I see a comment on City Lights making fun of French courage again. Nobody appointed me apologist for France, but this stuff wears mighty thin. Under Napoleon, the French army held off the combined royalty of Europe for a dozen years, losing a 600,000-man army in Russia in 1812, another 350,000 or so in 1813-14 and yet another few hundred thousand in 1815. A standing joke during those years was that the leading natural cause of death among young French men was warfare.

Arguably, the French army has never been the same since, but the French still managed to pour 8.4 million troops into World War I (remember, this is a country the size of Texas). Of those, more than 6 million became casualties, including many thousands of children of wealth and privilege who had no opportunity to spend military service playing politics in Alabama. For several weeks during peak fighting at Verdun, the French lost a soldier every 45 seconds.

The French performed abysmally during World War II, but it wasn't because the soldiers were afraid to die for their country. In a few short months of war, the French suffered 210,000 combat deaths. By comparison, U.S. forces fighting on two fronts over four years lost 292,000 soldiers. We lost 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam (the French fought there, too) and were left militarily, psychologically and politically scarred for a couple of decades. What might the impact have been if we had lost 100 times that number?

If anybody out there has the guts to go tell a French war widow that her loved one died a coward, then have at it. Otherwise, kindly lay off.