This is an account of a short, but intense, part of a brave man’s life.  It is also a detective story in which the hunt is on for two characters; Tillema and the author himself.  The reader will ask themselves through to the end whether they are reading biography or fiction.

 

The author receives by chance a manuscript on faded yellow foolscap paper.  It is entitled ‘Memoir 1939-1945  A Tillema’.  The story, written in rather good English, tells of the experiences of the Tillema, a Dutch eye doctor, during the Nazi occupation of Holland.  It is riveting.  Tillema and his family have much to endure.  He is obsessed by making ready for flight in case of being raided by the German authorities.  The  manuscript suggests hat he is active in the Dutch Doctor’s disobedience movement.  He is shot and wounded.  His house finds itself in the middle of the advancing armies of liberation.  In 1944 they grind to a halt right outside his front door.

 

The author sets out to discover more of this document.  Was the story even true?  Tillema is frustratingly elusive.  But as things emerge it becomes apparent that he has been orchestrating an iconic part of the Dutch Resistance.

 

As the search itself develops, the author comes to have reasons to question his own motives.        

​