RAF PLAYS SANTA CLAUS TO DUTCH CHILDREN

The support given to the occupied Netherlands by the Royal Air Force during

World War 2 is well known. While Dutch citizens were starving in the last stages

of the war the RAF regularly dropped parcels of food and other comforts which

helped this brave nation to survive and are remembered in Holland to this day.

Some elderly citizens who were children during the war will also remember the

Christmas of 1941 when the RAF became Santa Claus to Dutch children.

The principal Christmas celebration in the Netherlands is held on 6th December

when, according to their traditions, Sinterklaas (Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas)

comes to Holland and parades through a Dutch city. He arrives the night before

with his servants, the Zwaarte Pieten, Black Peters, who keep a record of which

children have been good during the previous year and which have been bad. The

children leave out clogs beside the hearth on the night of the 5th and the Black

Peters come down the chimney and leave presents in the clogs of the good children.

The bad children are put in the Black Peter’s sack and taken to Spain for a year,

where Sinterklaas lives, to learn how to behave.

If the children leave some hay and carrots in their clog, Sinterklaas’s horse, who

pulls his sleigh over the rooftops during the night, will leave them some sweets in

exchange. On the approach to St. Nicholas’s Day in 1941, it was decided that the

RAF should take over this duty.

It was winter and Bomber Command’s activities were very light in view of the

weather. On the night of the 5th visibility was down to zero and the operation had

to be postponed. It was the same the following night and it was not until the 8th

that the weather had lifted sufficiently for the mission to proceed. A scratch crew

comprising Sergeant Thompson, Pilot Officer Barrett, Warrant Officer Binns, and

Flight Sergeants Whittaker, Brownlow and Ollar took off at 4 am on the morning

of the 9th and dropped thousands of packets of Pascall sweets over the

Netherlands – a slightly late, but nonetheless very welcome gift from Sinterklaas.

The back of the packet shows a Black Peter giving Adolf Hitler a good thrashing

with a birch while a terrified Mussolini, his head poking out of Black Peter’s bag,

awaits his turn. The front of the packets showed St Nicholas with one of his Black

Peters flying in an RAF fighter and throwing out sweets for the children. This is

one of the unusual activities undertaken by the RAF described in a new book on

Bomber Command “The Night Hunter’s Prey” by Iain Gordon, published by Pen

and Sword Aviation and available through all good bookshops.

Sender: St. Nicholas

SCATTERED BY THE RAF

Sender: St. Nicholas

c/o The RAF