Dutch devotion belies the message given to West Point grads
The Netherlands lives up to its promise 80 years ago to Americans to "watch over your boys"
IF AN OPINIONATED OLD GUY from southern Iowa delivered the recent commencement address at the United States Military Academy, my message would have contrasted with the one given by another opinionated old guy, one from Queens, N.Y., by way of the White House.
When I was a newspaper editor, I sometimes told the staff they needed to run a belt sander across an article to remove rough spots before publication. So it was with Donald Trump’s speech to 1,000 new Army second lieutenants at West Point a week ago. His staff needed to take the Oval Office belt sander to his message.
The West Point graduates are embarking on military careers that will disrupt their family life and may end in death or crippling injury. The president was on the mark when he thanked them for their willingness to sacrifice to protect the safety and security of our nation.
But these young men and women deserved more facts and serious reflection, fewer half-truths, less fiction, and no campaign rhetoric. These new officers and their families did not gather on the highlands above the Hudson River to hear about trophy wives and “the late great Alphonse Capone.” (Inexplicably, our president talked about both.)
The audience did not deserve to hear “we are the ones that won the war,” when, in fact, victory in World War II was achieved by the allied nations working together.
The audience deserved better than the fiction about how people overseas during the recent observance of the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe no longer appreciate the United States.
If I were standing in front of the graduates, I would have talked, instead, about the respect and gratitude that still exists overseas for the contributions the U.S. played in helping to liberate the world from the grip of Hitler’s Nazis, the Empire of Japan and Mussolini’s fascists.
I would have assured the new officers that when nations work together we can accomplish more than when we try to go it alone. I would have reminded them of Benjamin Franklin’s comment when signing the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
And I would have built my speech around the inspiring bond between a family here in Iowa and generations of families around the small Dutch farming community of Margraten. For eight decades, Dutch families have shown their heartfelt gratitude for the U.S. military personnel who liberated them and secured the blessings of freedom and liberty for the Dutch.
I WOULD HAVE INTRODUCED THEM to Capt. Karl Holliday, a farm kid from Promise City, Iowa. He was 26 years old when he was killed by German gunfire in 1945, shortly before Holland was liberated.
He now rests with 8,300 other U.S. soldiers surrounded by the haunting beauty of the American military cemetery on the outskirts of Margraten.
Holliday may be a long way from the rolling countryside of southern Iowa and Wayne County, but he is not forgotten by people in and around the Dutch town.
I would have told the West Point grads how Holliday’s portrait hangs in a place of honor in the home of Fietje Quaedvlieg. She and her late husband and their daughters have looked after the Iowan’s grave for 40 years. They have twice hosted Holliday’s son, Robert, a retired West Des Moines lawyer, when he journeyed to the Netherlands to visit his father.
THE AFFECTION BETWEEN the two families should put to rest the fantasy that Europeans do not remember the contributions hundreds of thousands of Americans played in freeing Europe from tyranny.
Like Karl Holliday’s grave, each of the other U.S. soldiers’ graves at the American cemetery at Margraten has been “adopted” by a Dutch family that visits “their soldier” on Memorial Day, at Christmas, and on the dates the soldiers were born and died.
More than 700 people wait to adopt a grave. The list is long because some families have been tending the same graves for 80 years.
Why such interest in placing flowers at the foot of these white stone markers of people they never met? It is a simple answer. Just as Americans reflect on the price paid by their fallen soldiers, sailors, aviators and Marines, people like Fietje Quaedvlieg and her family also reflect on how much they, and their nation, owe to young men like Karl Holliday.
The Dutch have not forgotten what life under Nazi occupation meant. They are eternally grateful to the Americans who gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of freedom.
Before Memorial Day was observed at Margraten after Germany’s surrender in the spring of 1945, people from the area worked through the night to place fresh flowers on the graves of thousands of fallen Americans. From that overnight mission of gratitude sprang the “adoption” program that is going strong today.
ROBERT HOLLIDAY WAS 19 months old when his father was killed. He fights back emotions talking about his father and Fietje Quaedvlieg’s family. This year, on the eve of Memorial Day, Fietje again sent her family’s greetings to their friend in Iowa. She included a new photograph of the stone cross that stands sentinel over Karl Holliday’s grave.
Bob Holliday knows the connection with his father’s Dutch “family” is part of a pledge that nation made to America, and Americans, out of love and gratitude decades ago. The pledge — “We will watch over your boys like our own, forever” — touches his heart, just as it should touch every American’s heart.
That is an important message the new West Point grads needed to hear as they head out to serve our nation and the freedom-loving people of the world.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
STRAY THOUGHTS is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of more than 70 people who write on a wide range of subjects, from politics to business, agriculture to the environment, and an assortment of culture topics, too. We are sort of like the Sunday newspaper of old. Click here for our roster of writers. Feel free to add them to your reading lineup each week. And please subscribe to your favorites if your budget allows.
Perfect, Mr. Editor. No sanding needed, just wide distribution.
Great story! You may be opinionated - but you certainly are more insightful and compassionate than the codger from Queens!