Chicken Soup for the Soul of America (19 page)

Megan

Megan M. Hallinan, ENS
Submitted by Thomas Phillips

Photo by PH2 Shane McCoy/U.S. Navy.

Four Simple Words

H
ow wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment to improve the world.

Anne Frank

One day after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, a man stood on the street of a foreign country with an American flag and a sign. I didn't really have time to look; I was busy and in a state of shock over the recent events. Yet something compelled me to stop. What did this man want to say about my country? Would I have to defend mom, apple pie and rock 'n' roll so far from home? I crossed the street. On his sign were four simple words I will never forget:
“Wir alle sind Amerikaner.”

The country was Switzerland, and it is my second home. It is also stubbornly neutral and not even a member of the United Nations. Also neutral, in his own way, is Erwin Handschin, the man with the American flag and the sign. Not a member of any political party, union or club, he has never been to America and doesn't even speak English. This country and this man do not take positions, generally speaking. But on September 12, 2001, Herr Handschin woke up near Zurich and felt compelled to hold a one-man demonstration. Walking the streets of the largest Swiss city, he carried an American flag over his shoulder and a sign that proclaimed,
“Wir alle sind Amerikaner.”
Many people congratulated him or clapped their approval. Because I speak German, I knew immediately what the words meant, but their deeper meaning only became clear a few minutes later.

I introduced myself and a conversation developed. The sixty-year-old had gotten up early that morning and written his feelings down on a piece of paper. He wanted to show that his heart went out to Americans, that he had compassion for them in their time of grief and confusion. As we talked, the deeper meaning of his sign became apparent to me: What America stands for is what most people everywhere stand for. The spirit and the ideals of our country are what is best about being human. They are what men and women all over the world envy and identify with: freedom, democracy, courage, compassion. And yes, even rock 'n' roll.

Today, the streets in Zurich are more or less back to normal. Bankers, barons and businessmen walk these noble
strassen.
Neutrality is secure. But as I stroll through the city these days, Erwin's nonneutral words accompany me:
We are all Americans.
It is one reason why our country will prevail.

The evening after his one-man demonstration, Erwin went back to his apartment, cooked some dinner and went to bed at around midnight. He didn't sleep right away; instead, he lay in bed and thought to himself,
Today you did something good, something that embodies the spirit of people everywhere.
Indeed you did, Erwin.

We are all Americans.

Arthur Bowler

Hope from Abroad

Y
ou cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. .

. . We are not a nation, so much as a world.

Herman Melville

Omaha Beach, France. We'd spent most of the day on the road and had just sat down for a late dinner—8:30
P.M.
in France, 4:30
P.M.
in New York—when we heard the news.

The couple at the table next to us was from Ireland, and when they recognized our accents—we were, I believe, the only Americans in the seafront restaurant—the man asked if we knew.

Knew what?

And so it began for us: two Americans learning that more than 5,000 people back home had been murdered by terrorists.

Two Americans lost in the atrocities of the past—we were researching World War II for a book I'm writing—suddenly confronted with an atrocity of the present.

Two Americans who, for the next week, would be buffered—and frustrated—by being an ocean away from a homeland in mourning.

What a strange juxtaposition: to be listening to the waves wash ashore at Normandy, where fifty-seven years before, Allied troops stormed ashore to liberate northern Europe from the grasp of Germany—and, at the same time, watching CNN images of the World Trade Center collapsing after being attacked by terrorists.

Evil, I was reminded, never goes away. It simply lurks in the shadows of time, morphs to fit the technological advances and springs on another generation. Hitler, bin Laden—the monsters change, the methods change, but the madness that motivates them does not.

Earlier that day, we'd walked through the preserved ruins of a French village, Oradour-Sur-Glane. There, on June 10, 1944, its few hundred residents—like millions of New Yorkers on September 11, 2001—awoke to a place of peace and prosperity. But with the same suddenness as the attack on the World Trade Center, German troops rolled into town and massacred virtually everyone: men, women and children.

By the end of the day, 642 lay dead and the village had been burned to its stone foundations.

“Man's inhumanity to man,” I heard a man mutter after witnessing the chilling remains of the village, eerily replete with everything from charred dishes to children's bikes.

The next morning—the day after we'd heard the news from home—we walked among the 9,386 graves at the American Military Cemetery above Omaha Beach.

Chimes played “My Country, 'Tis of Thee.” American and French flags, both at half-staff, fluttered in the brisk breeze. And on the beach below, a couple of sand yachts slalomed beside surf once colored with blood.

Now came news of more blood following an attack that, unlike the Normandy invasion, wasn't done to liberate the oppressed, but to oppress the liberated.

Not until we placed a phone call home did we realize the scope of the terrorist attack. We were traveling France's back roads and didn't see English newspapers and English TV broadcasts until days later.

In a sense, the language barrier protected us from the pain; we weren't barraged, as others were, with constant news reports. Nor, because of the language difference, were we conversing with others about what had happened.

