Special Commemoration Bulletin

INTRODUCTION, BY YOUR VIRTUAL CHAIRMAN

Dear members,

Welcome to this Special Commemoration Bulletin about the September Commemoration ceremonies, which were held at Chatham (21st, 22nd), at sea off the Dutch coast (23rd), The Hague (24th), and Noordwijk (25th). Because of its size this Bulletin is divided into two parts.
The afternoon meeting of 21 September at Chatham’s St. George’s Centre was with 250 participants fully booked.
The Chatham Historic Dockyard was with 1.000 participants (900 relatives and 100 others) booked-up too for the events of Monday 22nd September.
A group of Dutch divers commemorated Tuesday 23rd at sea the sinking of the three cruisers.
With 100 guests also booked up were the ceremonies in Den Haag, 24st September. Amongst them about thirty guests from the United Kingdom and five from Germany.
In the evening of 25th at Noordwijk, the Boulevard, a fine new Memorial has been unveiled. In this Bulletin more about this concluding event.
With this Bulletin I trust to give you all a lasting impression of these days.

I am very grateful to a lot of people. On behalf of you I sent letters with expression of thanks to the Mayor and Council of Medway, the Historic Dockyard Chatham Trust, the ProjectTeam of the Historic Dockyard Chatham, The First Sea Lord, The Lord Lieutenant of Kent, The Mayor of Den Haag, The Board and Team of ‘Muzee’ Scheveningen.

The credits for the photo’s are for Marius van Leeuwen (ML), the official photographer of our Society, for Daniel Turner (DT) of the Dockyard, David Knott (DK) of the Royal Marines, Mrs Diany Stoel, our daughter in law (DS), Cor Kuyvenhoven and Udo van Dongen.

Henk H.M. van der Linden