‘May 10, 1940, was a day I’ll never forget,’ recalled Tiny Mulder. ‘When I awoke, I wondered what that noise was up in the air. The radio confirmed that the Germans were invading. There was no declaration of war. They just came. Just like that. We were a small country then, of eight million, overrun by a large army.’

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Overrun, but not defeated. Like many Dutch citizens, Mulder, 19 years old and living in Drachten, decided to work in the underground. Organized resistance, however, came slowly. ‘The Germans treated the Dutch very well at first, to gain our trust,’ she remembered, ‘then we began to see what was coming.’ She worked in a local government office, regulating the distribution of clothing, food and oil. ‘We never had a military government in the Netherlands. Dutch collaborators were appointed to higher offices in The Hague by Reichscommissar Artur von Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian Nazi who had been appointed by Adolf Hitler to govern Holland. My boss, Pieter Wybenga, never had any Nazi sympathizers working for him.’

Wybenga was one of the earliest members of the underground, and he recruited Mulder. Her first job was to work as a courier, traveling by train to Rotterdam or Amsterdam to deliver maps with information for the Allies. During her missions Mulder wore a green hat to identify herself. ‘You never gave your name to anyone. What you don’t know, you can’t reveal,’ she said.

In 1943, Mulder gained additional duties with the Resistance, taking on the job of rescuing Allied airmen shot down in the northern Netherlands. The planes, on their way to bombing missions over Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin, were downed either by German fighters or anti-aircraft fire.

Mulder was particularly happy to be helping the airmen. Not only were they destroying German war industries, but they also lifted the morale of the Dutch. ‘The British and Canadians flew at night and Americans during the day,’ she said. ‘When we saw these airplanes in the beautiful formations, B-17s, B-24s with vapor trails, we felt that we were not alone, that someone was helping us.’

Hurrying downed airmen to safety was a big job for a young girl. Mulder thinks she was chosen for the difficult assignment because of her command of English, but surely her candor, caution, quick wit and courage must have played a role. ‘It was dangerous work,’ she admitted. Two of her girlfriends had been captured doing the same job and were moved from one prison camp to another until they were finally liberated by the Russians at the end of the war.

When a plane was shot down, as many as 10 airmen could be captured by the German police or army. If they came down in a field, there was a better chance for rescue. Some farmers or villagers would hide them inside their homes and give them civilian clothes, but not everyone would take such a chance. Mulder understood their hesitation. ‘Here is the farmer living in an occupied country, and a couple Americans show up at your door,’ she said. ‘What is he to do?’ In every village there was someone who was part of the underground, sometimes the minister or schoolteacher.

In the best of scenarios, the farmers would contact the Resistance. ‘He would say: ‘Come over here, we have something. Do you know what to do?’ Or someone might send a message: ‘We have four young rabbits. Would you like to have some?’ Then the chain got working. In the end they came to me, as I was in charge of helping them on their way out of enemy territory.’

There was danger at every step of the way. During the initial contact with the fliers, Mulder was at her most cautious. ‘I had to find out if they were real Americans or fake Americans,’ she recalled. ‘The Germans had enough American uniforms by that time, and they had Germans who had been educated in Albuquerque before the war to create impostors.

‘When we saw them coming out of an American plane, that was all right, but if they just turned up early one morning, then I became suspicious. So we asked the farmer, ‘Did they come from the sky, yes or no?’ We had some questions, which the soldiers had to be able to answer properly. Then we could be sure they were not Germans.’

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