American World War II Cemetery in Draguignan, France

 

By sheer chance (we were running low on gas and had to drive about 20 km out of our way to find any), we stumbled upon this historical marker, commemorating the spot where on 16 August 1944 at 2230, American airborne troops made contact with the French resistance with whom they liberated the city of Draguignan.  

There were signs to the Rhone American Cemetery and Memorial, so we followed them to pay our respects.   As the website described it: 

On 12.5 acres at the foot of a hill clad with the characteristic cypresses, olive trees, and oleanders of southern France, rest 860 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the liberation of southern France in August 1944. Their headstones are arranged in straight lines, divided into four plots, and grouped about an oval pool. At each end of the cemetery is a small garden. On the hillside overlooking the cemetery is the chapel with its wealth of decorative mosaic and large sculptured figures. Between the chapel and the burial area, a bronze relief map recalls military operations in the region. On the retaining wall of the terrace, 294 names of the missing are inscribed. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified.

The grounds were extremely well-maintained, quite a contrast to the somewhat run-down surrounding area.  We met the man in charge of maintaining the place and complimented him on his work.  

    The mosaic mural on the little chapel was quite impressive, done with local artists commissioned by the United States.

It is an awesome and humbling thing to be standing in the final resting place of these young men who never made it home, fighting to liberate a people they had never met from an occupation over which they had no control.  Most who died here were probably about 10 when Hitler became dictator of Germany in 1933.   Many were a little older than Christopher is now when they died.  

Today, this Mediterranean Front is far less remembered than the Normandy theater of operations which we visited a few summers ago, but the sacrifices made her were just as great.  The English language version of Wikipedia has no entry whatsoever for Draguignan, but the French language version has an interesting write-up.  Dracénois and Var refers to the region.  My translation follows: 

 

During World War II, the city was headed by Fernand Escullier.  Resistance was quite lively and several [resistance] networks were established in Draguignan. In November 1942, the city was occupied by Italian troops, replaced in 1943 by the Germans... Many young people left to avoid the STO [Service du travail obligatoire, or obligatory labor program imposed by the Germans] into the wilderness areas of the Var Highlands to join the maquis of various political persuasions. The Gestapo and the militia were active in Draguignan. The most famous Dracénois resistance fighter, Georges Cisson, was shot in 1944.

Draguignan was liberated in large part by the FFI  (French Forces of the Interior) on Aug. 15 1944.  U.S. and British paratroopers landed to the southeast, at Motte during Operation Anvil-Dragoon. The Germans, superior in number and equipment, counter-attacked during the day of August 16 to regain control of the city.  Four FFI soldiers were killed but the Resistance held on.  Thanks to the action of Helen Vidal who notified the allies of the local insurrection, the city was not ultimately bombed by U.S. aircraft. The city was liberated by the U.S. 551st Infantry Battalion. 

A memorial [see above] recalls the place where Dracénois Resistance and the Allies finally joined on August 16 at 2230. General Von Neuling surrendered to U.S. General Patch. In 1963 a memorial erected in Peace Square in honor of Resistance of Var.

 When we returned home, I got out the World War II maps we had studied at West Point and found the town in the context of the larger fighting:

I circled in green the city of Draguignan.

On the drive back through the scrubby, rugged country near what is described as France's grand canyon that must have been perfect country for the maquis,  there were numerous spots marking where members of the Resistance had been captured and summarily executed by the Germans.


Original French:

Durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la mairie est dirigée par Fernand Escullier. La Résistance est assez vive et plusieurs réseaux s'implantent à Draguignan. En novembre 1942, la ville est occupée par les troupes italiennes, remplacées en 1943 par les Allemands. Le général Neuling réside à Draguignan, où il installe le PC du XII^e corps d'armée allemand. De nombreux jeunes dracénois partent pour éviter le STO dans les zones sauvages du Haut-Var pour rejoindre des maquis de diverses obédiences politiques. La Gestapo et la Milice sont actives à Draguignan. Le plus célèbre résistant dracénois, Georges Cisson, est fusillé en 1944.
Draguignan est en grande partie libérée par les FFI le 15 août 1944⁶ lors de l'opération Anvil-Dragoon ⁷. Les parachutistes américains et anglais atterrissent au sud-est, à La Motte. Les Allemands, supérieurs en nombre et en matériel, contre-attaquent dans la journée du 16 août pour reprendre le contrôle de la ville. Quatre FFI sont tués mais la Résistance tient bon. Grâce à l'action d'Hélène Vidal qui prévient les alliés de l'insurrection dracénoise, la ville n'est finalement pas bombardée par l'aviation américaine. La ville est libérée par le 551^e bataillon d'infanterie américain. Un monument commémoratif rappelle l'endroit où les Résistants dracénois et les Alliés font finalement leur jonction le 16 août à 22h30⁸. Le général Von Neuling se rend au général américain Patch⁹. En 1963 est inauguré un monument commémoratif érigé place de la Paix à la gloire des Résistants du Var¹⁰.

Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who saved 6,000 Jews

Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.

Imagine if the NRA had as much influence and was as radical in the past as it is today...

Imagine if the NRA had as much influence and was as radical in the past as it is today...

Today....

The only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Mental illness, video games, and the media cause massacres, not easy access to unregulated firearms.

If 90% of Americans want something but the NRA doesn't, the NRA will override the will of the people (it's what the founders would have wanted).

Laws regulating guns won't work because outlaws don't follow laws.  So let's not pass any laws.  

What worked in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan will not work in the United States because Americans are more addicted to violent video games and more mentally imbalanced (so let's arm them more heavily).  

Let's not do anything.  Except maybe buy more guns and put more guns in schools.  

December 7, 1941:  The Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor

NRA Press Release:  We believe all this talk by a Democratic President of a "day that will live in infamy" is just more evidence of an overreaching government intent on taking your guns.  Let me explain.

President Roosevelt wants us to believe that the guns used by the Japanese caused the violence we witnessed on a quiet Sunday morning in Hawaii.  This is simply not the case.  Guns do not kill people.  Bombs don't either.  Japanese with guns and bombs and kill people and the NRA strongly recommends rounding up all Americans of Japanese ancestry and putting them in camps just to be safe.  

Some urged caution when the Japanese and Germans were arming and expanding.  I think this shows the reflexive hostility Democrats have toward guns everywhere and at all times.  What Pearl Harbor illustrates is the need to privatize our Navy - only a bungling government bureaucrat would cluster all those ships together in one place like that - and to immediately cut taxes and decrease the regulatory burden on American captains of finance.

The Democratic President today spoke of the need for a declaration of war against the Japanese.  Yet we have established that the Japanese are outlaws.  The NRA does not believe that outlaws will be deterred or swayed by legal proclamations such as declarations of war.  Instead, the NRA proposes writing off the losses from Pearl Harbor, outsourcing what is left of our navy to private contractors, and putting armed security guards in every home, school, and place of work and worship on the West Coast.

If we allow President Roosevelt to massively expand the government and our public debt in order to fight a war to disarm the Japanese, the NRA believes this will send a dangerous precedent that armaments - not those who bear them - are the problem.  They are not.  In fact, the NRA also supports legislation that would allow all Americans to own whatever weapons they want to defend themselves and their families from a possible Japanese invasion.  Private families, not the government, should make the decision what armaments they should stockpile in their barricaded homes.  For some, a heavy machine gun will do.  Others who have the means might opt for a tank or at least an armored vehicle.  Some coastal communities might pool their resources and buy a fractional ownership of a battleship to patrol the waters.  But Mr. Roosevelt, please do not have the arrogance to tell the people what weaponry they can and cannot own while massively expanding the reach and power of the federal government.  

Some will argue that as we speak, millions in faraway countries and lands are suffering from brutal Japanese oppression, and that we have a moral argument to help them.  If we bail out every country that failed to see the wisdom of arming all of their citizens as the NRA advocates we do in Fortress America, then we will only encourage this reckless behavior.  There is a moral hazard to bailing out the Chinese, the Filipinos, or those on Formosa.   If we help them now, it will only encourage such irresponsible disarmament in the future.  

June 6, 1944  D Day

NRA Press Release:  Almost three years after we advised President Roosevelt not to declare war on either Japan or Germany, our worst fears are coming true.  As we have written earlier, Mr. Hitler was exercising his right - an inherent, inalienable right - to bear arms.  We may not like Mr. Hitler and he may have done some dastardly things, but does not equal fault lie with the Czechoslovakians, the Poles, the Dutch, Belgians, and French, among so many other nations who failed to arm their citizens as the NRA would like to arm all Americans?   Unfortunately, governments like the Third Reich are the price of freedom.  We can do nothing to predict or prevent the rise of another Hitler, so why not simply arm everyone all the time?  The idea of any sort of bilateral disarmament as is already being discussed among those once this war is over is dangerous and will lead to a New World Order with a Single Capitalized World Government that will take our guns and therefore make us all slaves to Mr. Roosevelt and his crew of Democratic gun-snatchers.

As we pray for the heavily armed men wading ashore on the beaches of Normandy to do battle against other heavily armed men on the bluffs above those beaches, let us never forget that the true lesson of this conflict is not that the Germans were armed too much (no one can be armed too much) but that the French were armed too little, which is why we are now engaged in such a fierce battle to liberate them.  

