← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kevin_O'Keeffe
Thread ID: 18913 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2005-06-30
2005-06-30 07:57 | User Profile
[url=http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/garbage.asp]link[/url]
"Did you hear about France demanding the American soldiers buried over there be dug up and removed from their land? You know, the ones that died in World War II freeing that country? It was in all the news ââ¬â they want our dead out of their country.
And the worst of it? They sent a note to our government saying, "Come and pick up your trash."
Dislike of the French ââ¬â always a popular pastime in America ââ¬â ran at fever pitch during the first half of 2003. The manuvering in the United Nations by the French government to prevent the war in Iraq was viewed by many as an act of base ingratitude in light of the sacrifices made by Britain and America to rescue France and its people during two World Wars. That anger surfaces in a number of the rumors of the day, some of which call for boycotts of goods presumed to be made by French companies, and others which turn out to be mishearings or misunderstandings of events reported in the news. It is from this latter category that the "come and pick up your trash" blood boiler is plucked.
In March 2003, at one of the largest British war cemeteries in northern France, hate-filled comments were sprayed in red paint over a monument to Britain's dead from World War I. The defacement was removed by the afternoon of the day it was discovered, but not before a few busloads of visitors had seen it. Along with "Rosbifs (British) go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" and "Death to the Yankees," was painted the comment that would spark the rumor: "Dig up your garbage. It is fouling our soil."
Outrage over this craven act of anonymous vandals was swift and unanimous, with the French authorities just as incensed by it as anyone.
Scant days after the anti-war slogans were discovered, President Jacques Chirac sent an apology to Queen Elizabeth over the desecration of those graves. "These unacceptable and disgraceful acts are unanimously condemned by the French people," said Mr. Chirac. "In the name of France, and in my own name, please accept my deepest regrets. France knows what it owes to the formidable devotion and courage of the British soldiers who came to help it free itself in the fight against barbarity." (President Chirac was not slighting Americans with that comment; he was recognizing that only British, Canadian, and Australian soldiers who died in World War I are buried at the cemetery which was defaced. No American war dead lie there.)
Yet rumor being what it is, it wasn't long until this real story (unnamed hooligans, defacement of a British cemetery, apology by the President of France) rearranged itself into quite a different tale, one in which the French government stood poised with shovel in hand to cleanse their land by digging up American war dead while sending a "Come and pick up your trash" note to the Americans.
It is ironic that the reality of who wants the American dead removed from French soil is the polar opposite of the rumor. In March 2003, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite aired her American Hero's Repatriation Act. This bill called for allowing families of fallen American soldiers interred in France or Belgium to retrieve their deceased relatives and re-bury them in the United States because, as Rep. Brown-Waite said, "Millions of dollars a year are collected by the French Government and French businesses from patriotic Americans visiting their loved ones who gave everything in defense of the French during WWII. It is not right that American citizens are compelled out of respect for the fallen to support the economy of a country who has turned its back on us and on their memory."
This is not the first time the placement of America's war dead has been the subject of rancor. In the 1960s, France, under Charles DeGaulle, bolted from the NATO Nuclear Planning Group and established their own nuclear deterrent, an act which strained French relations with the United States. In 1966, DeGaulle asked that all American soldiers be removed from France. "Does that include the dead Americans in military cemeteries as well?" U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk reportedly asked.
About 30,000 Americans who died fighting World War I are buried in eight European cemeteries (six in France, one in Belgium, and one in England), and another 73,000 U.S. servicemen who gave their lives during World War II lie at rest in twelve European cemeteries (five in France, two in Belgium, two in Italy, and one each in England, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands). These foreign burial grounds are administered and maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) in Arlington, Virginia, but the ABMC does not pay "millions of dollars on rent for these cemeteries," as another popular rumor boldly asserts. The United States has been granted tax-free and rent-free use of all these cemetery sites, in perpetuity, by their host governments. The honored dead rest in peace.
2005-06-30 08:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE]In March 2003, at one of the largest British war cemeteries in northern France, hate-filled comments were sprayed in red paint over a monument to Britain's dead from World War I. The defacement was removed by the afternoon of the day it was discovered, but not before a few busloads of visitors had seen it. Along with "Rosbifs (British) go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" and "Death to the Yankees," was painted the comment that would spark the rumor: "Dig up your garbage. It is fouling our soil."[/QUOTE] Personally, I find that more offensive than the rumour, had it been true.
