South-African volunteers in the Netherlands East Indies Army

[nuyt]

A very interesting subject, Stellan. And one that has intrigued me for a while.

I think there were several batches of volunteers, totalling a hundred men.

Battle reports suggest these were well motivated, if not fanatical (Tarakan). Some lingered on to fight with KNIL in the Indonesian Independence war.

From the few names I have seen of these volunteers I would assume the volunteers were NOT Afrikaners, but (recent?) immigrants to SA or Dutch nationals living there.

There was compulsory service for all Dutchmen living in the world after May 1940. Volunteering for KNIL probably avoided getting drafted in the Dutch forces in the UK or Navy.

A substantial number of Dutchmen living in SA refused to join up, however, and were arrested and deported by SA. They spend the war in a working camp in Surinam/Dutch Guyana.

Suriname was also the site of a Dutch jungle concentration camp (Jodensavanne) for deportees from the Dutch East Indies: NEI Nazis (members of the NSB) as well as Indonesian Nationalists (Douwes Dekker, yes a relative of Multatuli), Germans of Jewish descent, all locked up together, some by mistake.

Conditions were appalling and the inmates were treated rather roughly by the Dutch guards (there was a case of murder of two alleged NEI Nazis by Dutch Marines).

I am not sure if the SA pacifists were locked up at the same place or elsewhere, but what I am sure of is that this was a black page in Dutch history.

Thanks for the picture!

Nuyt