April 14 – Hasselt-Maastricht, Netherlands. Our first trip of the day is to the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in the little village of Margraten. It's not a huge place but most of the soldiers and airmen who are buried here were killed during Operation Market Garden.
When we arrived our Tauck tour leaders got dozens of white roses from under the busses and gave us each one to place on a grave. A nice touch. When you first enter the memorial you are in a large, walled courtyard, The Court of Honor, facing a tall tower. Down the center of the courtyard is a reflecting pool. To your left is a visitor's hall with two large engraved maps. One illustrates the actions during Market Garden, the other larger one shows the military actions in northwestern Europe starting with D-Day and continuing to the end of the war. On the walls of the Court of Honor are the names of 1,722 American missing who are buried in unknown graves.
At the end of the Court of Honor is a court wide set of stairs that take you up to the cemetery level. Here you see the headstones of 8,301 Americans who were killed nearby. They are arranged in 16 plots and as is the case in many overseas US military cemeteries the headstones are aligned in large sweeping curves. No matter how many I visit, from Arlington to Manila to Margraten it is always a moving sight.
The manager of the memorial was there to give us a guided tour. When you are in the cemetery proper and you look at the back of the tower you can see that it's the chapel and at 10am I found out it's also a carillon. The interior of the chapel is very plain. The altar has a carved wood face but is made of the same grey granite as the rest of the structure. It was nice of the manager to take the time to come a greet us and show us around but I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I stood at a distance where I could still hear his explanations but in a short time that was not an option. I left the Court of Honor and climbed the stairs to the cemetery. There I just walked among the headstones. In retrospect, when they gave me that rose to place it focused my thoughts and emotions on the names engraved into the headstones even more than I usually do.
It's usually not hard to find the grave of someone from Pennsylvania and that was true here. I put my rose in the ground at the headstone of Robert G. Peterson, a 2nd Lt. in the 571 Bomber Squadron whose fate was to be killed just two months before the war ended. As a 2nd Lt. in a bomber he was most likely a co-pilot and young although he could have been a navigator or bombardier. They flew B-17s so they usually had 3 or 4 officers aboard. I walked around the cemetery on my own for a while and then rejoined the group as they walked into the area. The manager wanted to tell us about one of the seven Medal of Honor recipients buried here, Lt Col Robert G. Cole.
He earned his MOH when he and his men made it possible for the 101st Airborne to link up with the 29th Infantry coming in at Omaha Beach. After taking hours of cannon, mortar and machine gun fire as well as a strafing by German fighters the pressure was building to take the city of Carentan that would allow the linkup. Cole figured that it was now or never so he had the US artillery to fire smoke shells at the on the German position and gave the order to fix bayonets. He started the charge himself with the small group of men around him. As others saw what they were doing they joined in on one of the rarest military techniques of WWII, a bayonet charge. In hand-to-hand combat they routed the Germans and allowed the two Army units to link up making their situation much more secure. He survived the experience only to be killed by a sniper before he received his medal.
Every Cross or Star of David in this place has a story. Many are probably unknown to anyone. But each had parents, siblings, relatives, wives, girlfriends and friends back in the US that received the sad news of their passing. I guess that's why I am usually struck by such a somber mood when I visit memorials. Sad!
There's a bowl on the altar in the chapel that had flowers in it. I'm pretty sure it always does. But there was a large wreath of spring flowers on a stand in front of the altar that said simply, 'In Memoriam from MSJHS Fremont, California USA'. I'm guessing that's Mission San Jose High School. I wonder what their connection is with this place. Must be a tradition started some time ago that continues to be honored.
I certainly found myself in a somber mood after this visit. Not unusual but maybe stronger than normal. It was fairly quiet on the bus as we drove away; perhaps I'm not the only one that was affected by the rose placement ritual.
