Many gray faced men had stopped him humbly, looking searchingly at him, and had asked, peering at his long, lined, grimy face, under the anonymous helmet, “Are you a Jew?” Sometimes they asked it in English, sometimes French or Yiddish. He didn’t know French or Yiddish, but he learned to recognize the phrase. He had never understood exactly why they had asked the question, since they never demanded anything from him, rarely even could speak to him, until one day in Strassbourg, a little bent old man and a small, shapeless woman had stopped him, and asked, in English, if he was Jewish.

“Yes,” he said, smiling at them.

The two old people had smiled widely, like children. “Look,” the old man had said to his wife. “A young American soldier. A Jew. And so large and strong.” He had touched Seeger’s arm reverently with the tips of his fingers, then had touched the Garand he was carrying. “And such a beautiful rifle…”

And there, for a moment, although he was not particularly sensitive, Seeger got an inkling of why he had been stopped and questioned by so many before. Here, to these bent, exhausted old people, ravaged of their families, familiar with flight and death for so many years, was a symbol of continuing life. A large young man in the uniform of the liberator, blood, as they thought, of their blood, but not in hiding, not quivering in fear and helplessness, but striding secure and victorious down the street, armed and capable of inflicting terrible destruction on his enemies.