Joe Mann Memorial, Open-Air Theatre, Best, Holland
This was put up by the people of Best in memory of Private 1st Class Joe E. Mann of H Coy, 502nd US Parachute Infantry Regiment. It was unveiled by his parents on 17 September 1956. During the 18th/19th September 1944 the 502nd fought a pitched battle in the woods here against the Germans holding the nearby bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son. By the evening of the first day Mann had been shot four times and his arms had been strapped to his sides to stem the bleeding of his wounds. On the morning of the 19th, the Germans made a grenade attack and one dropped into a fox hole that Mann occupied with 6 others. Shouting Grenade! Mann threw himself onto it taking the full blast and thus saving the lives of his comrades. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour, America's highest soldier's award. The Memorial represents a mother pelican on her nest of young, a symbol of self-sacrifice, derived from the legend that the bird will feed her young from her own flesh
