After the liberation of Loon op Zand, the Highlanders pitch their tents on Saturday night 28 October 1944 at Roestelberg, located south of Waalwijk, in what is now National Park the Loonse and Drunense Dunes. To drive off the last Germans, shells fly over Waalwijk a day later. It was then Sunday 29 October, the day when the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of Christ King.

Already during early mass, the Scots are firing away briskly. ‘The church was shaking,’ said an eye witness. ‘Many people no longer dared to stay and went home.’ Across Waalwijk, the parish priests decide to forgo high mass. Meanwhile, the local Red Cross had already picked up the first wounded and the sick and elderly are taken to the various shelters.

Around midday, a shell hit St Antoniusstraat. The house of the Berkelmans family at number 95 was hit. The damage was enormous, but miraculously no one is injured at first. At number 81 in the same St. Antoniusstraat, mother Marie van der Geld was standing in the back garden having a chat with neighbour Koos Pennings. ‘Come Marie, let’s go to the cellar,’ Pennings responded, startled. Both quickly ran through the back doors of their respective homes to go to the cellar under St Antonius Church, located a little further away, together with their families. Then another shell hit. At number 81, at the home of the Van der Geld family. Mother Marie (66) and daughters Stien (25) and Corrie (24) are fatally hit, son Nico and youngest daughter Marie are seriously injured.

The same day three more young children are killed, this time in St.  Crispijnstraat right behind St. Antoniusstraat: Henk Henkelman (9), Rietje Lommers (7) and Cor Sleenhoff (10). Six-year old Reintje van den Broek, who lived just around the corner on the Tweede Zeine, had slipped away from his mother’s attention and had walked to St. Crispijnstraat to play. He, too, was hit by shrapnel. Initially he did not appear to be wounded too severely but in the end he also succumbed to his wounds. He died on Christmas Eve. Like many towns and villages in the south, Waalwijk paid a hefty price for its liberation.