Dutch man tends grave of fallen Georgia soldier

When Marco Veijers was a little boy, he would drive with his father from his home in Heerlen, Holland into the town of Maastricht. Along the way they would pass a field with acres of green grass and white crosses.

"If you enter the site, you get grasped by the beauty of the place," Veijers now says.

Later he learned that the field was The Netherlands American Cemetery, and the crosses marked the graves of U.S. soldiers killed in World War Two.

"It's a strange feeling to know that those are all people who had lives back in America and now they are lying here in Dutch soil," Veijers tells WSB.

Marco Veijers is a 35 year old architect and he has always been fascinated by the cemetery. Due to that fascination, a few years ago his girlfriend, as a birthday present, signed him up for the cemetery's Adopt-a-Grave program.

The graves are assigned at random, and Veijers was given the final resting place of Albert Partridge, of Newnan, Georgia.

"It's a nice thing to for those young men who left their country and died in our land, for us," says Veijers.

Albert Partridge left Newnan to go to war in 1942 and never returned. Killed in May of 1945, he is among the 8300 American soldiers buried in the cemetery in Holland.

Veijers, who was born 32 years after Partridge's death, makes sure that his final resting place is well cared for.

"You visit the grave, you bring some flowers, you visit on Memorial Day," says Veijers. "It's a way to remember that one person."

But now, Veijers is trying to find out more about the man who grave is his responsibility. He knows very little about Albert Partridge, all of it from a file he obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense.

"It gives his birthday, where he was from, when he died and what he had on him when he was killed," says Veijers. "So it is very basic information."

So Veijers is reaching out to the Atlanta community in hopes that someone remembers Partridge. He has contacted the mayor of Newnan, along with a local leader of the VFW. He has gotten a few responses to his efforts, but still knows little about Partridge.

Marco Veijers still visits Albert Partridge's grave regularly. He may be the only living link to the man who left his Georgia home 70 years ago, never to come back. To Veijers, if Albert Patridge has no remaining family, then he take over that role.

In a way, Veijers says, he adopted the grave but, in the end, the grave adopted him, as well.