Text

In memory of our comrades

Serg. H. Van der Waals

corps. A. Van Ginkel

Sold. J.J. Fröling

They gave their lives in the fight for the Netherlands

^4th Section VII Z.L.A. t.I.

May 1940'

Most monuments to victims of the Second World War were erected after the war. The monument to the three soldiers of the VIIth Searchlight Division is an exception. It was already erected in 1940 and stands in the garden of De Binckhorst castle, Binckhorstlaan 149, then still in Voorburg. Conscript sergeant Hugo van Lennep, colleague of the three fallen boys, designed the memorial. The construction was paid from the canteen fund.

It is a simple brick column with a sandstone slab inside, on which is inscribed a text and the names of the three soldiers. The column also features an engineer's helmet, the emblem of the Searchlight Department. The reason this monument is in the garden of De Binckhorst castle is that, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the castle had already been requisitioned for a year by the VIIth Searchlight Division of the army, a division for tracking down air targets.

On the first day of the war, 10 May 1940, the commander of the section in Voorburg asked three volunteers from De Binckhorst to supply five searchlights at Ypenburg airfield. Sergeant Van der Waals, corporal Van Ginkel and private Fröling report. It will be a dangerous trip, because the area is crawling with German paratroopers. Between Rijswijk and Nootdorp the car in which they were riding was attacked and hit the water. The three men are killed.

The founder of their tribute, Sergeant Van Lennep, joined the resistance. In an attempt to reach the liberated part of the Netherlands below the great rivers together with a comrade at the end of '44, he was arrested. On 17 February 1945 he was executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte.