After the public outcry over the removal of panels celebrating the Black soldiers buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery, Loes de Graaf explains why the location is special to her and how it builds new connections with America.

As a little girl, I didn’t realise I was growing up in a remarkable place. To me, it was perfectly ordinary: a village with plenty of traditions and a cemetery full of white crosses, where we would sometimes go to lay flowers.

My grandad, Huub, would sit me in the back of his red Fiat Punto and we would drive to the American cemetery in Margraten to bring flowers to the grave of a man called Hubert. That was all I knew. It was just something we did—part of my life in Margraten. I didn’t understand why Memorial Day was so important or why so many people came to honour the men and women who lay in that field near my home.

When I started primary school, I began to sense that there was more to it. My school was named Maurice Rose primary school, after an American army major general buried there. On the Friday before Memorial Day, our school would visit the cemetery to stand by major general Maurice Rose’s grave, which the school had adopted. He is the highest-ranking American soldier buried in Margraten.

Bit by bit, I began to piece it together: this cemetery was not just a quiet field of graves, but a monument to freedom—and our village played a special role in keeping that memory alive through the adoption of these soldiers’ graves.

Uncovering the past

At secondary school, my interest in history began to grow. I started to understand the stories behind those white crosses: the liberation of South-Limburg, about the young soldiers who died far from home, and about the people of Margraten who saw the cemetery being built.

My grandfather was one of them. When he was first interviewed about that period, I wasn’t allowed to watch. My parents thought the story was too intense for a 12-year-old. But that interview marked a turning point. It was the first time my grandfather spoke openly about what he witnessed.

He was only 14 years old when the war ended, and his family owned one of the pieces of land on which the American cemetery was built. He was actually the first person to see the Americans arrive and begin the construction — he was on his way to milk the family’s cow. He watched the first graves being dug and saw the bodies of American soldiers lying on the ground.

In the 1980s, my grandparents took over the adoption of a soldier’s grave: Hubert T. Bauman II from Lansing in Michigan. My mum looks after it today as grandad is 94 years old. Over the years, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. I started to realise that the name “Hubert” on that grave was not just a name. It stood for a person, a family, a life.

Finding Thane’s family

After finishing high school, I left Margraten to study elsewhere, though I regularly visited my family. Now I was driving grandad to the cemetery instead of the other way around. Then, in 2018, when I was 21, something very special happened. My mother managed to contact the family of Hubert, known to his relatives as Uncle Thane. That connection changed everything.

In October that year, my parents and I travelled to the United States. We met John Belen, Thane’s nephew, who was in Dallas for work. From that moment on, the adoption of Thane’s grave took on a whole new meaning. He became real to me. I wanted to know who he had been, what kind of man he was, and how his life had ended in the fight for our freedom.

I read and watched accounts and stories about his unit, which my dad had discovered in books about World War II. The following May, in 2019, a group of his nieces and nephews from Michigan came to the Netherlands for Memorial Day. Together we visited the cemetery and they got to meet my grandparents and we travelled to the place where Thane was killed, in the German village of Kirchberg.

Those days left a lasting impression on me—and filled our family with a deep sense of gratitude. The bond between our families has only grown stronger. We keep in touch, we celebrate milestones, we recently mourned the loss of my grandma together. And every year we remember their uncle Thane together when they visit.

A living act of remembrance

I’ve come to understand that my family, and so many others in Margraten, are part of something truly unique: a living act of remembrance, of supreme gratitude, that connects generations and continents.

Today is November 27, the same day 81 years ago that our soldier, Hubert Thane Bauman II, was killed. But today is also Thanksgiving Day in the US. Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks for the people that shape your life and today we will go to the cemetery in Margraten with fresh flowers and remember Thane.

That feeling of gratitude feels even stronger. I am thankful, not only for the freedom he helped secure for me and my family, but for the unexpected gifts that his sacrifice continues to bring: friendships, family ties across the ocean, and a deeper understanding of what it means to remember.

Documentary film

The story of the adopters of Margraten isn’t as widely known as it should be, but the documentary film we are working on will tell the full story of our adoption and so many others. Every adopter takes their task to remember their soldier very seriously and current events show us how important it is for our community to keep doing what we have been doing for 80 years: honouring, remembering and being grateful.

This documentary has made me think back to that little girl in the back of grandad’s red Fiat Punto and realise it was the start of something special. She didn’t really know what this place would come to mean to her. It was all so perfectly ordinary— until I realised just how extraordinary it really is.

Loes de Graaf is a volunteer for the Foundation for Adopting Graves at the American Cemetery Margraten and is a co-producer on the documentary film, The Adopted, which tells the story of her soldier and her village.