From small lines of American graves, the camera of a drone then lifts up high into the air to show the shocking expanse of a WW2 cemetery. This is the astonishing footage of the World War II Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in the Dutch village of Margraten.

Passing by the cemetery is an old Roman road leading from Cologne to Boulogne. Built by the Romans, the road was intended for the military usage of Julius Caesar’s campaigns.

Scroll Down for Footage

Over the years, the road was used time after time by military leaders; Charlemagne, Charles V, Napoleon, and Kaiser WiIlhelm II all saw it as a path to success in Europe.

Despite their neutrality, Hitler invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, using the very same Roman road. On May 14, the Dutch forces surrendered. The royal family fled to Britain and Canada whilst leaving their country succumbing to German law and order.

In the early days of the occupation there was little resistance. An economic boom tempered the immediate fears of some of the country’s inhabitants. Others were fearing for their lives.

Until the Allied invasion of Europe, thousands of Jewish people were deported and sent away to extermination camps. The Germans paid a bounty to Dutch police and officials who could track down and identify Jews, although Amsterdam organized industrial action to protest the persecution.

By 6 June 1944, the D-Day invasion finally gave the Dutch population something to hope for. By September, the Allies were ready to invade Germany. By going through the Netherlands, the idea was to launch a large airborne and land assault to capture a series of 9 bridges across the Rhine river which would open a route into Germany.

British led “Operation Market Garden” failed to achieve its main objective and the Allies had to withdraw. Many men were lost along the way. The US 101st Airborne Division got to their target bridge too late, arriving after the Germans had blown it with prepared explosives.

The US 82nd Airborne also failed to achieve their objective which led to severe delays and allowed the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions and the rest of the German forces to organize a counter attack.

The operation lasted from the 17 to 25 September and explains, in part, the vastness of the American cemetery in Margraten.

Later, more successful attempts to enter Germany still saw their fair share of casualties. Twenty year old George J. Peters, a private in the 17th Airborne Division was dropped across the Rhine river near Flüren, Germany with his unit on 24 March 1945.

Once his feet hit the ground he single-handedly attacked a German machine gun emplacement that had opened fire on his group. He destroyed the position and was mortally wounded in the process. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor and his grave stone can be found in Margraten.

There are many other Medal of Honor recipients in the cemetery. Private first class Walter C. Wetzel, a 25 year old from Michigan, threw himself on German-thrown grenades during a fire fight in Birken, Germany. His actions saved the lives of those around him. His Medal of Honor was posthumously awarded by President Harry S. Truman in 1946.

The undertakings made by these Medal of Honor recipients will never be forgotten, their actions now written into the history books. But when we watch the drone footage we realise that there were thousands of men, all heroes in their own right, whose stories are less known.

Laying buried in the cemetery are the bodies of 8,301 Americans. Carved into stone tablets on the walls of the Court of Honor are 1,722 names of those whose bodies were never found.

As the drone pulls up we see the reflecting pool and the chapel tower. At its base sits the dark statue of a mother grieving for a lost son.

In a commemoration at the cemetery in 2005, President George Bush gave a speech where he mentioned the connections between America and the Netherlands:

“For the Americans who rest here, Dutch soil provides a fitting home. It was from a Dutch port that many of our pilgrim fathers first sailed for America. It was a Dutch port that gave the American flag its first gun salute. It was the Dutch who became one of the first foreign nations to recognize the independence of the new United States of America. And when American soldiers returned to this continent to fight for freedom, they were led by a President (Roosevelt) who owed his family name to this great land.”