And Baker, thanks for your story as well! So many of the vets are or were the silent types.
Are we missing out on the stories - or are some things best not remembered?
All my Dad ever told me was that people will sink to some wicked lows in wartime. He was in the ETO (Sicily, I think) and then in the occupation in Berlin (airlift and stuff, too)
After his death I found his files of being recruited into intelligence and espionage and then his sudden dropping out, being transferred stateside, and leaving the service. His files had glowing praise from generals about him, he was going to make a career out of Air Force Intelligence (he switched over in 46/47), and then he just quit. Man, if I had known ANYTHING about that, I would’ve pressed him for info.
Yes, we loved Maastricht. Andre Rieu hosted us for lunch at his home, then had friends drive the veterans in vintage vehicles to a reception at Town Hall. What a wonderful day for the men.
Hokkaido Brit and Baker, for me too it is such a strange and wonderful thing to owe our…MY freedom to the Allied forces. This thread again makes me realize that. Your dad and uncle, and so many others of that generation, have given us a great gift.
I live in Maastricht and almost monthly, I drive past the American Military Cemitary in Margraten, a village a few miles outside of Maastricht. Here’s a short clip of it on an American website. All the US soldiers who died on Dutch ground are buried here, some 8000 of them. I visited it a couple times. It is a solemn and beautiful, but not a happy place.
The situation in places like Afghanistan is so muddy. I don’t know how many Afghani men and women there feel our UN forces (the Dutch are a military presence there along with you guys) are there to help them. I hope they are and that the UN makes things better there, but I just don’t know enough about the situation there.
I do know, however, that the WW2 situation was pretty straightforward. We minded our own business, The Nazi’s rolled in and over us, and you saved our butts.
Thank you.
Over the last ten years I got to know my neighbors Dad. He was a fighter pilot over Europe. Being a Navy guy I don’t remember any details about the stories of the man in Kahki. Or maybe it was the bottle of scotch we knocked off one summer evening. Little embarasing to be drank under the table by a man almost twice my age…
His daughter (my neighbor) let us be that night. She said she never ever heard him tell stories about the war. Maybe because I was a vet? I do know he crashed two planes, asked why he didn’t bail out he said, I don’t know who packed this damn chute, but I know I can drive the fucking plane.
He married an Irish lass, brought her home to the US after 2 years of red tape wrangling, and raised 4 lovely daughters. One was deaf. His wife spent 30 years in a home with Altzheimers. Not a picture perfect life but was always full of good cheer and a jolly man. A good man, he died recently as well.
Another friend’s grandfather I knew my whole life was a medic. 5 daughters.
Another friends’ grandfather, 9 kids, 20+ grandkids, none served. He always had a corny joke for me and treated me like family. Tough old farmer flew on PBY catalinas over the pacific.
Neither of my grandfathers served so I cherish the time I spent with those who did. Hell of a generation. Did their duty and came home to populate my world with the people I love and care about.
RIP Lt. Bob Halley, Sgt. Steven Grazenkowski, and Petty Officer Paul Trowbridge.
No, perhaps it is just that the stories are family lore, and as such, don’t seem important enough to report; no more important than Dad playing football for the high school team which went to the city championship, or Mom raising the prize pigs at the county fair. For some of us, there are plenty of stories of our fathers, uncles, cousins, and so on, and they just become “what Uncle So-and-so” did in the war.
One of my cousins flew Mosquito bombers over Europe. He was shot down. Had he not been, family lore says that he would have earned a DFC. I still have his last letter home–it has been passed down through the generations, and never opened. (The family got word that he was dead before the letter got home.)
A DFC was earned by our across-the-street neighbour. He had been in RAF Bomber Command, and flew many raids over Europe. I just remember a nice, jolly neighbour who told me jokes when I was a child. When he died, my Dad took me to the funeral, where all his medals and honours were displayed upon the flag on his casket. My joke-telling neighbour was a hero: DFC with bar and so many other honours.
My uncle was a Royal Canadian Navy sailor in the Battle of the Atlantic. He had plenty of stories about shore leave in Halifax (that my mother did not want me to hear), but very few about life at sea in a conflict. I’m sure he had plenty of stories, but he didn’t tell them.
Just family lore. Never seemed very important at Christmas dinner, but it should be remembered.
Coldfire, it is possible that my uncle, of the Royal Canadian Navy, was in the parade you mentioned in the OP. I don’t know, but I do know that he went back to Europe from time to time to participate in rememberances and parades and such. Sadly, Uncle passed away last year. But I know that he was proud to do what he could.
Yesterday we remembered the dead, today we celebrate our freedom here in the Netherlands. So it’s time to bump this thread.
