He participated in Operation Market Garden, leading the 59th Infantry Division where he led his troops across a river crossing between Breskens and Flushing.
The Breskens arrived in a promising bay and was received friendly by the population of Yamada on Honshu.
The Dutch captain Maarten Gerritsz Vries in the Breskens entered the Sea of Okhotsk from the south-east in 1643, and charted parts of the Sakhalin coast and Kurile Islands, but failed to realize that either Sakhalin or Hokkaido are islands.
Cafes in Amsterdam, Breskens, Arnhem, and Majorca have been named Heren van Amstel after the dynasty.