[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 41, Number 19 (Monday, May 16, 2005)]
[Pages 779-781]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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

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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.
    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

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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. 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 Veers 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.