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Please notice that there is a significant update at the end of this post that should clarify things a bit further, notably pertaining to this alternative theory (although, technically speaking, my initial post wasn't formulating any theory but, once again, was recording some troubling omissions. Therefore, this theory can't be an "alternative" one) that helped me to understand WHERE exactly the misuderstanding on the "memorial" issue originated.I MUST HONESTLY CONFESS A FAILURE ON MY SIDE.
I wasn't expecting such wave in reaction of my article about three - and only three - troubling omissions I noticed at the Bayeux Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy.
Sorry for those among you who were expecting me to confess that I did edit the photos to remove the flags, that I did remove the flags from the pole, the display-case and the pedestal before taking the pictures or that I asserted there was an ugly plot from the Bayeux township to remove all flags from the museum because it's not going to happen.
I'm a bit surprised (and also amazed) to see how fast and impulsively most people reacted and I got caught in the constant flow of comments, emails, trackback notifications and the need to check all of them, to remove the abusing ones and possibly answer the accusations.
Hence this belated, yet much needed precisions.
I know some of you won't believe it, but this site is not run by a team of CIA operatives. There's only one guy trying to run the show.
Anyway that's the failure I want to confess: I should have turned off the comments sooner and put the things back in context earlier.
Sorry. It won't happen again.
There was a lot of hazy assumptions and therefore, false deductions that were made and written by many people. People talk (well, "write") and it's fine of course. But what's bugging me is that most of this noise, anger, name calling could have been avoided with a bit more attentiveness to what I wrote precisely and a bit less extrapolation on what I didn't wrote.
What's really bugging me is people trying to put words in my mouth or thoughts in my mind that I never pronounced or cogitated.
There are several issues I addressed in the comments that probably got lost in the flow and I'm going to dig them out and put them back here. Sorry for those among you who already read them.
The most important issue that was consistently misunderstood is that the Memorial Museum is... A museum.
It is not a war cemetery; it is not a memorial to the fallen soldiers or any other official burial or monument.
The three - and only three - troubling omissions I noticed over there can't compare to what happened in Etaples a few month ago. It's a no-no.
In any case, war cemeteries are small plots of land that belongs to the fallen ones' nation of origin. (This is actually the reason why I can claim I went to the USA, the UK and Canada without leaving the old continent. But that's not the point).
There is absolutely no way their flag can be removed, unless their own country decides to.
In fact, I can't even tell if such outrage happened to the WWI cemeteries during the Nazi Occupation of WWII (And I have little time to look for that right now). Anyway.
Next, I read here and there, people stating that I wrote or declared the Museum, its staff or the even Town council "decided to remove all American flags" from the museum or that "all symbols representing America have been removed from the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux, France".
That is SIMPLY NOT TRUE and can be easily verified in my article. I have other photos to prove it as well and it's worth mentioning that half of the museum is dedicated to the American Sector of the aforementioned battle.
I won't hide the fact that I'm quite upset by these obvious fabrication, since that's precisely what we usually and rightly blame the liberal media for, and the very opposite of what we find so attractive in the blogs we read everyday.
We don't have to resort to such "tricks" while our adversaries can't avoid them.
Get back to the source, read my article again and extract its basic meaning:
- I went to Bayeux and visited the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy.
- I noticed three - and only three - troubling omissions.
- I have no information on the reasons why their was obviously something missing.
This is what this article means; this is its basic meaning, its "substantifique moelle". And it should be pretty obvious for anybody wishing to keep his/her self-control and try to find out.
Before you start making assumptions, jumping to conclusions - which I didn't even do myself - and, in some regrettable cases, distort the original message and concoct stories that will spread possibly even better than the bare truth, or, on the other hand deny the facts and pretend I doctored the photos, I really think it would be better to take the time to think, understand what you read and ask yourself if there could be a rational explanation for these undeniably bizarre coincidences.
I witnessed them and shot the pictures. I presented them on my weblog, with the usual sarcastic tone that - I guess - keeps my regular readers remaining so ("regular" and "readers" of course). I was indeed, troubled by these three - and only three - omissions (and so were the people accompanying me), particularly taking in consideration the current state of the US-French relationship and that's the reason why I decided to post about it.
But...
I take great care in what I do write and what I don't. For a simple reason: I know I'm not a native English speaker and yet, I'm writing on very polemic subjects.
That means I must take extra care in what I write and how I write it because I always have the fear that my lacunas in this language can create a misunderstanding that will be difficult to clear up.
