‘Adopters’: how the Dutch rallied to honour their liberators after WWII
Thousands of American soldiers died liberating the Netherlands from Nazi Germany. After the war, the Dutch started adopting their graves and are still bringing them flowers 80 years on.
It was summer, 2021. We were slowly emerging from the pandemic when I visited my in-laws in Sweikhuizen, a tiny village in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands. It’s a peaceful bolt hole from the city of Amsterdam, where I live with my family.
One morning, my mother-in-law, Gerda, walked into the garden and picked some fresh flowers. “We gaan naar het kerkhof, Rob,” she announced. In English it means: “We’re going to the cemetery.” Its official name is the Netherlands-American Cemetery at Margraten, and it is around 30 minutes from their home. I didn’t even know it existed before she mentioned it, which felt quite shameful. My World War II education got me only as far as D-Day.
We drove through pristine Dutch countryside, past small villages and open fields, until we pulled into the car park of the cemetery, which is managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission, part of the US State Department. We walked in and to the left on a large stone wall were engraved the names of soldiers, their regiments and home states. Fred, Dennis, Vincent, Robert, Ashby, Willard, John. New Jersey, Massachusetts, Alabama, Indiana, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and California. On the tower above us, an unattributed quote:
“Each for his own memorial earned praise that will never die and with it the grandest of all sepulchres, not that in which his mortal bones are laid but a home in the minds of men.”
Meeting Louis
We walked up the steps beside the tower and before us were 8,301 white marble headstones, quarried and transported from Italy, the cemetery’s superintendent tells me. My father-in-law, Wim, immediately snaked his way between the white crosses, with a small piece of paper in his hand. He kept looking down at the paper, and then looking up like he was on a treasure hunt. Eventually, he arrived at the headstone of a man called Louis Smith from Pennsylvania.
The flowers were for him.
We stood by his grave as though we knew him, or we were family, and then solemnly placed the bouquet down at the base of his headstone. To be honest, this all felt a bit weird to me. My mother had died late in 2019 and we had been unable to visit her grave in Scotland for two years because of travel restrictions, but here I was paying my respects to Louis. I didn’t know who he was, so I asked Wim.
“Who is this?”
“Louis,” he said. “He’s our soldier. My family adopted him after the war.”
“Adopted him? Why adopt?” I asked.
His reply was very firm: “We owe them our freedom.”
Quiet heroes
I found this very moving. Here were two elderly Dutch people, probably toddlers when this soldier arrived from America to face down the Nazis. They had picked fresh flowers and had brought their son-in-law (me) and their grandchildren to honour him, a man they had never met, or ever knew: Louis from Pennsylvania. More questions followed.
“How many soldiers are adopted?”
“All of them,” Wim replied. “Every grave— all 8,301 has an adopter.” And then he added this: “It’s not easy to adopt any more, because there is a long waiting list.” A waiting list? To adopt a grave? I found this astonishing. I returned to Amsterdam the following day and called up the Foundation for Adopting Graves at the American Cemetery in Margraten, a small foundation that runs the program, and introduced myself to a man called Ton. I wanted to check what my father-in-law had told me by Louis’ grave.
Every year only around 30 to 60 graves become available for adoption, Ton told me, and the waiting list was heading towards 1,000 people before the foundation decided to close it. There are currently 700 people still on it. I discovered that many of these adopters, who were children when the war was ending, had taken on the commitment of their parents and were now passing the graves onto their adult children. This was a duty: to keep the stories and memories alive of the soldiers who saved them — and their country — from the Nazis.
This is Limburg.
I asked some Amsterdam friends about Margraten and its adoption program, and it wasn’t widely known. And over the years that I worked on this story, people came forward with staggering accounts of kindness and reverence. I would drive two and half hours down to Limburg and speak to the adopters. I contacted Peter Schrijvers, author of The Margraten Boys, which details the long history of the adoption program. His book lays bare a David vs. Goliath battle by this tiny farming community to remain guardians of these soldiers, defying regional and national Dutch governments along the way.
From a small committee formed in 1945 — and run by a local priest — the adoption program has kept itself intact for eight decades, carefully allocating US soldiers’ graves to people as they became available, hosting American families and tour groups, maintaining databases of adopters and delivering newsletters. An army of quiet heroes. And in America, and in the Netherlands, people don’t know they are doing this.
The blooded field
Many of the soldiers buried at Margraten died in Operation Market Garden, which was launched three months after the Normandy D-Day landings, in September 1944. The Allies dropped 35,000 troops into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to secure five bridges over the Rhine into Germany. Three airborne divisions landed at separate locations to seize road bridges along a route through the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem.
