Commemorating Freedom

by Aaltje Hultink Moes

“It happened after midnight. . . . I stood at the road watching and listening. . . . But then way far off I heard something I could not identify. A strange sound. I peered into the night but I saw nothing. There was only that unfamiliar sound that grew stronger by the minute. As it came close I saw a Canadian Brenn carrier. It is now more then 60 years ago, but sometimes I can still hear the sound that is so indelibly etched in my mind that it will never be erased. It is the sound that brought freedom.”

That is how retired Christian Reformed pastor Rev. Carl Tuyl described his experience of freedom at the end of World War II. Tuyl spoke at a service in Ottawa commemorating the liberation of the Netherlands at the end of World War II. Rev. Pieter Heerema of Calvary CRC and Rev. Kenneth Gehrels of Calvin CRC also participated in the service.

Tuyl told the audience at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church that freedom “is a very expensive gift. We must treasure it. One of the ways I do that is by consciously realizing I am a free man. . . . Those of us who have known what it is to be imprisoned, to be enslaved—and I am certainly only one among those—we want to give voice to our gratitude for one of God’s great blessings: freedom!”

Author

Aaltje Hultink Moes