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| Canadian Troops Liberate Amsterdam, 1945. |
Today the world celebrates VE- Day, that day in 1945 when World War II hostilities ceased in Europe.
In the former Soviet Union the celebration is delayed by one day, to May 9, because fighting there continued for another day.
The Soviet Union lost a higher percentage of its population (15%) than any other Allies – led by Belarus (25%) and Poland and the Ukraine (18% each).
Overveen, The Netherlands, May 4
On Friday, May 4, I was in Holland remembering the war dead with a visit to the Honorary Cemetery (Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal), which is identified as being in Bloemendaal but is accessed from the town of Overveen. It was Remembrance Day (Dodenherdenking) in Holland. On that day, the Netherlands remembers those who died in combat during WWII and in subsequent combat or peace-keeping operations.
The following day, the country celebrates Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag), a day of festivities at the ending of World War II for the Dutch in 1945, after the long Hunger Winter of 1944-45.
The hard-working Dutch people do not annually close their banks on either May 4 or May 5. But government workers have a holiday on May 5 and some Dutch people start their vacations on Kings' Day, since 2014 on April 27 (King Willem Alexander's birthday) and continue through May 5.
Memorials and festivals, such as a music festival in Amsterdam (the Bevrijdingsfestival), are widespread and many schools are on vacation at that time. Liberation Day is officially a holiday for everyone only when the last two digits of the year are divisible by five. So 2020 will be the next big celebration.
Here's how Hilda van Stockum described the joy that flooded Holland on May 5, 1945, in her 1962 book, The Winged Watchman:
At the Valfleury Cemetery in Laval, representatives of local military and historical groups remembered VE-Day on May 8. The first photo shows the laying of wreaths and flowers before the graves of the 14 airmen in two airplanes.
The photos shown here are sent by Jean-Louis Cholet, who was one of the two people mist responsible for getting monuments erected to the crews of the two Halifax III bombers.
One plane was piloted by a Dutchman (my uncle Willem van Stockum) flying with the RAF after being trained with the RCAF.
The other was piloted by an Australian (Thomas Henderson), whose son I met at the visit by the families of the airmen in 2014, during the 70th-anniversray year of D-Day. The two bombers that were downed had been on missions before and after D-Day, to remove gun emplacements and disrupt airfields and railway lines.
Every year, local students in the Laval area visit the gravesites and lay flowers on the graves of the flyers out of gratitude for the Liberation of France by the Allies.
With the placement of two monuments at the site of the crashes of the two Halifaxes, the annual memorials extend to these sites.
In 2014 I posted a memory of the coming-together of the relatives of the crews of the bombers. This was my third visit to the gravesite, but the first with my wife Alice, and with the largest number of relatives.
It was a special pleasure also in 2014 for us to meet Dr. Rex Henderson, son of the Australian pilot of the second Halifax, and Rex's wife Deborah. Alice and I traveled with them for several days to see the landing areas of the Normandy invasion.
Melbourne, Yorkshire, England
This year for the first time I went with my wife Alice to RAF Melbourne, the base in Yorkshire from which the planes from 10 Squadron took off.
I have written about this visit separately. In the post, I cite the statistic that 46 percent of all the crew members of the RAF Bomber Command were killed on missions. Perhaps some of the crew members believed that the statistics didn't apply to them, but the statistics don't know that.
The following day, the country celebrates Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag), a day of festivities at the ending of World War II for the Dutch in 1945, after the long Hunger Winter of 1944-45.
The hard-working Dutch people do not annually close their banks on either May 4 or May 5. But government workers have a holiday on May 5 and some Dutch people start their vacations on Kings' Day, since 2014 on April 27 (King Willem Alexander's birthday) and continue through May 5.
Memorials and festivals, such as a music festival in Amsterdam (the Bevrijdingsfestival), are widespread and many schools are on vacation at that time. Liberation Day is officially a holiday for everyone only when the last two digits of the year are divisible by five. So 2020 will be the next big celebration.
Here's how Hilda van Stockum described the joy that flooded Holland on May 5, 1945, in her 1962 book, The Winged Watchman:
On the fifth of May, Holland was liberated. Canadian troops marched into the villages and cities. Women and girls threw flowers and jumped on cars and tanks. Everywhere the Dutch flag waved. Children held bunched of flowers. People danced in the streets. Bells rang.Laval, France, May 8
Father and the boys set the Watchman in joy. Mother fetched flags out of her trunk, which they strung from one wing to the other, plaiting the sails through the gates in decorative patterns.
They were free!
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Laying of wreaths and flowers. The gravestone at
lower right is different form the others because it was
sent from the Dutch Government, not the British.
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The photos shown here are sent by Jean-Louis Cholet, who was one of the two people mist responsible for getting monuments erected to the crews of the two Halifax III bombers.
One plane was piloted by a Dutchman (my uncle Willem van Stockum) flying with the RAF after being trained with the RCAF.
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| The Laval student shown in first photo laying flowers on the graves. |
Every year, local students in the Laval area visit the gravesites and lay flowers on the graves of the flyers out of gratitude for the Liberation of France by the Allies.
With the placement of two monuments at the site of the crashes of the two Halifaxes, the annual memorials extend to these sites.
In 2014 I posted a memory of the coming-together of the relatives of the crews of the bombers. This was my third visit to the gravesite, but the first with my wife Alice, and with the largest number of relatives.
 |
| 2018 – A wreath for the Halifax piloted by Tom Henderson. |
Melbourne, Yorkshire, England
This year for the first time I went with my wife Alice to RAF Melbourne, the base in Yorkshire from which the planes from 10 Squadron took off.
I have written about this visit separately. In the post, I cite the statistic that 46 percent of all the crew members of the RAF Bomber Command were killed on missions. Perhaps some of the crew members believed that the statistics didn't apply to them, but the statistics don't know that.
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| 2018 – Remembering the crew of one Halifax, piloted by Willem van Stockum. |
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| 2018 – Honoring the crew. |
Statistics hide the face of the human costs of war. But they are the only way to convey the magnitude of the death and destruction that Hitler generated.
Estimates of losses from WW2 sometimes differ for gruesomely competitive reasons – "We lost more people than you did." Wikipedia averages several estimates, which is not necessarily the best approach.
Below is how one source summarizes the deaths world-wide by country from World War II, ranked in order of the estimated loss.
Country
|
Millions Dead
|
1. Soviet Union (USSR)
|
25
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2. China
|
15
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3. Germany
|
8
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4. Poland
|
5.7
|
5. Dutch East Indies
|
3.5
|
6. Japan
|
2.9
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7. British India
|
2.1
|
8. French Indochina
|
1.6
|
9. Yugoslavia
|
1.4
|
10. Philippines
|
0.8
|
11. Romania
|
0.8
|
12. France
|
0.6
|
13. Greece
|
0.6
|
14. Hungary
|
0.6
|
15. Italy
|
0.5
|
16. United Kingdom
|
0.45
|
17. United States
|
0.42
|
18. Korea
|
0.4
|
19. Lithuania
|
0.35
|
20. Czechoslovakia
|
0.3
|
21. Netherlands
|
0.3
|
Total of These Countries
|
71.32
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That's more than 71 million dead in these 21 countries. The losses weigh harder on countries that have a smaller population, and on population groups such as Jews who were targets of the Holocaust.
May 10, 2018 – Today I updated this memory of VE Day, May 8, with a perspective from three places – Overveen, Holland; Laval, France; and Melbourne, England.
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