And Also Our Thanks
One Sunday in Paris with my friends Garry and Martine, we searched for the remains of the old Bastille. What’s left of this fortress today is a few foundation stones, forming an outline of the building in Paris’s cobbled streets. Despite connotations of revolution and war, the Bastille really isn’t all that big.
In no time we had rounded the block to find ourselves in front of a pharmacy. I quickly went in to buy something. I walked out to find my friends talking with an older gentleman on his way to the market. As I was introduced, he asked if I was an American.
“Je suis Américain” I replied in my cobbled-together French.
Then he thanked me for saving France.
The French are often portrayed as difficult to talk to; snobby grammarians who ignore American contributions to democracy. I found this impression far from the truth; I’d even heard of French people who still thank Americans for their bravery in the World War.
In reality, much of the First World War (1914-1918) was fought on French soil as the Western Front. On any French war monument that lists the dead by name those killed in WWI vastly outnumber French folks who died in other conflicts. This is true from Paris to Rouen to tiny towns like Bailly.
When the Second World War came to France in the guise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the French knew about war tragedies. Those who lived through World War II, even as children, also remember the massive D-Day invasion.
Unlike the size of the Bastille, D-Day was the largest amphibious landing ever by sea and by air. 150,000 Allied troops landed and scrambled for their lives on the beaches of Normandy. By the time the invasion concluded, there were 10,000 Allied casualties with 9,000 soldiers dead. Among the thousands of Allied soldiers killed were the Americans. Most of them were barely twenty years old. But the D-Day invasion began to break the back of Nazi domination in Europe and free the French from Hitler.
I was being thanked today for the United States’ participation on June 6, 1944, well before I was born. The children of wartime France—of which this man was one—grew up remembering the American landing on D-Day and the generosity of the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe. As I listened to him recall his life during the war, I knew this man’s sincere thanks were for all Americans: for each person in my country on behalf of a place and a people that many of us have never experienced.
If we wonder about the French or rail over Freedom Fries, consider that even now there is a deep well of appreciation in France for the American’s effort. They still vividly recall sacrifices our young American soldiers made seventy years ago on June 6 for France and the cause of freedom.
I shook the man’s hand and told him I loved France. Better than monuments and memorials ever could, it is only for us to be gracious and warmhearted to those who remember the brave American dead and our country so well.
Merci monsieur. Je suis un Américain.