Some of the most intense and costly battles followed. It was designed to end the war early and was part of a series of campaigns and operations between autumn 1944 and spring 1945 as the war raged to its bloody conclusion. Operation Market Garden was described by writer Cornelius Ryan in A Bridge Too Far as “one of the most daring and imaginative operations of the war”. By the end of the operation the Allied casualties — killed, wounded and missing — were more than 17,000, compared to an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 in the Normandy landings.
Across the region thousands of Americans, Polish, British and Canadian forces were killed in the push to end the war early.
Their sons, too
All of the losses were acutely felt by the Dutch; it was like they were losing their own sons. This period of the war had brought young American and allied soldiers into the heart of their communities. Thousands of them lived in the towns and villages of Limburg: in homes, schools or tents. They would swagger around the streets handing out American food and candy to kids before deployment. They were the boys who came to liberate them; but now they were returning on the back of trucks.
“They [the Dutch] had been heartbroken when truck upon truck returned from the battlefield loaded up with corpses of boys who had brought so much hope and optimism to their war-torn lives,” writes Schrijvers.
Amid the fiercely cold winter of 1944, American commanders then faced a challenge: where to bury their dead and honor them in a way befitting their bravery. They searched for a burial ground in the Netherlands, somewhere big enough for tens of thousands of bodies. A few miles inside the border was suitable farmland outside the village of Margraten. It was remote, quiet and the local community had warmly welcomed the soldiers into their lives.
‘What can we do?’
The trucks kept coming from defining battles inside Germany, in the nearby city of Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest as well as the Ruhr pocket campaign, where Louis died. Convoys of dead bodies became part of daily life and with them an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and helplessness started to build in Limburg. Locals made regular visits to the burial site, to pay their respects, but they wanted to do something more and organised a plan to approach American commanders.
What followed was classic Dutch: they formed a committee.
As described by Schrijvers, they balloted to decide on a president and set some basic goals. “We, as Dutch citizens,” they solemnly declared to the American commanders. “feel an obligation towards the American soldiers who died not just for their country, but also for our freedom, and we want to do something for them in return.”
This matched what my father-in-law told me by Louis’ grave. The committee would collect money to buy flowers and pay for a Holy Mass in the boys’ honor every third Sunday of the month. When the war finally ended, in May 1945, Margraten “went wild”. Peace didn’t stop the steady flow of visitors to the graves. In fact, they came more regularly. A local man offered to adopt one of the graves, and then another… and gradually there were too many for him to look after on his own. Adoption emerged as an appropriate way to say ‘thank you’.
Adopter №1
I decided to make a film about this. I started tracking down some of these adopters and asking them the same question I asked my father-in-law: why adopt a soldier you didn’t know? I started with Louis’s adopter, because this was my first contact with the story. Louis is adopted by my father-in-law’s sister, Alma, one of 13 children. She recalls hiding in the neighbour’s basement during the war as a little girl; she is now 89 years old and lives in an apartment block in Heerlen with her husband Pierre. She inherited Louis’ grave from her parents.
We travelled with Alma to Margraten, her first trip in 3 years because of the pandemic. She emerged from the car with her walking aid. Watching her journey to that grave is possibly one of the most heroic things I’ve seen in my life.
The second most heroic thing is what she decided to do by the grave: she handed Louis over to her son, Joost. It was so quiet you could barely hear the words: “Let’s keep him in the family,” she said. She tells me her parents tracked down Louis’ relatives in the US after the war; his family even visited the Netherlands once, but then they lost contact. They have tried rekindling the connection with remaining relatives, but it is difficult.
Part of the family
While there are language barriers between adopters and American families, the connection that is built when they touch base is often profound. I meet the de Graaf-Bessems family at their home in Margraten. Outside their home they fly the American and Michigan state flags to honour the family of their adopted soldier, Hubert T. Bauman II.
Bauman arrived in Europe on August 31st, 1944, in Cherbourg, France and died on November 27th in the German village of Kirchberg. He was 23 years old and was awarded a bronze and silver star and a Purple Heart for his bravery. ‘Uncle Thane’ to his family, his grave was adopted by Huub Bessems, who is 93, in 1984. Huub tells me about the day the diggers rolled in to excavate the Margraten field which became the cemetery. He was a curious 14-year-old boy during the war.
By the end of 1944, death was everywhere. Soldiers’ bodies were being delivered to Margraten stacked on trucks, but carefully buried one by one. Huub stood and watched as they were placed into the ground. He tells me he knows these were not scenes for any boy to witness.
