do
that because everybody between 18, at that time
I was still only 17, but
between 18 and 21 have to have permission from
the parents that they
can fly. He said, there is a rule over here and
there are no exceptions. He said,
but I will bring you something from the army
and you can join them. And I got a
choice. He said, what do you want? This or that?
He said, no, I would like to go in
an armored division. Oh, no problem, he said.
And he brought me to the
British Army, told them the story, who I was
and what I was that they could trust
me, and I joined the British Army. Okay, all
right now, you, so you, you went
through all the training, boot camp and all
that? Everything. Everything. Boot camp in
Colchester and Manchester, I worked all over
the place, and later on I ended up
Yes, I would say London. Anyway, that was our
main headquarters.
Okay. How long did that training take? Remember?
All the day till we went to Europe.
Because even if you were trained, you kept on
training, training, training.
Specifically, what outfit of the British Army
was it?
11th Armored Division.
Let's see.
When did you go back to the continent?
Let's see.
Okay. All right, when did you go back to the continent?
We landed
was it
the next day at 5:00 in the morning. That must
have been the 7th.
of? The invasion was the 6th, May the 6th.
Okay, so you went in on, you were at
Normandy? Yeah. Okay, now they, the British
Army landed where? They didn't,
they landed at Omaha, no? No, not at Omaha.
What was the name? Utah? No, Utah was American too.
The next one. Juno? Juno, I think it was. I'm
pretty sure that's what it was.
Alright, and what was your, you were with an
armored division so you were a tank
man, right? Okay, what did you do in a tank?
What was your job? I was in the
turret and responsible for the .50 behind me as
in the aircraft gun and
loading the gun. Okay, what does that mean,
rolling the gun? Moving it? No, no,
loading it. Oh, loading it. Next door was me,
the tank commander, and I was in next to him.
And then in the tank, the worst place in the
tank, that is the gunner.
That's the gunner. All right. But we were all
trained for all the jobs in the tank, in the
British Army.
And you fought all the way across Europe?
How far did you go?
We were ready to go into Denmark.
And we had orders to be everything ready at 3:00,
loaded, gas, the whole lot,
and leave at 3:00 to Denmark.
And then early, late in the afternoon,
came the word that the Germans surrendered completely.
And the British, Montgomery,
decided not to send the tanks into Denmark,
but the motorized infantry.
We need those more than the tanks.
And we stayed in Schleswig-Holstein.
You stayed where?
Schleswig-Holstein, that's in the northwest Germany,
all the way in the top,
about 12 miles from Denmark, Wardorf.
Now, how long did you stay there?
A year.
Oh, really?
So you were just kind of an occupying force
there, or were you in action all this time?
I was, after about a month, I was temporarily
loaned out to a motorized infantry division,
because those guys had to go on patrol every
day, trying to find if there were still some
hiding somewhere in the area, in the country,
SS or Hitler units.
The Wehrmacht was sent home, took all the
weapons off and sent them home, but those
guys had to go to jail. Okay, so from where did
you go from there? You were
there a year? A year. Okay, the war was over
then by then. The war was over, but we had to
go to the
country right to drive patrols because they had
halftracks, so we couldn't do
patrol with the tanks with the halftracks and a
different battalion was
that. So that's where you were when the war
ended? That's where I stayed in
Schleswig-Holstein till March 1946. Okay. And
then I was transferred from the
British Army to the Dutch Army. Okay, and when
did you get out of the Army?
Nineteen... I have to think the whole minute.
1956, I think. You were in the Army all
those years? Yeah. So, you were a career army
man? Yeah, well, because I
When I went in, John, when I, well, the Dutch Army,
when I got transferred to the Dutch Army,
I was sent after four months to four and a half years
to Indonesia, because we were fighting still
in Indonesia, Kutsukarno's rebels.
Four and a half years I was over there.
So you were literally in combat from the time
you were 17 years old in the Dutch Resistance.
