# May 5, 1945 - we shall remember. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 4, 2000, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605 "2000-05-04T22:11:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2002, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/241 "2002-05-06T18:01:23Z")
Of all the threads on this board this one _deserves_ an annual resurrection. Thank you again, **Coldie** for starting it. And your last paragraph makes an excellent point, **monkeymensch**. On a lighter note, **John Carter of Mars** remarked: > [@](#): > > Now my cover is blown! Anybody that can add will figure out that I’m a really old dude ! C’mon, John! Anybody who’s read Burroughs knows you’ve been around since at least the Civil War and cannot remember when you were young! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a5b964/32.png) [@kase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kase)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2002, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/242 "2002-05-06T20:59:30Z")
Once again; Thank you all that helped liberate our small country. Your posts had me in tears. Especially today. don’t you think \*\* coldfire \*\* that on this day, Holland has lost her innocence? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/243 "2002-07-09T16:21:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Coldfire \* > There’s a huge American WWII cemetary in Margraten, The Netherlands. I believe there are also some Canadian graves there. In total, there are some 10,000 soldiers burried there. > > Imagine a slightly mountanous landscape with 10,000 white crosses (actually, some are David’s stars, for obvious reasons). > > Let me tell you, there’s few things that can render me totally speechless. But that cemetary gets to me every time. It had that effect on us, too, when my wife and I were there recently. (As I mentioned earlier in this thread, her grandfather is buried there.) It is a beautiful place, a moving place. It is hard to imagine how many soldiers died to preserve our freedom in WWII, but seeing the rows upon rows of crosses and stars of David of the 8,302 men and women buried there begins to give one a small sense of the scale of the sacrifice involved. And they are but a small fraction of those who died to preserve us from the rule of the Axis dictatorships. We will shortly have photos of the Margraten cemetery posted on the Web. When we do, I’ll provide a link. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/244 "2002-07-09T17:01:02Z")
I’m glad your wife and you liked the place, RT. How does this work, anyway? Is there like a floor plan where one can look up where relatives are buried? I think people will like those photos, when you put them up. ---
**Author:** ![JohnM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@JohnM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnM)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/245 "2002-07-09T23:51:46Z")
**Coldfire** , I’m glad this thread got bumped, as it gave me an opportunity to read it. Thank you for reminding all of us of what was at stake in WWII, and giving us all the opportunity to remember. My father was in an anti-tank artillery unit in WWII in Europe. He arrived after Normandy, but was in the rush across France and was involved in the Battle of the Bulge. When the war in Europe ended, his unit began training for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. After Nagasaki, he served in occupation duty in Germany and Austria for a time, and after returning to the States he finished out his service guarding German and Italian POWs. And that, unfortunately, is about all I know. My father died in 1983, and all I have are my increasingly vague recollections of the stories he told me, and a few unit histories that were in the closet when my Mom sold the house after my Dad’s death. I didn’t serve in the military, but my respect for those who have served, and those who are now serving, is greater with each passing year. Thank you all for your sacrifices (and thanks to you, Dad). ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2002, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/246 "2002-07-10T01:56:18Z")
The [American Battle Monuments Commission](http://www.abmc.gov) has a searchable database of American soldiers that are buried (or listed as MIA) in each of the 24 overseas cemeteries. Enter a soldier’s name (LAST FIRST with no comma separating them) into the search engine. It will return the name, rank, serial number, cemetery name, and plot number in the cemetery of the soldier. The Margraten cemetery, officially the [Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial](http://www.abmc.gov/ne.htm), is divided into 16 sections, A through P, arranged in a 4x4 grid. Within each section, each grave has a row, and a place in the row. For instance, if you looked up Calvin Moon either online or in the book at the cemetery’s visitor center, you’d find out that Tec-5 Calvin J. Moon of the 121st Infantry, 8th Division, who hailed from Kentucky and died on April 2, 1945, is in plot J-7-1, meaning the first grave in row 7 of Section J. Just one of the many young men who gave their lives for our freedom. But a rather special one, since his granddaughter is the woman I share my life with. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2002, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/247 "2002-07-10T09:31:17Z")
What’s sad is that he almost made it. He only had to survive for one more month. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2002, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/248 "2002-07-14T23:35:26Z")
My wife has posted [photographs of the Margraten cemetery](http://www.rootsweb.com/~gacolqu2/Pix/Margraten/Margraten.html) on the GenWeb page she manages. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/249 "2002-07-15T00:06:28Z")
The grave of [Calvin J. Moon](http://www.rootsweb.com/~gacolqu2/Admin/Kenton/P6170013.JPG), my wife’s grandfather. [sub]This photo may eventually be moved to another GenWeb site. If that happens, I’ll post a new link.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/250 "2002-07-15T07:52:16Z")
That’s beautiful, RT. Looks like you had favourable weather that day, too. I love that part of my country, with its hills, and that cemetary has a special place in my heart. FWIW, this one isn’t working: [http://www.rootsweb.com/~gacolqu2/Pix/Margraten/flag.jpg](http://www.rootsweb.com/~gacolqu2/Pix/Margraten/flag.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/251 "2002-11-11T22:04:51Z")
