I draw a lot about the bad stuff that happens in the World but what’s comforting with this one, is that the most heart-warming aspects of this story are all true!
1-Thousands of canadian soldiers (and I presume, americans, too) found sweethearts in Europe towards the end of WW2 and the immediate after-war. They crossed the Atlantic back to Halifax and are now our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
2-Lili Marleen was a song first written by Hans Leib, sung in german by Lale Andersen and later popularised in english by Marleen Dietrich. Nazi authorities tried to recuperate it, then tried to ban it when fraulein Andersen wouldn’t put out. It was the favorite song of the german soldiers who would play it over loudspeakers and the allied soldiers, camping not that far, heared it and started to love the song. It was then recuperated by the allied forces…and mrs Dietrich.
3-In the 1990s an acadian musician from my town, Raynald Basque, made a song about a WW2 veteran of his village, Fortunat Haché who fought to liberate the Netherlands. Mr. Haché passed away a few years ago but just before he died, he famously went back to the Netherlands and met the daughter he had with a woman there.
