"Our Liberators"

American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.

Friends,

I was nearly set to release a “One Good Thing . . .” post, but something happened to head me off in a different direction. I will get back to that original post at some point, but for now, I cannot pass this week by without addressing what happened on February 28 in the Oval Office. Bear with me, I will get to “One Good Thing . . .” in this post, a treasured memory I would like to share with you today — especially today.

On February 28, President Trump and Vice President Vance used a public, televised meeting to humiliate, scold, and insult Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a man who represents a war-torn country, a man who visited his country’s front line before traveling to Washington, a man who has seen up-close and personal the miseries of war (ironically visiting a man who used a doctor’s note about bone spurs to get out of being drafted into the U.S. armed forces), a man who had to take a train out of his country because air travel isn’t possible, a man who was elected to his office by more than 73% of the vote (a far bigger slice of the electorate than Trump managed in either election), and a man who — roughly 10 minutes ago — was our ally.

Among the readers of this blog, opinions are all over the map regarding the war in Ukraine in general and Zelensky in particular. I do not intend this post to pass as political discourse — that is not my area. To be honest, I don’t even welcome a debate about the merits of the war in Ukraine in the comments here. Such debate is important, of course, but it is really outside the scope of what I am trying to address today. Such debate misses my point. Anyway, my heart is too broken to engage in that kind of debate right now.

Instead, I put in a plea — a solid, passionate plea — for kindness, dignity, and respect. That kind of behavior should begin right at the top, modeled by our country’s leaders. Today I feel covered with shame because America’s President and Vice President ambushed another country’s already-embattled (literally) leader in such a despicable manner. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t vote for Trump/Vance. I am an American, they are my country’s leaders, and they represent me on the world stage. I have a right to expect them to exhibit basic diplomacy. They behaved so abysmally, I don’t even have words for it. (Yes, I have watched the video and read the actual transcript of the meeting. If my 3-year-old child had behaved that way, I would have put him in a time out.)

So, to get my bearings again, I have found myself thinking about a long-ago memory. Right now, it seems to be a memory of another America, one that is vanishing before my eyes, but perhaps the memory can lead me somewhere.

I have wonderful friends who live in Belgium. I consider them (and call them) “my Belgian family.” My relationship with them began a thousand years ago when I was in high school, and I befriended their son when he joined my senior class. As a result, I have visited Belgium a number of times over the years — far less often than I would have liked, but more often than I ever would have done if I hadn’t become so close to them.

My Belgian family lives in the metro Antwerpen area, the Dutch (or Flemish) speaking part of the country. Consequently, I have learned a smattering of Dutch during my visits. Even though I actually know hardly any Dutch (or, put another way, I know just enough Dutch to get myself into trouble), I am sure I know more than most Americans do. My friends had a summer place in the Ardennes, however — the French-speaking part of the country. Thus, I was exposed to both languages on a regular basis when I visited Belgium.

I studied French in high school and, briefly, in college. It wasn’t my best subject, but it wasn’t my worst, either. I was far better at understanding it when it was spoken than I was at generating conversation. (When I became an English language tutor a few years ago, I learned that that is the natural progression of learning a new language. You understand the spoken word far faster than you learn how to generate conversation yourself.) Back then, when French was spoken quickly, I lost the thread quickly. (The same is true now.) But in the Ardennes, people spoke relatively slowly, and I could understand large parts of their conversations.

Now, for those of you who are not up to date on Belgian geography or history, pertinent to this story is the fact that the Ardennes saw terrible, brutal fighting during World War II. Think: The Battle of the Bulge, otherwise known as the Ardennes Offensive, for instance. The Battle of the Bulge was really a turning point of World War II, when Germany tried and failed to beat back the progression of the Allied troops. The town of Bastogne, at the heart of some of the worst fighting, has an enormous memorial erected in tribute to the American soldiers who lost their lives there during the Battle of the Bulge. When I visited that memorial, I was rendered nearly speechless.

During one visit to the Ardennes, my Belgian mother and I stopped in at the butcher’s shop just as we pulled into town. We were picking up some provisions before heading home. My Belgian mother and the butcher had become friends over the years, so as the butcher filled the order, the two of them used the time to catch up on the news.

“This my American daughter,” my Belgian mother said (in French) to the butcher.

The butcher stopped what she was doing, looked me in the eye, and said (also in French), “Oh. Our liberators.”

Now I want to tell you, I was so surprised. I wasn’t proud of our country in those days. We were embroiled in the Vietnam War, a stain I felt I carried with me wherever I traveled. But when the butcher praised my country like that, I felt proud — proud of what my parents’ generation had sacrificed to accomplish, proud of the bravery they exhibited, proud of my country’s contribution to freedom. Here I was, face-to-face with a woman who had lived through those years, and she was grateful for my country.

