Wednesday, June 05, 2019
June 6, 1944
The accompanying photo shows my aunt, Johane Heise Tucker, and my father. Aunt Johane was possibly the first Allied woman on the Normandy beaches. She was a U.S. Army nurse officer, and landed on Omaha beach on June 6, 1944. She was in charge of a field hospital. She told me how it was strafed and bombed by the Luftwaffe, while she, her staff, and patients ducked in foxholes. She had many stories from the war, but the one thing she wouldn't talk about was what she saw when they entered German concentration camps. She said it simply could not be repeated.
My father, Charles H. Steele, was a U.S. Navy pilot in the war, flying a PBY Catalina and commanding a crew of eleven. He didn't see combat; his unit was stationed in Florida and did anti-submarine patrols and search and rescue. Both my aunt and my father told me something that has stuck with me. Both of their units received orders to begin packing for the invasion of Japan, and both expected to be in midst of brutal combat. When the atom bombs were dropped on Japan, they both felt relief and realized they and their fellow Americans would survive the war. Both told me the atom bombing of Japan was a good thing. They are right; it ended an evil and saved many lives.
I had an uncle who was one of the very last Americans killed fighting the Germans. In the last couple of days of the European war, he had entered German-controlled territory, met with a German general, and arranged for surrender of a German division. On the way back to American lines, his jeep was ambushed by an SS unit and he was killed instantly. He never saw his son, my cousin Sam Paton.
Aunt Johane's husband, Colonel Tucker (Uncle Tuck to us) was a U.S. Army engineer. He volunteered for the Army, and while gone lost his hardware store in Kansas to competitors. During the war he salvaged at least one B-17 that had been shot down and returned it to combat, and built bridges that Allied troops used to invade Germany. He returned to the U.S., started a new lumberyard, and was a successful entrepreneur.
What to make of all this? Justin Raimondo, a Rothbardian anarchist and lead writer for Anti-War-dot-com (I won't link to these phony libertarians), once claimed there was no difference between the young Americans, British, Canadians, French, et al. who landed on Normandy and the Germans they fought. To Raimondo, all were simply brutal murderers.
No.
Twenty-nine years ago, I traveled with a good Canadian friend, Mark Deacon, to Normandy to tour the beaches on June 6. On June 5th, we checked into a small hotel in Carentan. The proprietress checked us in coolly and matter-of-factly. After we inspected the room, we agreed to take it and, as is the rule, returned to the desk to show her our passports and complete the transaction. "You're not Germans?" she exclaimed (I speak French with a distinct German accent, but that's a story for later), and then "you're Liberators!" She began telling us excitedly how as a little girl she saw combat between American and German soldiers, and how Americans liberated -- note that word -- Carentan. Carentan was the scene of brutal fighting. Much of the town was destroyed. And there was no doubt in the mind of this woman who was good and who was evil. I was slightly embarrassed to be called a liberator, since I was born long after the war, but her enthusiasm was genuine.
Later in the day in our travels around the beaches, we stopped in a small cafe, I'm unsure where, for coffee. The only people were locals and we chatted with them a bit. When we explained we were American and Canadian, they pointed out this area had been liberated by Canadians. The woman serving us told us how two Canadian soldiers had stayed in their home and how wonderful they were. She then choked up as she told us how both were killed shortly after.
So...what do we make of this?
The great libertarian John Stuart Mill put it this way. "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Every person I've mentioned in this bit -- my aunt, two uncles, and my father -- is deceased. None were warriors by profession. They simply fought because it was necessary. That we have any freedom today is because of them and many more people like them. Let's continue the tradition.
