Sid Baron, The Way It Was, Growing up in Wartime Holland
Reviewed by Bert Witvoet
Former editor of Christian Courier

The subtitle indicates what this biographical account by author Baron is about: Holland under German occupation seen through the eyes of a teenager, although the first 50 pages recall events of Sid Baron’s childhood before the war broke out. There is even a concluding chapter dealing with post-war preparations for immigration to America. Nevertheless, the greatest impact on the reader is made by the telling of the stirring events that surrounded the horrendous time of Nazi conquest and defeat.

Sid Baron is not a writer by profession, unlike his brother Henry Baron, who is a retired professor of English and a writer. Sid was and is a successful businessman who in his retirement still manages a construction and development company in the state of Washington. But the ability to tell a good yarn is apparently not lost in his DNA. The Way It Was is a fascinating account of five years of war and death experienced by a young boy growing up in the northern part of Holland.

Dramatic Events

For a young boy (he was almost 10) when the German army invaded his country) he experienced an extra-ordinary number of fearful events – he witnessed air battles overhead, saw German soldier round up local men, was keenly aware of the danger his family was in when they hid a resistance man and his family, a danger significantly increased by a snooping neighbor who collaborated with the enemy. The result of Baron's recollections is an action-packed story that keeps the reader anticipating and dreading the outcome of certain events.

The most amazing account in the book is perhaps Sid's recollection of the time he witnessed a B-17 bomber jettison its bombs just before being blown out of the sky by a German fighter plane. Sid saw that one of the occupants of the B-17 bomber had escaped the doomed plane by parachuting down to earth. That person was later identified as 23-year old turret gunner Howard Adams. Many years later, Baron was able to obtain Adam's extensive account of this last flight of the bomber known as Sky Queen, his capture by the Germans, and his two years spent in a war camp in Germany. Talk about providing the reader with an almost omniscient author's account.

A time for love

The story is not without moments of grace. Sid's family was a close-knit family that lived out their commitments and breathed trust in God and love for each other. One incident illustrates the sensitive and caring ways of this family. Sid's younger brother, Henry, accidentally sliced Sid's forehead with a peeling knife. Blood streamed down Sid's face. But instead of blaming his brother, Sid admitted to his mother that he had started the horseplay. The family agreed not to tell others about the incident lest his younger brother become the brunt of ridicule and teasing. "He (meaning Henry) may be suffering more than you right now," Sid's mother said to him, while pinching the wound shut with her fingers.

Another incident illustrates amply that this family took God's love commandment seriously. Sid's father was upset that his bother Hans no longer bought dairy feed supplies from him, at a time when his business was needed to provide his own family with food on the table. He wrote an angry letter to his brother, pulling in the authority of Scripture to justify his anger. His brother replied that he, too, needed to supply his family with food and that Sid's father had been selfish in his accusations. Sid's father reflected on the exchange for a while, and then decided immediately to bike to where his brother lived and apologize to him. He came back humming the tune, "How good and pleasant is the sight, when brothers make it their delight to dwell in sweet accord." (no doubt the Dutch version of the Genevan Psalm 133 was hummed: "Waar liefde woont gebied de Heer zijn zegen.")

A time for fun

Small-town humor also keeps popping up. Apparently Sid and his family enjoyed playing pranks on others. None succeeded better than the time Sid and his buddies exchanged a drunken man's chew of tobacco with a wad of horse turd. The enraged man's reaction after he had chewed on the offensive substance, provided Sid and his friends and family with days of entertainment.

At this point, it might be appropriate to point out a certain prudishness exhibited by the author. He himself referred to the chew as a "wad of oats that had gone through a horse." He leaves it to the drunkard to identify the object as "a wad of hyster stront (horse shit)." In itself my observation is perhaps a negligible comment, but this reviewer noted that earlier in the story Baron referred to the teats of a cow as "handles" and the teats of a sow as "buttons." Perhaps this tendency toward euphemisms indicates a change in the author's vocabulary from the time he was a grounded Frisian farm boy to the time he became a respected member of the Christian Reformed Church in Lynden, Washington.

The larger context

Baron has done more than recall personal experiences. His later research on the Second World War, especially as it involves his native land, brings a convincing context to his account. This reviewer also lived through the war years in occupied Holland, but he did not know, for example, that the Dutch airforce acquitted itself very well in the early days of the war. Baron tells us that "Dutch airmen destroyed one third of the entire German air fleet engaged in the air war over Holland - 328 of about 1000 Luftwaffe airplanes" - an achievement never to be matched by any other allied force. Also, by the end of the five-year war, close to 3,000 Dutch soldiers had been killed, and close to twice that number German soldiers. So much for the notion that Holland never put up much of a fight, as I had been led to believe.

The Way It Was provides today's descendents of survivors of the German occupation of Holland with an accurate and graphic illustration of what it was like to have your country taken over by a foreign army, by a Fascist dictator who knew no mercy. These five years changed the life of Sid Baron as it did the lives of many others. It was a time when a person's mettle was severely tested. Baron remembers his parents with admiration: "They demonstrated through example that the first and greatest commandment – to love God and love your fellow man – was principles that they would never compromise, even in the face of death."

This story helps us all to remember with gratitude the sacrifices made by so many for the freedom and honor of one's country.