In keeping with the theme of the Dutch:
About 15 years back I was working at a lumber yard here in Vancouver, Canada, and one of the customers who had come in once in a while that I liked to talk to, told me a story of when he was a young boy, maybe around 10-12 years of age. He was originally from The Netherlands, and he was there during the occupation by the Germans in WW2. He and the kids around his age were playing "Football", soccer to us in North America, and it was common for some of the German soldiers to come out and watch, alongside a crowd of dutch people who lived in the town.
At one point he went to give the ball a big kick, and his shoe flew off with the kick, (I think he'd said something about shortage of shoes but I cannot recall exactly - so I don't know if the shoe fit his feet well) only to fly off and hit a German officer, possibly even the local garrison commander. The officer was pissed. The man told me that initially the officer wanted him to be taken away and either beaten or worse. But as the game had progressed, more and more of the local people had come out to see the game, and the officer was reminded by one of his subordinates that it would not be taken well if he had that order carried out.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened to the boy, and he lived to tell me this story so many decades later.
About 15 years back I was working at a lumber yard here in Vancouver, Canada, and one of the customers who had come in once in a while that I liked to talk to, told me a story of when he was a young boy, maybe around 10-12 years of age. He was originally from The Netherlands, and he was there during the occupation by the Germans in WW2. He and the kids around his age were playing "Football", soccer to us in North America, and it was common for some of the German soldiers to come out and watch, alongside a crowd of dutch people who lived in the town.
At one point he went to give the ball a big kick, and his shoe flew off with the kick, (I think he'd said something about shortage of shoes but I cannot recall exactly - so I don't know if the shoe fit his feet well) only to fly off and hit a German officer, possibly even the local garrison commander. The officer was pissed. The man told me that initially the officer wanted him to be taken away and either beaten or worse. But as the game had progressed, more and more of the local people had come out to see the game, and the officer was reminded by one of his subordinates that it would not be taken well if he had that order carried out.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened to the boy, and he lived to tell me this story so many decades later.
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