Reagan’s Visit to a German Cemetery

The furor over President Reagan’s visit to a German cemetery leads one to realize that the reasoning of this President, his friends, advisers and sycophants has reached a new level in perfidiousness. So the Germans felt slighted during the D-Day ceremonies last year. What a shame. As if 40 years were enough to expurgate any nation’s inhuman crimes.

Reagan seeks “reconciliation,” claiming there were “helpless” Germans drafted into that army, which makes them, somehow, no different from the millions of other victims of World War II. Which is about as outrageous an insult on the integrity of the human spirit as is possible.

Let me tell you firsthand how some of these helpless little monsters behaved. As a very young GI, I landed with the 63rd Infantry Division (U.S. 7th Army) at Marseilles in December, 1944. Soon after we were pushing through Alsace-Lorraine, and my job was GRO (Graves Registration Office), which meant touring the lines in a jeep and trailer to retrieve dead bodies--German and GI alike.

Can I possibly describe the rage and horror (still felt today) when I was ordered to a barn to pick up some Americans--and found five medics , Red Cross logos and all, with their hands tied behind their backs and enormous bullet holes in the backs of their heads.

One is not talking vicious SS troops here, these murderers were examples of Ronald Reagan’s idea of “helpless Germans drafted into the army!” Everywhere one went in that lamentable country--and I saw all of West Germany after V-E Day--one was greeted by Germans with arms raised in grotesque helpless shrugs and simpering: “We had nothing to do with it.”

FREDD WAYNE

Santa Monica