When? World War II? Four years of World War II?
Four years of World War II.
Yeah, four years of World War II.
And then I came back in 1951 from Indonesia.
And then I still don't know why,
But when I came back I was transferred to the
Dutch Royal Air Force.
I was a teacher in the intelligence service
over there to teach the pilots about all the
Russian aircrafts, tanks and ships.
And I got out of there in 1957.
I want to go back, I want to know, when did you
reunite with your family?
I got,
when the Germans surrendered, about,
I would say,
a month and maybe four or five weeks
after that,
I walked in the morning in the
company commander's office
and he said,
Neil, the big boss wants to see you.
He said, what did I do?
He said, don't worry, nothing.
Just go and see him.
And I went to him.
And this was in the British Army, right?
That was, yeah, it was all still in the British Army.
And that was, the Germans surrendered in May.
That must have been the end of May.
And I'm held myself by the battalion commander.
He said, okay, Neil, sit down and let's have a talk.
He said, before we start talking,
he said, I want to apologize to you.
And he was a major, no, not a major, a colonel
in a tank division.
A battalion commander is a colonel
because you have so many tanks
and so many people under you.
He said, I want to apologize for you
when we had that problem down near Osnabrück.
I said, well, now before you say anything new,
I now understand how you people in the occupied countries
had to suffer under the Germans.
I said, well, it's not necessary,
so I shouldn't have laughed,
but I laughed and I enjoyed it what you did.
No, I, okay, I missed that part.
What did he do?
We had a German concentration camp, nothing
else but women, all German women who don't like Hitler.
And we had to liberate those.
And he told the company commander, he said, put
that tank where Neil is in by the front gate.
and we came over there and a little bit later
the battalion commander came he
said okay let's go to the gate and I had to
tell the guard to get the camp
commander and the second team command. I said
and no shooting and he went to get
her and I come to a fat German lady, June,
June, Gestapo lady, the second
one a Gestapo lady. He said, well here they are
sir. He said, first of all let her
tell all the guards to put on their weapons and
no shots fired. And I told her
that in German. And he said, what does she have
to say? She said, well what do you have to say
about what you have to do. Heil Hitler. This
lady did this? Yeah. He said tell her
once more. And I told her again. The colonel
says do what you have to do.
Bring all the guards here without the weapons.
He said and what do you have to
say to the colonel, heil hitler, he said well
Sir, heil Hitler, okay Neil, I will take care
of that
right between the eyes and I started laughing
I said, Neil, that is not a laughable
situation, he says, don't tell exactly the same
to the
second in command, and I told the same to the
second in command, and she said, yes,
yes, yes, I get them all right now.
Wow, what a story, wow, wow.
Okay, but now, how did this colonel get you
back to your family?
Oh, I report, he said, he apologized to you,
that I laughed at in that incident.
Because he didn't know your story? No.
And he said, yes, he said, now I realize how
you guys, why you guys hate the Germans so much.
And we found out.
But anyway, he said, I've got good news for you.
He said, I've got a letter here.
You are going six weeks with vacation to Holland.
He said, have you heard anything about your family?
He said, no, Sir, nothing.
He said, here, you go home for six weeks.
He said, but how do I get home, Sir?
There are no trains running yet.
He said, I took care of that too.
He said, go tomorrow morning to the garage and
ask for sergeant, that and that.
And here you have a letter that you get a jeep
home for six weeks, go home, enjoy yourself.
And here's the letter, all British units have
to supply you with gasoline.
And I went home for six weeks.
You drove home from Paris?
No, that time in Germany still, North Syria.
Okay, that's a long drive, right?
Who cares?
We came all the way from...
Okay, now I want to ask another question.
All that time you had not heard, you were not
able to write your family?
No, no, no.
Okay, so they didn't know whether you were
alive, dead, or whatever happened?
Later on, I found out, when the war was over,
that my dad knew it, and she went to my home.
