Fifteen minutes before the telephone conversation with Mariska van der Kraats, co-founder of the Veterans Search Team (VST), it is announced that the body of nine-year-old Gino has been found. The team played an important role in the investigation. On Friday, the team found Gino’s stuff. A suspect was arrested that night, and the body was found on Saturday afternoon. “The press release is now out,” says Van der Kraats. Did she already know? “I can’t say anything about that.”
When the VST is deployed, always via the police, an alarm is sent to 2,400 volunteers. Sixty people can be on location within two hours, all wearing a yellow vest with a logo (an angry owl with below: “quietis semper et paratus” (always calm and ready). VST geoanalysts study the maps of the search area and decide where the search teams can be deployed promisingly. The search map can be followed on its own VST app. In rows of twenty combs “search teamsa strip of land. At the end they ‘flip’ and walk back – until the whole area is searched. Searched areas are marked with (ecological) toilet paper.
At the same time, a drone team searches through the air, and an underwater drone team through the water. There are mountain bike teams and tracker teams to look for tracks. And: there is a catering team in the base camp.
Next best thing
On Friday, the team found Gino’s stuff. During a police press conference on Saturday it was announced that the find provided one of the tracks that led to the perpetrator. The search in Kerkrade for the missing Gino was the 32nd this year.
The VST is deployed annually on average for sixty urgent missing persons. It is a foundation, mainly dependent on donations. Still, the team looks more like an elite military unit than an amateur club with good intentions. Five years ago, the team didn’t even exist.
It started with the disappearance of Anne Faber in 2017. Five nights passed without a breakthrough. Despair grew. Faber’s family demanded the deployment of the army “to expand the search”. But the deployment of Defense is only possible after an official request for assistance from, for example, the police. And besides, it takes time. Mariska van der Kraats: „Then my husband [veteraan Dennis van der Kraats] and I was approached by a friend of the Faber family,” says Mariska. “Whether veterans couldn’t help search. being veterans the next best thingafter the army.”
Mariska and Dennis called veteran friends and posted calls to veterans’ private Facebook groups. Within two hours they had two hundred volunteers, by the end of the day four hundred. “The Netherlands has a hundred thousand veterans,” says Van der Kraats. “And veterans know other veterans.”
Every quest is a new mission, an opportunity to do something good
Mariska van der Kraats, founder of VST
That same day they undertook a search in the woods of Den Dolder. They did not find Faber, but the work was not in vain. “It’s also about excluding areas. You never know for sure, it’s human work, but once we’ve searched an area, we’re 98 percent sure there’s nothing there. Then the police can search elsewhere.”
The police appreciated the efforts of the veterans. And more importantly, the veterans appreciated it. Mariska: “You don’t go to Defense for the money, but to contribute to society. When you stop working, it disappears. VST gives people the opportunity to contribute again. That feels good.”
The Van der Kraats couple then decided to set up a foundation, with a view to making one annual commitment, “perhaps two”.
Psychological damage
At the VST there are police officers, firefighters, paramedics and a casual forest ranger here and there. But 85 percent of the volunteers are veterans. Why? Mariska: “Partly because veterans are trained. Normal citizens sometimes erase traces of a possible crime. Or on a quest next to a highway: if you start on the wrong side of a forest, you can just send a group of wild boars on the road. There are so many factors, veterans have the knowledge to deal with them.”
In addition, the VST helps ‘damaged’ veterans. “A small percentage of our volunteers have psychological damage,” says Van der Kraats. “We offer camaraderie and discipline. We look out for each other.” Her husband, Dennis, told in a television program Intersection about his time as a soldier in Afghanistan. He came back “as someone else”—full of guilt and shame. Thanks to VST, he found more peace. Van der Kraats: “Every quest is a new mission, an opportunity to do something good.”
Warm bath
Military Alfons Coeling was there from the start. He is still active in Defense – logistics, office job – but he missed the “split-second work” he did when he was a firefighter in the Air Force. “I saw the commitment of the veterans in the disappearance of Anne Faber and I also wanted to contribute.” He started out as a member of the search team, but was trained through internal training to become a deputy group commander and member of the mountain bike team. Now he is being trained as a tracker.
“It was a warm bath. I actually came there to search for missing people, but I quickly saw that it also has another function. People with trauma have come back after a broadcast. People who sit at home all alone, almost pathetic, and don’t dare to go out on the street. You see it blossom. They are taken for full. Their qualities are used. Suddenly they come twice a week, even if they don’t have to.”
Many veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Also read: ‘Veteran is now only helped if he beeps’ (2019)
Van der Kraats emphasizes that the VST is very mixed: “All layers of the population. People who have lost their limbs by a bern bomb. There is a place for everyone, in the search team or with the catering.”
Area cordoned off
The search is successful in about half of the bets. Often the team finds stuff, sometimes the missing person. In most cases, the missing person has already died. It sounds risky, exposing vulnerable people to, sometimes, heinous crimes.
According to Coeling, that’s not too bad. “You can indicate that you do not want to be at the forefront.” He himself has never seen a corpse, even though he was on several ‘successful searches’. “When someone is found, only four people see it: the finder, a medical specialist, the group commander, and – if he is with him – a police officer. The area is immediately cordoned off. The rest withdraw.”
And the people who do see it? Van der Kraats: “There is an extensive aftercare process. There is a meeting on return. A debriefing with extra guidance. We have specialists to help. And the ‘finders’ are called back in the evening.”
Important, still: “We have no contact with the family. We do sixty searches a year. It can’t get too personal.”
In 2018 NRC wrote about the search for Anne Faber. Also read: How citizens and police searched for Anne Faber for 13 days