A Gorham couple are traveling to the Netherlands for Memorial Day in remembrance of their soldier who didn’t make it home from World War II.

Gerard “Butch” and Barbara Guimond left on May 21 for their third visit to the grave of Gerard’s older brother, Cpl. Alfred O. Guimond, buried in the Netherlands, and to reconnect with a man there who has vigilantly cared for the soldier’s grave.

“This whole thing is not about us,” Gerard said in an April interview. It’s about “Fred and the Netherlands.”

Gerard never knew his older brother. He was a year old when Alfred was killed in action at 22 on April 15, 1945. Alfred is buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. He served with the 230th Field Artillery Battalion in the 30th Infantry Division. Leaving a young widow stateside, he died while firing a big gun in Germany. According to unit records, a bomb from a Luftwaffe aircraft struck his position.

Guimond posthumously received the Silver Star, the U.S. military’s third-highest combat award, for gallantry in action.

He and thousands of fallen comrades will be honored in Margraten on Memorial Day, observed there on Sunday, May 25. Barbara said thousands of Dutch people will come, bands will play and little children with parents and grandparents holding their hands will lay flowers on U.S. graves. In past years, there was a Catholic Mass in the cemetery and a reception at Town Hall with visiting American families as honored guests.

“The people of the Netherlands have never forgotten the American soldiers liberating them from the Nazis,” Barbara said, providing a copy of his story she once read to the congregation at Gorham’s First Parish Church, where she and her husband attend services.

“They truly, truly appreciate what the Americans did for them,” Gerard said.

Barbara said a man, a youth during the war and now confined to a wheelchair, visits that cemetery every day. A taxi driver in Amsterdam asked the Gorham couple if they were Americans and said, “Thank you for my freedom.”

Thousands of graves have been adopted and J. Wiel and Paula Gielkens of Geleen, Netherlands, adopted Alfred Guimond’s grave. Wiel, now a widower in his 90s, continues the ritual. He will reunite with the Guimonds at the grave.

Retired Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram columnist Bill Nemitz was instrumental in connecting the Guimonds with the Dutch couple. Nemitz wrote a Christmas Day story in 2015 following an inquiry from a reader in the Netherlands about finding the family of PFC Linton Lowell, of Portland, buried in Margraten.

“How often do you get an email from the Netherlands?” Nemitz said last week.

Nemitz successfully located the U.S. family and the story inspired Gerard and Barbara Guimond to contact Nemitz seeking help.

Alfred Guimond’s grave marker was misleading as it gives Connecticut as his home state. But the state was where he found work and hitched up with the Army.

Nemitz found a cemetery registry that unraveled the mystery. His work led to the Dutch family that adopted the Guimond grave.

Nemitz said flowers are placed several times a year on U.S. graves and people there wait in line for years to adopt an American one. “It borders on a religious commitment,” Nemitz said.

The commitment led the Guimonds, both retired from the South Portland Police Department, to make a lasting friendship in the Netherlands eight years ago with a law enforcement couple, Ad Liebregts and his wife, Claudia Drega. They have traveled to visit Gerard and Barbara in Gorham.

Alfred Guimond was born June 8, 1922, in Westbrook, the son of Joseph and Amanda (Bernier) Guimond. He grew up on McLellan Road in Gorham after the family moved there in 1925.

Guimond joined the army after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. On leave from boot camp in 1942, he married Carolyn Curto, since deceased. Their anniversary would have been May 31. They had no children.

In a letter from home, his mother informed him of Gerard’s birth. His return letter asked, “How is the little Butch?” — and the nickname stuck.

Barbara Guimond said 17,000 U.S. troops were interred in Margraten Cemetery, but the number has dwindled to 8,300 as remains have been shipped home. Alfred will stay buried with fellow soldiers in Margraten. His mother never got to see her son’s grave.

“My mother always said he died there with those guys. He should stay there,” Gerard Guimond said.