Why do Americans go to war? I pondered that question this weekend while reading a small pamphlet produced for soldiers about to debark for France during World War II. In a nutshell, Americans fight for universal human rights.
Surprisingly for a team of bureaucrats, the War and Navy Departments did an admirable job introducing Americans to France, its culture, its people, and its history. The US Navy gave my copy to my best friend’s dad, Charlie Lupsha, prior to his participation in the Normandy Invasion. My friend Matthew passed it on to me. I am grateful to Matt for his gift and to Charlie for his service. I wonder what he thought as he read through this amazing document.
The Navy instructed Charlie and his compatriots that “the Allied offensive you are taking part in is based upon a hard-boiled fact. It’s this. We democracies aren’t just doing favors in fighting for each other when history gets tough. We’re all in the same boat. Take a look around you as you move into France, and you’ll see what the Nazis do to a democracy when they can get it down by itself.”
America’s servicepeople fought to liberate our friends who were “our last defense on the Continent against Hitler’s crazy world conquest plan. As Europe’s leading Republic, France was the keystone of freedom on land from the Mediterranean to the North Sea and one of the bulkheads of our freedom on the Atlantic.” Our soldiers also learned that “there is very little divorce in France” and that “the economies of French life are based on the parents’ rule of working and saving for their children’s future.” Like Americans, “the French are individualists.”
This Veterans Day, we should remember a few lessons from A Pocket Guide to France.
You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language. Americans among Frenchmen, let us remember our likenesses, not our differences. The Nazi slogan for destroying us both was “divide and conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union There Is Strength.”
Thank you, veterans, for everything that you have done for your families, your communities, your country, and our democratic allies.