The French version of my posts results from the English one and therefore receives the same care.
I can tell you that maintaining this weblog in both English and French on a regular basis is one hell of a mission.
I'm not complaining though, but I want you to know that the corollary to this matter of facts is that I expect from my readers a bit of help.
Nothing inaccessible though: all I ask is that you take the same care in reading me that I took in writing.
When I write "there's a troubling omission on this empty pole" it does not mean "the US flag has been removed".
Equally, when I write "Now there's another troubling omission here and another one there. Must be coincidental" it does not mean "the French decided to remove all American symbols from the museum".
And when I write "I don't know why something's missing, maybe the Mayor's office or the Museum's staff could tell", all it means is "Hey that's three - and only three - troubling coincidences, let's find out".
It actually started in such wakeful yet positive state of mind, with the first comment by Jkrank from Sofia Sideshow and his post, in the rather sarcastic tone that keeps me being one of his regular readers. His idea of sending the museum a few US flags was precisely the kind of smart and witty complement I would expect from him and I was hoping for my initial post. Just pushing things a bit further, in an unconventional way, until we can find out if there is really something "ugly" behind this or not.
But then things turned bad because many people simply forget about a simple notion: the benefit of the doubt.
So the first - and possibly most important - decision I come up with now is that I will open the dissident frogman's columns to Bayeux's Mayor office and/or the Museum's administration for any disclaimer or statement they could see fit to publish here.
Next, as far as the photo editing accusations are concerned, I think I already lost too much time answering the "plot people".
In fact, the most interesting development pertaining to that issue comes probably from the person posting under the nickname of "qwe" who first accused me of faking the three poles pictures, then found a picture of the same spot by another photographer on another site (significantly older than mine - That's interesting because it could mean that the pole in the middle has been empty for a long time which could hint at a reason for that, other than anti-Americanism) then revised his judgment to finally retract his accusation after looking at the high resolution versions of the pictures and apologize.
I won't, of course, mention that other extrasensory (French) fellow who claimed he was in Bayeux as well and saw the US flag there, even though he admitted he just stood there 30 minutes (calling this a "pee stop") when the whole museum visit (which I took) takes 2 hours...
Moral of the story? Well, I guess I still have to find it out. I'd say it probably has something to do with the concept of "balance", "time" and "thought".
The last thing that's really bugging me is that, from the very beginning, I wrote the following in exergue of this very article:
Expect more about Normandy in the coming days - Joe is fine though, but I have a few things to say and show you about Tommy.Maybe you should ask yourself if, would these three - and three only - troubling omissions have been anything serious, I would have written "Joe is fine".
What do you think?
For the rest, I wanted to tell you about the streets of the little towns in Normandy, adorned with the Allied flags, all of them. I wanted to tell you about the gratitude of Bayeux that was the first French town to be liberated; I wanted to tell you about the British War Cemetery in Bayeux with its flowered graves where Tommy rests and lives forever. I wanted to tell you about the Pegasus Bridge Memorial and Museum where I saw Tommy for real. I wanted to tell you the emotion I felt listening to this man, this veteran British paratrooper recalling the events that lead him to take this crucial bridge with his brother while he was moving from display windows to display windows in this museum dedicated to the bridge, where no flags are missing. I wanted to tell you about the genuinely warm welcome he received from the museum staff and from the director who was called, came right into the museum to shake his hand and tell him with an outstandingly heavy French accent barely hiding his own true emotion: "It iz a reel honor to have you heere Sir".
I wanted to tell you about all of that but I'm wondering...
Will you listen to me this time?
The first important error people made pertaining to my initial article was to focus almost exclusively on the empty flagpole in the first picture while, by itself, it is indeed not significant unless closely appertained to the other two (in the shop).
As a fact, if I had decided, that day, not to stop by the museum and not to visit it while on my way to the British cemetery and memorial, I would probably not have noticed these three flagpoles and this whole story would be inexistent, for the simple reason that I wouldn't have seen the other two "missing symbols" in the shop, inside the museum.
And one isolated empty flagpole wouldn't have caught my attention, particularly in Normandy in summer (there seems to be many different flags in many different places, including the historical Norman colors)
So maybe I should stress this once again: I'm always extremely careful with what I write. Since, judging by some emails I received, some of you still question what I mean with:
When I write "there's a troubling omission on this empty pole" it does not mean "the US flag has been removed".I guess I have to punt it bluntly:
when I write "there's a troubling omission on this empty pole" it does mean "something's missing on this pole even though I can't tell exactly what".
