The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Perth man attends Dutch ceremony to honour British soldiers.
British troops who died in battle to free Netherlands receive honorary citizenship
A Dutch town has bestowed a unique honorary citizenship on more than 300 British soldiers who died fighting to free the Netherlands during the Second World War.
The special honour was granted to the 328 men buried in the Commonwealth and War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery in Brunssum to mark the 75th anniversary of the town’s liberation.
More than 100 of the solders’ relatives travelled from the UK, and as far afield as Australia and Canada, to attend a ceremony yesterday.
Honorary citizenship is Brunssum’s highest municipal honour, with only 15 citizens having received it in past decades, and this is the first time it has been awarded posthumously.
The inscription on the soldiers’ medal of honour reads: “Their lives. Our freedom”.
John Davies, from Perth, was just three weeks old when his father, Rifleman Sidney Arthur Davies, was killed aged 23 on December 9, 1944, and then buried at Brunssum.
“My mother, when my father was killed, she received a wallet which had been in his possession when he died and in the wallet was a letter from my mother to my father telling him that I had been born,” he said.
Mr Davies explained his father, who served with the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), was wounded in fighting near Geilenkirchen in Germany and died at the Brunssum dressing station. He added: “I’ve always strived to do the best I can and I always think of my father when I do these things because I never knew him, but I can try my best to make him proud of me.”
A series of other memorial events are being held near Arnhem in the Netherlands this week to mark the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden. In September 1944, 35,000 British, American and Polish troops parachuted and glided behind German lines in a bid to bring the war to an end by Christmas that year.