And yet, being thousands of miles away from our friends, family and community also meant a strange sense of disconnectedness tinged with guilt. No matter how far off the beaten path we ventured, sometimes on roads not much wider than our rented Renault, the news from home stalked us.

Meanwhile, though, we sensed that America's pain was Europe's pain. While we were at a D-Day museum, a British schoolmaster cautioned his students to treat Americans with extra respect because of what had happened. On back roads in Luxembourg, the country's flags hung from windows, tied with black “mourning” bands. Once, not far from where Allied troops fought German troops in the bitter Battle of the Bulge, we came across a memorial for the 80th Infantry. It overlooked a beautiful valley and was anchored by two flags, both half-staffed: an American flag and a Luxembourg flag.

We couldn't help but notice the Stars and Stripes had, in the heavy wind, ripped loose from one of its two grommets. It was flying wildly out of control—and yet with a certain amount of tenacity, battered but not beaten, like the country itself.

Finally, on a drizzly Saturday, not far from Liege, Belgium, and the German border, we scanned the white markers of yet another American military cemetery, where more than 7,000 U.S. soldiers had been buried. As I looked at the sea of white crosses and Star of David symbols, I couldn't help but think this was roughly the number of people who had died in the terrorist attacks.

It left me feeling despondent, contrasting the pain of the past with the pain of the present. Would we ever get beyond man's humanity to man? Hadn't the world learned anything in the last half-century-plus?

But just when I had resigned myself to a bleak world in which nobody seemed to care about one another, an incident whispered hope to me.

I'd been interviewing the cemetery's supervisor—the subject of a book I'm writing was once buried on these grounds—when a man with a handful of daisies poked his head in the door.

He was roughly the same age that many of these U.S. soldiers from World War II would have been had they lived. He was German. He spoke little English. And he was, I discerned, seeking a vase.

“Who are the flowers for?” asked the supervisor.

“For New York,” he said, “and Washington.”

Bob Welch

Did You See Me?

G
od is known by many different names and many different traditions, but identified by one consistant feeling: love, love for humanity, particularly love for our children. Love does eventually conquer hate, but it needs our help.

Rudolph Giuliani

Did you see me?

I joined with hundreds of my fellow Canadians today, in the shadow of the Detroit skyline, to pay my respects to my American brothers and sisters. I watched as utility workers, stationed in bucket trucks, rose high above the crowd to fly the Stars and Stripes and the Maple Leaf. I shivered as the wind picked up, at just the right moment, and the flags snapped to attention, their colors bright.

Did you see me?

I was the Canadian veteran in full-dress uniform, my military medals shining brightly, whose voice quivered as we sang “O Canada.” I thought of the battles we fought together sixty years ago, side by side, united in our common cause. I remembered my comrades, American and Canadian, lost in war, far across the ocean.

Did you see me?

I was the young woman wearing a
hejab
and
bourka,
who held my child's hand. I feared that the intolerance I left behind in my homeland would reappear here, in my chosen country. I wondered if my neighbors would persecute me because of my color and creed. I prayed that my children would not know the hatred my ancestors had known.

Did you see me?

I was the student, only in sixth grade, who marveled that the crowd knew the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” as well as they knew their own national anthem. I looked across the water, at the Renaissance Center shining brightly, and thought of the U.S. Girl Scouts I had met once. I wondered if they were more afraid than I, or if all children, everywhere, now felt vulnerable. I watched as a dozen bunches of red, white and blue balloons were sent up into the air, floating on the breeze, perhaps later to bring comfort to children in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois.

Did you see me?

I was the businessman, face somber in reflection. I wondered if the thin blue line of the river that divides our countries would now become a barrier. I watched the traffic waiting to cross the border, and I wondered if I would ever go to work again without U.S. Customs' officers searching every inch of my car. I wondered if people I had worked with had lost loved ones, and I mourned their loss as though it were my own.

Did you see me?

I was the young woman, tears in her eyes, who looked skyward during a moment of prayer. A solitary plane flew high overhead, the first commercial flight I'd seen in three days. I thought of the Americans I knew, women just like me. Until Tuesday, we'd concerned ourselves with matters that now seemed mundane. Now we steeled ourselves to smile as we sent our children off to school, calling them back for one more hug, one more look at their innocent faces.

Did you see me?

I was the rabbi who assured the crowd that God had not forgotten us. I said that God was in the heroes, in the people who united in rescue efforts, in the thousands who lined up to give blood around the world, in the hundreds of firefighters who went into the World Trade Center Towers while thousands of people fled. I was the Muslim leader who prayed to Allah, to guide us to the straight way, and to make us understand the beauty of our differences. I reminded all that we are human and asked that Allah unite us in humanity. I was the Baptist preacher who suggested that we must behave like the children of God, as one people.

Did you see me?

My heart swelled with pride as my friends and neighbors leaned over the rail and dropped flowers of red, white and blue into the water. I watched as a sea of blossoms, the symbols of hope, peace and forgiveness, floated past. I listened to our mayor repeat the words that John F. Kennedy spoke about our countries, a decade before I was born: “Geography made us neighbors, history has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.”