A Sacred Promise of Honor, Sacrifice, and Eternal Gratitude

Remember Us by Robert M. Edsel

Robert M. Edsel, with Bret Witter, has written an essential work of nonfiction, Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II. It relates the chronology of the background, origin, and post-war official establishment of the Netherlands American Cemetery through twelve real people selected to represent the broad spectrum of military personnel and civilians, Americans and Dutch, involved in its creation and maintenance.

This is a story that needed to be told in full to honor and remember the courage of the many who gave their lives for the cause of freedom and the Dutch populace who vowed to never forget their rescuers. The authors provide a fascinating, thoroughly researched, concise history of World War II as experienced by the courageous citizens of The Netherlands, who were occupied by their Nazi German neighbors beginning in May 1940. They resisted, fought back, nearly starved, and made many sacrifices in their steadfast determination to assist the Allies.

These authors previously collaborated on The Monuments Men, about the military personnel who rescued art stolen by the Nazis during WWII. Eleven years of research went into the creation of this work, which, after being made into a successful film written, directed, and starring George Clooney, went on to sell nearly a million copies.

Robert M. Edsel is a former professional tennis player, the founder of a gas and oil exploration company, which he sold to focus on art and architecture, and the creation of the blockbuster book. Bret Witter is a gifted wordsmith and co-writer, able to shape the ideas of others into coherent, skillfully crafted books that have met with great success. These include The GRITS Guide to Life with Deborah Ford and #1 bestseller Dewey (the Library Cat) with Vicky Myron, with whom he co-wrote three follow-ups about this Iowan feline.

A Monument to Shared Sacrifice

In 2007, Robert M. Edsel founded the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that “is dedicated to raising global awareness about the importance of respecting and preserving the world’s shared cultural heritage.” In addition to honoring the service of these wartime heroes from fourteen nations who served as Monuments Men and Women during World War II, the Foundation continues their mission by locating some of the hundreds of thousands of still missing works of art and cultural objects and returning them to their rightful owners.

Administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial is the only US military cemetery located in the Netherlands among the 26 cemeteries and 31 memorials and monuments maintained outside of the United States. It is situated on 65.5 meticulously tended acres of former farmland, six miles from Maastricht in the southern part of the country, near a historic road Caesar used with his legions marching from Cologne, Germany, to France.

There is a tall memorial tower with a chapel and a statue at its base representing women lost in the war, separated by a reflecting pool opposite a Court of Honor lined with Tablets of the Missing, which record 1,722 names of unknown servicemen killed in combat. Rosettes are inserted to mark the names of those later identified. Beyond this are sixteen plots laid out in long curves containing the graves of 8,288 US military dead, with their headstones providing information for each individual.

From Battlefield to Hallowed Ground

The small province of Limburg in this compact country had the misfortune of being the epicenter of four major battles of WWII: Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge, all of which entailed enormous casualties. The cemetery became a peaceful, solemn memorial as a result of 12 years of extensive work by the US Military to replace the larger wartime muddy, unkempt burial site, which contained nearly 20,000 servicemen and women. Postwar, American families were given the opportunity to have their loved ones disinterred and returned stateside for burial in their hometowns.

A large number of these families chose to have their sons or daughters remain in the hallowed grounds in Margraten based on the care and concern of the Dutch villagers who had adopted each grave and the perpetual care of the United States government. In 1946, at the Memorial Day service, 40,000 Dutch citizens attended the solemn ceremony, having previously decorated each grave with locally grown flowers. Three generations of these valiant civilian volunteers have tended each grave, corresponded with the families of as many of these fallen warriors as they have found, and conducted tours for mourners and visitors.

Within this cemetery lie the remains of Major General Maurice Rose, the highest-ranking American officer killed in combat in Europe, several Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, 44 sets of brothers, and a number of women nurses, medical and administrative staff among the nearly 10,000, with each deserving to have their stories told. They have been epitomized by the twelve individuals Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter selected as representatives. Most of the military servicemen included in these narratives did not survive the war and are buried here. Among the major characters is Walter J. Huchthausen, an architect and college instructor who became one of the Monuments Men.

Emilie Michiels van Kessenich, the wife of the Mayor of Maastricht and mother of 14 children, worked with the American Allies who arrived to drive out the Nazi Germans and, from 1945 until her death, continued to work on behalf of the fallen soldiers as one of the individuals responsible for the local community’s adoption of the gravesites of the fallen. The Foundation for Adopting Graves at the American Cemetery Margraten is now part of the Dutch Cultural Heritage Network, as is the Foundation United Adopters American War Graves established in 2014.

These members have collected over 3,000 photos of the fallen heroes that are on display during the Dutch Memorial Day weekend and were published in 2023 by Amsterdam University Press in a commemorative book, The Faces of Margraten.

The cemetery would not have existed had it not been for the nightmarish gravedigger and undertaker duties assigned to the 260 noble men of the predominantly African American 960th Quartermaster Corps. These men worked 10-12 hours each day, six days per week, were isolated, poorly housed, and only able to shower weekly after long hours of working in muck and mud during the historically coldest and wettest winter of WWII. The first 300 dead were buried during Thanksgiving 1944. Graves were dug by hand with shovels and picks according to a standard of 6’ deep, 6’ long, and 2.5’ wide.

This process was complicated by frozen bodies, frozen ground, and frequent flooding. There was a lack of machinery to assist in the task, with a daily goal of burying three bodies per soldier worker, which was seldom possible to meet. The bodies were gently wrapped in mattress covers and placed with dignity into the graves. Despite the overt racism and hostility from some of their own countrymen, these servicemen reverently handled the remains.

Stories of Valor, Devotion, and Unsung Heroes

One of the featured stories concerns Jefferson “Jeff” Wiggins, the fifteen-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers, who left his job as a delivery boy to join the US Army. He worked his way up from private to staff sergeant with the 960th Quartermaster Corps and was assigned to burial duty for two months. After returning home, he was able to receive a high school diploma based on his military service. He then earned a history degree at the all-black Tennessee State College. He taught English and math to veterans in Alabama before re-enlisting in the Army, where he served with distinction in the Korean War.

Relocating to New Jersey, he earned a teaching degree followed by a PhD. Jefferson Wiggins spent the next 30 years in education as a teacher, administrator, and college professor. In 2009, initially reluctantly, he took part in a Dutch documentary From Farmland to Soldier’s Cemetery about burying the war dead. That same year, Dr. Wiggins received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Margraten with his wife and two of their grandchildren to make a speech about his experiences. When interviewed, he stated, “It was up to us to give them as much honor in death as they had shown in life.”

Legacy of Remembrance

For the 2025, 80th anniversary of Memorial Day, Robert M. Edsel made the following statement: “For my part, I’ll be at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, placing a flag on the graves of Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole, Captain Walter Huchthausen, and the many other soldiers buried there whom I now think of as family. I will honor their sacrifice and give thanks to them, alongside the Dutch adopters who, for eight decades, have kept aforever promise — setting an inspiring example of the transcendent power of gratitude. Their actions remind us that grief is universal and that humanity knows no national or racial boundaries. Because in the end, we all want to be remembered, somehow, someway, by somebody.”

Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II serves to keep this sacred promise.

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