Only the ignorant dare call french cowards

i realise this is a bit late to be current, and may in fact have been covered here months ago, but i hope some who havent seen it will appreciate it nonetheless.

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http://www.bigeye.com/050103.htm

ONLY THE IGNORANT DARE CALL FRENCH COWARDS
Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2003
May 1, 2003

VERDUN, France - Something keeps drawing me back to this most evil and sinister battlefield on earth, a mere 18 km (10.8 miles) by 10 km (6 miles), where during ten hellish months of 1916 1.4 million French and German soldiers were killed or gravely wounded.

Each year it is my custom to greet spring in France's exquisite countryside, exploring battlefields and forts of the two world wars. But this, my sixth journey to Verdun, holds particular personal meaning.

Decades of travel, covering many wars, reading the history of man's folly have made me a cosmopolitan who detests borders and earnestly believes mankind's worst evils are nationalism and religious fanaticism. Still, there are four countries that I hold particularly dear and to whom I feel respectful (as opposed to hormonal) patriotism, respect, and loyalty - Canada, France, Switzerland, the United States (in alphabetical, not emotional order), and reserve a special place for Pakistan.

Quixotic as it may sound, while at Verdun, I apologized as a US Army veteran to France's fallen soldiers for the slander and disgraceful lies hurled at their memory by American know-nothings and pro- Israel neo-con pundits who poured venom on the French for not agreeing to President George Bush's imperial oil war against Iraq.

`Defeat monkeys'….`surrender specialists'…..`never won a war'…`always saved by Americans'…`in war, like an accordion, useless and noisy..' `cowards' …were hurled at France by American commentators. The internet filled with anti-French jokes and lists of French military defeats.

I invite all those flag waving, fire-breathing American couch patriots who called French cowards to visit Verdun. The air here still stinks of death; only deformed, stunted bushes grow on its poisoned soil. In the towering gray stone Ossuary repose bone pieces of 135,000 men.

In 1916, the Germans sought a decisive battle on the strategic heights above Verdun, where they planned to bleed France's army to death with their massed artillery. On the first day of battle alone, French positions were inundated by one million heavy shells. The titanic bombardment went on for ten months, explosives against human flesh. Trenches and dugouts were pulverized. Entire French regiments were destroyed in hours.

The French commander, Gen. Nivelle, ordered his 2nd Army defending Verdun: `No surrender; no retreat, not even an inch: die where you stand.' And so they did.

On 4-5 June, the Germans poured 100,000 poison gas shells - chlorine, phosgene, and cyanide - onto only 4 kms of French-held front - then launched divisional assaults against the position. French soldiers had no gasmasks. Thousands died in hideous agony, or were blinded. Yet they somehow held.

Shells churned the battlefield into a gigantic quagmire of mud, rotting corpses, body parts, dead horses, overhung by a toxic miasma of chlorine and mustard gas. Troops went days without food; they drank from shell craters filled with bodies, and often drowned in them. German flamethrowers inflicted frightful casualties. Shells rained down round the clock. Every tiny elevation, every fort, became a little Thermopylae.

At the height of the German attack on Fort Vaux, over 2,000 heavy shells an hour, some 405mm 1,000 kg monsters, were exploding each on its roof and glacis. When we today talk about soldier's combat stress, think of the heroic garrison of Vaux, burned, gassed, poisoned by toxic smoke, dying of thirst, fearing they would be buried alive at any moment, yet fighting on. The French lost 100,000 casualties trying to retake another fort, Douaumont.

Three-quarters of the French Army, an and entire generation of France's men, passed through the inferno of Verdun. Units stayed in line until they had lost 60% casualties. Every town and village in France bears a war memorial with names of its sons fallen at Verdun. The heights above the Meuse River became France's Calvary; `They shall not pass' the army's and nation's credo.

The attacking Germans fought, as always, like lions, losing 400,000 dead. They almost broke through, but were finally held at the last line of French defenses, at fearsome sacrifice. French soldiers fought like tigers, with their legendary fury and élan: over 430,000 died at Verdun; 800,000 were gassed or crippled for life. Bones are still unearthed here today, 87 years later; French metro's and busses only recently ended reserved seating for `mutilated war veterans.' After the war, there were not enough young Frenchmen to farm the fields or produce children.

