There’s a cemetery in the Netherlands consisting of 8,300 US veterans who died in WWII. For the past 70 years, Dutch families have come to the cemetery every Sunday to care for a grave they adopted. Hundreds of people are currently on a waiting list to become caretakers.
While the families of American soldiers who have died in defense of freedom throughout the world know too well the harsh reality behind John F.Kennedy’s famous words about service, there are foreign nations like the Netherlands where the locals continue to pay their respects to those men and women in the U.S. military who gave the ultimate sacrifice over seven decades ago so they could live in freedom.
Ever since the people of the Netherlands were freed from Nazi Germany occupation on May 5, 1945, by Allied Forces, the Dutch have been paying their respects to the American soldiers who died in nearby battles during World War II by adopting their grave or name on the Tablets of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial.
Located in the Dutch city of Margraten, the permanent American military cemetery is overseen by the American Battle Monuments Commission, an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.