Posted on 01/30/2005 4:31:53 PM PST by RWR8189
The wind moaned gently in the nearby forest of the Vosges mountain. A thick blanket of snow lay on the ground and on the thousands of white crosses that marked the graves of US servicemen who had fallen in France during the Second World War.
With my wife and her aunt Nancy from Pittsburgh, we had come to the American military cemetery at Epinal in eastern France, where 5,200 US soldiers are buried. We were paying tribute to one of those brave men, Private Bill Anderson from Pennsylvania, Nancy's brother, who went through D-Day and then died at the age of just 19 in November 1944 while on a dangerous reconnaissance mission.
As we stood by the headstone, Nancy read out a heart-rending letter to Bill that she had written before leaving America. Full of poignant memories of their young life together, the letter captured the spirit of heroic optimism that had led Bill to give his life for the cause of freedom in Europe. Though I was born almost 20 years after Bill died, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the sacrifice he had made, a feeling reinforced as I lifted my eyes from his grave towards the arch that overlooks the cemetery. On it were carved words of remembrance for those "citizens of every calling bred in the principles of American democracy".
To European intellectuals, the term "American democracy" is probably an oxymoron. Though such sophisticated cynicism is contradicted by events in Iraq, where – just like in France 60 years ago – US soldiers have been sacrificing their lives to liberate a people from tyranny, anti-Americanism is now written into the European psyche, the last acceptable prejudice in a culture that makes a fetish of racial equality. Indeed, as I walked through the cemetery, my sense of gratitude at Bill's service was accompanied by deep, almost visceral, anger at my fellow Europeans for their constant sneering at America and their gloating over the body count in Iraq, despite all that the USA has done to free Europe in the past from totalitarian dictatorships, whether they be Nazi or communist.
Last week, the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Although it was achieved by the Russian army, it would never have happened without US intervention in western Europe, which forced Germany to fight on two fronts. America's action was purely altruistic. Whereas Russia was engaged in a life-and-death struggle for survival, the USA was not directly threatened by the Nazi domination of Europe.
What sickens me is that we in Europe are fed a constant diet of anti-American propaganda because of the USA's supposed aggression, greed, imperialism or insularity. Yet, at the very same time, we are urged, through the remorseless process of European integration, to embrace Germany, the country responsible for most of the ills of Europe for the past 140 years. Perhaps even worse is the way the experience of Nazism has been used to promote the ideology of multi-culturalism.
Any objection to mass immigration or the destruction of traditional Judaeo-Christian moral values is deemed as racist, akin to support for fascism. As a result, in the name of multi-cultural tolerance, we have allowed the creation of the brutal, anti-democratic monster of Islamism in our midst.
It is a bizarre paradox that the hysteria over Nazism has encouraged Europe to be swamped by Islam, in which anti-Semitism appears to be an integral part of the creed – tellingly, the Muslim Council of Britain refused to take part in the Holocaust commemorations. Instead of falling under the sway of Islam and European federalism, it would be better if Europe followed the values of America, a country that has always understood the meaning of the word "freedom".
ping
Heck of an article.
Wisely surmised and written. The French Jews of today face the same gathering storm as the late 30s in Europe. "Never again" has become folly or farce in 21st Century Europe.
And I too was moved to tears in an American cemetary in France (above Omaha Beach).
Vosges is "voh-zhay" BTW.
Thank you for posting this. It is a nice break from the usual anti-American tripe out of Europe. I have begun to think there is something bad in their water. Perhaps there is, but some few folks are immune to the bug.
I would love to do that, just not sure if I could maintain composure.
That must have been an awesome experience.
LVM
I wonder - I once heard that, in a strange twist, that when someone's life has been saved by someone else, the one saved ends up, after time, resenting the one who saved them - by some quirk of the human psyche -
'wonder if that's what's going on subliminally in the minds of the French and Germans? We saved thier sorry butts and they resent it...
'rather like the subconscious group-guilt that still lingers - that causes a discrimination-resentment effect - with Americans over what was done to the Native Americans by their ancestors. It's misplaced, we are not to blame for what anyone did a hundred - 200 or 1,000 years ago...but it's there, nonetheless. Maybe a 'genetic memory' thing? (Hmm, maybe I could get a million dollar grant to study this theory? ;o)
I didn't bawl, but as I walked those grounds (perhaps two hours), I had the lump in the throat and the dizzying dull sense of awe and I kept wiping my eyes.
I stood on Omaha Beach at low tide and stared up at that shore, trying to imagine tank traps and whithering enemy fire.
I said a prayer of thanks over a Christian man's plot and I laid a stone on a Jewish man's marker.
Then I went back to my hotel and got drunk.
I will never forget it. Not one moment.
I think that tells you all you need to know about Islam, if you did not know already.
That's the one.
It's a glorious, exhausting, beautiful place....hallowed ground.
Remember what Colin Powell said (paraphrasing)... we never took land, but only asked for some to bury our dead. They should put his words on a plaque there.
I remember LBJ's redeeming moment. De Gaulle was pulling out of NATO and Johnson sent an emissary. De Gaulle told the emissary "we want all American troops off of French soil" by a date certain.
When this got back to LBJ, he insisted on a very specific response: "We will need more time than that to remove our dead from Normandy." De Gaulle left the meeting in a huff and nothing further was ever said.
That is true. But Germans made a mistake in declaring war on us. They should have left us out of it. - Tom
On December 11, 1941, Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag. Confused and rambling, he compared his own childhood of poverty to that of the wealthy Roosevelt. He declared war on the United States.
December 11, 1941
The President's Message (FDR) To the Congress of the United States:
On the morning of Dec. 11 the Government of Germany, pursuing its course of world conquest, declared war against the United States. The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism. Italy also has declared war against the United States.
I therefore request the Congress to recognize a state of war between the United States and Germany, and between the United States and Italy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
LVM
Yes, I've been through that cemetary and all the Normandy battlefields. It is a very powerful and moving experience.
I would heartily recommend that pilgrimage to all.
Not too far away was a German cemetary, also well kept but very somber with a large granite Teutonic cross in the middle. I found myself moved by it too, for it was full of youth barely out of their teens - dead for a hateful cause which they probably did not fully understand.
And just how do we know for sure Germany doesn't own a few dozen suitcase nukes right now?
The big cemetary at St.Avold will stop you cold,close to 11,000 there and 14,000 plus Doughboys at Vincennes. Now at Draguinan, there are less than a thousand, but the graves are well taken care of, with tenderness and love by their French caretakers.
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