After a respectful time our tour leader announced that we were leaving the Netherlands and heading into Belgium for lunch. If she hadn't told us we probably would not have known. We're driving on very rural two-lane blacktop and there wasn't a sign at the border. After about a 30-minute drive we turned into a very narrow gravel lane leading up the hill to Chateau Neercanne. Built in 1698 it was an operating farm and winery for a few hundred years. Now it's a wedding and banquet spot, and a charming one at that. The main house of the chateau is a restaurant. We are dining in the banquet hall. This unusual structure is part building part cave. The limestone caves here were used for aging the wines when it was a winery. Now they provide several banquet spaces of different sizes. We will be occupying the largest two of them.
From the entry we turned quickly into a limestone cave lighted by candles that led us around several turns until we emerged from the confines of the cave to find our banquet hall. Lengthwise, half of it was carved into the limestone hillside and half of it was in a cement building. They were serving from a wine bar as we entered. I was still in no mood to have wine so we selected seats and Diana chatted with our neighbors. Listening to the conversation lightened my mood and soon I was back in the game. They served the meal in a very unusual manner. I haven't bored you with many menus on this trip but time I'm going to do it.
The starters were set up in two different areas, one in each of the rooms and when you were ready you served yourself. They included: Carpaccio of Beef with parmesan cheese, capers and olives, cold salmon (fully cooked) with garden herbs and lemon-mint mayonnaise, mozzarella cheese and tomato salad with olives and sweet pepper vinaigrette, marinated mushrooms with sweet garlic, crispy gamba (fish) with puree of onions and potatoes and sweet potato soup with shrimp. That's just the starters. We haven't gotten to the unusual part yet.
The main course was veal with prunes and a puree of Nicola potato and cabbage. The unusual part was how you got it. We each took our plates and headed into the kitchen to have the chef serve us. Problem they have is that they belong to a gustatory society that does not allow non-culinary people into the kitchen. So we each were given a chef's cap and temporary status as prep-chefs to give us entry to the kitchen and out main course. Most people were good sports and wore the cap at least until they got back to their tables. In fact, most wore them for the entire meal. The veal was very tender and the sauce was delicious. They placed the potatoes on the plate using a pastry bag to form a long fat line. It looked like a string cheese snack. It was all very good.
The star of the show, however, was the desert. On the menu it was simply described as Chocolate Desert with Vanilla Cream and when it came to the table it really didn't look that special. In this case, looks were definitely deceiving. It looked like a two inch in diameter domed chocolate cake with a dark chocolate cross on the top. It was inside two circles, one of vanilla cream and one of apricot puree. I thought the circle of vanilla cream was what they were mentioning on the menu. When I cut into the chocolate dome, the inside was filled with thick, creamy vanilla. It was one of the most delicious chocolate things I've ever eaten. Truly outstanding! The rich chocolate cake's surface had been dusted with cocoa powder which made it look fuzzy and not very chocolaty. The reality was that the cake inside was probably some sort of flourless chocolate cake, very rich in flavor, then you hit the vanilla center and everything smoothed out into a mouthwatering flavor bonanza of the best kind, chocolate. Are you getting the idea that I liked the desert? Our drive back to Maastricht found me in a much better mood that the drive out.
When we arrived back in the city we embarked on, what else, a walking tour of the old town. I have to admit that after seeing a few Dutch Colonial towns from the Golden Age, I'm getting pretty jaded. They are still beautiful buildings; I'm just not taking as many pictures as I did earlier. One really unusual building was the church. It was obviously built at a time when it served not only a religious function but also a defensive one. It's about 5 stories tall and all walls with a small tower on each side of the front façade with an entryway in a two story structure to the left side of the main structure.
Every country has a problem with junk mail. The Dutch have a pretty good system in theory; I just wonder how well it works. The have a strip you attach above your mail slot. It can say 'Nee Ja' or 'Nee Nee'. If you want all your mail delivered you don't put a sign up and all of it goes in the slot. If you want junk mail that has your name and address on it you put up Nee Ja. No to the 'occupant' junk mail but Ja to the L.L. Bean catalogue with your name on it. If you don't want anything but first class mail address to you, you put up 'Nee….Nee', no to all of it. Wonder if it works.
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