Edward Samuel Behr

“Exhausted and covered in dust and dirt, the Tunisian soldiers stood, dazed but defiant, and the French paratroopers, furious at the casualties the Tunisians had inflicted on their unit during the siege, angrily muttered something about lining them up against a wall and shooting them.

We reporters overheard these remarks. To the everlasting credit of our number, an Italian journalist, whom I had never seen before and have never seen since, quietly walked over to where the Tunisians were standing and stood, hand on hip, in front of them. Dramatically, but without saying a word, he made the point that if the paras executed the Tunisians, they would have to shoot him, too. It was one of the bravest acts I have ever witnessed, all the more so since there was no gallery to play to. An officer arrived, calmed his men down, and the Tunisians were marched away into captivity.”
― Edward Samuel Behr, Anyone here been raped & speaks English?

“One had only to sun oneself around the pool of Saigon's Cercle Sportif or fly from Saigon to Paris in an Air France plane packed with the student sons of affluent Vietnamese families, able to avoid the draft (Air France ran a Friday-night special which made a stopover in· Nice, where many rich Vietnamese had second homes), to realize that South Vietnamese society was corrupt, class-ridden, and profoundly unjust. But in similar circumstances, how would their American counterparts have reacted? It's arguable that it was only when the sons of affluent American families, hitherto protected by generous deferment terms, became liable for the draft-and Vietnam-that the U.S. Establishment's hostility to the war became irrevocable. For most of my own involvement in the war, fighting infantry and marine units were 50 percent black, Chicano, or Puerto Rican—[...].”
― Edward Samuel Behr, Anyone here been raped & speaks English?