Memorial Day

24 May 2009

Today I went out to the Netherlands American Cemetery for the Netherlands’ Memorial Day Ceremony. I really felt sad that I was missing out on the Memorial Day stuff so I was really happy that they do something to commemorate it here. I missed the bus at 2:16, so I had to wait until the one at 2:46 and because of that I missed the first ten minutes which included the Star Spangled Banner. That was sad, but the rest of the service was so incredibly touching. There were all sorts of high ranking US and Dutch government and military officials who spoke about the meaning of the day. Then there was the laying on of the wreaths by lots of different important people. That was what really struck me. That went on for about an hour with all different people placing the wreaths. There were veterans from WWII and important military officials from all over in the world including Germany and Japan. It was really, really neat. There was a Navy band and a Dutch military band that alternated playing American and Dutch songs. They also did a volley and played taps, which made me cry of course. Then there was a flyover with US and Dutch Air Force doing the missing man formation. It was really touching. Honestly, it was the best Memorial Day Ceremony I’ve ever been to.

On the way home, I met a really nice girl named Iona who had adopted one of the graves in the cemetery. There are about 8,100 marked graves in the cemetery and another 1,700 memorialized MIA soldiers on the wall in the cemetery. Iona, along with about 8,099 other Dutch people, adopted one of the graves and takes care of it during the year. That is also incredibly touching to me. There is actually a waiting list to be able to take care of these graves. It’s amazing that they care that much about the graves of American soldiers that they never even met. It’s wonderful.