Today's ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day focused on the soldiers' heroism and the necessity of the Allied cause to triumph. The American media did not bother to look very hard under the celebratory hood, much as Steven Spielberg's Normandy invasion movie,
Saving Private Ryan, did not.
The BBC's wave of stories on D-Day included a very poignant one about the destruction of the French port city of LeHavre, and 5,000 of its French civilian residents, during the 1944 Allied air blitz that framed the Normandy campaign. Those type of grim details tarnish the sheen on official speeches, such as the one President Barack Obama gave today.
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| Leonardo Sciascia |
I recently started a novella by the late Sicilian writer
Leonardo Sciascia set in a town liberated by American forces during World War II. The skillfully drawn picture includes people abandoning Fascism and shouting approval of the Allied advance. It also depicts what happened to the town after its changing of the guard from German to American occupiers. The black market resumes acvitity. Prostitution occurs somewhat openly or quite discreetly. Scores get settled. Lies about family connections to America expand like fish stories. The natural, centuries-old Sicilian suspicion about foreigners, especially military ones, maintains its grip on the local population.
One notion Sciascia implicitly raises is how little things change over time. This perspective notably contrasts with an unquestioning American belief in the constancy and positive value of change. That conundrum was not articulated during today's Normandy ceremonies, but it's worth considering after the good feeling from American triumphalism fades away.
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