FROM "Vagabond - The Story of Pieter Broersma
It was a routine patrol along a dusty road through the Indonesian rice paddies: Sergeant
Broersma of the Ist Battalion, 12th Regiment of Infantry , Royal Netherlands Army stumbled
along, lost in a daydream, when suddenly ...
"...there was the staccato voice of a Jap machine gun. Rifle fire added to the din
of an ambush: I dived for cover off the road and rolled behind a tree and opened
fire with nly Bren gun. Then a Jap (some Japs never:surrendered and fought
alongside the rebels) ran out of the rice fields and onto.. the road. One burst stopped him. Sntoke was curling up from the grass in front of me. I raised my
head a bit and stared down at a phospl?or grenade. I tried to roll away hut it
exploded. I could feel the hlood on my face. I was stunned hut conscious. I
thought I \'las blind. Someone beside me called for the first aid man. He \'las
beside me in ntinutes. He said, "grab my ankles \'lith your hands and crawlout
behind me. " We crml'led about 50 yards, then he sprinkled sulpha powder over
myeyes." ,
After four sightless days in the hospital, his head immobilized with sandbags, Broersma's
bandages were removed. Light! Blurry images and movements. Then finalIy, thankfully, the
smiling races of the doctor, nurses, and friends. The best of these friends, an Ambonese native
soldier named Telehalla 1 .would be fatally injured by a Japanese grenade only two months later.
.But ror the fortunate Pieter Broersma, it was a third combat wound and yet another brush .with .
death. Por these wounds, he recieved the recently instituted Draaginsigne Gewonden (Wound
Insignia) from the Netherlands Ministry of Defence 2. . ..... With the termination of the war in Europe and the Japanese yet to be defeated, Broersma enlisted
in the First Battalion of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment, Royal Netherlands Army. This was an
0. V. W .(Oorlogs Vrijwilligers) or war volunteers battalion. Near the end of 1945, The Regiment
travelled to England by way of Belgium, and then sailed aboard the New Amsterdam for
Singapore. Af ter a short period in British Malakha, the volunteers landed in Soerabaja on the
island of Java for the purpose of suppressing the rebel Nationalist forces under xxxx (Ironically,
the govemment of Indonesia currently is waging a war of suppression against East Timor, a fact
which the Canadian government tends to ignore). The rebels sought to prevent the reassertion
of Dutch colonial authority following the defeat of the occupying Japanese forces, and fought to
establish an independent nation. It was a tough little war fought in the jungle against a
determined idealistic foe, some of whorn had vowed not to cut their hair until independence had
been gained. In many ways it corresponded to the French fight with the Vietnamese in the post-
war era. When the fighting was over, almost six thousand Dutchmen would not return to their
lowland home near the North Sea 8 and almost twice that number were wounded.
Pieter fought in several campaigns against the rebels while with the 1/12 R.I during the period
1945-48. He recounted the strange sounding narnes of Modjokerto, Trawas, Tretes, and Malang,
which although foreign to most, were indelibly written in the memories of many a young Dutch
soldier. Apart from the major campaigns, the trials ofroutine patrolling occurred daily. Contact
with the enemy occurred on one out ofthree patrols. When the 1/12 retumed to The Netherlands
in 1948, Pieter signed up for a second tour of duty with the (KNIL) Royal Netherlands Indies
Army and served frorn 1948-51. For his service in with the 1/12 R.I., he was awarded the
Decoration for Order and Peace, with the bars 1946, 1947, 1948. He received a second
Decoration for Order and Peace for his Service with the Royal Netherlands Indies Army.
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