EN 
NL 
From 'My memories of the liberation' by Jan Brans
At the time of Oudenbosch's liberation, Jan Brans was 13 years old. He lived with his parents on Molenstraat, close to the railway. More than three years later, he described his memories of those anxious and, for him, at the same time adventurous days and weeks. Excerpts from them follow below:
September 1944
School was out of the question in those days; it was too dangerous. In the streets, gangs of people were discussing politics and here and there, children who were bored or playing cards.
Look over there! Four English fighters, one behind the other, swung through the air, looking everywhere for the enemy, to destroy it for once. "Would they notice anything yet?", someone broke the silence, as the conversation had ceased and all peered at the searching Spitfires. A little train from the Dordrecht direction was heading for Roosendaal. Yes, they had spotted the train! Once they flew over it to warn the driver - who was a Dutchman, of course - to get out and then ducked down with their noses pointed at the locomotive. I was standing on the level crossing at Molenstraat, some 300 metres away from the train, watching the planes, but the moment I heard them whizzing above my head, I ran as fast as I could home and just saw a couple of burning objects fall from one of the planes, which caught fire in the nursery behind the NS warehouse among the trees. It may also have been behind the nursery, I'm not sure. Trrrrrrr! There the machine guns of the first plane rattled on the defenceless little train. The first one shot up into the air before the second one fired its shots at the train. A third followed. Again and again they came back.
When I saw those planes diving, I had run home as fast as I could - as I have already told you - and dropped to the floor of the basement with a bang. At our house, they were all already in the basement. They were happy when they saw me come in, because they didn't know where I was at the time of shooting. "Where are they shooting?", they asked when I was well and truly seated. "The train standing by the station," I panted, still tired from running, "and there were these big black things falling out. What they were I don't know, but by no means bombs, because they didn't explode and when they fell, big flames burst out!"
Still the machine guns rattled. Under the shooting, we prayed the Rosary. Zzzzt!!! .... Trrrrrrr!!! Every time I heard that grim sound, I involuntarily collapsed. Happy! After about 10 minutes, we heard nothing more than only the distant roar of the disappearing war monsters. Silently we crawled out of the cellar and took a look at the sky. Yonder in the distance only black specks could be seen. For how long was it quiet again now?
No train could run there or it would be shot at. Often people were killed. Once, a train was at the station. Hunters arrived and shot at the train. People fled and crawled away. Some Germans were also there. Two of them fled into a dustbin on the unloading line. One's head was riddled. A dead Kraut also lay under the train. But... often it also happened, that the train drivers were killed and that is the worst.
That's how life went on! Plane roaring, shooting, fleeing to the basement and doing nothing, because it was no longer school. These had become the ordinary things of the day
