Adopted Graves Christmas visit

Visiting adopted graves for Christmas:

December 23 2011, today I accompanied my friends Martijn and Jasper on a trip to the war cemeteries; Ardennes, Henri-Chapelle and Margra-ten. Martijn and Jasper are twin brothers and have a mutual passion for WWII history. They both adopted graves at the three war cemeteries. Martijn adopted 25 graves in total, Jasper 7 and I paid a visit to my 6 adopted graves who are all located in Henri-Chapelle war cemetery.

We drove to Ardennes war cemetery first. At 10.00 am we arrived at the cemetery and met up with the super intendant. Jasper and the super intendant work closely together to fill up the online database that Jasper created a while ago with friends. The database collects records of as many soldiers as possible. The super intendant told us stories of the war cemetery and eventually took us to his home, which is located on the premises. He is working on a special project. A while ago the metal name tags of the original wooden crosses were found in a bag underneath the ground. The name tags were used to identify the graves. The name tags will be used for a future project of which the super intendant couldn’t tell us about at the moment. Martijn was surprised to find the original name tag of one of his adopted graves in the pile of plates; Capt. Edwin Ross Herron

Next stop was Henri-Chapelle. This is where I visited my adopted graves; David T. Hines, David Lardner, Pvt Harold L. Lytle, John J. Jarozy, Richard V. Tiburzi and Pvt Percy J. Webre. While I was placing my flowers and candles, Jasper and Martijn went to their graves to do the same.

Last stop of the trip was Margraten war cemetery. We placed the last candles and bouquets of flowers at the graves and the wall of the missing. Martijn promised some American friends, who lost a family member during WWII, to take pictures of their family members’ grave. It’s just a simple thing to do for us, but so meaningful for the family members who can’t make the trip across the Atlantic to visit the grave. We had a great trip and could go home to celebrate Christmas, filled with joy!