A.B.C. for soldiers on leave

Large numbers of Canadian soldiers are unable to return home straight away because of a shortage of shipping. In the meantime, they start to make contact with Dutch people. 'A.B.C. for Soldiers on Leave' is specially printed for Allied soldiers. Each letter is accompanied by handwritten-style, rhyming text and cartoon drawings in black and white or with red and bronze colours. In this way, the soldiers can communicate with the Dutch population. A range of subjects is addressed, including Amsterdam, Allied soldiers and Dutch women, Hitler, and alcohol.

Max Schuchart

When he wrote A.B.C. for soldiers on leave, Max Schuchart was 25 jaar old. He was born on 16 August 1920 in Rotterdam. He spent a large part of his youth in Nijmegen, where he also attended highschool. In 1939 he moved to England to study journalism. Because of the threat of war he returned to the Netherlands during the same year.

His first literary-journalistic activities were during the Second World War. In 1941, an interview with writer and fellow countryman Johan van der Woude was published in Contact, a monthly magazine for mature youth. In 1943, Schuchart clandestinely published a collection of poems under his own management: Zwarte Verzen [Black Verses] After the liberation in 1945, he wrote A.B.C. for soldiers on leave using the pseudonym Max Lowland, with illustrations by Jos Ruting. He also wrote critical articles in the newspaper Het Vaderland, among others. From the fifties onwards, he profiled himself mainly as a translator. In 1959, he received the Martinus Nijhoff Prize for prose translations, for his translation of the trilogy In de ban van de ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. Other major authors he subsequently translated include James Joyce, Daniel Defoe, D.H. Lawrence, Saul Bellow, Oscar Wilde and Salman Rushdie. He died on 25 February 2005 in The Hague.

Jos Ruting

Jos Ruting was born on February 6, 1909 in Amsterdam. He became known as the illustrator of 'The adventures of Daantje Kaan' in the magazine De Stuwdam in 1940. In 1944 he illustrated The lonely forest by A.D. Hildebrand.