When commander
Yeo-Thomas finally was finally welcomed by American troops on 26th April 1945, he had spent the previous thirteen months in quite an eventful way: in March 44 he was betrayed to the Gestapo, underwent then four months of torture and interrogation in Fresnes prison, three of them in solitary confinement. After a stint in another prison, he ended up in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, where he and 36 of his fellow prisoners were supposed to get executed. Just before that happens, he and two other prisoners swap identity with dead prisoners, and so escape execution. He then spends time on a work commando, from which he escapes. He gets captured as a POW. He escapes again, gets separated from his mates, goes three days without food, and is eventually recaptured. Together with ten other French POWs he organizes a final escape and makes it to the American lines. When asked what got him going through all these atrocious ordeals, beset by disentery, kidney stones and blood poisoning, Yeo-Thomas answered: “Barbara and Britain, both of whom I loved so much”
The bravery of this man is of course quite remarkable, and earned him a G
eorge Cross, the highest of all civil decorations in the UK. But even more remarkable is that love for his wife and country were the main motives that spurned him on. Conjugal love and fidelity are currently under attack, to be replaced by what is called “Lebensabschnittspartner” (partners for a season in life) in German. Why would you wait for me or I wait for you when the going gets tough? And yet, it is this kind of love that allows human beings to go through even lesser trials successfully.
Even less intelligible for post-modern Europeans is the notion of love for one’s home country: at football games perhaps, but surely not in times of conflict. Patriotism has yielded to cynicism and those who still profess identification with a commonwealth are deemed unenlightened and slightly dangerous. At the same time, we deplore the lack of civic responsibility in most of our European societies: who has a sense that it is worth sacrificing for the common good? We cannot recreate the extraordinary circumstances of the 1940s which brought out such extraordinary courage and generosity of men such as Yeo-Thomas. But we can seek to imitate their example when it comes to fighting for the right and protecting our vulnerable fellow men. Let’s just hope we have a Barbara and a Britain to love…
# posted by tino @ Thursday, July 03, 2008
Yeo-Thomas finally was finally welcomed by American troops on 
eorge Cross, the highest of all civil decorations in the 