At any rate, the initial reports do not appear hopeful.  Heavy casualties and stalled assaults make it appear that Roosevelt's Folly as we have called this massive government works project that he is calling yet another Great War will end badly.  The debt of the United States government now exceeds our Gross National Product and the level of spending by this Democratic administration is clearly unsustainable.  How long can this madness be sustained, Mr. President?  Far better to pull back to Fortress America as the NRA has long advocated, and let the rest of the world fend for itself.  Only by the harsh lessons of occupation by a more heavily armed country can the occupied truly learn the price of not being more heavily armed in the first place.  

August 6, 1945  Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima

NRA Press Release:  Although we have opposed most of the policies of this Democratic administration, the NRA wishes to commend President Truman for illustrating to the Japanese and the world the extraordinary liberating force that only arms can produce.  If the Japanese have not now learned the lesson of leaving their populace disarmed while all of their weapons were redistributed by their government to the government employees fighting what appears to be a losing war, they never will.  We know that those incinerated at Hiroshima were unarmed civilians - women, children, and old men - whom the Japanese government foolishly left unprotected.  Hiroshima shows what gun control looks like.   The viciousness of the attack will hopefully have the beneficial effect of both bringing this massively expensive war to a close so we can get our federal debt reduced and lower taxes from their current top marginal rate of over 90% to something more reasonable and sustainable.  

The NRA predicts that once the world fully absorbs the game-changing wonder of these atomic weapons, any talk of international arms control or attempts to limit defense technology will die a natural death.   What nation would not want to possess such wonderful weapons that allow so many to be killed without endangering anyone except for a handful of men in a high altitude, unaccompanied bomber?  The NRA will strongly oppose any nation that would attempt to limit access to such a weapon, even by our potential enemies, since an occasional incinerated city is the price we all must pay for freedom.  Our hope is that the day is not far off when families may be allowed to own such wonderful weapons of home defense.  The government has no right to tell people what weapons they can and cannot posses to protect their families.

December, 1979:  Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

NRA Press Release:  The NRA is deeply troubled by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which we believe was encouraged by recent victories by gun control Democrats in the United States.   The Soviets can sense weakness, even across the Atlantic, and no doubt invaded confident that an America losing the moral courage to trust its own people with automatic weapons and handguns is an America that lacks the spine to resist a Soviet invasion.

We are encouraged, however, by the wise decision of our government to arm the Afghanistan people to repel this invasion.  The NRA believes that Afghanistan will one day demonstrate to the world what a country where citizens are free to own every weapon from AK-47s to shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles can look like.  Perhaps not this year, perhaps not next year, but the NRA predicts in a decade or two, Afghanistan will be a prosperous, peaceful country after successfully evicting the Soviet occupiers and gaining their freedom by force of arms.  If the country keeps the weaponry as a gift from the West, it will no doubt improve relations as an armed, free Afghan people install a Jeffersonian democracy and show their gratitude to the United States with a long and warm relationship.  

Some argue that arming the Afghan people is dangerous.  The CIA has even warned against "blow back" from all those whom we and the Saudis have recruited across the region to fight what the Islamists call jihad or holy war.  The NRA believes these fears reflect the typical hand-wringing of the reflexively anti-gun Democratic crowd.   A war against the Soviets is a holy one and we hope that weapons supplied by us and our Saudi allies will fill the Soviet occupiers with holes.  

Even if the Soviet occupation continues, it will be a painful, bloody one, thanks to the weapons we are supplying the freedom-loving people of Afghanistan.  If the Democrats lack the spine to arm the mujahadin as the freedom fighters call themselves, then we ask them to step aside and let the NRA and its members show them what freedom looks like.    

October, 1986:  Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik Summit come close to abolishing all nuclear weapons

NRA Press Release:    We remain fiercely opposed to any and all attempts to limit access to defense technology by any government or individual.  Although President Reagan is a Republican and an NRA member, we find his international attempts at "gun control" to be deeply troubling.  If he is successful, he could establish a precedent, in which peace is maintained by eliminating weapons rather than stock-piling them.  This may buy us a year, a decade, or even a century of peace, but what sort of world would we live in if we are not free, as individuals and governments, to own whatever weapons we want? 

The NRA does not wish to live in such a world and predicts that if the United States ever enters into a bilateral agreement with the Soviet Union to reduce weapons, the Soviet Union will take this as a sign of weakness, invade Western Europe, send Soviet troops into Alaska, and force us to surrender our arms or face nuclear annihilation.  The NRA has long maintained that the Soviet Union is far stronger than it appears, that President Gorbachev is a crafty man intent on world domination, and that only the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction will keep us free and at peace.