Oh, I had, I forgot to tell you that I told
her, in case you know anything, don't talk
to my mom or sisters, tell my dad.
And then I found out that my dad knew all the
time that I was in the British Army.
He didn't want to marry my mom.
Oh, my dad was...
I can't imagine the type of reunion that would
have been.
Oh, fantastic.
Now, what shape was Holland in at that time?
The southern part where my mom and dad lived
was good,
because that was liberated in October of 1944.
But the northern part, above the rivers we
always call that, never got
deliberated till the Germans surrendered. And
then the Canadians came in, right up
to the end. And no, I don't know if you ever
heard about that, that at the end of
the end, close to the end of the war and the
B-17s dropped food over the
northern part of Holland because there was
nothing, nothing. And the Germans were
warned not to take that food. How did your
family survive? My mom and dad and
my younger sister good because my dad had the
job and he knew a lot of people
and farmers over there and he had no problem.
All the time during the
war they had no problem but the people up North
they had the biggest problems
and there was the people took doors out of the
house to get some heat okay now
what about your what I had a question that went
away I was gonna ask more
about your family, I mean, what was the
celebration like?
Oh, fantastic.
Okay, now they had it, they're living in the
same house?
Yeah, same house I left, and it was pretty new
at that time.
It was in good shape and all that?
Oh yes, no problem.
The neighbor had a television hit,
but my parents' house was okay.
But nobody was killed in there,
it was way in the top of their house.
Okay, and your one sister was living with them?
Yeah, my younger sister was living with my parents.
And where was your older sister?
In the north.
Did she survive okay? No.
She died?
She died, oh, I would say about two months
after the war
because her body was so weak that she got a fever
fever and the fever busted her kidney and my
dad nobody was allowed to see her
he said because she was completely black from
the poison she survived it but only
two months and my other sister came out okay
okay is she still alive no none of
I'm the only one alive.
You're the only one alive. Yeah.
Well, I am too, isn't I?
So, but mine didn't go through that. No.
I don't wish anybody to go through that.
And I still say, Hitler was bad, Himmler was
the worst.
Himmler was way worse than Adolf Hitler.
The only good thing about Hitler was that he
was a tremendous stubborn guy
and he would not believe his generals.
If he had listened to his generals, the war
would have turned out completely different and longer.
But he knew everything and what he said had to happen.
And that was the luck for us when we landed in Normandy.
Because about a hundred miles to the south, no
to the north, were two or three big
German tank divisions. And that was, they were
not allowed to go into till he gave
orders to. He said because the real division,
the real invasion is not the
real one. The real one still has to come and he
believed that. Because the Allies
Eisenhower had them fooled that much and that
was in one way our luck too. Otherwise
we would have had another three tank divisions.
Okay now let me ask you
something. What'd you do after the war? You
were in the you were
in the army by this time. You were a career
army guy. I got transferred to the
Yeah, okay, all right. Now, how long did your
parents live?
My mom was 61 when she lived. She, the doctor
says she was so strong she wanted to see you again
till I came back out of Indonesia and that was
about 51, 52 I think it was.
And then I was home and about three months
later she passed away.
your dad? 95. Long life. Did he have good
health? Yeah, but I was so afraid when I
was in England. All the years that I didn't see
him, I was so afraid for him
because he was so anti-German. And I will tell
you one more story about him,
him, not me. It was before I left home. On
Sunday morning, we came out of the church
and across from our house, that guy was walking
there back and forth, that Dutchman in Hitler
uniform, I would call it. And when we came
close to my house, he came over to the other
side and he said, Mr. Burkard, may I talk, may
I see you for a minute? And my dad
looked at him. He said, not goddammit on the
street here. He said, let's go just in
my house. And we went in and he said, I've been
thinking one of my sons is a member
of the Hitlerjugend, and he has learned a lot.
I think that would be a very good thing for
your son, too."
That was me.
My dad said, I didn't hear you very well.
What did you say?
