Mission
The Fields of Honor Foundation would like to offer a unique tribute to the thousands who have been buried in the American War Cemetery and Memorial Netherlands in Margraten through the project "The Faces of Margraten." It hopes to do so in particular by giving their names a face in two different ways.
First of all, it would like to do so by continuing its work on its Fields of Honor – Database, in which information and photos of those buried in Margraten has been collected since 2009. All information in this database can be accessed online for free. Through the project "The Faces of Margraten," the foundation has the opportunity to further gather information and photos of soldiers who have not yet been added to the database and to complete the profiles of the soldiers who already can be found in the Fields of Honor – Database.
However, the project's main goal is to decorate as many graves and names on the Walls of the Missing with a personal photo of the soldier to put a face with the name. Through this way, the foundation hopes to finally give our liberators a face, more than 70 years after the liberation of the province of Limburg and the Netherlands. The foundation will do so biannually around May 4 and 5, when the Netherlands commemorates their war dead and celebrates the liberation of the country in 1945.
At the beginning of this project, the foundation possessed personal photos of approximately 2,000 soldiers who either have been buried in or are memorialized at the Margraten Cemetery. It, therefore, is aware that it will not be possible to decorate each grave or name with a personal photo. Nevertheless, we hope that many other photos will be found. In order to reach this goal, solid communication about the project in both the Netherlands and the United States is fundamental. By generating awareness of the project, the foundation hopes to reach adopters, relatives of soldiers, fellow researchers, and veterans' associations who all may have photos and information of those buried in Margraten. Currently, more than 5,000 photos are available.
The foundation considers it to be important to continuously reflect on the sacrifices made by these American soldiers as the current international context still shows us that freedom cannot be taken for granted. Being aware of the human costs of freedom is important in preventing possible conflicts in the future. The Fields of Honor Foundation hopes to enhance this awareness through this project. In particular for younger generations it is important to make them aware of the destruction of war. After all, they have never experienced World War Two or any other war, and the generation who has and can tell them about that war rapidly passes away. The foundation, therefore, also would like to actively involve schools in the proximity of the cemetery.