Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery
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The Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial (French:Le Cemitière de Guerre Canadien Groesbeek) is located about three kilometers north of the village of Groesbeek, Netherlands. The cemetery contains 2,338 Canadian soldiers of World War II. Within the cemetery stands the Groesbeek Memorial, which commemorates members of the Commonwealth land forces who died during the campaign in north-west Europe between the time of crossing the Seine River at the end of August 1944 and the end of the war in Europe. The Memorial consists of twin colonnaded buildings which face each other across the grass forecourt of the cemetery, between the entrance and the "Stone of Remembrance." The names of the men whose graves are unknown are inscribed in panels of Portland stone built into the rear walls.
The cemetery is unique in that many of the dead were brought here from nearby Germany. It is one of the few cases where bodies were moved across international frontiers. It is believed that all fallen Canadian soldiers of the Rhineland battles, who were buried in German battlefields, were reinterred here (except for one who is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery). General H.D.G. Crerar, who commanded Canadian land forces in Europe, ordered that Canadian dead were not to be buried in German soil.
Among those buried here is Victoria Cross recipient Aubrey Cosens and memorialized are Gustave Biéler, Frank Pickersgill, and Roméo Sabourin, Canadian members of the Special Operations Executive who were sent undercover into occupied France and were caught by the Germans and sent to Concentration Camps where they were executed.
Thousands of Dutch children tend the graves of Canadian soldiers buried here as they do throughout the Netherlands.
