Tanks Painted in Protest? As long as it's not My Tank!

 A Sherman tank in front of the Bastogne War Museum 

painted by a street artist to honor victims of violence.

In front of the museum in Bastogne is a temporary display of art from the fall of the Berlin Wall--30 pieces of wall painted to commemorate freedom. An M4 Sherman tank in front of the museum was also repainted to remember the victims of war and violence around the world.  The other tanks on display in the museum are, of course, painted as they were during their wartime service.  

Seeing a Sherman repainted by a street artist in front of a war museum was jarring.  Should a war machine be repainted as an anti-war protest?

  

Soviet tanks repainted in rainbow and pink as 

anti-war protests.

I realized I did not mind seeing former Soviet tanks painted pink or with love symbols. The Soviet Army was my Cold War enemy. They lost. So defacing their tanks was okay.

But seeing the Sherman tank painted in protest made me uncomfortable. That was an American tank. 

Then I remembered the mixed feelings I had just a week ago when I saw American-built M60 tanks, the tanks I served on in the Cold War, rolling into Syria.  More than 2,000 of the 3,000 tanks fielded by the Turkish Army are M60s.  The tank I served on was part of the attack against the allies Trump abandoned.  I did not like seeing what could have been my old tank rolling across the desert in service to a dictator. 

And then I thought of why tanks are painted in protest and as monuments and memorials.  Tanks are used as targets or monuments or left to rust because they can't be recycled. Armor plate costs more to metal than the recovered metal is worth. So tanks can't be melted down to make Mack trucks or Mercedes road cars. 

Tanks are war machines.  It would be best if unneeded war machines could be reused peacefully, but since they can't they will be monuments or palettes for protest for centuries to come. Armor plate a foot or more thick won't rust away anytime soon. 

Belleau Wood: Soldiers and Marines Stop a Huge German Attack in 1918

I visited Belleau Wood in northeastern France, site of a battle unlike most of the terrible trench warfare of World War I. In Belleau Wood, newly arrived American Soldiers and Marines reinforced the allied armies against a new German attack. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were transferred to the west as Russia left the war to fall into revolution.  

At Belleau Wood the Americans first stopped the German assault then counterattacked, never stopping to dig trenches or retreat from the attacking army.   At one point, a French commander told the Americans to fall back and dig trenches.  A Marine captain said, "Retreat? Hell no. We just got here."  

The story of the battle is available form many sources.  I visited to see how the world heals itself from the horror of war.  Belleau Wood is beautiful.  The rolling wheat fields that surround it where so many Marines died in a direct assault in June of 1918 were fallow, long past harvest at the end of October a century  later.  The wood itself, splintered by millions of bullets and tens of thousands of rounds of artillery, are peaceful, carpeted with leaves and showing no signs of rage and death.  

The cannons that ring the monument to the Marines in a clearing in the wood are black, somber and as peaceful as the woods around them. On this trip I will visit battle sites and Holocaust sites to see how life goes on after slaughter.  Belleau Wood and the rolling farm country around it could hardly be more different than the temporary terror of 1918.  Moments of heroism and long years of peace are both part of the human condition: both very real and a very real paradox that both exist in the same place--though not at the same time.  

Bicycling in Paris: the Daily Training Race

One of the groups circling L'Hippodrome in Paris

On my first full day in Europe, and the only day in Paris before leaving for battlefields in eastern France and Belgium, I rode the daily training race in Paris.  Each day, year round, the two-mile perimeter road around l'Hippodrome, the horse racing track in southwest Paris, is closed to traffic from 10am till dark. 

Every day groups of cyclists ride the circle, most in groups, some by themselves.  The speeds vary from two guys in their 80s I saw on my second lap going about 10mph to the first group I rode in which was averaging 22 mph.  I stayed with that group for a couple of laps and joined a group we passed which was traveling about 2mph slower. 

