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I was born three years after dad came home from England following the cessation of fighting in Europe.

A Royal Canadian Air Force paymaster, Flt.-Lt. John W. ‘Jack’ Robertson (1910-1992) never ventured into battle. If he had, we might never have met.

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I thought of him while placing ‘lichtjesavond’ — night lights — on the graves of two of the 1,619 soldiers buried in the Groesbeek Canadian Military War Cemetery, 10 km southeast of Nijmegen, Holland’s oldest city.

The cemetery, whose memorial inscription ‘Pro amicis mortui amicis vivimus’ translates as “We live in the hearts of friends for whom we died,” is unique in The Netherlands, since many who lie here were reinterred from graves in nearby Germany.

Though I did not know them, such thoughts are fitting for anyone related to, or a friend of, a Second World War veteran who could, through changing circumstances and changing tides, so quickly have been plunged forever through the gates of hell.