Dopers, if you have a father or grandfather who fought for our freedom, would you thank them from us please? Tell them that we will always remember, and that we are still so grateful for our freedom.
Here are some old grainy images of the liberation, to give you an idea of the celebration. It’s just one minute, and it can only give the vaguest impression, but look at those happy faces!
I’m off outside to celebrate now. Today is a happy day.
I was thinking about this tread yesterday too, gracer, Thank you for bumping it. I was recently at a family reunion and I found out that two of my great uncles had been in concentration camps for resistance work. One of them threw himself out of a window during an SS interrogation to keep from betraying other people. The other built himself a yacht after the liberation. A tiny ship, but with enough room for fuel to take him across the ocean if necessary. “Never again” must have been what he thought.
And thanks again, US and UK, for that that whole freedom thing you gave us. Not to mention that whole economic rebuilding stuff you gave us right after, since you apparently are the giving kind.
I’m in this thread several times already, just posting to acknowledge all the thoughts one more time.
I still wish I could talk with my uncle Larry about his European war service. But he never mentioned it, not even once, that I ever knew. He was in Europe when it was liberated. It was only after his mind started failing, and we, the family, were looking at pictures, that I realized he’d been in the Army. My Dad wasn’t quite old enough, but if the war had gone on another year or so he probably would have been drafted then.
I thought today was special … I was honorably discharged from the US Navy on this day 43 years ago. The Vietnam war was still going on …
Thankfully the last submarine I was on, USS Sam Houston SSBN 609, never received that dreadful message from the Joint Chiefs of staff that went something like this;
“This is the captain speaking we have just received a message from the President of the United States to launch missiles”
“Now man battle stations missile”
Jesus.
With memories of 1667 and de Ruyter’s little escapade in mind, we thought it best to keep you onside regardless of cost. 
And we couldn’t have picked a more pleasant people than the Dutch to help out.
Thread bumped in anticipation, on this the week of the 70th anniversary of V/E Day and perhaps the last such decennial with a visible presence of those who fought. For those few still here and the legions who are no longer, who beat back the darkness and made possible the world we know, all our gratitude and may their fame be immortal… and let us ever watch lest the darkness return and this time engulf us.
Thank you, JRD.
We just watched the May 4th Commemoration of the Dead on TV. A little surreal - the trumpetist seemed to be miming The Last Post. Strange.
Tomorrow, the 5th, is a national holiday, which it only is once every 5 years now. As you rightly point out, the overlap with the generation who were there is fading, and to an extent, so is the prominence of the commemoration. Inevitable, and a little sad.
I’ve read this thread, or parts of it every year for 15 years now. I’d have thought I’d have stopped getting emotional by now, but I suppose if it hasn’t happened yet, it isn’t going to happen.
My brother (a high school history teacher) made the comment to me that the original Gulf War is about as far in the past to high school kids today as Vietnam was to us, and that WWII is about as distant as WWI was to us- something relegated strictly to history books and the occasional really, really elderly person.
I was pretty surprised to drive past the American Military Cemetery just outside Florence Italy when on vacation there a few years back- made me realize that despite the fact that the fighting that the soldiers fell during was considered a backwater, and that the cemetery itself is of unremarkable size compared to the other US Military cemeteries, it’s still huge in an absolute sense, with some 4400 burials there, and only one of 13 of that size or larger in Europe, and that those cemeteries only represent a fraction of the total killed, because many remains were sent back to the US for final burial.
The scale is colossal, and even more mind-boggling when you consider that the US got off light compared to most other nations involved in the war.
I, too, look for this thread every year. It started just a few months after I signed on to the SDMB. For a while it was the only 'zombie" thread allowed to stay open.
I hope it never closes. I’ll be thinking of my Uncle Larry, who was in Europe at the close of the war.
I have been reading this thread annually for some time now. More tears than usual this year due to the passing of my dad, SSgt. 749th Tank Battalion. He wasn’t in the Netherlands, but was in combat in France, Belgium, and Germany. He was a farm boy from SC when WWII began. He told me very little of his war experiences, but I found that when he was talking to other veterans I could listen and learn something.
He was a conservative, SC State Trooper, but when there was a protest on the news with people burning the US flag he said “I fought a war so they could do that.”
Thank you for remembering him and others like him.
Coldfire, as I may have stated in earlier iterations of this thread, I had a few relatives involved in D-Day and the liberation of the Netherlands. Yes, they were Canadian, and yes, I remember. After stories from my relatives, I doubt that I will ever forget.
I am glad that you and your countrymates remember also. I am raising a glass tonight for the Canadians who helped liberate the Netherlands, and whom you met in that parade so long ago. I am sure that many of them have passed away now, but they deserve a drink in their memory. I hope that you will join me.