Black Soldiers Buried White Soldiers. They Couldn't Sit With
The Most Important WWII Story Nobody Knows - In November 1944, the 960th Quartermaster Service Company—260 African American soldiers—arrived in Margraten, a Dutch village in South Limburg that had just been liberated. Tasked by the U.S. Ninth Army to establish the Netherlands American Cemetery, these soldiers faced one of World War II's most gruelling and psychologically traumatic missions: burying approximately 20,000 American soldiers killed in combat.
First Sergeant Jefferson Wiggins, who had enlisted at 16 to escape Jim Crow Alabama and the threat of the Ku Klux Klan, led his men through a brutal winter.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
If Only More Americans Could See This Place | NY Times Opinion
By Jonathan Darman* | Nov. 11, 2025
Video modified from source. This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall.
Eighty-one years ago this week, men from the advancing U.S. Army stood in a rain-soaked farm field in Margraten, the Netherlands, and established a cemetery. Over the winter and spring that followed, the bloody final months of World War II in Europe transformed that quiet stretch of land into a huge American cemetery, its soil turned over with thousands of fresh graves.
[...]
Credit: Jan Staiger for The New York Times
There are fewer and fewer people still alive who lived through World War II. Margraten and the other cemeteries serve as reminders of the sacrifices that Americans made to free Europe. And, at a time when many Americans want to retreat from our responsibilities to the rest of the world, they offer us a warning.
The Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten includes a map of Allied military operations in World War II. Credit: Jan Staiger for The New York Times
The American service members buried in the soil of Europe grew up in a country where many respectable politicians claimed America had no business preserving peace on the European continent or promoting freedom in the world. There was no NATO, no United Nations, no American-led global order.
When you stoop down on European soil to read an American soldier’s name on a grave, you see how policies sold as “America First” can lead to unthinkable suffering and loss.
[...]
Approximately 8,300 graves are at Margraten, one of a handful of out-of-the-way cemeteries for America’s war dead near the German borders of France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Many of the service members buried in these places died in the western Allies’ assault on Germany and its forces in late 1944 and early 1945.
[...]
Credit: Jan Staiger for The New York Times
[See more under the cut.]
Margraten lies in the southern part of the Limburg region of the Netherlands, where American troops were billeted in the final months of the European war and where the role of the United States in liberating the country from Nazi occupation is fondly recalled. The Dutch people have long taken pride in the grave adoption here. In a tradition that stretches back to the first Memorial Day after the war, every service member honored in the cemetery has a Dutch adopter who brings flowers and visits his or her place of memorial. Some even correspond with the deceased’s family in the United States.
Every grave at the cemetery has a Dutch adopter. Credit: Jan Staiger for The New York Times
This has always been an essential task of the World War II cemeteries — shrinking the distance across an ocean through the memory of shared sacrifice.
[...]
In each of the World War II cemeteries, rippling rows of identical white marble crosses and Stars of David mark the final resting place of Americans killed. Each bears an inscription that includes the person’s name, rank, unit, home state and date of death. Some say simply: “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.”
(Above left): The “Mourning Woman” statue represents women who lost loved ones in the war. (Above right): Restoring a gravestone inscription. Credit: Jan Staiger for The New York Times
Walking through these rows of graves, you feel the sorrow the war visited on every corner of American society. A service member from Oregon lies next to one from Pennsylvania who lies next to one from Arkansas. Dumas is next to Ulander, next to Giudice, next to Smith.
[...]
It is now more than ever, after all, that America needs the message of its World War II cemeteries. On a Veterans Day when optimism about the American experiment can be hard to summon, they transport us back to a moment when America was an essential force for good.
"The Mourning Woman" | Credit: Shutterstock
In today’s Europe, the need for such a partner remains. At Margraten that August morning, I spoke with a Dutch woman who’d come to visit the cemetery with her young son. He was learning at school about “the problems in the world,” she explained. He’s a little bit nervous, she said, about what would happen “if the Russians come.” She gestured at the rows of graves all around her: “So it’s very important to see everything.”
Not far from where we were standing was Margraten’s “Statue of the Mourning Woman,” a large bronze cast sculpture by the American artist Joseph Kiselewski. It depicts an outsize female figure, a trio of doves at her side, gazing down on an obliterated tree. All she sees is what too many of us have forgotten: the lonely, terrible sorrow that comes in the wake of war.
_____________
*According to The New York Times: "Mr. Darman, a journalist and historian, is the author of 'Becoming FDR.'”
Note. The video and all photos were modified from their original source (i.e., the above New York Times article). The order of display for the first photo was changed. The last photo was added from Shutterstock.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
