As many of you know, I make a living as a roadside assistance technician. I think this is a great job, I also have many nice colleagues and one of those colleagues is Hans Vruggink. Hans has many hobbies, but one special one: he is fascinated by the Second World War. Because I am on the editorial staff of an ANWB staff magazine, Hans once asked me: could you come and have a look at Christiaan Harkink’s museum, where there are special items that I found together with Christiaan. I went there together with Hans and Hans didn’t lie a word.
I wrote this story based on that visit.
How a BBQ, Dutch lessons and a broken watch can lead to a family in New Zealand. The special story about the special hobby of my colleague Hans Vruggink.
About a year ago I received an invitation from Hans Vruggink to take a look at Christiaan Harkink’s war museum, this was to write a story about it for the roadside assistance staff magazine 3D.
After saying to each other a few times: we should do that, the time finally came on Saturday, November 18. Around ten o’clock Hans and I were sitting in the kitchen with Christiaan and Madelon in Laren, having coffee.
For those who don’t know Hans very well: Hans is a roadside assistance colleague who is always up for a joke, he loves making music and is always busy with air-cooled Volkswagens. Then you will think he has no time left.
But nothing could be further from the truth, he still has a very special hobby
At secondary school, Hans was assigned to read a book (which was not really his hobby at that time). Because he had always been interested in old war planes, he took the book A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan off his father’s shelf (500 pages) and read it in one sitting. This aroused his interest and the search for stories and objects from the Second World War began.
Hans now lives in Almen, where there was heavy fighting during the battle for the Twente Canal in April 1945, and there are sources for stories in his backyard.
So it could happen that 12 years ago Hans was having a BBQ at home, and the then 19-year-old Christiaan Harkink, together with two friends from Hengelo, walked past Hans’ garden, armed with a metal detector and a few bats. To Hans’s question: what are you going to do? They said they were looking for an airplane wreck in Hans’s meadow behind the house. And Hans responded: then you shouldn’t be there…………
Christiaan Harkink had always been fascinated by a shell casing that stood on the windowsill at his home. Stories were also told at his home about family members who were active in the resistance during the Second World War. This sparked his interest in the Second World War, he bought a metal detector and started searching in the area around his hometown. In his search, Christiaan had already found a whole collection of attributes from the Second World War and used them to decorate a small museum space.
Back to the BBQ. This chance meeting sparked a friendship between Christiaan and Hans and they continued their search together. In the years that followed, they started searching and digging together for war attributes, in places that they found through the stories about the war that circulate among people in the area. Christiaan has now become quite adept at searching with the metal detector, digging at a possible good track until they find something and together Hans and Christiaan are quite successful in this.
When you find one such object, the next search begins. The search for the story of the object, how it got there, what happened there, who owned it. With these objects, pieces of the puzzle of these stories fall back into place. Over the years, they have been able to set up a real museum with objects from the Second World War. Sometimes with very special items and with each item there is a new story.
For example, there is a collection of 25 German radar helmets, which are soldier helmets with four steel antennae on top. This seems like a special SF story, but the reality is a bit sobering and more common sense. A farmer in Laren welded four legs onto the helmets and thus these helmets served as a feeding trough for the chickens for years.
Christiaan and Hans also found a link of a caterpillar track weighing 16.5 kilos along the Oude Kapelweg. This came from a Canadian Sherman tank that was destroyed by a shell during the fighting during the liberation of Almen. The tank itself was removed, but the piece of track remained in the ground for years.
These are examples of the many objects that Christiaan and Hans have found. Their museum contains even more attributes such as gas masks, shell casings, helmets, bags and so on. And all these objects have their own story. But perhaps the most special thing they found is part of a watch, more about that later.
During WWII, soldiers and pilots from all over the world came to Europe to fight against the rising German Empire.
For example, in August 1941, 18-year-old New Zealander Raymond J. Cammock enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. After basic training, Raymond leaves for England on a boat trip that lasts three months. Once there, Raymond receives training and education as a pilot on a single-seater fighter plane.
