My war by Rooney Andrew A

Author:Rooney, Andrew A
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rooney, Andrew A, United States. Army, World War, 1939-1945, Soldiers, World War, 1939-1945
Publisher: Holbrook, Mass. : Adams Pub.
Published: 1995-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

cases of the best wines they could appropriate in France. There was cognac, champagne, port, and sherry enough for, literally, an army. German officers apparently lived better than our own.

Soldiers and several reporters who got there ahead of me were going in and then reappearing at the mouth of the tunnel a few minutes later, carrying cases of wine of an excellence far beyond their beer-trained taste buds' ability to appreciate. It was my first exposure to the spoils of war and to the word "loot" used as a noun. They put the loot in jeeps and trucks and drove off. It gave me a new view of looting, too.

In school I'd read how Hannibal's troops looted and plundered as they moved across the Alps and then into Rome. It was something out of the ancient past but as I watched this anthill of activity at the mouth of the tunnel, as Americans helped themselves to this great stock of wine and liquor, I realized the standards of what's right and wrong change in a war. These soldiers and the newsmen helping themselves didn't have any sense that they were stealing. Stealing suggests taking property away from someone else. They weren't taking from anyone, and it didn't seem wrong to them. It wasn't wrong, I guess. They were taking something that wasn't theirs but it wasn't anyone else's, either.

These were second-generation spoils, of course. They'd already been spoils once when the Germans took them from the French. Now they were spoils again as American soldiers helped themselves. I remember the feeling I had that I should get in on this good thing going on and take several cases back to Sainte-Mere myself. Here was something valuable absolutely free. Mine for the taking.

I didn't take any wine that day. It wasn't so much that I had any inhibitions about taking it because it wasn't mine. At that time in my life, I didn't drink wine or liquor of any kind—a personal shortcoming that I was to correct after the war when I learned what a good, wholesome, American drink bourbon is.

Cherbourg was of vital importance to the success of the Allied drive toward Germany because without a port it was difficult to bring ashore the vast quantity of supplies that a million soldiers already ashore needed. They had to be fed, moved, and stocked with ammunition, a monumental supply job.

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