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Walking arm-in-arm with the Dutch queen, American World War II veteran Kenneth Thayer returned Thursday to the tiny Dutch village that he and others in the 30th Infantry Division liberated from Nazi occupation exactly 80 years ago.
Thayer, now 99, visited Mesch, a tiny village of about 350 people in the hills close to the Dutch borders with Belgium and Germany, and was greeted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima for a ceremony beginning nearly a year of events marking the anniversary of the country's liberation.
After Thayer and the king and queen were driven in a vintage military truck into the village along a mud track through orchards and fields, Maxima reached out and gave a hand of support to Thayer as he walked to his seat to watch the ceremony paying tribute to the American liberators.
American troops from the 30th Infantry Division, known as Old Hickory, were among Allied forces that liberated parts of Belgium and the southern Netherlands from German occupation in September 1944.
Thayer still recalls the day. He told The Associated Press he was sent out on a reconnaissance mission the night before the liberation and saw no Germans.
“And so we went up the next day and we found that I had accidentally crossed the border and, we didn’t think anything of it, you know, it was just another day on the front line,” he said.
What felt like another day of work for soldiers who had fought their way from the beaches of Normandy, through northern France and Belgium to cross the Netherlands on their way into Germany is forever woven into the history of the village as the end of more than four years of Nazi occupation.
While Thayer was one of the guests of honor at the event, he paid tribute to his comrades who didn't make it through the war and said he was representing them.
“It wasn’t just me and there (are) hundreds and hundreds of guys who didn’t make it. They’re not here, you know,” he said.
Residents of Mesch were among the first Dutch citizens to taste postwar freedom, at about 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, 1944, when Thayer and other American infantry troops crossed the border from Belgium. A day later, they reached Maastricht, the provincial capital of Limburg and the first Dutch city to be liberated. It would take several months more for the whole country to finally be freed.
A schoolteacher, Jef Warnier, is remembered as the first Dutch person to be liberated, although others may have beaten him to the honor. After spending the previous night in a cellar with his family, he emerged to see an American soldier holding a German at gunpoint.
“Welcome to the Netherlands,” he said.
“They were treated to beer, I even think the pastor offered a few bottles of wine,” Warnier later recalled.
The fighting in Belgium, the Netherlands and into Germany took a heavy toll on American forces. An American cemetery in the nearby village of Margraten holds the graves of 8,288 servicemen and women.
In an enduring symbol of Dutch gratitude to their liberators, local people have “ adopted ” all the graves, visiting them regularly and bringing flowers on birthdays and other special days.
Jef Tewissen, 74, who was born in Mesch where his father was a farmer, said the gratitude is deeply rooted in the region.
“I have only heard good things from my father about the Americans,” he said after watching the king and queen walk along Mesch's main street.
The feeling, Thayer said, is mutual.
“The Dutch people were always tops with us," he said.
