While a band plays cheerful songs, mine hunter Zr.Ms. Vlaardingen in the naval port in Den Helder. The ship departed on August 7 and has been on exercise in the Mediterranean for almost 4 months. Today the ship came back home, and so the navy people are back in time for the holidays.
“It is cold,” says the ship’s commander, Dave de Kruijff. In the Mediterranean it was constantly between twenty and forty degrees, a lot warmer than November in the Netherlands. But he and the crew take the cold for granted. “After four months, this is a welcome homecoming.”
The mine hunter Zr.Ms. Vlaardingen is part of a NATO exercise and participated in an exercise in the Mediterranean Sea with ships from other NATO members.
Watch the crew being welcomed by family members in the video:
The ship could possibly be called up in recent months to assist in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Then it would be deployed in the Black Sea. But in the end this turned out not to be necessary.
De Kruijff is sober about this: “It was no different than usual. Something can always happen with a minehunter, so whether we go to the Mediterranean or the Baltic Sea, or whether we are just in the North Sea, it does not matter difference.”