Czech villager

"General Stilwell noted about the GIs in WWII that they were obedient but idiosyncratic, willing but not too enthusiastic. That attitude could be observed most closely in their marching. It was not that the men walked out of step, or that they could not move about in bodies with ease and dispatch. It was that each man stepped out or swung his arms in his own way, giving European observers an impression of incipient discordance in any body of marching GIs. No amount of close order drill could completely erase that impression, for the GI never made that ultimate, intimate surrender of the individual to the mass... A Czech villager remarked to an American officer as they both watched American soldiers swing by, 'They walk like free men.'"
Extrait du livre de Michael Bennett, When Dreams came true, Brassey's, 1996

Lamballe, février 1945