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That was a sad but wonderful video. Thank you for sharing it.
Seeing the video and a few days earlier the whole precession on CNN as it reached Hilverum brought back memories of when I was in The Netherlands in 1970 and road on some of the same roads during a vacation trip by Coach from Amsterdam to Zurich via Germany. Schipol Airport was brand new and everything in the Netherlands was was tidy clean and the roads were perfect and looked as if they had been paved the day before. Now some 40 going on 50 years later, the roads are still perfect and I wonder if there is a single pothole patch anywhere in the country (I think they could teach us volumes about how to build and care for roads). The Dutch have their faults but are a decent people to the core and for this to happen to them is so sad. The Netherland population is 1/7 of Americas so a similar tragedy here would have taken nearly 1400 lives so this in magnitude is like 9/11. Americans need to remember that in 2001 the Dutch stood with us without having to be asked.
As a Canadian, and in particular one who served in the Canadian Forces for thirty years................
I have nothing but the highest respect for the people of the Netherlands. They remember WHO it was who liberated their county, in the long ago times at the end of the Second World war. It was the Canadians, and we left 6691 of our guys buried in THEIR country.
They have a school program that sees EVERY 10 year old child, spend a whole school year, learning about a individual Canadian soldier who is buried in their local military grave yard. And tending to their grave, at least once a week, for an hour. They also have some "back yard graves " that are on the grounds of a private home, as that is where they were buried, when they died.
On a number of occasions, as a CF military police officer, I was stationed in Europe, doing personal protection for Canadian diplomats, and Ambassadors. In Holland, a Canadian soldier CANNOT buy a meal. or a drink in a bar. The Dutch won't let you......they will insist that they buy for you, as a Thank You for their Liberation in 1945. It was quite normal to be invited home for meal or to meet their Granma, who was alive in those horrible years of starvation and occupation.
The Dutch have defended freedom, long before much the rest of the world. They provided refugee for Puritans from England. They fought a devastating war with Spain rather than allow the Inquisition, and were valiant warriors against the Nazis.
They deserved much much better with regard to this incident.
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