soldier

Major mistakes made by the Ministry of Defense led to incidents in which soldiers suffered heatstrokes during training in the Netherlands, television program Zembla reports based on "recent, confidential investigation reports".

The Ministry of Defense is ordering an investigation into abuses in the armed forces, State Secretary Barbara Visser said in a letter to parliament. Reports were received about inadmissible behavior at training institutes as well as another defense department, she said, NOS reports.

Hundreds of Dutch soldiers will be living in hotels around Zeist in the coming months because the conditions of the sleeping barracks at their home base, Huis ter Heide, are so bad that they can no longer be used, newspaper AD reports.

Dozens of former soldiers are pressing charges of defamation and slander against lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld, who is representing the relatives of hijackers killed in a train hijacking at De Punt in 1977. The relatives are suing the Dutch government, saying that the train was stormed with the intention to kill the hijackers.

Three new witnesses came forward in the trial around the hijacking of a train at De Punt in 1977. The three new witnesses, former officers, say that soldiers who stormed the hijacked train were ordered not to take the Moluccan hijackers prisoner, but to shoot and kill them, the Volkskrant reports.

Two soldiers were injured in an accident at Volkel airbase on Monday evening. One was rushed to hospital with serious injuries. There was a collision and the soldiers ended up in a ditch with their off-road vehicle, a spokesperson for the Koninklijke Marechaussee said to newspaper AD.

Several ambulances and a trauma helicopter responded to the airbase. The seriously injured soldier was rushed to hospital. The Marechaussee spokesperson could not tell AD whether he is in mortal danger. The other soldier sustained only minor injuries and was treated at the scene.

The military department of the court in Arnhem is handling a case on Thursday involving a female soldier being sexually assaulted by a male soldiers, as two of their colleagues filmed the incident. The assault happened at the Luitenant-generaal Best barracks in Vredepeel in October last year, the Telegraaf reports.

The two soldiers ended up in the same room after a night out. The young woman could not get into her own accommodations and asked her male colleague if she could spend the night in his room, according to the newspaper.

In what he describes as a "small miracle", Willem-Wouter Dijkstra managed to track down the owner of a WWII bracelet he picked up while hiking 16 years ago. Or track down the owner's family at least, the Telegraaf reports.

A soldier was arrested a woman was found dead in a home in Kaatsheuvel on Wednesday morning. The police believe she was murdered.

A large number of American families have contacted the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Limburg through email in order to find out how to get in touch with the Dutch families who adopted their relatives' headstones and grave sites, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Thousands of families, mainly from the Netherlands, but also from Belgium and Germany have volunteered and committed to take care of all 8,300 graves of American men and women buried at the cemetery.