Holten Canadian War Cemetery

After my post of December 26th regarding Christmas at Holten Canadian War Cemetery, we received the following message and photo (taken June 2011) from Joe Cosby in Ontario:

“When we finally found the cemetery, there were about 30 – 40 Dutch, of all ages, wandering the grounds.

We brought with us 100 Canadian flags to randomly place on graves (given to us by our local Legion)

We made a point of approaching (gracefully) a very elderly Dutch couple ( i’m guessing mid 80’s)…..they immediately knew we were Canadian, due to a handful of flags in our hands.

They spoke little English, but were near tears when we offered them a Flag…… they walked away in some state of reflection, it was a beautiful moment.

Several minutes later, a young family came in, and the father was making a point of showing his young daughter particular graves (at least that was my observation)…… at some point after we said hello, his daughter ran up to us to say hello or something….. which is when i gave her one of our flags.

She ran back to her parents, with the flag held high… which is the exact moment I happened to have my camera ready, and captured the photo.

We were really amazed at the juxtaposition of the young Dutch girl, running amongst the graves of men, who most certainly never had the chance to hold a child of their own…….

We enlarged this picture and framed it with poppies, and donated it to our local Legion in St Catharines…..

After this we visited Groesbeek, Tyne Cot in Passchendaele, plus numerous others in France and including being at the Juno Centre for the D-Day service…… we captured some incredible pics that trip, nothing like this, in our opinion.

Hope you like it!”