National Affairs: No Land of Saints

On Bahnstrasse, on the edge of Berlin’s U.S. sector, is a small restaurant named Rodestock’s. One evening last week, while a score of Germans sat around drinking Rodestock’s watery beer, three smartly dressed U.S. paratroopers, white gloves folded under their shoulder straps, strode in and sat down. But only for a moment. Suddenly they were on their feet, with guns drawn. Rodestock’s terrified patrons backed against the wall. Swiftly the soldiers frisked them, gathered up watches, cheap jewelry and a few thousand marks. They emptied the cash register and locked Rodestock’s patrons in a back room. Outside, they climbed into two U.S. jeeps, with Army drivers at the wheels, and disappeared down the Bahnstrasse.

In the depressing aftermath of war, other stones like this were coming out of Germany, Belgium, France and The Netherlands. They ranged from instances of mere tactlessness to stories of downright outlawry. Occasionally Europeans have retaliated. In Louvain, recently, a U.S. soldier was stabbed to death.

“This is not a pleasant thing to write about,” cabled the New York Times’s David Anderson from Brussels, “but the people back home should be warned that the U.S. is not by a long way regarded as the land of saints and heroes.”