As we talk, the past casts its shadow over his face and he tells me about the importance of saying ‘Thank you’ to his liberators. His adopted soldier would become a second son in his family of four children: Maria, Wiel, Jolanda and Elly. It is common for adopters to treat their soldier as their own family: their photos sit alongside those of their family members. Behind me, there are two photos of Bauman in the front living room of their home.
While adopters go to great lengths to find an American family connection, some get lucky, others don’t. I ask Maria, Huub’s daughter, how she tracked down Bauman’s family. She found a family connection with a man from Michigan, called John Belen. She introduced herself to him on Facebook and asked if he was related to Hubert T. Bauman II. Then she told him that her and her father had been bringing him flowers for more than 40 years. Belen was stunned and shared the news with his wider family. Now, he visits the de Graaf-Bessems family every year on Memorial Day.
Lessons in gratitude
Next, I visited Maurice Rose Primary School in the village, named after the highest-ranking military officer buried at Margraten. Inside the school, I walked upstairs to meet a teacher, Erik, who showed me the school’s shrine to General Rose. I watched and listened as he asked his charges if they knew any adopters. One by one, the children’s hands go up. The war touches everyone here. The village is bonded with its adopted soldiers from the cradle to their grave.
I arranged to film Erik’s class visiting the grave of Maurice Rose on Memorial Day this year. They do this every year. As we waited in the cemetery, the rain came teeming down. Erik stood behind General Rose’s headstone in front of three rows of Dutch kids, explaining to them the great sacrifice he made for their freedom. The kids fiddled with their umbrella handles and twirled their feet in the puddles below.
As he closed off his talk, Eric directed the children to Margraten’s new visitor center. But he peeled off, and headed towards the top end of the cemetery. “Where are you going?” I asked. “To place flowers on my soldier’s grave.” Me and my crew followed him in the rain. I noticed now that the cemetery was quite busy; adopters were everywhere, marching to the beat of the past, with flowers in hand.
A good deed
So shines a good deed in a weary world. But it’s more than a good deed. When I first walked into Margraten, I didn’t quite understand it. Now, its history and the voices of the past soar through its blossom-filled trees. Why bring flowers to a stranger’s grave? That was my central question and it reverberates through this story and through time. I don’t have the answers yet, but I suspect it is far simpler than I thought.
Maybe we don’t celebrate small acts of kindness enough today, or even notice them at all?
Moving from the front garden to Louis’ grave made me think hard about my own family. My grandad, Donald McKelvie, landed at Juno Beach on June 6, 1944. I used to listen to gran’s stories about his escapades in far off lands. He was saved by a kind Dutch man, she told me once. Before victory was declared in Europe his regiment liberated a concentration camp in Northern Germany. In Hamburg, they married in the ecstasy of peace. And I am standing here in this cemetery now, saying ‘Thank you’ to Louis Smith by accident? Possibly not.
Margraten is a village with an enormous heart and sense of duty; maybe I am here to learn something from them? About kindness, respect, reverence and duty. Maybe I’m the one to tell this story? I hadn’t ever come across the concept of soldier adoption before, but I saw a story here worth sharing with the world. Over the three years, it often moved me to tears. The great commitment these adopters make, to their soldiers and their families, is something heroic: a lesson in human connection.
And they want America to know: We’re looking after the boys.
As Schrijvers notes: “Dutch adopters did not need to see the faces of American relatives to realise that what they were doing was worthwhile. Indeed, it did not matter to them if anyone in the US knew what they were doing at all. Whether out of deep gratitude or sheer humanitarian concern, caring for the Margraten Boys simply remained the right thing to do.”
Never forget
I didn’t know where this journey would take me, but I have a clear objective for my film. Millions of Americans are connected to what happened in Europe during World War II, but only a tiny fraction get to travel here, to see this simple act of kindness and understand its raw power in context. To hear the birds, feel the Limburg breeze and the steady drumbeat of the past. I can show them that a good deed is still worth something today, even if it goes unnoticed.
Although, what these adopters do is more than just a ‘good deed’; it is a quiet warning about the lessons of history. For 80 years, Margraten’s adopters have done their bit, holding a quiet vigil for the young Americans and their allies who liberated them from Nazi Germany. An adoption certificate costs them €10; it’s a small administration fee to keep this program of memorial and kindness running. And what do they ask for in return?
Only that we don’t forget.
Do you want to help me finish the film? I am fundraising to finish this documentary and have set up a Kickstarter campaign to invite people to come onboard and make this story as powerful as it can be. To sign up and contribute to ‘Adopters — a feature documentary’ please click here