2005-06-30 08:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE=robinder]Personally, I find that more offensive than the rumour, had it been true.[/QUOTE]
You'd think it was worse for one lone yahoo (and maybe a budy) to say something like that clandestinely, then for the French government to say nearly the same thing officially? Why?
2005-06-30 08:33 | User Profile
It is only marginally so (and I honestly am not very perturbed by either), but it is still the case for me. Maybe because the French are a sovereign nation, and at the end of it all, it would be their decision to make, should they so choose. But the insult to the same people who stood with them in a war where a quarter of their young men were killed, and to hope that they die in a new war is something I can't help but take a bit personally. I don't hold the entirety of the French people responsible for it, it probably was one or a few hooligans and certainly the good people of France disapproved just as much. I find it hard to be offended by a government, but disrespectful vandalists are another matter. Suppose some mean-spirited Americans (or British) purposefully defaced a French monument, we would never hear the end of it, either from Gaullists, or those Americans who kowtow to them, or see a conspiracy against the French in all things.
2005-06-30 11:15 | User Profile
Robinder, think for a moment about the class of 'Frenchman' who would scribe "Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood". All that's missing from that picture is a star and crescent.
2005-06-30 11:39 | User Profile
It's a bit unlikely that Arabs would use a slang term like "rosbif". Perhaps I just have a low estimate of Arabs, but the deed was calculated in such a way that this was most likely the work of native French. Hussein probably isn't the hero of the more devoted muslims, either.
2005-06-30 12:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=robinder]It's a bit unlikely that Arabs would use a slang term like "rosbif".[/QUOTE] Why not? It's just the French equivalent of "Limey" and I've heard American Negroes use that term. Do you believe sullen young Muslims in France avoid using French lingo? Thanks to the exciting kaleidoscope of diversity afflicting Europe it's possible to meet Jamaicans with cockney accents speaking in rhyming slang, in comparison I donââ¬â¢t see what is unlikely about a Muslim using the term "Rosbif".
2005-07-01 01:11 | User Profile
"Did you hear about France demanding the American soldiers buried over there be dug up and removed from their land? You know, the ones that died in World War II freeing that country? It was in all the news — they want our dead out of their country.
And the worst of it? They sent a note to our government saying, "Come and pick up your trash."
Top Northern France, where I live, is packed with French, British, Australian and of course American war cemeteries (11). They are well-kept and nobody ever asked to remove them.
[img]http://www.nesdelaliberation.fr/libe/CIMETIERE03.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nesdelaliberation.fr/libe/CIMETIERE02.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nesdelaliberation.fr/libe/CIMETIERE01.jpg[/img]
The cemeteries are maintained by foreign powers via associations - Commonwealth War Graves Commission for the British, Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. for the Germans and The American Battle Monuments Commission for the Americans. France maintain its own graves as all nations choosed to do. Sometimes foreign deads are buried alongside the French when special agreements were made. The different nations arrange their heroes the way they want. For example there are 818 British cemeteries but only 11 American ones (they prefer large places of memory) which are among the most well-kept.
Millions of dollars a year are collected by the French Government and French businesses from patriotic Americans visiting their loved ones who gave everything in defense of the French during WWII.
That's infamous! Each nation honors its lost ones like they prefer and the agreement dates back to 1920, July 31. Money is not "collected"(???) at all, it is granted by Americans, British or Germans just for this purpose and France has to justify expenses. You can Babelfish this page to check : [url]http://www.senat.fr/rap/r97-006/r97-0062.html[/url]
[QUOTE=na Gaeil is gile]Why not? It's just the French equivalent of "Limey" and I've heard American Negroes use that term. Do you believe sullen young Muslims in France avoid using French lingo? Thanks to the exciting kaleidoscope of diversity afflicting Europe it's possible to meet Jamaicans with cockney accents speaking in rhyming slang, in comparison I don’t see what is unlikely about a Muslim using the term "Rosbif".[/QUOTE] That's "Rosbeef", a word rarely used since decades and indeed Muslims most probably do not know it. And if you want my opinion, there were dozens of cemetery desecrations in France (Catholic, Muslim and Jewish ones) last year but mysteriously none since. The shift is very, very suspicious and the trend was certainly an organized provocation ... Even German cemeteries have never been desecrated.
2005-07-01 01:35 | User Profile
And we do not use the terms "Yankees" or "honkies" or "rednecks", but "Ricains" (from Américains) which can be seen as derogatory of just an abbreviation, depending on the context and who is speaking, or Wasps (rare).