The Wrong Ambassadors

It was a difficult thing for U.S. correspondents to write about, but in intermittent dispatches they were sending back a disturbing story. The behavior of U.S. soldiers abroad, particularly in the liberated countries of Europe, has left a bad taste in the mouths of all concerned. Relations between the G.I.s and the civilian populations have been strained to the utmost. This was especially true in France.

There were things to be said on both sides; there were excuses and rationalizations. But the ugly fact was that the behavior of many G.I.s in Europe was disgraceful. It was not just that there were rights in the Place Pigalle (which G.I.s call "Pig Alley") and fights on the waterfront of Le Havre. It was not just holdups here and drunkenness and rowdyism there.

It was in large part the attitude of many G.I.s, who swaggered about as though they were conquerors--and irresistible conquerors to boot. "They have merely taken the place of the Germans," was a common French pronouncement. Many troops being redeployed from Germany arrived with a German-inspired hatred of the French. In Le Havre, where some Frenchmen began carrying truncheons at night to protect their wives and sisters from G.I. insults, a young French girl complained: "I do not know why all Americans think that all French girls will make love to anybody. I think Americans can be nice if they don't drink. But when they are drunk they are beasts. For me they have worn out their liberation. I wish they would go home."

With the French girl's last observation all G.I.s would agree. They also wished they could go home. And that was partly the reason for their bad behavior. The best-paid, best-fed soldiers in the world had not wanted to come in the first place, they had never really understood why they were there, and now they wanted to go home fast.

They had not learned the fact, intimately known to the British--and to the Russians--that the victors are supposed to stick around and clean up the peace. The people at home had not learned it either: they were in as much of a hurry as the G.I.s to get them home--back from that unpleasant outer world that neither understood nor appreciated what grand fellows (in George Patton's phrase) Americans were.

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