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:
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! 
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?
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.
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.
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).
The American Battle Monuments Commission 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, 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.
What’s sad is that he almost made it. He only had to survive for one more month. 
My wife has posted photographs of the Margraten cemetery on the GenWeb page she manages.
The grave of Calvin J. Moon, 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]
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
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.
No objections from this mod, jr8. None at all.
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
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.
We’ll be burning candles in our windows tonight in rememberance.
Peace to all.
You beat me to it, Shayna. I just logged on to bump this thread!
It’s the best thread ever.
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:
The entire speech is available here: http://www.gg.ca/media/speeches/archive-2000/unknown_soldier_e.asp
Thank you – to all those who sacrificed, and to all who remember.
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.
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.
