Nick Lees: Love at first sight has lasted 77 years for dancing Edmonton couple

It was love at first sight when Elizabeth Schutte met George Dettling in the ballroom of Amsterdam’s Krasnapolski Hotel immediately after the German Second World War surrender to the Allies in May 1945.

Why else would she have agreed in their first conversation to leave her date and climb out of the women’s toilet window to meet her new Canadian soldier friend when he had ditched his date?

“We were both 21-year-olds on blind dates at a Victory Dance and I had spotted Elizabeth and thought her very attractive,” says Dettling, a member of the Seaforth Highlanders raised in the small farming community of Friedenstal in northern Alberta.

“Elizabeth’s date had spotted me winking at her and suggested she go over and ask me for an American cigarette. She did and the rest, as they say, is history.”

The couple, now 98, both loved to dance, enjoyed walks and met as often as Dettling was free to make a two-hour trip across the city to see her.

“We quickly decided to marry, but my commanding officer told me he didn’t think it a good idea” says Dettling. “He noted we didn’t really know one another, and I didn’t speak Dutch and Elizabeth knew little English. But we were determined and married six months later.”

When his Seaforth Highlanders were ordered home, to stay Dettling transferred to B.C.’s Westminster Regiment. And when it was ordered home, he joined the Canadian Scottish Regiment and was then later posted with Allied Occupation Forces to Wihelmshaven, a German North Sea coastal town.

”I was about to be shipped home when we found Elizabeth’s papers hadn’t been finalized and she’d have to follow me later,” says Dettling.

Home alive

As his ship neared Halifax in the spring of 1946, he says: “I just couldn’t believe I had made it back alive.”

He had been 18 years old when ordered to report to Edmonton for military duty and then later sailed to England for intense training.

Dettling’s first major shock came when, en route to North Africa and sailing through the Gibraltar Straits, his freighter-and-destroyer convoy was attacked by German aircraft.

“The ship next to us was hit and we watched it sink,” he says. “Meanwhile, the freighter on our other side was torpedoed and burning.

“Another ship full of nurses was also hit. We saved a few by lifting them from the water onto our ship. We wondered if this was the entrance into hell.”

After a brief stay in North Africa, Dettling’s regiment was sent to fight in Italy for 18 months and then saw more action as it advanced through France and Belgium and on to the Netherlands.

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Dettling doesn’t like to dwell on his war experiences but says: “Soldiers all around me succumbed to hellfire and crumpled to the ground. The war took us to many places, but the sense of destruction and shattered lives was the same everywhere.”

Jimmie arrives

The couple’s son Jimmie, born in Amsterdam in 1946, was six months old when Elizabeth was reunited with her husband in Edmonton after sailing into Nova Scotia on October 8 that year.

“She thought she had arrived and wasn’t expecting to have to make a six-day train trip to reach me in Edmonton,” says Dettling.

“Fortunately, some 100 Red Cross nurses were at the station to hold children while soldiers and their brides hugged and kissed.”

Sadly, when Dettling was to be honoured at his home this year on May 5, Dutch Liberation Day, Elizabeth fell and broke her hip before company arrived.

“Elizabeth is recovering well and I am hoping she will be at home again in two or three weeks,” says the former soldier. “She is in the Royal Alexandra Hospital and shouts when I arrive, ‘Here comes my liberator to rescue me again’.”

Elizabeth at first disliked Edmonton and its cold, freezing winters and was aggressively encouraged by her mother to return to Amsterdam.

“It was a strange land and she didn’t speak much English,” says Dettling. “She thought the Dutch were much more happy-go-lucky by nature and Canadians had a very dry sense of humour.

“Elizabeth also thought Canadians were also not as good as the Dutch at decorating their homes or making coffee, which Canadians served in bowls rather than in a demitasse.”

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Lasting love

The couple eventually bought an affordable house through a government home plan for veterans and Dettling later worked for 25 years for National Defence as a carpenter.

“Elizabeth and I, of course, got on well and have seven children, 13 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and two great, great grandchildren,” says Dettling.

“We met at a dance and still enjoy dancing. Sometimes, we just find ourselves dancing in the kitchen.”

Their Houston-based married daughter Diana Dettling Buckley, who is writing a book about her mother’s involvement with the Dutch wartime resistance, says her brothers in Canada report their dad is lonely and yearning for his wife’s return.

“He listens regularly to Britain’s wartime Forces Sweetheart Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again, her song that inspired millions of troops and civilians with yearning and optimism. After 77 years of marriage, my parents are still very much in love.”