Gijs Tuinman


Gijs Pepijn Tuinman is an officer of the Royal Netherlands Army. Tuinman is one of the only four living knights of the very exclusive Military Order of William, the highest order of chivalry of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Life

Gijs Tuinman was born in 1979 in Heerlen, where he attended the Bernadinus from 1992 to 1998. In 1998 he went to the Royal Military Academy in Breda. In 2001 he became a platoon commander in the Korps Commandotroepen to be. By 2009, he had been on at least five deployments to Afghanistan, several to Africa and other missions. On 7 October 2009, for a mission in 2006, he was awarded the Bronze Lion, the second highest military decoration awarded by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
From 2009 to 2012, he was special operations policy adviser at the Ministry of Defence in The Hague. After this he was a 'citizen' consultant at Deloitte. He returned to military duty in 2013.

Military Order of William

On 4 December 2014 at The Binnenhof in The Hague, Tuinman was knighted by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, receiving the fourth class' knighthood of the Military Order of William.
The King referred to Tuinman and Epke Zonderland in his Christmas speech in 2014.

Decorations