The men who died at D-Day did not die shoulder-to-shoulder with their French comrades. They died to liberate the French from a sinister and brutal occupation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.
If D-Day - the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken - failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn't an option.
I can't count how many of my friends are in the cemetery at Normandy, the heroes are still there, the real heroes.
The French suffered such catastrophic losses in the First World War. It really was the end of them as a great world power, although they, quote, 'won.'
In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going.
A few regular troops from old France, weakened by hunger and sickness, who, when fresh, were unable to withstand the British soldiers, are their general's chief dependence.
As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but they were dying of scurvy.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.
The French are very bizarre. There is this collective depiction: 'We're in decline, we're being assailed, we must protect ourselves.'
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