Until further information I wouldn't write "the US flag was there and it was removed."
And, mind you, I DIDN'T WRITE IT.
Two reasons for that:
First, if I was this so called "undiscriminating hysterical basher of France" some people like to depict me as, with any knowledge or certitude that there was indeed a US flag on this pole and that it had been removed for any sinister reason... I would have jumped on it with ardor because - and that's the second reason - I'm one of the last pragmatic individuals in the land of Socialist utopianism. If the cat is a cat, I call him a cat because that's the most appropriate term.
If there's a doubt and if the cat might, by any mean, be a mouse, a tricycle or bin Laden's mummy, I will call it an undefined entity that could be a mouse, a tricycle or bin Laden's mummy even though it looks a bit like a cat, until further information.
The interesting part here is that most people didn't actually believe in what they read but choose to believe in what they probably wanted to believe or deduce from my simple, straightforward observation.
The other interesting part is that many among them were first time visitors with little, if any, knowledge of the dissident frogman's sarcastic tone and obviously neglected to consider that behind the sarcasm is one of the last pragmatic soul in the land of Socialist utopianism.
Who calls a cat by his name, whenever he clearly sees one.
I'm not taking back what I wrote and how I wrote it. The empty space in the display case is troubling and so is the empty golden base beside the other three. I was troubled and shot the pictures. I was furthermore troubled when I went outside and recalled the three flagpoles next to the US Sherman tank (fully painted with the US Army signs and registering - I'm not talking about an American made Sherman tank provided to a British, Canadian, French or Pole armored division) and I shot that picture as well.
BUT WHEN PEOPLE START TO ASSUME THAT "ALL AMERICAN FLAGS HAVE BEEN REMOVED, THE DISSIDENT FROGMAN SAW IT" THEY'RE CROSSING A LINE BEHIND WHICH I'M NOT FOLLOWING THEM.
I have ENOUGH serious reasons to criticize France's current state of affairs, her corrupted political class and intelligentsia WITHOUT the need to make up "facts" or tweak pictures.
What's more, please consider the following: I do believe that on the last golden base and in the display case, the flag that's missing is the US one. I'm pretty sure about it. It could be the Polish one of course but - and no offence intended for the brave Polish soldiers who took part in the liberation of Europe and of my country - in the order of importance I would expect the stars and stripes next to the British, Canadian and French flags.
Yet, even with this intimate belief, I didn't write any authoritative assertion in the initial post. I think it's obvious that on these spots, the missing flag is the US one but, until further information and despite the fact that I do believe this double coincidence is a bit too much of a "coincidence", I only recorded and reported the troubling omission.
And no, unlike what some of my detractors claimed, the Bayeux Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy is NOT strictly dedicated to the British-Canadian forces in Normandy. That brings me indeed to the other point I wanted to address here:
In Eugene Volokh's second post, his reader Nicolas Bray also wrote the following:
Why no American flags in the gift shop? Well, on the basis of this:I have no reason to believe that Mr. Bray is ill intentioned so I assume he his honestly confusing the BRITISH WAR CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL IN BAYEUX, to which the link he provided points at with the BAYEUX MEMORIAL MUSEUM OF THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY where I took these pictures and to which I also provided a link.
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=Memorials/ww2mem/bayeux
it sounds as though the entire Bayeux memorial is dedicated specifically to Commonwealth soldiers. I don't know a whole lot about how the gift shops usually work at Normandy memorials (or about Normandy memorials in general) but it seems to me that in such a situation it wouldn't be unreasonable for the gift shop to only sell Commonwealth flags.
Both are just a few steps away from each other (hardly a two minutes walk) but there is a significant difference: the British British War Cemetery and Memorial in Bayeux is indeed dedicated specifically to Commonwealth soldiers but this is a war cemetery and memorial.
Not a museum or a tourist attraction. There is absolutely no "shop" of any kind (hopefully), anywhere in this consecrated final resting place or in any other in Normandy.
This is in fact the memorial and cemetery I was heading to when I passed in front of the Bayeux Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy and decided to visit it as well.
I guess many people probably made the same mistake and it may help to understand the epidermal reaction it triggered.
So maybe I should stress that as well:
I didn't see any sign of anti-Americanism, disrespect or outrage in any of the war cemetery and memorials I visited during my trip. No flags where missing at the places where Europe's liberators who were killed in Normandy are resting in an undisturbed and respected peace.
See? I just called a cat by his name.
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