Sijmen Van der Weele and his wife share an interesting history in the buildings of Wijk D. Several buildings have changed owners within their family. Sijmen was born in the building opposite Wijk D. When he got married, his parents moved to the building on the other side so that Sijmen could move into the parental home. But Sijmen himself also changed home later. His wife even considered naming their house "To and fro." "We have already moved three times and we are still going back and forth. To see how the construction of Wijk D is going, of course. "
When explaining the name of the apartments, a bell starts to ring for the couple. "I can still remember the change in house numbering," says Sijmen. "All the houses of the Loudons were called" D ". When we came to live here it suddenly became Valkenswaardseweg. So we have still experienced that change. We still thought: what is this now? We didn't get it. You didn't get that information then. They just put up a sign. "
The Van der Weele family is also not unfamiliar with the building that has now been given the name Wijk D. The father of Sijmen and Sijmen themselves worked in this building, again owned by the Loudon family. "It was a crisis in the 1930s. Loudon had a farmer here and he didn't make it. They then came up with the idea to found 5 farms. That's how my father ended up here.
And they have worked there for a long time. "We milked cows and there were pigs and horses for a while. But the fire in 1939 changed a lot to this building: the front part was completely burnt away. "Vrencken also remembers the fire very well. "I was about ten or eleven years old, I think. At that time there was a lot of threshing. The story then went around that they wanted to pour fuel into the tractor while threshing and that the case caught fire. It still stank of bandaged grain for weeks. Just as if a lot of bread had been burned down. "
But the building did not survive the fire alone. History was also written during the war. Sijmen himself did not experience the war consciously. He was three when the war ended. He knows that the English were billeted around Wijk D. There were also Englishmen in the barn. "Those great attics were all requisitioned. You had to take the officers in so they could sleep here in the attic. And there were also English in the house. My sister has always kept in touch with that. Those people have also been here after the war. "
The traces of the war can still be found in the barn. For example, there was a Walter pistol hidden in a corner. "That's a German or Austrian gun," says Sijmen. "I only know that my father put it away. My father told about a moment when the Germans were looking in the shed. I don't know what, but they pointed Carbine at him. My father then sat on a box with a radio. in it. That was also prohibited at the time. Fortunately, the Germans did not look into the box, because who knows what could have happened then. We don't know whether they were looking for the gun or where the gun came from. The story always went that the gun still had to be somewhere. And with the barn renovation, the gun has finally been found. "
The other thrilling war story was the story of the secret room in the barn. "Between the right door and the harness for the horses, you had a space. The wall had been extended and it was not being used for anything. On the other side was a cold room for the milk. You could only enter it from above. by sliding a few shelves in the attic. "Nobody knows what the secret room was intended for. "We think some grain might have gone into the hole as a sneak reserve. Everything was recorded during that time, so keeping something extra to yourself had to be done secretly. You could then resell it or trade it with citizens who had nothing. A lot of people did that at the time. But, it wasn't much talked about at the time. Most of the children were protected so that they did not have to hear the fierce stories. Only the beautiful things were told. "
One of those beautiful stories was a story that Sijmen's mother always told. "A German came to our house. He was injured and escaped. It was a young boy. My mother estimated him to be about 17 or 18 years old. She took care of him," says Sijmen. The German then escaped from the back for the English. When he left his mother got a ring from the soldier. "She could always tell us that so beautifully." Later Sijmen and his wife doubted whether the gun might have come from this German soldier.
The farm has meant a lot to the Van der Weele family. "It was our first meeting place. At that time you weren't allowed much, so we came together in that farm, which is now Wijk D. The shed is of great importance to us.