Riet van Grunsven

Riet van de Haterd-Van Grunsven died on 1 March 2004 in 's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant, Netherlands.

Maria Catharina van Grunsven was then personally presented with the Bronzen Leeuw (the Bronze Lion) by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands during a medal ceremony in July 1949. According to Haarlems Dagblad:

In recognition of her valor, she was honored with a personal audience with Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1946, and was awarded the Bronzen Leeuw (the Bronze Lion), which was personally presented to her by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1949.

Maria Catharina van Grunsven was twice honored by Dutch royalty following the war. In June 1946, she was received by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands during a personal audience at the Paleis Het Loo (the Het Loo Palace or "Palace of the Woods") in Apeldoorn in early June 1946. According to the Leidsche Courant:

After her nation was liberated from its German occupiers in May 1945, word of her dangerous exploits spread va newspaper reports, which heralded her valor while also documenting her injury and partial paralysis. Rather than using her birth name, many of those accounts used her resistance name, a practice which would be repeated for much of her post-war life. Her given name was used, however, when she was formally honored by the Dutch government.

As Riet van Grunsven continued her resistance work, she accepted increasingly dangerous assignments. During one, she broke two fingers while evading capture, an injury which left those two fingers in a permanently crooked state. In September 1944, she was assigned to rescue a priest and another Dutch citizen who had been arrested and sentenced to death after being falsely accused of blowing up a railroad. Dressed in a nurse's uniform and carrying a 6.35 mm revolver, she infiltrated the prison at Mariënhof by bribing a guard with a bottle of wine laced with sleeping medication. After locating the key to the men's cell, she spirited the pair out of the prison, and sent them to a Taalstraat safehouse.

By the final year of the war, Riet van Grunsven had become a “line crosser,” one of just 21 special resistance operatives from the larger Biesbosch resistance and Albrecht intelligence groups who safeguarded the secret connection between occupied and liberated Netherlands. Operating with her colleagues via the waterways of the Biesbosch and the Merwede, she risked her life numerous times to make this line crossing as a courier, transferring vital information to Allied troops under the aliases of “Ice Block” and “Trouble.” While engaged in one of these missions during the winter of 1944–1945, she was permanently partially paralyzed during a fall in which she damaged a cervical vertebra.

She also began her own family when she wed the priest she had rescued in 1944, becoming Riet van de Haterd-van Grunsven.

Maria Catharina van Grunsven (6 September 1918 – 1 March 2004), also known as Riet van Grunsven or Riet van de Haterd-van Grunsven, was an armed member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II. One of 21 people who became “line crossers,” special agents who helped to maintain a secret connection between occupied and liberated Netherlands across the waterways of the Biesbosch and the Merwede, she operated as a courier for part of the larger Biesbosch resistance group, and the Albrecht intelligence group. During this resistance work, she was given the aliases “Ice Block” and “Trouble.”

Born on 6 September 1918 in Geffen, in what was the Maasdonk province (and in what is now a section of the North Brabant province of the Netherlands), Maria Catharina (“Riet”) van Grunsven was the eldest child of her family. Her father was a contractor who engaged in animal husbandry, raising chickens and the occasional pig while also producing milk and cheese from the family's cow to help support his family. He was also reportedly was a firearms enthusiast who also enjoyed archery.