During his stay in England he met Kathleen (Kathy) Holden from Barrowford, and not much later the 19-year-old couple got married.
In September 1942, Raymond was transferred to North Africa and during his stay in Africa, his son Frank was born in England on June 13, 1943.
After having flown 97 operational flights from the airbase in Algeria. Raymond returned to England in May 1944 and was able to reunite with his family and finally have a family photo taken.
In England, Raymond becomes the pilot of a Hawker Tempest Mk V, an aircraft with a particularly powerful engine (an H-24 piston engine with sleeve valves) that produced 2,420 hp. With a top speed of more than 700 km/h, this aircraft was one of the fastest propeller aircraft of that time.
This high speed made it possible to keep track of fired V1 rockets in the air. The V1 was the world’s first unmanned jet aircraft with an explosive payload. When these missiles flew over the North Sea, the pilots tried to intercept these missiles. In addition to shooting down, the pilots also had another way to unbalance the V1. They flew next to it and gave the rocket a little tap with their wing. This slight imbalance upset the V1’s internal compass and caused the rocket to crash.
Raymond became an Ace (top pilot) for shooting down these V 1s. He managed to shoot down twenty rockets in the period June 19 to August 20, 1944, one in collaboration with a fellow pilot. The entire squadron claimed 223 downed V 1s and with this they prevented a lot of misery and casualties.
At the end of September 1944, the RAF occupied the destroyed Volkel airfield and began repairs to this airfield. Raymond arrived here at Volkel from Grimbergen, Belgium, on October 1.
On Friday, October 6, 1944, 7 aircraft carried out an armed reconnaissance in the Arnhem – Deventer and Lingen region in Germany. Four Allied fighter planes, including Raymond with his Tempest JN-863 “SA-R”, attack an ammunition train on the Hengelo – Zutphen railway line near Eefde. The train is set on fire, but Raymond’s plane is hit by concealed anti-aircraft fire. He crashes his plane into the last wagon of this train, causing the ammunition train to explode and Raymond Cammock to die in the crash.
Later, railway workers who worked in the Achterhoek in 1944 found body parts and the back of a watch with a name inscription: Raymond Cammock.
Raymond was then given a temporary grave, but the exact location of the watch and the body parts has never been properly recorded.
More than seventy years later, during work to convert an unguarded railway crossing into a bicycle tunnel, the remains of an airplane and many ammunition parts were found. Prorail contacted the municipality, who tipped Christiaan off. Hans and Christiaan were given permission to search among the debris of the plane. There they find, among other things, the remains of a watch. These remains bring the circle full circle and make it clear where Raymond J. Cammock died on October 6, 1944.
As a tribute to this New Zealand pilot who crashed his plane into an ammunition train in 1944 and was killed, Prorail has named the bicycle and pedestrian tunnel after Raymond Cammock. At the opening, attended by eight of Raymond’s descendants, this tunnel was named the ‘Flying Officer RJ Cammock tunnel’ with an official ceremony.
Relatives of Raymond Cammock have been to the Netherlands several times to visit his grave, the last time was in 2016. In 2022 they finally found the place where Raymond J. Cammock died. This is partly due to the detective work of Hans and Christiaan.
This story may read like a hero’s story. This story is about one pilot, about a young man, Raymond J. Cammock, a husband, a father of a small child, himself also a 21 year old child of a father and mother. If you think about the fact that there are several cemeteries in the Netherlands full of thousands of fallen soldiers, all of whom died for our freedom. Then I’m quite impressed by that.
I would hate to think that our eldest son, who is now 21 years old, would never come home again………….
This brings me to the conclusion that the price for our freedom is very high.
Text: Richard Huijsmans.
Below are two excerpts about the story of Raymond J. Cammock:
Radio fragment NPO radio 1 What happened to pilot Raymon Cammock
From Stentor 24-03-22 This young father crashed his plane into a train full of ammunition in the Achterhoek: ‘Fabulous, my family needs to know this’
Photos from the past
Recent photos by: Christiaan Harkink, Rob Voss and Richard Huijsmans.