It’s November 11, and this is a bump, for which I am unapologetic. As far as I’m concerned, this thread should come back again and again until the mods are forced to lock it and we start May 5, 1945 – Part II. Once again, a toast to those brave souls whose nobler instincts prevailed in times of base anarchy and war. And another to **Coldfire** for this, possibly the best thread of all the vast repository of stories that is the SDMB. I feel the lack of a more appropriate story to add to the long list which have come before, so let me make mention here of my mother’s family, fleeing Budapest before the advancing Russian Army: my grandfather, a civil servant who, with other civil servants, hired a train to take them to the German border; my five-year old mother and two-year old uncle left sitting alone on the piled family’s belongings in a chaotic train station while her father argued with the engineer and her mother collected food and supplies for the journey; the unknown man who held a gun to the engineer’s head to force him to take the train into Germany when he refused to go further; my grandmother, who alone amongst the entire train had thought to bring a little camp stove, which cooked everyone’s meals when the engineer abandoned the train and left them all stranded for a month in the middle of a strange German forest. We sometimes forget (or at least I do) that war is not just about the big issues: principles and boundaries and power. It’s also about the individual lives it changes and destroys, and today, on November 11, I think of them. _Requiescant in pace._ ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/252 "2002-11-11T22:25:02Z")
No objections from this mod, **jr8**. None at all. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2002, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/253 "2002-11-12T00:15:21Z")
I just wanted to post in honour of my great-grandfather, who never returned from World War I and his son, my grandfather, who did return from World War II. CJ _In Flanders’ field the poppies lie_ ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2002, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/254 "2002-11-12T00:41:18Z")
My grandfather died several years back, at the age of 102. He lied to get into the US military early, and served in World War I. He didn’t talk about the war much, but he proudly displayed a framed certificate (from the French government, I believe, given many decades after the war) on his wall, and marched in parades as a veteran. One of the few stories he did share with the grandkids was when he went to take a drink from his canteen and found it was empty. Holding it up, he discovered a bullet hole in it. Rest in peace, Grandpa. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/255 "2003-05-04T21:43:25Z")
We’ll be burning candles in our windows tonight in rememberance. Peace to all. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2003, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/256 "2003-05-04T22:04:24Z")
You beat me to it, **Shayna**. I just logged on to bump this thread! It’s the best thread ever. ---
**Author:** ![Rodd\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ab097/32.png) [@Rodd\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodd_Hill)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/257 "2003-05-04T22:31:16Z")
In a few weeks, I will be priviledged to attend a burial ceremony near the small Belgian village of Passchendaele for three Canadians who were killed in the fall of 1917, and lost in the mud of the 3rd Battle of Ypres until their accidental discovery last year. Despite all modern science’s best efforts, they remain unidentified, other than their unit, the 3rd Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, raised in Toronto. I will be thinking of the words of a speech that Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson, Canada’s Governor-General, gave in May 2000, as a eulogy to Canada’s Unknown Soldier, at a ceremony in Ottawa: > [@](#): > > We do not know whose son he was. We do not know his name. We do not know if he was a MacPherson or a Chartrand. He could have been a Kaminski or a Swiftarrow. We do not know if he was a father himself. We do not know if his mother or wife received that telegram with the words “Missing In Action” typed with electrifying clarity on the anonymous piece of paper. We do not know whether he had begun truly to live his life as a truck driver or a scientist, a miner or a teacher, a farmer or a student. We do not know where he came from. > Was it the Prairies whose rolling sinuous curves recall a certain kind of eternity? > Was he someone who loved our lakes and knew them from a canoe? > > Was he someone who saw the whales at the mouth of the Saguenay? > > Was he someone who hiked in the Rockies or went sailing in the Atlantic or in the Gulf Islands? > > Did he have brown eyes? > > Did he know what it was to love someone and be loved back? > > Was he a father who had not seen his child? > > Did he love hockey? Did he play defence? > > Did he play football? Could he kick a field goal? > > Did he like to fix cars? Did he dream of owning a Buick? > > Did he read poetry? > > Did he get into fights? > > Did he have freckles? > > Did he think nobody understood him? > > Did he just want to go out and have a good time with the boys? > > We will never know the answers to these questions. We will never know him. But we come today to do him honour as someone who could have been all these things and now is no more. We who are left have all kinds of questions that only he could answer. And we, by this act today, are admitting with terrible finality that we will never know those answers. > > We cannot know him. And no honour we do him can give him the future that was destroyed when he was killed. Whatever life he could have led, whatever choices he could have made are all shuttered. They are over. We are honouring that unacceptable thing – a life stopped by doing one’s duty. The end of a future, the death of dreams. > > Yet we give thanks for those who were willing to sacrifice themselves and who gave their youth and their future so that we could live in peace. With their lives they ransomed our future. The entire speech is available here: [http://www.gg.ca/media/speeches/archive-2000/unknown\_soldier\_e.asp](http://www.gg.ca/media/speeches/archive-2000/unknown_soldier_e.asp) ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/258 "2003-05-05T01:59:32Z")
Thank you – to all those who sacrificed, and to all who remember. ---
**Author:** ![Pelleas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e8c25b/32.png) [@Pelleas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pelleas)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/259 "2003-05-05T02:27:59Z")
This is one of the most moving threads I have read. It should be required reading in schools so the younger generation will get some idea of the sacrifices made by ordinary people so that we and they can live in freedom. Thanks, **Coldfire** , for starting this thread. Even though it is starting its fourth year, the message is timeless. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605/260 "2003-05-05T02:37:21Z")
I haven’t posted to this thread since I’ve first read it, but I want **Coldfire** to know that I keep it close to my heart. Tripler For once, I’m speechless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-5-1945-we-shall-remember/18605.md?page=14)