The year’s major 80th anniversaries of D-day are behind us. However, commemorations are still being held by the towns and villages that were liberated throughout 1944 as the allies advanced through Normandy and into mainland Europe.
In eastern Holland, people are commemorating the battle to liberate the neighbouring villages of Overloon and Venray. The present inhabitants definitely do not forget. Venray has a series of commemorative public benches, each of which has a 6ft high metal sheet dividing it in half. A silhouette is cut into the metal, so that if you sit on the bench, you have the outline of a person sitting beside you. They are clearly marked in English “Venray remembers”.
The town itself lies in an area of wet and muddy peat bogs known as The Peel, and the autumn and winter of 1944 were the wettest and coldest of the century. Venray was liberated in October that year, at huge cost. The cemetery has 693 graves, and a local group is attempting to find photographs of every man with a named headstone. So far they have 487 photos and these are placed by the headstones on special days. One of those days is Christmas Eve, when each headstone is lit by a candle.
Among the mainly British graves are those of 22 Canadians, five New Zealanders, four Australians and one Polish serviceman.
This military cemetery is unusual in that it also contains the grave of a civilian. He was William Rippon, a war correspondent killed in March 1945. He was reporting on men of local regiments for the Peterborough Citizen and Advertiser. Rippon had served four years in the British army during the first world war and, aged 57, is the cemetery’s oldest casualty.
The ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation involved children, a brass band, two pipers, a freedom flame, and wreath laying – tokens of thanks as only Dutch flower growers can provide.
One of the many striking things about the day was to be reminded of the extraordinarily young age of many allied servicemen buried at Venray – 130 of them had not reached the age of 21. Their average age was 25. One soldier was still 17 when he was killed. At the ceremony, two senior local students read tributes to this young man.
Just west of Venray there lies a vast German cemetery. Here the depth of feeling gives way to astonishment at the extent of the killing. It holds 31,598 German war dead.
My father was Lieutenant Colonel George Millett, a professional soldier. His battalion was involved in the hectic and heated fighting to liberate Venray. He was 41 when he and three members of his battalion were killed just outside the town.
He lies in Venray cemetery, alongside all the others.
Tony Millett is a retired journalist. After a career in television news he became a student again, gaining a PhD on British policy towards war crimes 1919-1945. Tony was born in February 1942; his father was killed near Venray in December 1944
