Posted on 05/29/2004 7:32:00 PM PDT by quidnunc
Omaha Beach, Normandy – Franz Gockel sits on the grassed-over remains of his former machine-gun nest above Omaha beach, and quietly weeps as he looks out across a broad stretch of sand towards the English Channel.
Sixty years ago this week, he was a raw 18-year-old private in the German infantry, about to suffer the full onslaught of the D-Day invasion. Of his 25 comrades who manned the gun emplacement WN62 near Coleville-sur-Mer, 18 were killed. The experience marked him for life.
"Whenever I return here I am overcome with emotion," he said. "I know that the Germans were on the wrong side but I feel that I owe it to my fallen comrades to revisit this place and remember that we all suffered terribly as well."
Mr Gockel is troubled by more, however. "D-Day is remembered almost exclusively from the Allied point of view," he said. "We Germans have been depicted merely as the occupiers of France. In fact many French people became our friends.
"During D-Day there were many French who were angry about the destruction of their towns and cities by American bombers." As a result, he said, the French were more hostile to the Americans than to the Germans who were, ostensibly, their enemies.
In the days after the invasion, he met a Frenchman in the badly bombed town of Vire who pulled a six-inch dagger from his pocket. "I said, 'I hope you're not going to use that on me.' He replied, 'No, I'm saving it up for the Americans, look what they've done to our town.' The whole place was in ruins," he said.
He recalled one French woman boasting that she would marry a German soldier. "She said, 'After the war I will be Frau Koch, and I'm proud about that,"' he said.
On his first return visit to Coleville-sur-Mer with his wife Hedwig in 1958, a local farmer greeted him warmly and cracked open a bottle of champagne.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Why are the streets in Paris lined with trees?
So the Nazis can march in the shade.
Yeah, we know.
Hopefully, she had her head shaved at the end of the war.
And hopefully, Mr. Koch didn't live to see the end of the war.
If you really want to understand the french, read some of the definitive histories of their so-called resistance movement in WW-II. Seems there was something like 20 different french resistance movements, who on the average spent far more time fighting and informing on each other then opposing the germans.
HEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO???????
Does Mr. Gockel not realize that if HE hadn't been there, WE wouldn't have bombed those places????
Ah, Mr. Gockel, erhalten sie einen anhaltspunkt.
Would you be allowed to post that in English?
The Free French Resistance was the only group of WWII veterans whose numbers kept growing every year after the war ended.
France is what would happen if you were purposely trying to parody a real nation.
I think the war-oriented pictures I remember the most are the ones of enemies from years past sitting down and having a nice chat.
I've always found those scenes comforting.
I thought that was exactly what we did!
That's why Europe is essentially border-free these days.
LOL......yes, I would.......GET A CLUE!
Check this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1144586/posts?page=71#71
Oh, yes...my wife and I saw it on Fox. My wife's only complaint was she wished it had been Barbara not Poppa Bush. Clinton wouldn't have needed help getting back up.
Reminding me of a story that our grocer told my Dad and me. It was about 1955. He had been a paratrooper on D-Day and had come down in the night separated from the rest of his platoon. During the folliwing morning, he met with other troopers, most from other units, and the group, led by a captain, started down the road to an objective marked on the captain's map. After awhile they saw two troopers hanging in the trees in a field. They found each man dead, with his throat cut crudly inplement. They cut the men down and buried them in shallow graves. They then noticed a farm house nearby. They went over and kicked in the door. Several men were sitting around the table. They froze when they saw the Americans. The two led soldiers looked to the captain. He nodded, and they shot them all. No one said a word as they resumed their march. That night the grocer asked another guy: Did they do it? The other guy shrugged. And that. said the grocer to me and my Dad, is why I hate the French.
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