HERMANUS EDWARDUS AKA "Harry" DUYKER was born on 10th October, 1927 in the coal mining town of Schaesberg, Limburg, The Netherlands. In 1932, his family moved to Beverwijk in Noord-Holland where he spent his formative years. In 1940, the Nazis invaded The Netherlands and, with his father unemployed, Herman left school at the age of 13 to become the principal breadwinner for his 14 brothers and sisters. He scavenged, re-saled and dealt in the sale of contraband goods while also assisting his father in poaching activities to keep his family fed. In 1944, he followed his older brother Anton to Austria to find work on the civillian aircraft hangers of LUFTHANSA. Later he was taken by the Nazis and placed in a forced-labour camp near the Hungarian boarder, where he and thousands of others dug anti-tank trenches to slow the Russian advances. After escaping in 1945 he found himself in a field-hospital in Vienna, which was bombed every 2nd day by American and Russian planes. Unable to go west through the front-line of fighting, Herman and 25 other Dutch men and women travelled east to the Ukraine in order to travel by sea back to The Netherlands. The horrors of war experienced during this time were documented in 1988 on the Radio National program 'Word Of Mouth' with Bill Bunbury. In 1950, fearing that another war would one day plague Europe, Herman immigrated to Melbourne, Australia where he met and married Maryse Commins, a Mauritian girl, in 1954. The couple resided in the working class suburb of Malvern and raised 8 children. Herman was employed on the Melbourne waterfront for 36 years and retired as a foreman in 1987. When he passed away on 2nd June, 2014, a few days short of his 60th wedding anniversary with Maryse, he was the proud grandfather of 17 grandchildren and great-grandfather of one: 22 month-old Lucien Felix Duyker. He will be greatly missed by his family and friends worldwide. Music: - Bob Scholte "...and his Dutch Tango" (EMI) - Mario Lanza "Funiculi Funicula" (IODA) - Nat King Cole "Let's Fall in Love" (UMG) - Nana Mouskouri "The White Rose of Athens" (UMG)

Be the first to comment