The Dutch government declared a mobilization of her forces on August 28, 1939 and Stef Willard got his call- up to defend the country.

Popular top-hits on the radio were…(what else could it be)…soldiers’ songs. ‘Rats,kuch en bonen, dat is het soldatendiner’ (hodge-podge, bread and beans, that’s the soldiers’ dinner).
‘Blonde Mientje heft een hart van prikkeldraad (Blond Mientje has a heart of barbed wire).
The Netherlands hoped against hope to stay neutral.
The Dutch were truly floating between hope and fear.
3 October Adolph Hitler had this to say when he ‘liberated’ Sudetenland. ‘You now join the great German future!
We thank Almighty God that he has blessed us in the past and that he bless us also in the future Germany, Sieg Heil!’
Hitler predicts in a speech to the "Reichstag" that a war in Europe would lead to "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”, "The destruction of the Jews", "Auswanderung oder Evakuierung".
The world in August 1939 was a world that held its breath.
However Hitler's guarantees the neutrality of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and Swiss.
But few people believed war would be avoided.