Frank Deaver Peace Editorials

     June 6, 1944 — In the largest amphibious military invasion in history, Allied forces crossed the English Channel, taking the war against Germany back to the mainland of Europe.

     June 6, 1996 — In a gesture of international friendship and good will, a delegation from Tuscaloosa crossed the English Channel, taking gifts to German hosts now allied in a sister-city relationship.

     It was, to the day, exactly 52 years later when Al DuPont crossed the English Channel for the second time.  In 1944, he was one of the nearly 3 million men who participated in the wartime invasion.  In 1996, he was one of the 31-member Tuscaloosa delegation—about one-third of them Rotarians— who went to confirm bonds of international friendship.

     Those two channel crossings, the second on the exact anniversary of the first, brought sobering thoughts not only to DuPont but also to those with whom he shared the remembrance.  The first crossing was in war, the second in peace; the first in hostility, the second in cordiality.

     Those of us who discussed the 52-year contrast were made to reflect on the nature of human relationships—how instinctive it is to be understanding, forgiving, friendly.  And in our new German friends, we also found those same instincts.

     We were hosted in German homes in June, and in September a return delegation returned the visit and were our guests in Tuscaloosa.  In the process, we learned much from each other, and the bonds of friendship inevitably were contrasted to our national experiences of an earlier generation.

     Rotarian Wilhelm Böck, born in 1927, was inducted into the German army before his 16th birthday, and was one of 60,000 soldiers taken prisoner at Ulm, shortly before the end of the war.  He remembers that when the city was invaded, an American soldier in a Sherman tank threw him an orange—not only a rare treat but a gesture of kindness, he said. 

     Three months after the end of the war, Wilhelm said, all prisoners under 18 were released to go home.  He returned to school, but at the University of Munich food was scarce and he said the American occupation army distributed sausages to students who were under-weight.  He remembers “very fair treatment” by American soldiers, both during and after the war.

     Rotarian Thomas Rösler, born in 1958, said that from his childhood he heard from his parents “only good things about America.”  His father, he said, was inducted into the German army at age 19, was captured and imprisoned in the United States until the war ended.  German prisoners in American POW camps, his father told him, were treated well and had enough to eat.  Those under 18 were given 15 percent more rations, he said.

     One act of kindness, related by his father, particularly impressed Thomas.  An American MP had only one cigarette, but he broke it in half and shared it with his prisoner. The elder Rösler, Thomas said, spent the rest of his life recalling his good treatment—that he had clothes “better than back home,” and sometimes “thought he was dreaming.”  He told so many instances of friendship in the POW camp that his friends said he “should write a book.”

     The younger German soldiers who were drafted into service, Thomas said his father told him, felt that “there were no enemies; they only had to do their duty.”  Many of them, Thomas said, “wanted to be taken by Americans.”  They had not only heard of fair treatment by the American captors, but that young soldiers without a political record “would soon be released.”

     Both Wilhelm and Thomas also recalled the rebuilding of German industry.  American assistance not only allowed but assisted in post-war recovery.  “That is not normal,” Thomas said.  Still, it established not only economic development and trade opportunities, but friendly relations as well.

     It didn’t take 52 years for wartime hostility to evolve into post-war sharing, we observed.  Still, the reciprocal visits brought to sister-city partners—both German and American—a realization of how friendship is a more normal human emotion than hatred.  And it reminded the Rotarians among our delegations of our dedication to international goodwill and friendship.