Not an Armchair General

I left the US when I was 27 and I spent the entire first year in a huge transition. (I’ve written about this before). I was 5 months in the hospital with a difficult pregnancy, the rest of the time I wanded the coastline with all of the abandoned trenches and bunkers from the years of Nazi occupation. I talked to people whose houses were commandeered by generals. Who worried about who to trust.

All these things I had read about in school, but never knew as anything more real than a fairy tale.

My grandfather fought in WWII, but didn’t bring it home. For me, taking part in armed conflicts from America seemed like politicians sitting in a deer stand and deciding where and when to shoot based on the angle of the story — the more profitable alliance. While Peter Paul and Mary protested interventions in South America. While famous people negotiated with people “over there”.

But “over there” is here now, and in part because of my age and situation, it all became real.

When my kids were in elementary school, they walked a block to enter the building that was a Nazi-run hospital during the war. When we walked the dog, we passed the graves of the British pilots who crashed here trying to reach the resistance fighters.

A few years ago, at a party in the south, the host showed me the bottom of the plates in the…