Luxembourg

A little while ago I asked Tali Sachs, one of our senior English majors, to talk a little about her experience on a summer research scholarship in Luxembourg this past summer. She has graciously complied, with a brief description and a short essay. Give it a look:

This past summer, I had the privilege of making the journey across the Atlantic to serve as a student envoy at U.S. Embassy Luxembourg, as one of Clark University’s Summer Research Scholarship recipients. At the prospect of spending the summer living and working in Europe I was, of course, excited, scared, and most of all, clueless. I had no idea what I would find. As it turns out, I found something that changed my outlook on life drastically. I found an experience that placed me as a foreigner, alone, in an environment that is not so fond of Americans. To make it even more difficult, I was working for my country, a country that I love dearly for its strengths and its ideals, but a country that has a long way to go until it reaches maturity. My experience cemented my dedication to helping this country reach its full potential both within and beyond its borders.
While in Europe I diligently kept a travel journal. Below is the entry written on the most influential day of my entire stay in Luxembourg and the surrounding countries. Being an envoy for the U.S. put me in a rather unique position: I was at home inside the walls of the embassy and a foreigner without. It was my duty, along with everyone else working for the State Department, to promote the United States of America despite our individual opinions of specific issues, policies, and people. For me, specifically, this involved presenting a grand image. I worked for Protocol, which means it was my job to help implement and arrange events welcoming Europeans and to make sure that our ambassador and other diplomats were comfortable reciprocating similar events.
One of these events was the Memorial Day Ceremony, held on Saturday, May 26, 2007. This ceremony put my life both as an American and as a member of the human race into perspective. For the first time I truly understood what it meant to be an American and why Americans are often met with and thought of with disdain by the rest of the world. It was on this day that I understood that loyalty to my country had nothing to do with a politician or a policy, but with the ideals of the country’s foundation. Administrations change, world climates change, every year, every day brings a different opinion. Americans fighting on opposite ends of the spectrum of idealism are just as American as their counterparts. This country’s ability to survive and withstand such opposing opinions is what makes it beautiful and great. It’s what makes me love it more than any other.

May 26, 2007
In Memoriam
I spent the last two days standing over General George S. Patton’s grave. Originally, he was buried like everyone else, among the soldiers, undistinguished from all the other crosses and stars. It was a Luxembourger who was walking among the graves one day and stumbled upon his. She thought it was wrong that he wasn’t given a more, let’s say, “elevated” position in the cemetery. I suppose the government agreed, and so his body was moved to a large memorial just in front of plot B, the first one you’re confronted with upon waking into the graveyard. It’s chained off and on top of it is a quote from General, and later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “All who shall hereafter live in freedom will be here reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and with the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live eternally.” But I think I like the idea of him being among his men better. After all, a soldier is a soldier just like a human is a human and we’re all in it together. I find it ironic that he didn’t die the way I think he would have liked, and also, just a day before he was meant to go home to America. A truck took him out on a leisure trip, shooting pheasants and not men.
Surprisingly, this memorial service actually moved me to tears. I guess it’s because I was standing on liberated ground, something Americans don’t ever get to do if we don’t leave our little bubble of the New World. The Battle of the Bulge was fought here and there are five thousand American graves to show for it, veterans to remember it, and millions of grateful Europeans who lived through it and millions more who were born afterwards who somehow take their freedom much less for granted than the kin of those who allowed that freedom to be. Thinking about it, I know why I was so moved. It’s because we do take it for granted despite our rhetoric. “Freedom” has become a word used so much in American society that we have desensitized ourselves to what it actually means, and in doing so we have lost sight of creating and maintaining a reality of that freedom. Sadly, I feel, we are letting it slip away under the false pretense of itself, or rather, what it has become. We have let it slip away by our apathy, and by our extreme ability to pretend that everything is wonderful when the world is anything but.
We have to wake up. As a nation. Because the world does not love us. We’re juveniles and it’s not our fault. We’re young, not 231 years old. In the face of nations, we’re infants, so how can we be expected as a society to have that maturity? We’re still in the blissful fantasy of childhood but the world, as always, comes upon us quickly and we try to ignore it for as long as we can, unfortunately waiting too long. Perhaps we will learn from our mistakes.
That graveyard, like any in its league is not only one of soldiers, but of a dying American Dream. That may be revived if we realize that we are not separate from the world but a part of it and that the oceans on either side of us are not as wide as they used to be. I love that Dream and I want it. I want to own it and see it realized again and again and again. I want to run my fingers over the embroidered stars of our flag and I want that flag to stand for a country that exists and a country that I love in all ways, in both idea and in reality. I want people to understand that love of soldiers need not be support of a war, and that love of country need not be love of its current administration.
I stood in the sun too long but it was worth it. For the honor of those fallen soldiers, of ones not fallen, and of ones to come, I am willing to give up a little skin while they have given up so much more for me and for you.

--Jay