2008-02-10: Two kinds of war monuments

(Posted on DailyKos, mofembot.com and the European Tribune)

There are two basic kinds of war monuments here in France. The most ubiquitous and easy to find are those commemorating the fallen of World War I — “the war to end all wars.” There is at least one in every town and every hamlet, no matter how small, and all bear impossibly long lists of names of those who died “for the glory of France.”

There are other monuments, often just plaques, affixed to what seem to be random walls and fences and buildings, scattered here and there in cities and suburbs: these are from World War II, and they commemorate a specific act that occurred on that very spot at a specific moment in time: members of the Resistance executed by the Nazis, for example.

What kind of monument will be built in Iraq?

In France, it does not matter how remote the place: even the tiniest hamlet on the most hard-to-get-to mountaintop has in its central square a monument to those who fell during World War I. As I have traveled from place to place and looked around at the small number of houses still standing, still inhabited, the lists of names seem implausibly long: this village could not possibly have supplied so many soldiers!

Most heartbreaking to see are the same family names over and over again: Entire generations were wiped out, entire families obliterated. France lost one-quarter of its men between the ages of 18 and 45 in the First World War. It would be a much harder statistic to wrap one’s brain around, but for the monuments: each name represented crops unharvested and animals untended, a schoolhouse without a teacher, a factory without skilled workers, a town without a leader. There are derelict buildings dotting the landscape that date from that conflict some 90+ years ago.

The outbreak of monument-building following the Great War was a way to honor the dead, to provide some small measure of consolation to those many widows and children left behind and bereft, and to remind generations to come of ultimate sacrifice. Some of the monument-builders and sculptors presciently left space to commemorate the fallen of subsequent wars, and many of these same monuments list the dead from World War II (with far fewer names). Every so often the same monument includes a handful of names belonging to the wars in “Indochine” (Vietnam) and Algeria, listed without commentary about the relative morality of these two latter conflicts.

But there is a second kind of monument, dating from World War II, that is also found all over France, but most particularly in the strongholds of the French Resistance. These are not so easy to find, as they are rarely large. Unlike the more formal monuments, these plaques, usually affixed to buildings and walls and fences, tell a brief story as well as list the names of the fallen. One senses that these plaques are there to keep the outrage alive as much as to honor the dead: whereas the monuments of World War I rarely make reference to the enemy, those who notice these plaques as they walk or drive by are directly reminded of the perpetrators’ identity and guilt.

The impetus for writing this diary was my finally taking the time last week to pull over and read what was written on a monument on the side of a road that I take fairly often. Built pretty much in the middle of nowhere, this was a free-standing World War II monument, a tiny obelisk, and its plaque read something like this:

“On this site, on [date in 1944], these brave resistance fighters were shot to death, victims of Nazi barbarianism [la barbarie Nazie],” followed by roughly 20 names, and then an admonition: “You who pass by, remember their sacrifice.”

It did not matter to the French families of the victims that most German soldiers did not round up and summarily execute suspected Resistance fighters. Likewise, it will not matter to generations of Iraqis to come that most American soldiers were not guilty of “shooting first, and asking questions later,” nor that many were kind and tried to be helpful to the Iraqis among whom they lived.

What kinds of monuments will be built in Iraq? There is only one possible answer: Iraqis will erect the kinds of monuments that will fuel outrage at the deeds leading to deaths of those listed. And if marked at all, our soldiers’ deaths in that torn land will be remembered only as a “victory” for the insurgents.

What kinds of monuments will we build in America to honor our soldiers, who are almost without exception brave and decent human beings? Our soldiers are loving husbands and wives and sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. They have left their homes and loved ones far behind at the behest of unscrupulous leaders and corporate profiteers who know little and care even less about the horrors of war. Our soldiers have died viewed as enemy occupiers, unmourned in Iraq. Nationally, politically, Bush and his minions keep them as invisible and as generally unlamented as possible: in a failed war, even heroes are an embarrassment and a liability. But they are mourned by their loved ones and by those in the towns and cities whence they came.

Still, the sad truth is that America will build no monuments to their courage and sacrifice for many years to come, if ever.