pamela forsyth

A Wartime Link Discovered 

An article written by Pamela Forsyth  and published in Relatively Speaking, the magazine of the Alberta Genealogical Society, Volume 48, Number 4, November 2020.

In the last few months I have been sorting through old family photographs and letters. Among them I came across a snapshot and letter connected to my father’s years in the Canadian Army during World War II. The snapshot is of a Dutch family that Dad, (Wilfred/Bill Forsyth, 1904-1977), then a member of the Lake Superior Regiment, stayed with in March 1945 as the Canadian Army was fighting its way from Normandy through Belgium and the Netherlands to Germany. 

Dad and two other soldiers from his regiment were billeted with the Esbach family in the town of Tilburg, Netherlands. The photo which he sent home to my mother shows an older couple seated on a bench in their back garden with their four daughters and a little dog. He had typed the names on the photo and a note that, “Their boy Bas is not in the picture.” 

There was also a letter from Mrs. Esbach, received by Dad in February 1952, apparently in response to a letter he had sent to the family at Christmas 1951. I was curious about the family for Dad had often spoken fondly of them when I was a child but, aside from looking Tilburg up on the map and, in recent times, Googling the family’s address that was on the letter, I had not really tried to find them. But, confined to home with the Covid-19 pandemic’s restrictions on travel and visiting, I had time on my hands and on March 30, 2020, I took a look for the family in the “Public Member Trees” section of the Ancestry website. To my surprise, I found names that looked like theirs, but with almost no detail, in what seemed to be a peripheral part of a large Family Tree posted by a woman named Margaret in California. 

I sent Margaret a short note, saying why I was trying to reach any member of the Esbach family from Tilburg who might still be alive, asking if she had any information that she could share. She replied within a couple of days, saying that she did not have any information about the family from wartime but that one of her uncles, in the 1960s, married Immy Esbach in the Netherlands. Her uncle died several years ago but her aunt died only a few months ago. From her Aunt Immy’s mourning card Margaret noted the names of Immy’s siblings and added them to her family tree on the Ancestry site. 

Margaret said that she was in touch by e-mail with the daughter of another of the Esbach sisters and offered to pass my request on to her. The first names she posted on her tree were similar but not exactly the same as the names Dad had put on the photo. The names he wrote, besides Mr. and Mrs. Esbach, were: Marie, Aimee, Lot, and Lene, while the ones on her tree were: Marij, Immy, Lot and Lien. I reasoned that he may never have seen the girls’ names written but had spelled them as they sounded to an English-speaker. Margaret said that the family lived in Tilburg. 

After another few days she e-mailed me and said that she had been in touch with the daughter Marleen and her mother, the former Lien Esbach. Lien was excited to hear about my inquiry and said that one American and six Canadian soldiers had stayed with them at times during 1944/45. Marleen and her mother were very eager to see the photo and the letter which I said I would scan for them. 

In California, where Margaret lives, and in the Netherlands where Lien and Marleen live, people were confined due to Covid-19 restrictions, just as we were. We all had some of the same challenges so this three-way communication took time. But, by May 3rd, my note plus scans of the family photo and letter had been sent to the Netherlands along with a picture of my Dad taken in 1940 when he joined the Army. 

Below is the envelope and the two surviving pages of the letter. Unfortunately the first page has gone missing.

Transcription of page two of the letter:

“Well are much things very expensive but you can get it.  We never heard any more of Grant and Dennis. From Dennis we get a card, but because he forgot to write his address we were not able to write him back.

So you have a summary of my whole family. The most of them you know. I was very glad to have had your letter. Many times we spoke over you, Grant and Dennis and over the bad times we then have had.

What are we wishing now? I believe that economy and the structure of the whole world is bad. What shall the Russians do. We are not quiet when we think on a third world war. I have had two and that is more as enough. We shall hope that the good God shall protect us for such a terrible time. Now I do not know more news. Before to end I will ask you to send us a picture of you and your wife too. I should be very glad to have it. You are the only of the three that have not forgot us. I hope that you shall receive this letter in the best health.     S.O.S.”

 

On May 5th, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Holland, I received this message from Marleen,

I’m the daughter of Lien Esbach (in the front right on the picture). My mother remembers your father under the name Bill. She says he had a mustache.

It’s very special to see the picture and the letter. My mother recognized the handwriting of my grandfather in it. Special to read the thoughts and fears of that time. 

Yesterday it was the 5th of May – liberation day in Holland. On the front page of our newspaper we had a picture this morning of a happy crowd and Canadian soldiers. So you see – people are still happy with people like your father. 

The names of the sisters on the picture are: Marij, Immy, Lot at the back row and Lien at the front row. The dog was Pukkie. 

My mother and her brother Bas are the only ones left of the family. So I can still ask my mother questions if you have some. 

I was delighted to receive the message confirming that I had found the right family and asked a little more about the time the soldiers were with them and what the family members did after the war. I also sent her a photo of my Dad taken in June 1944 when he did, indeed, have a mustache. I had not initially chosen to send that photo because it is one that my mother always disliked. She said, “I can’t stand that picture. That mustache makes him look like Hitler.” 

 

After chatting with her mother Marleen sent some more information. There were four other children in the family besides the four in my picture. Some of the older ones had already left home which may be why the family had room to billet soldiers. 

“My mother has good memories especially of the Canadian soldiers and your father. They were kind. They ate their meals somewhere in the neighbourhood where they cooked for all the soldiers together. If something nice was left – for instance porridge – then they took it home for the Esbach family.” 

Lien said that the Canadian soldiers stayed with them twice, first in the early spring of 1945 and then again in the summer. She remembers that the Canadians returned for a couple of days, after the liberation, to say goodbye and they made a walk together near “Het Baksche Ven,” a nature area near Tilburg. 

Marleen also sent me a translation from Dutch of a short article on the internet that talked of the time the Canadians were in Tilburg. Our troops were deployed around Tilburg to secure the Allied lines there during the Ardennes Offensive in the Winter of 1944/45. “The longer stay of the Canadians in the city and the harsh winter conditions (‘hunger winter’) created a close bond between the military and the local population where the soldiers were billeted.” 

[Reference: https://www.tijdmachinetilburg.nl/detailview.aspx?id=1147%5D 

This article helped me to realize that my Dad and his fellow soldiers had been billeted for quite some time with the Esbach family and that was how he got to know them better and prompted continued communication for some years after the War. It is amazing to me that after 75 years I was able to make contact with this family. Success in genealogical searching is often a combination of luck and chance and so rewarding when it happens! 

Wilfred Forsyth with mustache, taken in 1944, and on motorcycle in Tilburg Holland in 1945. 

Lien Esbach in 2020. Photo courtesy of Marleen Arkesteijn. 

************************************

About the Author – Pamela FORSYTH

Pamela Forsyth, now retired, is a librarian and former manager of St. Albert Public Library. She is an active member of the Alberta Genealogical Society’s Edmonton Branch. She edited the Branch’s newsletter “Clandigger” in the early 1990s, co-chaired the AGS Conference in 2015, co-chaired the Program Committee of Edmonton Branch for two years, made presentations at the DNA SIG and the PostScripts SIG, and has been an AGS Edmonton Branch Library volunteer since 2011.

In 2016 she started the web-site   https://pamelaforsyth.com    to publish her family history research and research on her hometown of Woodnorth, Manitoba which she has registered with the Society for One-Place Studies.