    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2005, Book I)]
    [May 8, 2005]
    [Pages 773-775]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten,
    the Netherlands
    May 8, 2005

        Your Majesty; Mr. Prime
    Minister; Mr. Mayor; distinguished officials of the Netherlands;
    veterans and their families, including the 104th Infantry Division,
    known as the Timberwolves, the unit of Harold B. Welch, my father-in-
    law, the father of First Lady Laura Bush;
    Congressman Hoekstra; General Jones; General Franks;
    Superintendent Schwind; fellow Americans
    and friends: On this peaceful May morning, we commemorate a great
    victory for liberty, and the thousands of white marble crosses and Stars
    of David underscore the terrible price we paid for that victory.
        For the Americans who rest here, Dutch soil provides a fitting home.
    It was from a Dutch port that many of our Pilgrim Fathers first sailed
    for America. It was a Dutch fort that gave the American flag its first
    gun salute. It was the Dutch who became one of the first foreign nations
    to recognize the independence of the new United States of America. And
    when American soldiers returned to this continent to fight for freedom,
    they were led by a President who owed his family name to this great
    land--Roosevelt.
        Some of those brave troops are here with us today, and we welcome
    you, and we honor you. And they're here with their Dutch comrades. They
    share a love of liberty. In the war that came to an end 60 years ago
    this day, all those who fought for freedom made sacrifice, and many gave
    their lives.
        In the Voice of America's radio broadcast from London on the first
    V-E Day, the announcer asked Europe to ``think of these Americans as
    your dead too.'' In Dutch hearts, they already were. The Americans saw
    the Dutch spirit in action within weeks of liberation, when this new
    cemetery marked its first Memorial Day. It was still a time of hardship
    and want and deprivation, yet Dutch citizens from 60 local villages
    collected 20 truckloads of flowers so that every American grave here
    would be decorated when the sun came up on Memorial Day.
        And in the six decades since, the Dutch have continued this
    wonderful tradition by adopting and attending to the graves of the
    people they never met. Your kindness has brought comfort to thousands of
    American families separated from their loved ones here by an ocean. And
    on behalf of a grateful America, I thank you for treating our men and
    women as your sons and daughters.
        Today we join them at this hallowed ground. We come first to
    remember the young Americans who did not live to comb gray hair. Each
    man or woman buried here is more than a headstone and a serial number.
    Each person here has a name that is precious to some family. And in
    faded black and white photographs, each one here looks back at us in the
    full glow of youth: the fresh-faced American in uniform; the newly
    minted officer with a smiling sweetheart on his or her arm; or the young
    dad proudly holding a baby son or daughter on his knee. Every one of
    these Americans added his own unique contribution to the story of
    freedom.

    [[Page 774]]

        In this cemetery lies Willy F. James, Jr., one of seven African
    American soldiers from the Second World War to win the Medal of Honor.
    On this memorial wall is inscribed the name Raymond Kelly, a young man
    studying to be a priest in Detroit who could have sat out the war but
    gave up his exemption to serve his country. And in this ground rests
    Maurice Rose, the brilliant division commander who led the first Allied
    troops into Germany. Here they rest in honored glory with thousands of
    their comrades in arms, and here we come to affirm the great debt we owe
    them.
        We come to this ground to recall the evil these Americans fought
    against. For Holland, war began with the bombing of Rotterdam. The
    destruction of Rotterdam would be a signpost to the terror and
    inhumanity that the Nazi lie would impose on this continent. Like so
    much of Europe, over the next years of occupation, Holland would come to
    know curfews and oppression and armed bands with yellow stars and
    deportation for its Jewish citizens.
        The winter just before liberation was the worst. When Dutch railway
    workers went on strike to make it harder for the German army to
    reinforce their troops, the Nazis responded with a blockade that made
    fuel and food even more scarce. Amsterdam would wait for liberation
    longer than almost any other city in Europe. Before it came, more than
    20,000 Dutch men and women and children would perish in what was called
    the ``hongerwinter,'' and many others were reduced to eating tulip bulbs
    to stay alive.
        For some, V-E Day brought hope for normalcy after almost 5 long
    years of occupation. For many others, including a Jewish girl named Anne
    Frank hiding in an attic, V-E Day would come too late, 2 months after
    the institutionalized evil of Bergen-Belsen took her young life. And for
    still others, V-E Day would bring a lasting sense of solidarity with
    those who fought. One resistance leader put it well: ``We are one
    because, together, we believed in something.''
        And so we come to this ground to remember the cause for which these
    soldiers fought and triumphed. At the outset of the war, there were
    those who believed that democracy was too soft to survive, especially
    against a Nazi Germany that boasted the most professional, well-
    equipped, and highly trained military forces in the world. Yet this
    military would be brought down by a coalition of armies from our
    democratic Allies and freedom fighters from occupied lands and
    underground resistance leaders. They fought side by side with American
    GIs who only months before had been farmers and bank clerks and factory
    hands. And the world's tyrants learned a lesson: There is no power like
    the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights
    for that freedom.
        Private Robert Lee Rutledge was one of those soldiers. He gave his
    life fighting against a brutal attack by two Nazi divisions. Weeks
    before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter on her fifth birthday.
    The letter was addressed to little Ginger Rutledge in Lumpkin, Georgia. Private Rutledge told his
    daughter, ``You're too young to understand it now, but you will later.
    It's all for your benefit. You came into a free world, and I want you to
    finish in one.''
        Sixty years later, Ginger is
    still free, and she does understand. And so do her three children and
    eight grandchildren. Private Rutledge did his job well, and the men who
    fought and bled and died here with him accomplished what they came for.
    The free America that Ginger grew up in was saved by their courage. The
    free Europe where many of them lie buried was built on their sacrifice.
    And the free and peaceful world that we hope to leave to our own
    children is inspired by their example.
        On this day, we celebrate the victory they won, and we recommit
    ourselves to the great truth that they defended, that freedom is the
    birthright of all mankind.

    [[Page 775]]

    Because of their sacrifice and the help of brave Allies, that truth
    prevailed at the close of the 20th century.
        As the 21st century unfolds before us, Americans and Europeans are
    continuing to work together and are bringing freedom and hope to places
    where it has long been denied, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon, and
    across the broader Middle East. Freedom is a permanent hope of mankind,
    and when that hope is made real for all people, it will be because of
    the sacrifices of a new generation of men and women as selfless and
    dedicated to liberty as those we honor today.
        May God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:09 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    Queen Beatrix and Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the
    Netherlands; Mayor H.J.G. (Harrie) van Beers of Margraten, the
    Netherlands; Gen. James L. Jones, USMC, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander,
    Europe; Gen. Frederick M. Franks, Jr., USA (Ret.), Chairman, American
    Battle Monuments Commission; and Frank Schwind, Superintendent,
    Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial. The National Observance of
    the 60th Anniversary of the End of World War II proclamation of May 3 is
    listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.