Since then, I have studied the history of World War II a bit on my own. What I have come to learn is that the U.S. initially was a reluctant participant in the war. While people were dying by the thousands and even hundreds of thousands overseas in the late 1930s, much of America was a stew of “America First” isolationist thinking. (Sound familiar?) Naziism had a firm footing here in surprisingly and concerningly large numbers — even in the halls of Congress — during the 1930s. Here’s how I would adumbrate that history.

Germany in the 1930s: Let’s create a master race of Aryan people!

America:

Germany: Let’s round up political dissidents, homosexuals, gypsies, and, above all, Jews, and put them in prison! While we are at it, we can smash up Jewish businesses and keep their kids out of school. If we murder a few here and there, nobody will care.

America:

Germany: Hey! We can invade other countries. Let’s start with Austria! Let’s round up more people! Let’s get them to dig trenches in the forests, then line them up on the edge of the trenches and shoot them all!

America:

Italy and Japan: What a great model Germany is for the rest of us!

America:

Germany: Let’s build concentration camps and get going with the Final Solution.

America:

Germany: Let’s blitz Great Britain with bombs! Let’s set London and Coventry and everywhere else on fire!

America:

Great Britain: We’re dying over here! Send help!

America:

Great Britain: We’re literally dying. Send help!

President Roosevelt: Maybe we could send a wee bit of materiel.

American Public: No way! America first!

Great Britain: We’re getting bombed every night the skies are clear. We’re sleeping in the tube stations. London is on fire. We’re dying.

American Public: America first.

President Roosevelt: We’ll find a way to send just a little bit of materiel. Just a little bit. Maybe some advisors. And Eleanor can visit, too.

[The first part of this dialogue goes on for a few years and then…]

Japan: (Bombing Pearl Harbor.) Take that!

America: Oh. Wait.

So, yes, the United States initially — and for quite a long time — resisted allying itself with nations that were being invaded and people who were being exterminated. You could say our contribution on the world stage was ignominious at best at first. At least, I could say that, because I suspect the war would have ended sooner, escalated less, and resulted in far fewer casualties and outright murders if the United States had become involved sooner. We will never know, of course, because you cannot replay history and do it a different way.

But I can say that there is a direct line between America’s involvement in the war and that long-ago butcher’s remark to a young and rather shy American girl who was visiting the Ardennes: “Nos libérateurs.” I have never forgotten that moment.

That generation of Americans — my parents’ generation — has been called “the Greatest Generation.” By many measures, they were exactly that. Just using my father as an example: He was drafted into the Army, where he served for over 4-1/2 years. He really hated being in the Army, but he did what he had to do, and he did his job well. Like so many soldiers, he longed for the war to end. He wanted to be home with his family. He wanted to meet his first child (who was around 18 months old when my father finally returned home). My mother recalled the mothers walking baby carriages up and down the streets. Their husbands were deployed somewhere, so all of the mothers were, ipso facto, single mothers until their husbands came home from the war. If they did come home from the war.

Up and down my childhood street, families could tell their own stories of the war and sometimes did. Never did I hear anyone complain about what they had sacrificed during those years. Never did I hear anyone question the obligation to resist bullies, dictators, and strongmen. They did what they believed they had to do.

Much ink has been spilled describing the close relationship Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill developed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the war they communicated regularly by telephone over an encrypted line — new technology developed to serve their need for secrecy. Of their regular communication, Churchill said, “I wish to be . . . in close and daily communication by telephone with the President of the United States. There is nothing we could not do if we were together.” (source: (10) Sunday Comments open - by Robert B. Hubbell)

And that, my friends, is where I want to leave you today. Because what Churchill said about his relationship with Roosevelt does not apply just to presidents and prime ministers and world leaders. It applies to all of us: There is nothing we cannot do if we are together.

These days, as I become disillusioned, angry, concerned, even frightened, it’s too easy to want to go to ground and shut myself off from the world. But the truth is we need each other. We need to be together. Those weary, cold, war-torn soldiers marching through the snow in the Ardennes? They were together. And their togetherness and their sense of purpose and their dedication to each other and to freedom is what ultimately led, one generation later, to a butcher in a small Ardennes town, to look at me and say, “Nos libérateurs.”

There is nothing we cannot do if we are together.

Love,

Sylvia

A couple of books to recommend:

The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson, is about Winston Churchill’s war years.

Prequel, by Rachel Maddow, offers a pretty good description of the U. S. isolationist bent and its tilt toward Naziism during the 1930s. Her tone is usually that of a measured historian, although on rare occasions, she (annoyingly) shifts into the high dudgeon of her television personality. The history is good, though, and the book is worth reading, especially now.