They lost 52 soldiers fighting alongside the US. Now they feel threatened by Trump

 

All his adult life, Colonel Soren Knudsen stepped forward when his country called. And when its allies did.

 

He fought alongside US troops, notably in Afghanistan, and for a time was Denmark's most senior officer there. He counted 58 rocket attacks during his duty.

 

"I was awarded a Bronze Star Medal by the United States and they gave me the Stars and Stripes. They have been hanging on my wall in our house ever since and I have proudly shown them to everybody."

 

Then something changed.

 

"After JD Vance's statement on Greenland, the president's disrespect for internationally acknowledged borders, I took the Stars and Stripes down and the medal has been put away," Soren says, his voice breaking a little.

 

This week before Congress, the US president doubled down on his desire to seize the world's biggest island: Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

 

"My first feeling was that it hurts, and the second is that I'm offended," Col Knudsen laments.

 

I meet him in the first weeks of his retirement outside Denmark's 18th Century royal residence, Amalienborg Palace in the heart of Copenhagen.

 

Abruptly, pipers strike up and soldiers stream by.

 

Today's Changing of the Guard comes at a time when the Trump administration has not just tweaked but defenestrated most assumptions around US-European security that have held fast for 80 years.

 

"It's about values and when those values are axed by what we thought was an ally, it gets very tough to watch." Soren says with his American wife Gina at his side.

 

"Denmark freely and without question joined those efforts where my husband served,” she says.

 

"So it comes as a shock to hear threats from a country that I also love and to feel that alliance is being trampled on. This feels personal, not like some abstract foreign policy tactic."

 

Soren has not given up all hope though.

 

"It's my hope and my prayer that I will one day be able to put [the flag] back on the wall," he confides.

 

 

Denmark lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan - more than any other nation than the US, as a proportion of its population

 

 

Read More Here:   BBC News