The road around the horse racing track rises slightly on the east side and goes down through the turn to the west.  The road is fifty feet wide on sides of the oval, but narrows to fifteen feet on the turn at the south end and is just a six-foot wide path at the north end. 

When the pack is silent, it is clearly no different than any pack I have ridden in anywhere in the world. The following distances, the way people pass each other, and even the young kid who attacks the group racing ahead, only to get caught on the uphill stretch where there was a headwind, is the same in Philadelphia, Paris or Prague.  Between the wind and my inadequate skill in listening to spoken French, I did not catch much of the conversation, but no one speaks deeply in a fast-moving group of 20 riders. 

If the weather is good and my knee is still good, I hope to ride again in Paris near the end of the trip.

The grandstands of l'Hippodrome seen from the east side.

"You and Your Doctor are Crazy" says the Physical Therapist in the Next Seat

With 90 minutes to go in the overnight flight to Europe, I spoke to the passenger in the window seat as we ate breakfast before landing.  We had an empty seat between us and she had slept through most of the flight. I was jealous.

I asked about her trip. She said she leaves the country anytime she has enough time off to get away.  She has lived in Paris, speaks four languages--English, Spanish, French and Russian--and loves to be in Paris in every season.  This trip will also take her to Rome and Vienna. She grew up in Puerto Rico where she learned Spanish and English. She learned French and Russian in Paris.

We introduced ourselves. Her name was Ady. She asked where I was traveling. I told her about riding in Europe and Israel. That switched the conversation from travel and language to her day job as a physical therapist.  

"Wait," she said. "You just got a knee replacement and you're riding across Israel?" I protested that I got the knee replacement more than six months ago, to which she answered, "Right. Just got a knee replacement. The first year is the recovery period." I told her my physical therapists said most knee replacements go wrong from lack of exercise. She agreed that happens, but said the knee is the most delicate joint in the body, with no supporting socket joint. "It just hangs out there, waiting to be--overused." 

Ady said, "Not like you would take my advice anyway, but you might want to think about limiting your time on the bike."  I told her that the doctor at the Orthopedic Urgent Care last night, and the surgeon, and PTs all told me to "Listen to my body." So I planned to do that.

She burst into laughter and said, "You and your doctors are crazy. You don't tell someone like you to listen to their body. By the time you hear you body saying 'slow down' you are already way into injury." I could see that. 

She was right about me not listening to her. I rode the day after I arrived in the daily training ride around l'hippodrome in the southwest corner of Paris. I'll write about that soon. 

Knee Works Well Enough to Walk: Boarding in an Hour

Last night, I thought the sudden, painful swelling of my titanium knee could be the end of my trip.  I am still not sure how much I will be able to ride, but I can walk well enough to navigate train stations and Newark Airport.  In an hour I should be on the way to Paris to begin the trip.

I also wondered if carrying a backpack would be a problem, but so far, no problem at all.  While riding on the trains today, I have been making alternate plans of what I can see and if my bicycle riding is severely limited. Since I have only seen Jerusalem and nearby towns in all of Israel, there will be plenty to see.

The same is true in the Baltic States later in the trip.

This trip, like the one in 2017, is both a bike ride and a chance to visit Holocaust sites and memorials. In the Baltic countries, like Ukraine and Poland, the Jews were almost completely wiped out both by the Nazis and by their neighbors who killed Jews and took their property.  As with Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide was personal and horrible.

I know I will be surprised by things I see and discover.  On the last trip, one of the saddest places I visited was the German Military Cemetery at Normandy. While there, I swung back and forth between sadness and anger, because this cemetery is how America should have treated the Civil War. The Germans started a racist war and lost. They memorialize the dead soldiers, but not the leaders or the cause.  America should have done that.

Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, Germany is a civilized country.  More than 150 years after the Civil War, we elected a guy who says Nazis are fine people.

Israel Trip, Day Zero: Orthopedic Urgent Care!

