Something that Doesn't Love a Wall

For thousands of years, fearful people have put high, thick walls around their cities to keep out the bad guys. Kings and nobles walled their castles and lived in the “donjon,” the innermost tower and supposedly the best defended. The Chinese walled off their whole border to keep out the Mongols. Hadrian and subsequent Roman emperors tried to keep the Scots from overrunning Britain by putting up a wall. The U.S. thinks it has walled off Mexico.

Robert Frost: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.”

History does not love a wall, but tourists do.

My British-born dentist told me that each year his father, a schoolteacher, would bring 25 boys over to St. Malo to climb on the walls and run along the walkway (and do other less-legal things that lightly-chaperoned teenagers still do).

All along the Emerald coast of Normandy and Brittany are walled towns. Remember Henry V? Henry’s chief accomplishment was conquering the town of Honfleur while hugely outnumbered by the French. The battle made a great film and play, and includes the memorable quote, “Once more into the breach!”

These days, Honfleur, east of St. Malo, is a beach resort popular with both the French and the British.

During the Second World War, the Allies suspected that many German occupying troops were in St. Malo and decided to burn it down. The Germans had barred the gates of the city to keep the Allies out and the citizens inside. Read http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p301_Beck.html for details.

The city burned; the buildings collapsed; many ordinary people died, trapped in the rubble.

But after the War, the city was rebuilt. Using the same old building blocks, the ones that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire, and going by photographs, old drawings and maps, it rose again, looking very much like the city that had been there since the 14^th Century at least.

Tourists flock year round to see the shops, the narrow streets, the walls, and eat the food.

Not just the Intra Mures [Inside the Walls] part of St. Malo was leveled, but most of the unique outlying homes were, also. And the spirit of the people rebuilt them. Often the workers were women, the men having been killed in the fighting.

People often comment to me that they’ve heard that the French don’t like Americans, that they are rude to us.

I found just the opposite to be true. The French have not forgotten the help Americans gave in liberating their country twice. They remember Lafayette and the role France played in liberating America. A lovely home on a street corner in St. Malo was named Villa Remember (in English).

They love American music. Almost all the music we heard at cafes was modern American, usually sung in English. They love American tee shirts. They love our movie stars. Thank goodness, that with all that love of us, they manage to keep their own identity safe and sound.

Walls cannot compete with curiosity. No architectural wall has ever succeeded, and no artificial wall will long keep people from wondering about each other.

The “something” that doesn’t love a wall is this spirit in people. Once we have seen what’s beyond the wall, the wall’s demise is inevitable.