Commentary The secret of the cave

At the foot of the Cauberg, a butte in the center of Valkenburg in the province of Limburg, The Netherlands, you'll find the entrance to the city of Caves, a system of tunnels carved in limestone that branch off and branch off again and thus form a labyrinth of tunnels under the city with a total length of about 50 miles.

For centuries people have sought a safe haven in the caves in times of war or unrest -- for shelter or because they were trying to escape capture by opposing forces. Refugees have carved out alcoves as small as a closet or as large as a room in the walls of the tunnels.

Long before the Spaniards and the Austrians occupied The Netherlands from 1568 to 1648 or Napoleon put his brother Louis on the throne in the early 1800s, people have fled into the caves. Thousands of messages have been engraved in the walls by people who hid or even lived in the caves, sometimes with all their livestock.

In one of these alcoves, about 750 feet from the entrance, a message written on the wall with charcoal tells the story of three people who stayed in these caves for about three weeks, together with the rest of the population, in the days before the liberation of Valkenburg in September 1944 by the soldiers of the Old Hickory Division of the United States Army.

Valkenburg was liberated on September 17, 1944, but it wasn't until May 1945, after the rest of The Netherlands went through a miserable winter of terrible hunger, that The Netherlands became a free nation again.

A new life of freedom and hard work began and slowly the memories about life in the caves faded away. Time enveloped everything with the darkness of the caves.

Fifty years after the liberation of The Netherlands, in May 1995, my father took me back to the caves, in the hope that we could find the alcove where we had stayed in those days full of hope and fear.

When we told our last name to the guide who took us into the caves, he remembered seeing that name and he took us to the alcove that had kept its secret in deep darkness for 50 years.

With disbelief and awe, we looked at the niche where we had waited for our liberators, full of hope for a better future. and on the wall we saw the inscription my father wrote minutes before we left the caves on September 18, 1944, words he didn't remember writing but that will stay on that wall in "our" alcove for as long as the caves will exist.

He wrote: "We stayed here from 4-18 September, 1944 waiting for our liberators. Long live our Royal Family. G. Thissen; E.M. Thissen-Somers; Tineke Thissen."

There it was, my name written on the wall of the cave, to stay there for all eternity. I took my father's hand and we stood there for a while in silence, thankful for the countless young men and women who gave their lives for our freedom.

Sixty years ago, when I was 2-1/2 years old, I celebrated my first Christmas in a free country.

I wish you that same glorious freedom in 2005.