Commemorating in Color

This weekend, together with alderman Bob Roelofs, I laid a wreath on behalf of the municipality of Arnhem for the first time during the Poppy Day commemoration in Oosterbeek. A first, prompted by my questions in the city council about why Arnhem—with its rich history of freedom and resistance—had so far been absent from this international ceremony.

Some asked me why that mattered. “Isn’t it a British commemoration?”
No. Poppy Day is a commemoration of people—of sacrifices made across the world.
And as long as not all people are included in that story, our remembrance remains incomplete.

A Global War, a Selective Memory

Poppy Day—or Remembrance Day—marks the end of World War I in 1918.
But that war was far from a purely European affair. Behind the frontlines in Flanders, France, and Italy stood hundreds of thousands of men from the Caribbean and Africa—men who fought, hauled, and died for an empire that treated them as second-class citizens.

More than 15,000 Caribbean soldiers served in the British West Indies Regiment;
600,000 Africans fought in the King’s African Rifles and the West African Frontier Force.
They came from former colonies such as Jamaica, Grenada, Ghana, Nigeria, Barbados, Trinidad, and Sierra Leone. They fought someone else’s war, under brutal conditions—and when they returned, they were forgotten.

Their names are missing from Europe’s war memorials. Their faces are absent from the archives. Their sacrifices faded into the margins of history—literally erased by a world that only wanted to remember the European narrative.

The Color of Freedom

When I laid the wreath in Oosterbeek on behalf of Arnhem, it didn’t feel like a ceremonial gesture—it felt like a historical correction. My presence was a signal: a recognition that freedom is not white.

We live in an era when history is being rewritten—or finally completed.
The stories of Caribbean and African soldiers are not a footnote to the First World War; they are a vital chapter. By forgetting them, we reduce freedom to a European privilege and courage to a European virtue.

Remembrance only carries meaning if we dare to face the uncomfortable truth: that the same colonial structures which enslaved millions later sent them to the front lines—to fight a war that was never theirs.

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Shared Struggle, Shared Freedom

That the municipality of Arnhem was represented at Poppy Day for the first time is not a symbolic side note. It is a step toward an inclusive culture of remembrance.

Our city lies at the heart of a region defined by its wartime legacy. The Battle of Arnhem has become a global symbol of resistance. But if we truly want to be the city of freedom, we must also acknowledge that freedom did not come at the cost of white blood alone.

In Oosterbeek lie the graves of soldiers from across the Commonwealth—white, Black, Asian.
Their shared sacrifice is the reason we can live in peace and freedom today.

Giving Color to Remembrance

Remembrance without color is not remembrance. As long as we are selective about who we honor, we continue to deny part of the truth.

Now that Donald Trump is actively trying to erase Black history—as happened last week in Limburg, where panels about Black American soldiers in Margraten were removed—we must continue to tell the stories they seek to silence.
This is no accident; it is deliberate erasure. An attempt to delete Black heroism from memory and preserve white heroism as the norm.

That is why we must now add color to remembrance. Because anyone who accepts colorless commemoration becomes complicit in the same denial Trump is trying to institutionalize.

I am grateful that I was able to lay a wreath on behalf of Arnhem—to honor the forgotten Black heroes, and to tell the whole story.

My hope is that this will not end with one wreath. That schools will start telling this story. That our monuments will speak more broadly. That we stop pretending colonial history and freedom are separate.

Only when we acknowledge all stories can we truly say we are remembering.
That is how freedom gains color—and keeps its meaning.

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