by Hans Smit
LAST week in De Daily Dutchman we reported about the Sunset March in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. For ten years citizens and military, always led by a veteran, have been walking a short daily march across the river Waal. This in honor of the fallen American soldiers who made a heroic crossing in 1944 during Operation Market Garden (Battle of Arnhem).
In 2022, U.S. Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue and several staff members were in Nijmegen to participate in the commemorations around Nijmegen and Arnhem. Sunset March chairman Peter Grotens invited Donahoe and his men to walk with them. They were, Grotens says not without pride, deeply impressed: “They all wanted to feel the ‘holy’ water and some took sand with them.” At that time, the US general said he wanted to organize a similar march in Fort Bragg.
He succeeded, because since June 2023, a daily march is also taking place (click for link) at Fort Liberty (to wish Bragg has since been renamed). In the absence of a bridge, a strip of red asphalt 33 feet wide by 0.6 miles (the length of The Crossing) was constructed in North Carolina. The Sunset Liberty March currently ends at a flagpole with the Stars and Stripes, but there are concrete plans to place a monument here as well to honor all of Fort Liberty’s fallen servicemen and women.
The Sunset Liberty March is open to veterans, active military and reservists, as well as Gold Star Families.
* Hans Smit reports from the Arnhem/Nijmegen region.
