I received from Ton Philips the following letter, which I have excerpted for space. The letter says it all.


“To all my classmates of Dartmouth 1953: Seventy years ago today my city was liberated by the 101st U.S. Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles.


“I was 12 at the time. Our city, and specifically the Philips factories, had been bombed twice, with many civilians living near the factory killed. My father had been a hostage for five months the previous year, and had escaped a second arrest by climbing out of his office window. In an attempt to get my mother to reveal where my father was hiding, they arrested her and took her to a concentration camp. Miraculously she was released after only a week. The camp was subsequently moved to Germany. Of the 97 women in her barracks, only 17 survived.


“On September 18, 1944, we woke up and heard the American paratroopers who had landed the day before about 20 miles north of our town, Eindhoven, had liberated us. They were digging foxholes so they could defend the city in case of a German counterattack. Later that day Field Marshal Montgomery’s 2nd British Army reached Eindhoven. We watched as the tanks moved north to reach Arnhem, part of Operation Market Garden, about which the film A Bridge Too Far was made.


“The following day our city was bombed by the Germans. Five bombs fell in the garden of the house of my grandparents, where we lived during the war, but no one in our family got hurt. A short time later my father turned up. He had been hiding near where the paratroops had landed.


I am writing you all this to express my gratitude to America and the Americans who liberated us.


The war experiences we had endured were a major incentive for my parents to engage in the work of Moral Re-Armament as an attempt to make sure that such a war would not occur again. And at least in our part of Europe, we have had peace since 1945.


“I and many in Holland and other European countries are tremendously grateful. Thank you, America.”


—Mark H. Smoller, 4 Schuyler Drive, Jericho, NY 11753; (516) 938-3616; dartmark@gmail.com