Indeed, and a delivery room of the Civic Hospital (where I was born as well) was declared Dutch territory so that the Princess would be born on Dutch soil.
Or so says my mother.
Anyway, I have to admit, my little peacenik friends in high school had this psychological grip over me, and we’d boycott Remembrance Day ceremonies, saying they glorified war whilst ignoring those who fought for peace, freedom and change through peaceful means, bla bla bla, whatever.
I’m still a socialist and a bit of a peacenik, but this makes me sick. It’s just retarded.
Of course. I was told that story when I as a little boy. Princess Margriet was born to Princess Juliana in 1943. On that day, the Dutch flag was flown on Parliament Hill and the bells rang out the Dutch anthem. During the birth, the Canadian government ceded the maternity ward to the Netherlands so that Princess Margriet was born on Dutch soil. (For those who don’t know, the Netherlands never surrendered their country during WWII; they fought every day of the war, and their government sat in exile in England.)
President Roosevelt and Lord Althone, Governor-General of Canada, were among Princess Margriet’s godparents.
After the war, the Netherlands gave Canada 1 million tulips as a gift for Canada’s efforts to liberate them. Today, millions of thousands of tulips still bloom in Ottawa every year, all carefully planned out to look as spectacular as possible. It’s a truly amazing sight; up and down the canal, along all the major boulevards, you see huge expanses of tulips in every colour imaginable.
Just the fact those men WANT to come to Canada to play at the graves of the downed airmen means something. It’s in the remembering. Many Canadians still lie in Europe. While it would be good for them to be brought home, I think many of us know that those who lie in the Netherlands are with family.
Another thing that got me, from the website of the Ronde Venen municipality, which has photos of the salvage operation: the flightmap that was on board the bomber.
Thje site’s in Dutch, with some English, but for those interested: http://www.derondevenen.nl/
Click on “Projecten” in the left margin, and then click on “Vickers Wellington”.
I remember reading about the Maternity Ward in Highlights as a kid. The tulips were also mentioned there. The Canadians did a whole lot more than most people think in WW2. When the Brits were facing the bombing of aircraft factories, the Canadians started producing Mosquito bombers, made mostly from spruce, a very common Canadian wood. They also contributed countless men in the invasion and helped bring peace to the world.
I avoided opening this thread for quite some time, partly because of suspicions that it was a bad joke about those “peacenick” Columbidae that deface most of our cenotaphs every day, (they are low-rent doves, after all,) and partly because deep down I knew it wasn’t.
How fucking asinine. I’d like to believe that the culprits were provocateurs, and that the real aim was to equate the current circus with the uncontroversially just and necessary efforts made in the “great wars.” Of course, I’d like to believe in Santa Claus, too.
I smell a rat, of the type the French call the agent provocatuer. Like the guys who used to spread stories about American war protestors spitting on 'Nam vets in airports. Never happened, but the story never died.
Among the refugees driven from Arnhem, a young couple with their three sons at the time. They will end up in a chicken shack outside of Velp, where they will spend the rest of the war, including the brutal “Hunger Winter” of 44/45. The youngest child is 2 years old, as his father tows him out of his birthplace on a cart.
There was the link to the newstory in the OP. Maybe not as much proof as pictures of the deed in progress, but do you have reason to believe this event didn’t happen?
Personally, I hope that if they ever catch the assholes that did this, the authorities hand them over to the WW II vets. Those guys may be old, but as Buzz Aldrin proved, they’re tough sons o’ bitches who don’t take shit from nobody. Assuming any of the peaceniks survive, they should be forced to spend the rest of their days with “I got my ass kicked by an old man” tattooed on their foreheads.
This is as bad as the colon lickers who decided to vandalize one of the planes that dropped the bomb on Japan.
Disgusting absolutely disgusting! My Great Uncle died in Europe at the age of 21 so that both Eurpoeans and North Americans could live without oppression. He was a young man, who was described as quite and never was involved in a fight or scuffle in his life. He Joined the Newfoundland Regiment, because he believed it was the right thing to do.
I believe in Peace and am opposed to the idea of war but NEVER should anyone deface a memorial to those who sacrificed their lives so that we can sit here grow fat and complacent and forget what the real price of our freedom is. An entire generation was laid waste because some leaders had ambitions of glory and others failed to keep them properly in check and this is what some idiots think of them.
We must never let anyone dishonour those men and woman who gave up their youth for generations they would never see. And those others who would remain forever mentally and physically scarred so that we can openly debate ideas and beliefs without fear of reprisal.
I couldn’t agree more. I wonder if these idiots are ever going to grasp that the people who die in wars are, overwhelmingly, not the people who create wars.
