Beckham County, OK - Military: Letter 3 re Leroy E. Cartmill
Thursday, 27 April 2006

Submitted by: bisscherouxnuth@homelnl  (Joseph Bisscheroux)
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 Copyright. All rights reserved.
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American Cemetery Margraten

 

Dear Mrs. Hill.

 

First hand information.

Google  “margraten”, choose “Amerikaanse Begraafplaats Margraten” and you’ll find pictures 
of the American Cemetery Margraten made by Cor and Joke whoever this may be.

You can choose for the British language and that is almost the same as yours.

Choose “Stichting Adoptiegraven Amerikaanse Begraafplaats Margraten” and you’ll see 
the page Memorial Day 28 Mei 2006. 

 

I hope you enjoy the information you get.

 

My wife and I were talking about what kind of information you would like to get. (My wife 
spoke and I had to listen)

We concluded that you would like to know how and what about adoption.

Because we believe in a life after this our loved ones who left us are not forgotten, 
we take care of their graves and visit them on day’s like their birthday, the day they died etc.

As we were liberated American soldiers came to our region for rest. They were embedded in our 
houses or lived in shelters in the meadows.

Local people and GI’s became friends.

Of course they had to go back to the front, but some of them came back later and told that 
friends both party’s knew got killed and were buried at Margraten Cemetery.

Of course the promise was made to look after the grave of their mutual friend.

In Margraten an organization was founded to organize the adoption of the graves because it 
couldn’t be accepted that on Memorial Day, for instance, some graves were covered with 
flowers and other graves not.

Now the whole region is proud because of this adoption organization but it was only a handful 
of men who did it. That is life.

The adopters were registered in a card index.

The organization knew that adopters died or left the region with no one who took over the 
adoption responsibility.

Now the adopter’s database is computerized and this made it possible, with help of the 
municipalities and the government of the province Limburg, to clean up the database.

They discovered what soldiers had no adopters anymore and this was made public.

That was the reason to me to adopt two more graves.

I asked for graves of members of 507th close to the grave I already adopted and that is how 
it happened.

 

American people react as if it is something heroic. That is not true. I get more than I give.

The last is that I got in contact with you.

But let us start at the beginning.

We visited the Cemetery and special the grave of Joe W. Milligan from Texas killed in Action 
March 27 1945. That was all we knew and because of what people said about the difficulty to 
get in contact with their relatives we didn’t try to get more information.

I retired in 1983 and started to find out my roots.

It must have been 1988 as we visited the Cemetery as my wife said: “You know your ancestors 
till 1584 and from him you know nothing.”

At the Cemetery office I got information about the veterans organizations and the addresses 
of some Archives.

I asked the archives for his casualty report and the veteran’s organization of his division 
for information about his comrades.

In his casualty report the name of his parents and his home address was registered.

Now I knew he was from Cuero Texas. I wrote to his home address and got a letter back telling 
me how they appreciated what I did but he didn’t know the Milligan family. He had brought back 
my letter to the post office. I got a Letter from a lady who volunteered at the post office 
and she told me that she had been a classmate of Joe at High school. She had forwarded my letter 
to the post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Later she wrote that she had discovered Joe’s sister who lived with her daughter.

The veterans had informed the local newspaper and I got copies of newspaper with articles about 
Joe.

Now I’m in contact with these people.

It must have been the year before 9-11, that a group American tourists from Victoria Texas 
visited the Cemetery and my wife and I were invited to meet them.

It was very nice but as they were going back to the bus, a man came to the lady who was in 
charge and told her that his wife was a bit confused because they had seen her brother’s name at the Wall of Missing. Because I know I’m not the right man for a word of comfort I told the lady in charge if she would be so kind and write me the name of this brother and she could tell her that on occasions when I lay flowers at Joe’s grave I’ll also lay flowers at the Wall of Missing at his name. I got the information and was told the lady was very happy with my offer.

So far what happened to Joe’s home front.

Now the veterans.

Now I’m honorary member of the 17th Airborne Division Association and I’m very proud of that.

I got in contact with some of his comrades for instance the man who was with him as he got 
wounded in the Ardennes. This man had been hospitalized for many month’s but Joe was fit 
again to join operation Varsity where he got killed.

I got in contact with another comrade of Joe who gave me the address of a comrade who was 
with him as he died. I wrote this man and he answered that he indeed had been next to Joe 
when he got killed but, also he didn’t want to get remembered at this horrible time he 
would try to find some pictures and other things to send me.

I wrote back that I understood that he had stored it in a closet in a dark corner of his 
brains and thrown away the key. I asked not to look for the key to do me a favor.

Because of my membership of the Airborne Association, I received their magazine.

In one of their magazines I read the call of a lady who asks the members of the association 
to send a card to a Mrs. Grandbouche this Mrs. Grandbouche would reach the 100 in some weeks. 
We had to send the cards to the lady who asked for the cards. She would give the cards more 
or less official on behalf of the association. Mrs. Grandbouche’s son was buried at Margraten 
Cemetery.

I wrote the lady that, on that special day, I would lay some flowers on her son’s grave, 
take a picture and send it to her so she could give it to Mrs. Granbouche.

So I did, but I also asked the local newspaper to ask the readers to send this lady a 
congratulation card.

Later I got a letter of the lady that had started this all that she had received many 
cards from the Netherlands. My picture she had enlarged, framed and given to Mrs. 
Grandbouche.

I could taste in the letter how happy Mrs. Grandbouche was.

The story above looks as if I’m fishing for compliments.

Read the story as if you are I and taste that I got much more than I gave. Not talking about 
freedom they gave me. Sincerely  Joseph Bisscheroux