The French Sneer At America’s War Dead

The French Sneer At America’s War Dead

The French Sneer At America’s War Dead: The picture that you see below is from the French “Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy.”

What’s missing is an American flag. According to the The Dissident Frogman, who just visted the museum, the American flag there and in another location, as well as American pins have been removed from the museum. Oh they still have the British flags and the Canadian flags, but apparently they feel that the 9,386 American soldiers who died at Normandy & the 1,557 who went missing or weren’t identified, don’t merit representation.

Besides, if any Americans take offense at that sort of thing, the French can just run another commercial featuring Woody Allen kissing his stepdaughter/wife and that’ll fix everything, right? I wouldn’t bet on that if I were them…

Hat Tip to Anticipatory Retaliation for pointing this one out.

***Update***: Here’s the explanation from the museum’s explantion for the missing flags.

But there is a simple explanation, insisted Magalie Bignon, spokeswoman for the mayor of Bayeux.

Bignon told WorldNetDaily the empty pole is reserved for the flag of the Sherwood Rangers, the British regiment that liberated the town from the Nazis on June 7, 1944.

…Two other photographs on the “Frogman” site suggested American items were conspicuously missing from displays at the souvenir shop.

Bignon said the shop sold its entire supply, because so many American tourists come in June during the anniversary commemorations, “even this year” amid anger over France’s refusal to cooperate with the U.S. in the war in Iraq.

…(A)ppreciation for what the U.S. did in 1944 is still strong among the residents of Normandy, said Yan Baczkowski, an American who directs the French government’s Western France tourist board office in New York.

“You will not find a Frenchman in Normandy who is hostile to an American,” he said.

Baczkowksi noted that just a few hundred meters from the flag poles at the Bayeux museum is a monument to slain U.S. soldiers.”

While I can’t imagine that they’re lying about the Sherwood Rangers flag (it’s too easily checked out), what they’re saying seems to be contradictory. On the one hand, no Americans fought at Bayeux, but plenty fought at Normandy and apparently there’s even a “monument to slain U.S. soldiers” there, but there’s no American flag flying. They claim the buttons and flags are sold out, but how plausible is that given that American tourism to France has dropped preciptiously? While I think their story sounds questionable, I also think that they have to be given the benefit of the doubt given the explanation that they’ve put forward.

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