And the stupid idiot said it again.
I think your son should join the Hitlerjugend.
He can learn a lot over there.
And my dad looked at him, and I knew it
already, he opened the door, peck him by the
neck and
things, and throw him out the house.
And I said, Dad, be careful, he is with the
Germans, that the Germans don't go after you,
be very careful.
He said, I cannot stand that son of a gun.
I said, Dad, you have to be careful, you know
he's on the wrong side.
But luckily, that was before I was 42, the
summer of 42 we came together out of the church.
When did the Germans come into Holland?
When did the Germans occupy Holland?
That was?
May 1940. Wow.
So, when did you come to the U.S.?
What brought you over here?
Wow. So when did you come to the U.S.?
What brought you over here? Let me ask you
another question.
I came to the... I wanted to go earlier, but
there was a quota in the United States.
And I had to wait at least three years.
And then I went to ask for Canada and I could
go within three months and that
was in 1958. March 1958 we came to Vancouver,
British Columbia. They wanted
me to go to Halifax. I said no, I want to go to
British Columbia, the nice weather.
That's where I came down. And then in 1962, I
came to the United States, and in the
United States I had basically only one
employer, and that was United Airlines.
And you worked for United Airlines? 30 years.
30 years. What did you do? I started as a
mechanic and then about five years I was a
foreman and then when we had that
recession in 68 I think that was they took our
secretaries away and I had to
do well all forms had to do everything take
care of the area and take care of
all the paperwork and after about five or six
months I was sick and tired of it
You could not, you are responsible as a foreman
for the work that goes out of your area.
But that is aircraft engines.
And I told, I went to the manager, I said, next
Monday I'm going back on the floor.
I go and work in the game.
He said, okay, and he said, are you sure?
I said, absolutely sure.
I cannot be responsible for all my people,
plus the work that you guys give me,
that that is 100% done.
Because I have no time to go on the floor to
check it.
He said, okay, you want to, okay.
And he must have called the big boss from the base,
Tom Heller.
And I could get along with Tom Heller really good
because it was everybody, whatever you are,
It was the first name.
And about 10 minutes later,
I got a telephone from Tom Heller.
He said, Neil, I want you to see at 2:00 in my office.
I said, okay, Sir.
So I went to my manager, I said, Tom just
called me.
He wants to see me at 2:00.
Okay, he said, and go down, I know it.
And he said, have you heard they're going back
on the floor?
I said, yeah.
He said, why? I said, well, Chicago took all
our secretaries away.
He said, do you know, I realized that I have 83
people under me.
Plus all the work that I have to do and all
their work.
I have to keep track if everybody is there, who
wants to go on vacation and everything.
He said, are you sure? I said, absolutely, Tom.
He loved the job, but I cannot say I signed
everything off that it is 100% done.
He said, okay, wait a minute.
And he went out of his office and about 15
minutes later, he came back and he said, Neil,
what about if I make you maintenance specialist?
I said, about what?
He said, about the engines, because there's no
second guy
who knows those engines as you do.
And I don't want to send you back on the floor
because there's a waste of people.
He said, you know what that involves?
I said, yeah, I know.
He said, what about this?
He said, at least the same money as you get as foreman.
There's a maintenance specialist, I was on
engines, if they put a new engine on an aircraft,
there's a special group who always do that.
Then when they are done, they notify you and
then I go down and check if everything is
done properly, especially the torque on the
engines, that is very important.
And then you go in the cockpit and run the
engines up, if you're running okay, that's
about an hour and a half.
If all the powers are right and it's a stick
like that, then I took that and did that for
the last 12 years.
When did you retire?
Exactly 65, oh, February the 2nd, 1992.
Now, have you been out here for what, how long?
five years this month. Well that sounds like
we've got a pretty good story on
you Neil and I'm delighted that you came to
talk to me and thank you on behalf of
the museum and I want to also say thank you for
your service to your country.
Yeah, thank you.