Red Cross Memorial

Sliedrecht General Cemetery contains a memorial commemorating 10 members of the Red Cross who were killed on de Merwede-river on 11 May 1940.

The memorial consists of a remembrance-column with their names. In front of the column are the war graves of two of them.

At the Sliedrecht General Cemetery there is a monument that commemorates 10 members of the Red Cross on the Merwede-river on May 11, 1940.

These involved where Red Cross volunteers who had been called up during the mobilization in 1939. They were on their way from Sliedrecht to Amsterdam on the hospital ship Actinia when the ship struck a magnetic mine dropped by a German aircraft near Werkendam. The ship sank immediately and 11 of the 16 people on board died.

Almost immediately, service members of the fallen Red Cross soldiers formed a committee with the aim of erecting a monument to them. This monument should be placed on the grave of the 2 soldiers buried in Sliedrecht. On September 13, 1941, the hardstone monument was unveiled in the presence of, among others, relatives of the fallen.

The monument consists of a memorial column with their names, and in front of it the war graves of two of them. The name of the eleventh victim, who did not belong to the Red Cross, is missing.

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