OP / ED
With the end of World War II in Europe, letters from American families seeking information about their loved ones began arriving at town halls across the southern Netherlands. Postmarked from big cities and small towns, from those of privilege and those barely scraping by, each one contained a heartbreaking request similar to that of a young widow from Demopolis, Alabama: “My husband…was killed in Germany on his birthday, April 18, 1945, and is buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery at Margraten, Holland, near your town of Maastricht… He was my whole life to me…Since you live so near…I will be grateful all of the days of my life if you can get me a snapshot of his grave.”
Oftentimes, the next of kin only knew the country where their loved one was buried, nothing more. The Dutch, though, knew this hallowed ground well. They had watched American quartermaster troops turn one of their fields into a cemetery in late 1944. They had watched the endless trucks full of bodies drive past their homes. Many of these young, heroic soldiers they did not know. Some, with whom they had shared their homes during the bitter cold winter of 1944-1945, they knew and loved.
