Everybody’s War

Everybody’s War is the personal journal of Wim de Vriend, a Dutch immigrant who runs a German restaurant on the Oregon coast. While relating lively, funny stories about his restaurant customers, he can’t avoid straying into his memories of World War II, in the occupied Netherlands. He takes you on tours of the lives of Dutch people during that occupation, and lets you meet soldiers and civilians, both allied and German, who dared commit small acts of chivalry in the midst of mayhem and murder. You also meet persecuted Jews, and Germans whom the war left brutalized and starving, whose most fervent hope was to find a place without fear. As one of them happily concluded: ‘It has happened to us. Here in this generous and beautiful America we have found freedom and peace.’ Throughout his journal you find Wim’s observations of the Dutch, the Germans, the Americans and other nationalities, their sometimes-conflicting values, and their foods.