The Vlagheide in Schijndel turns red this week. No fewer than 15,000 flags are planted on the spot where in 1944 parachutists from Operation Market Garden landed. The impressive tribute commemorates the victims and is also a symbol of peace. Young and old come from far and wide to help put the flags. “You will get goosebumps from this,” says volunteer Bernadette Roestenburg.
Slowly but surely the Vlagheide, an artificial hill, turns from a former landfill place, into a red sea of flags. With his car full of flags, initiator Jean Paul de Vries drives up. “Things are going very quickly at this pace.”
He only has two days to put the 15,000 flags in ten hectares of land. “Fortunately, a lot of people come here to help voluntarily, including a school class from a village nearby. That is the new future, they have to think about the world.”
“In a place where the parachutists in misery actually landed in 1944, they now realize peace work,” De Vries says as he proudly looks at his young helpers. “They forget a lesson from a history book, but they will never forget this again.”
In March of this year, a former battlefield of the First World War in France turned red. The project was devised to commemorate war victims, but must at the same time also be a powerful symbol of peace and connectedness. De Vries: “I started it about six years ago to make people aware of the madness of war.”
“I want to show people that it is not normal for this to happen,” he adds. “I have always viewed the eyes of the soldiers and civilians at war. I always think, how can people do this to each other. I want to go against that and that’s why I came to this project.”
The flags are all red. “That stands for the flowed blood, but it is also the color of love. Every soldier is loved by someone. The masses you see here, let yourself be realized of what happened here.”
“It is something to be proud of when it will be ready later.”
The vision of the initiator appears to be worn much broader. For example, 18-year-old Réan Gerritsen comes all the way from Hardenberg in Overijssel to help De Vries. “In France, where the project took place for the first time, I was also there. I think the idea behind it is very cool.”
“It is something to be proud of when it will be ready later,” adds Réan, while he continues to stab the flags on his clogs. “I’ve already put a few hundred today and tomorrow I will continue. I sleep in one Bed & Breakfast Around the corner. “
A little further on, Bernadette Roestenberg from Liempde is. “I’m going to start my first flag like that,” she says proudly. “I am here, because I want to commemorate and I am for peace. When you are busy here, you will get goosebumps. It really dries until you through how serious war is when you see this.”
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