Shane and Denise Williams at the grave of Arnold Grose in The Netherlands.
Denise Williams at the grave of Arnold Grose in Margraten, The Netherlands.
Denise Williams, with Margaret van Zinnicq Bergmann and my son Michael van Zinnicq Bergmann at the grave of Arnold Grose in The Netherlands.
It’s funny sometimes how this gigantic world sometimes grows so small. Such was the case with the inquiries I made into the final resting place of a Mossyrock World War II aviator shot down over Holland.
The family of Lt. Arnold Grose planned to install a marker at the Salkum Cemetery in April to commemorate what would have been the young man’s 100th birthday. The COVID-19 pandemic trimmed attendance at the event, but Audrey Rhodes of Chehalis said another gathering is Saturday during the Grose family reunion to honor her brother who died when she was five.
As I sent emails trying to discover who had been taking care of Lt. Grose’s grave in Holland, I finally received the name and contacted Eugene van Zinnicq Bergmann. The story he shared brought tears to my eyes and pride to my heart.
“My uncle Tom Berger adopted two graves at the American Cemetery in Margraten,” he wrote. “One of the graves was Lt. Arnold Grose. Before my uncle died, he asked if we would continue to look after the graves, which we agreed to do.”
At Margraten, Dutch families have adopted the graves of fallen American servicemen and maintained those graves for decades. It’s a labor of love and gratitude for the sacrifices our nation paid to free the Netherlands from German tyranny.
Last year, Bergmann said, he received a call from someone in Stitching Adoptie Graven Margraten, the adopt-a-grave program, asking him to contact Shane Williams, superintendent of the Netherlands American Cemetery. Williams, a Mossyrock native, discovered that a veteran from his hometown rested at Margraten.
When he contacted Bergmann, Williams said he and his mother, who was visiting from Mossyrock, wanted to meet the people who had adopted Grose’s grave.
“I knew that my best friend’s uncle was buried there,” said Denise Williams, whose best friend, Beverly Fitzhugh, was the niece of Lt. Grose. He was her mother’s brother.
Denise Williams visited her son in 2010 at the Normandy American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in France, and again in 2018 at Margraten.
“He made a special effort to give the family all the info he could get with a meeting and photos of the gravesite caretakers,” Williams said of her son.
After graduating from Mossyrock High School in 1996, Shane served in the Air Force and later as a firefighter before starting his “dream job” in 2009 with the American Battle Monuments Commission. Today, he and his family live in Paris, and he oversees white marble headstones of more than 3,300 American servicemen killed during World War I and World War II, including those buried at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, Belleau Wood, and Chateau-Theirry in France. A video of Williams speaking about his job can be found online at www.abmc.gov/news-events/news/meet-abmc-staff-superintendent-shane-williams
“I wanted to find a mission that I could believe in,” Shane Williams said. “I get to be a small part of these very important sites overseas that have a lot of history.”
Williams enjoys showing the graves to family members and school groups, especially when their eyes light up.
“You know that you made a difference, and they walk out those gates and they’ll never forget that moment, whether it’s putting sand into a headstone so it looks like it’s painted gold or helping fold the American flag; they’ve never done it before. Those are some of my favorite moments.”
The work never ends for the dedicated French employees or the superintendents.
“If I was ever to finish my administrative duties and make sure that they’re perfectly managed on a day-to-day-basis,” Williams said, “I’d still have 3,000 stories to learn. So we’re never finished.”
I’ve always been impressed with the excellent English skills of Europeans, especially in the Netherlands. Bergmann described his meeting with Denise and Shane Williams in eloquent words.
“Together we all walked to the white cross, the grave of Lt. Arnold Grose,” Bergmann said. “We stood in front of the white stone cross; it was very moving, especially having heard a little more of the background of the young serviceman who had given his life for our freedom.”
Shane Williams carried with him a tub of sand from the beaches of Normandy, which he rubbed into the letters on the cross. The name of the fallen soldier popped out prominently in gold. They placed U.S. and Netherlands flags on either side of the cross. Denise Williams placed red roses on top of the cross while Bergmann and his wife, Margaret, put the tulips they had brought into the cone.
“It was a surreal moment!” Bergmann wrote. “We were strangers standing together. We had only just met the superintendent and his mother for the first time, but after the short ceremony to honor Lt. Arnold Grose, we felt a bond. We were united in the same cause: to keep the soldier/serviceman’s story alive. They are ‘fallen but not forgotten.’”
Hearts were linked across an ocean where similar missions in both Margraten and Lewis County, at the Chehalis Veterans Memorial Museum, where the in gold letters echoes those of Bergmann: “They shall not be forgotten.”
•••
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
