Departure Delayed

Started by Lotti Fuehrscheim, November 27, 2020, 06:00:36 PM

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Lotti Fuehrscheim

A book my great uncle wrote during WWII, Departure Delayed

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30588474215&cm_sp=rec-_-o_3_ii-_-bdp&reftag=o_3_ii

The Australian WOMAN'S MIRROR, December 28, 1943



West Australian, Perth, 18 jun 1946



QuoteAuthor's Reunion With Wife

It will come as pleasant news to all those who have read Jan van Apeldoorn's book "Departure Delayed" to learn that his wife Rita, who shared his adventures in Nazi-occupied Europe and Java, attacked by the Japanese, but whom he had to leave behind at Bandoeng, came safely through the occupation and has been recuperating with her husband in Sydney.

M. Jan van Apeldoorn, whose real name is Jan Nils Vogt, wrote "Departure Delayed" after his arrival in Australia from Java and it was first published in 1943. In it he tells the story of the perilous journey through Europe which he and his wife made together (mostly on a bicycle-built-for-two), to escape the Nazi occupation. The keynote of the book is the companionship with which they shared adventures and discomfort – a companionship which made the sad parting, on which note the book ends, all the more poignant.

When Mr Vogt was ordered out of Java on official business, he did not anticipate that conditions woud be such that his wife's evacuation would become an impossibility, and he himself at that time expected to return. But the end came in Java soon after he reached Australia, so his book was dedicated to "My brave companion Rita, for whom departure was once too often delayed." At the time of writing it, , he had no clue to her fate, in fact he concludes by saying, "Ships that escaped from Tjilatjap were heavily bombed ... all that is known is that several which left Tjilatjap were sunk, presumably with all hands. Whether Rita was on board one of those ships I do not know. I do not even know whether she got away from Bandoeng."

Fortunately, perhaps as things turned out, Mrs. Vogt did not get away, but was interned in Batavia and reached Australia safely after the liberation. But once more her departure is to be delayed. Her husband has left on his return to Holland, but she cannot get a ship until next month.








airboy

Wow!

Is is available as an ebook?  My allergies prevent reading old books.

Lotti Fuehrscheim

Quote from: airboy on November 27, 2020, 06:04:32 PM
Wow!

Is is available as an ebook?  My allergies prevent reading old books.

No, it has been thoroughly forgotten  :'(

Lotti Fuehrscheim

Jan Nils Vogt, the author, worked in the Dutch East Indies as a manager for Stokvis, the largest trading company of Western Europe, founded in 1849 in Rotterdam by Rafaël Samuel Stokvis. They traded steel, machines, cars, mopeds, electronics, coffee, thee, everything. Amongst others they provided the Dutch East Indies with Western Technology, while exploiting coffee and thee gardens.

Jan Nils was in Switzerland in 1939, in an TB sanatorium, when the war broke out, while the Netherlands were still neutral. Because he also traded in steel, he described the political opinions of German steel producers, who looked down on Hitler, but were very optimistically nationalists.

He managed to travel to Holland through Germany on a special Swiss visa. From Holland he started to act in the interests of his company.

He travelled in the winter through England to Canada and back by ocean liner, to order plywood for thee crates, because their regular suppliers in Finland would no longer be able to ship to the East Indies. Amazingly down to earth and optimistic in retrospect.

airboy

If you got it scanned into a pdf you can put it up on the web for people to read.

Or, if you can find it in a library somewhere you could do the same thing.