Happy Birthday America
2012-07-04A Happy 236th Birthday to America!
On this very patriotic day, I would like to share one of my favorite stories that always makes me understand that America is more than a country--It is an idea and the greatest experiment for freedom.
During the Battle of the Bulge, Mrs. Maus de Rolle's chateau was surrounded by the Germans. The American soldiers who were trapped there, refused to surrender. With limited food, supplies and ammunition, the situation worsened as Christmas approached. Day after the day Madame Rolle stayed in the cellar with her baby Son as the battle raged outside. Finally, on Christmas Day, despite the danger, she emerged from the cellar to bake cookies for her son from cookie dough she had saved. A captain approached her and told her to please stop, as the smell of baking cookies was too much for his soldier to bear as many of them had not eaten for days. Understanding the situation, she had an idea. She asked where the wounded were and put the cookies in a bag. She went to the barn and climbed into the hay loft to find it overcrowded with wounded Americans. They had filled their parachutes with hay to stay warm, leaving only their heads visible. She approached a weary, tattered lieutenant and asked permission to distribute the cookies to the wounded. He agreed and she went one by one to the soldiers, many of them being aged 20 or younger. It was then that it struck her that these young men had mothers just like her. These mothers had worked to make their boys into men and now these mothers had no idea that their sons lie wounded in a barn in Belgium. She wondered what kind of men were they to do this. She walked back to the freezing, hungry lieutenant and gave him the last cookie and asked him, "Many of these men don't even know what country they are in. Many of them are not over 20 years old. But they come and they fight! Why? What kind of men are these?" The weary lieutenant looked her in the eye and said, "Ma'am, we're fighting for Liberty!" They never surrendered, beat back every attack by the Germans and Madame Rolle never forgot what type of men they were. She died in 2010 at the age of 93.
