Devotion

Tiny Claessen of Beesel, Holland, was told 45 years ago by her mother to tend the grave of a British airman shot down by Germans over the village. She has done so from that day to the present. She's 79 years old now.



Terry Charman, a senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, London, said the Dutch people hold British war veterans in the highest regard for liberating them from the Nazis.

He said: ‘The Dutch are acutely aware even today of the harshness of the German occupation.

‘Dutch schoolchildren used to be allocated a war grave to look after. But it is very rare for someone to continue to do so for the rest of their life.

‘The fact that this is a solitary grave in a small village cemetery could be a reason for why Tiny has done it for so long because there has been nobody else.’

What a touching practice, and how very wonderful that Mrs. Claessen has contintued to tend the grave for all these years.