Mr. mayor, liberators, friends and family of our liberators, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Netherlands, welcome to Friesland. We are very honoured that you are with us on this very special occasion.
(speech John Jorritsma)
Dear liberators, tomorrow we celebrate that you liberated us, seventy years ago. It ended the darkest period in our recent history. You did it while risking your own lives. Some of you got shot and wounded, such as Robie Hancock. Some barely survived while landing on the beach on D-Day, such as Jim Parks. You were told that 85 percent of the soldiers were destined to die on D-Day. Luckily you proved them wrong. But you saw other soldiers dying. You experienced terrifying moments. Some of you couldn’t believe that you could die in uniform. It’s always the other guy next to you who is getting killed, as Okill Stuart would say to cheer himself up. You played your best game of poker while sailing to the beach on D-Day. It was easier to win the toughest game of poker than to reach the beach alive. You experienced situations in which you were the ducks and the enemy was the hunter. But, as John Richardson mentioned, in that situation you were too busy to be scared. Those situations forged a bond between you – military men – that is closer than brothers, as Gordon Bannerman described it.
By reading and hearing all your eyewitness accounts, it is even more impressive to realise what you did. You helped give us back our freedom. From Normandy to Leeuwarden, from Rome to Harlingen you fought for people you didn’t know and in a country you didn’t know, risking your lives. But you fought for values you knew and against an enemy that tried to destroy those values. You fought to help the people in Russia, where your grandfather grew up, as Anton Kulchin mentioned. You all had your own motivation, one that was greater than life. I would also like to thank Boyd Affleck, Art Boon, Ross Clark, Alyre Gallant, Alfred Hebbes, Ralph Kearney, Robert Otterman, Ryerson Picot, Ted Slaney, Paul Wile, Don White, via Kathleen Duke also Alan Canavan, who had to cancel this trip last week, and via his family also Harris Giles, who recently passed away. We can’t thank you enough for your efforts. For helping us. In your behaviour you encouraged us to fight for freedom with our military and our air force in other parts of the world, where those values of freedom are under great pressure. We are very blessed to have you here today, with eighteen liberators. You are an important connection to what happened here during the war. But as you know, a lot of your friends and colleagues didn’t make it to the end of the war. They sacrificed their lives.
Tonight we commemorate them, together with all the other innocent victims, and all the other liberators and victims who died in the wars since World War II. We commemorate them on the square where our fathers and grandfathers celebrated the end of the war, together with you, seventy years ago. There is one more veteran I would like to mention. William Stephens. For us, the fourth of May has been a special day ever since the war was over. We commemorate the victims of the war. For you it was already a special date before the war. It is your birthday.
And I want to thank you that you want to share it with us this time. I wish you a pleasant stay. Once more you can exchange your memories where you experienced them. You are here among the people you liberated, you are here among brothers. Thanks for coming. I also want to thank all the volunteers who have worked so hard in the past couple of months to make the events possible we attend today and tomorrow. We appreciate it a lot. I would now like to give the mayor the opportunity to address you.