In the end, the French held Verdun. In this battle alone, France lost almost 1.5 times total US losses in all of World War II, and 20% of its nearly 2 million dead from 1914-1918.

To the northwest of here is Sedan. In May, 1940, the racing German XIX Panzer Corps negotiated the dense Ardennes Forest and fought across the Meuse, dividing, then shattering the French Army. Italy attacked in the south.

The French did not simply surrender, as some Americans claim. Their army fought valiantly, but was overwhelmed and torn apart by German's high-tech military machine, just as Iraq's outdated forces were recently obliterated by high-tech US forces.

The French government wanted to fight on from Brittany, but there were no army divisions left intact. France lost 210,000 dead in 1940 fighting Germany and Italy; America lost 292,000 men during the entire war. Let's keep the historical record accurate.

edit: another link for people who want to read more about the bravery of the french

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWmarne.htm

[ 11-04-2003, 05:05 PM: Message edited by: sultan ]

[skywalker]

Thanx for posting this sultan.

I cringed every time I heard the insults that were hurled at the French as whole at the seeming behest of the Bush Administration. Thankfully, no one that I am personally in contact with every said any of these insults against the French people. I do not know how I'd react or reply to them. I would most likely shake my head and walk away in disgust. Such insults do not deserve to be acknowledged.

Mark

[ 11-04-2003, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

[Faceman]

Great article!
The bottom line is "War is not nice"
Europeans have realized that after WWII, it took Vietnam to show it to Americans.
It's a common opinion here in Europe that Americans are always so gung-ho about going to war because they have not faced the destruction 20th century warfare is able to deliver to your personal home.
French, Germans, English, Polish, Italians, Russians and an endless list of other European people have experienced the destruction of their home-country in WWII. This makes you think about going to war again. Even if it be somewhere else.
So the lack of support for war (wherever it may be) in Europe may in fact be because of cowardice. But it is a cowardice I admire.

[Timber Loftis]

I never said they were cowards. They're the best and bravest bunch of losers in the whole world. Some people just lose a battle or a war. Not the french. The French do it with aplomb. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img]

[ 11-04-2003, 06:33 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[john]

And don't forget who helped us kick the British out over 200 yrs ago.The French!

[Ronn_Bman]

As is normal for this forum, I find the article interesting and informative, but I must say that I've never heard insults hurled at the French (people) as (a) whole at the seeming behest of the Bush Administration.

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by john: And don't forget who helped us kick the British out over 200 yrs ago. The French!

Absolutely!

If not for the French, we'd still be speaking English here in the States.

Of course the crappy part of that argument (and it will devolve) is the one that ends with the fact that the French would now be speaking German without the US...

Hopefully it won't result in that AGAIN because if it does, the timeless question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, suddenly becomes important AGAIN. So which would it be if it comes to that? [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

[Rokenn]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: I never said they were cowards. They're the best and bravest bunch of losers in the whole world. Some people just lose a battle or a war. Not the french. The French do it with aplomb. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kidding.gif[/img]

Have you no class TL? How can you say shit like this even in jest after reading this article?

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Rokenn: Have you no class TL? How can you say shit like this even in jest after reading this article?

Easy big fella Timber has class, in abundance, he just gets a little carried away with smart-assedness sometimes, as do alot of folk
I've lost count of how many times I've publicly apologised on IW for rash, heated statements. But then again, maybe I have no class...
Heh heh. It's all good. I've always tipped my hat to every aspect of French culture and history (except nuke testing in the Pacifc, grrrrr!!! [img]graemlins/1pissed.gif[/img] ). Beautiful folk, with beautiful ways...

[ 11-04-2003, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

[Barry the Sprout]

The most amusing thing to my mind was when the insults started cropping up on this side of the Atlantic every now and then. Now, correct me if I'm wrong but we've spent somewhere near 900 years losing wars against the French. It just all seemed a bit forced in my opinion.

Plus, the day that Chirac speaks for the whole of France is a very sorry day indeed IMO.