“Luck”
Damage to ‘Kazemat XII’ (casemate XII) after the bombing.
Spread across seventeen sturdy casemates, 225 men waited for months for the enemy to arrive. The casemates of the Stelling Kornwerderzand defence line on the Afsluitdijk were built to stop the enemy making rapid progress from Friesland to the Randstad agglomeration. The 225 men succeeded in halting the advance of the German ground troops – the real danger came from the air. Enemy planes dropped their bombs on the defence line, with one making a direct hit. A soldier from the second line vividly remembers his fight for survival.
A group of soldiers at Kornwerderzand’s second defence line.
