Siebren Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema RMWO, DFC (3 April 1917 – 26 September 2007) was a Dutch writer who became a resistance fighter and RAF pilot during the Second World War.

[4] He attended Leiden University and was a member of the Leidsch Student Corps Minerva society while living at Rapenburg 56 across the canal from the Academiegebouw [nl].

[14] In April he was arrested by the secret police and held for a week at the notorious "Orange hotel", a political prison run by the Germans in Scheveningen.

Taking his exams in formal tuxedo, as was the custom of his student society, Minerva, he passed and was awarded his doctorate in law on 10 June 1941.

[1] Roelfzema, Peter Tazelaar, Bram van der Stok, Gerard Volkersz and Toon Buitendijk posed as crew members aboard the SS St. Cergue, a Swiss freighter bound for New York City.

[2] The group was being run under the direction of François van 't Sant, director of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (CID, Centrale Inlichtingendienst).

[7] Their operation was called 'Contact Holland', whose goal was to establish links with the disparate Dutch resistance groups, support them and coordinate their activities in the Netherlands.

Due to internal politics Van 't Sant was required to step down from his position with intelligence and control of the CID was transferred to Colonel Mattheus de Bruyne of the Dutch Marine Corps.

Other intelligence mistakes by De Bruyne included attaching detailed maps of the landing sites at Noordwijk, Scheveningen and Walcherento to the walls of his London office and leaving them up.

Observing this, Louis d'Aulnis, an agent of the CID, elected not to announce where his landing place would be beforehand, a measure which ended up saving his life.

In their first mission, Peter Tazelaar was to deliver radio equipment and bring two men back from the occupied Netherlands to join the government-in-exile in Britain.

Reeking of brandy, Tazelaar managed to pass himself off as a drunken party goer and staggered past the sentries stationed around the hotel.

In his history of the Special Operations Executive, he wrote that the Allied intelligence effort in the Netherlands had been penetrated from the start of the war.

Two Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents, Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Stevens, had been captured in November 1939 during the Venlo Incident.

The Queen landed in Antwerp, Belgium, and traveled west by car to Maldegem, where she turned north to enter the Netherlands at Eede.

The Queen chose Eede as the point to enter her country because the village and surrounding area had been severely damaged by the war, resulting in many victims.

[26] He was provided with a small float plane in the Philippines, a Republic RC-3 Seabee and a former aviator from the US Navy to fly the aircraft to Ambon in the Mollucas.

His efforts created a lot of public interest, which Roelfzema made use of to bring attention to the plight of the people of the Moluccas.

[7] In the late 1950s Roelfzema had a number of meetings in New York City with fellow Dutch national Ben van Marken, where they discussed their mutual interest in auto-racing.

They asked if he would convey his war experiences for a series of articles to run in their paper and they proposed to send a ghost writer to take down narration and compose the pieces.

After a year of work his book was published in 1970 under the title Het Hol Van De Ratelslang (The Rattlesnake Cave).

Roelfzema purchased the rights to the book, reworked it to make the stories flow together better, changed the title and got Prince Bernhard to write a foreword.

Prominent Dutch film maker Paul Verhoeven took an interest in Roelfzema's Soldaat Van Oranje and brought it to the screen.

The musical version of Soldier of Orange was presented in a unique rotating theater, which was special built in an old hangar at the former military airport at Valkenburg, which is located between Wassenaar and Katwijk near Leiden.

The company is a leader in development in Hawai'i and performs oil and natural gas exploration in Canada and North America.

[25] While living in Hawaii Roelfzema became a member of the Waimea Outdoor Circle, a group that fosters environmental preservation and the enhancement of nature through education and community involvement.

Outdoor Circle is a statewide environmental non-profit that works with branches throughout the Hawaiian Islands to protect Hawai'i's unique natural beauty.

[2] He was survived by his wife, Karin Steensma, his son Erik, step-daughter Karna Hazelhoff-Castellon, granddaughter Meadow Melelani Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and great-grandsons Jake and Siebren.

[2] He went on to offer: Achter iedere soldaat met talrijke militaire onderscheidingen staan honderden anonieme helden.

Ik had het geluk herkend te worden, en oud (Behind every soldier with numerous military awards are hundreds of unknown heroes.