1/6 Flowers on the war memorial of Moerstraten (photo: Willem-Jan Joachems).
The oldest war memorial in Brabant and probably in the Netherlands exists eighty years. It is located on the edge of Moerstraten. Nine men were buried here who came from the other side of the world to free us. She has not forgotten Moerstraten yet. But they are still being thought of outside of that.
There is a large tombstone with moss on a crossroads of rural roads. Names are chiseled in the stone such as Burns, Foster, Tremblay, Stronach and Irwin. The names are slightly weathered but readable.
Here Canadian tanks and soldiers advanced, at the end of October 1944 at the liberation of West Brabant. They were on their way to Welberg. There they had to make short work of the fierce resistance of the Germans. The battle in the Steenbergse Kerkdorp raged for days and ended in a massacre.
Nine Canadian soldiers were killed in and around Moerstraten alone. One of them was Lorne Russel Kirker from the province of Ontario, 24 years old.
Together with eight other men, Kirker found a temporary resting place here. In the empty land, between the fields on the edge of a bush. Their names then traveled by post to commanders in the field and they then informed the army pipeline overseas by post. The family in Canada then received the worst message that you can get: a letter stating that their loved ones had been killed.
In the case of Sergeant Clifford Irwin – also 24 years old – who died at Moerstraten, such a letter was also made. A Canadian General reported his widow Edith in Fort William in Canada. In it she is condolenced with the big loss. The general also pays attention to the ‘courageous sacrifice’ that he made. That’s how it went with many.
The former war grave near Moerstraten is now an exceptional place, but eighty years ago there were many hundreds of such temporary cemeteries. Shortly after the Second World War, Brabant was littered with so -called field graves. Places where fallen soldiers were hastily buried, often during the fight. Under a provisional crotch. On market squares, intersections and in verges and public gardens.
When it became peace, the thousands of bodies of friend and foe had to be dug up and picked up one by one. Special teams did that. For the German bodies there was a cemetery far away from civilization in North Limburg. The Allied dead were taken to official new cemeteries in Mierlo, Uden or Bergen op Zoom, among others.
During the Second World War in April 1945, for example, nine boxes from Moerstraten to the outskirts of Bergen op Zoom, where a large new Canadian honorary field was built.
The events must have left a deep impression in Moerstraten. The nine fallen from Moerstraten came from far, had never been here and died young. They were between 18 and 28 years old. This is how the idea arose for a permanent place of memory. There was a local collection campaign to pay a monument. According to tradition, it was a theology student from Moerstraten who set up the ‘crowdfunding’.
Stonemason
Then it went fast. Already in the summer of 1945 an impressive monument was erected, thanks to a stonemason from Bergen op Zoom. On a plateau, with granite cross, a large gravestone with the names, stone objects in the form of grenades and the logo of the Canadian forces, the ‘Maple Leaf’.
Organizing a ceremony was easier. The war was just over. Europe was still full of hundreds of thousands of liberators. Most soldiers had to go home. But there were far too few transport ships so that took many months. There were plenty of remaining Canadians who could participate in the commemoration for their fallen comrades. The commander was also there, one of the many liberators.
And so on August 26, 1945, people from the wider area came en masse to the Luienhoekweg for the opening of the monument. Commander Bill Cromb gave a speech at the unveiling. He said he was happy that the brave Canadians “did not stay behind in strange soil but with friends.”
In the years that followed, villagers kept the monument in honor. The city council lays a wreath on 4 May every year. A primary school in Wouw has adopted it. In 2008 the monument received a makeover.
Visit
The nine of Moerstraten have never forgotten in Canada. Whether family members could make the crossing is unknown. Many could never again visit the grave of their loved ones. That’s how Frederick Morrison’s father died shortly after the war. Frederick is commemorated in at least four places: in Moerstraten, on his grave in Bergen op Zoom, on the stone of his parents in Canada and on the digital monument of the Canadian government. Moerstraten was also included in the Liberation Route.
Brock Bendall is also one of the nine. He already had a daughter, Lois. Her name is chiseled in the Stone of Bendall on the Honor Field in Bergen op Zoom. And with that they were connected forever.
After the war, relatives were able to blame their self -chosen captions at the bottom of the stone. At Romeo Tremblay the parents had Ingraveren: ‘To the rest of the world you were only one but all the world to us dear son’. Translated: For the rest of the world you were one of the many but for us you were everything, dear son.
Parents and widows of fallen soldiers have since died. Children often only took over a vague memory. Sometimes grandchildren sometimes pop up. Like Jenna Kirker from Canada a few years ago. “Very special,” she said when she squeezed the grave of her great -grandfather Lorne Russel Kirker.
Lorne was also married and had a son, Douglas. He later passed life on to future generations.