My trip to Europe and Israel officially begins today, October 22, with a flight to Paris at 6:40p.m.  But at that same hour yesterday, I was icing a very swollen knee and on the phone with the Lancaster Orthopedic Urgent care.

I went on my usual Monday ride with Scott Haverstick and Delaine and Chris Peris.  I turned off the ride for the shorter way home at 15 miles.  I stopped at the bottom of a hill and put my foot down. My knee hurt, a lot. It was swollen. It had been fine before the ride.  I managed to ride home, but slowly. I could not stand up and pedal.  I remembered there was an orthopedic urgent care office, so I called and went there.

After the usual twists and pokes the doctor said I had a sprained MCL--the ligament on the inside of my knee. He told me to wear a brace and "listen to my body" as to how much I can do.  Since this is the knee I got replaced six months ago, the doctor was not sure if the swelling was normal for me. I told him it was a lot less this morning.

I had planned to ride the Paris Training Races on Thursday and ride south and west of Paris before going to visit World War II battlefields on the weekend.  It looks like my plans just changed. The doctor thinks if I might be able to ride in Israel if the swelling goes down in a week.  If not, Israel road trip! 

I planned to post about the trip. I thought I would be posting about riding, but maybe not so much.

Conferences and the Delight of Meeting New Friends

I went to the 12th Annual Conference on Racism and Antisemitism at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. I was only able to attend the second day of the two-day conference, but I heard some great talks and even watched a controversy play out on stage. 

But the best part was lunch. 

I knew no one at the conference. The weather was cool and clear.  Outside the hall where the conference was taking place, the organizers set up a tent and picnic tables.  I sat at one end of an empty table. A small group was at the other end of the table. I introduced myself, but they were talking in hushed tones about the woman who left the stage in protest. 

So I ate my sandwich as the tables filled up.  Then a group of five formed around me. I introduced myself as a Hannah Arendt Fan Boy--not an academic like most of the conference attendees.  To my right was a quiet man who is a professor of history.  To my left was Anna, a history teacher at a Bard-affiliated high school, a lawyer, an activist, and executive director of the The Conversationalist. Opposite me were two women about my age, Ellen and Kate.  Eventually Kate left and her seat was taken by Amy who was the moderator of the panel with the controversy.

Through most of the lunch we did not talk about the conference, but about our different experiences of being Jewish in America. We had an especially lively discussion of when Jews became white. Kate was the only one who was not Jewish, but she grew up Irish-Italian Catholic post World War II. Her parents and family on both sides experienced discrimination both for religion and background when Irish and Italian Catholics were not quite white.

Ellen and I were the same age and grew up near big cities so could talk about being part of the big exodus of Jews to the suburbs after World War II.  A half-million Jews served in uniform in World War II. The GI Bill made it possible for many Jews to buy suburban houses and get a college education.  A million African-American soldiers served in uniform in World War II. They had very little access to GI Bill benefits, especially housing and education.

Anna's parents came to America from Russia in the 1970s. We talked about how different the experience of immigration was for blue-collar Jews like my grandparents in the early 20th Century and for her parents in the 1970s.  Her parents speak Russian and identify as Russian. My grandparents and uncles spoke Yiddish and in no way identified with the Tsarist Russia they escaped. 

Amy filled us in on the controversy on stage which has no explanation I can make simple. 

I enjoyed the presentations, especially the deep dive into "The Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. The four panelists traced the origins of this particular Anti-semitic conspiracy to post-World-War-II France.  It has been thoroughly debunked for anyone outside the lunatic world of the Alt-Right, Fox News, and the Trump White House, but inside those asylums it is a current threat to white nationalism.

When the torch-carrying Nazis at Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" they were quoting The Great Replacement conspiracy.  The murderer of Jews in Pittsburgh believed the same. 

As good as the presentations were, lunch was the most fun.  Laughing and sharing stories and insights with bright people in lovely place is in its own way as good as life gets.