Quote:
Originally Posted by JayTeeMe
And it was basically the same thing. French navy blockades Yorktown but can't resolve anything until the American infantry shows up. Ever as it always was.
Except maybe the time that US troops ran away (from the Italians, in one sector, which, obviously, takes some doing) at the Kasserine Pass in '43 and the Free French did not, and veteran British troops had to move in and prevent a complete rout.
And maybe the time the Americans thought they could do better than the French had in Vietnam, but sort of didn't. Perhaps you heard about it. (There's an excellent Burt Lancaster movie, Go Tell The Spartans, about that, set in Vietnam in '64. The climactic battle, in which the Americans are wiped out by the local resistance but for one survivor, is fought near an old French military cemetery, with the legend over the gateway, supposedly taken from the mass grave of Leonidas's men at Thermopylae: 'Stranger, when you find us here, go tell the Spartans that we died according to their laws.')