Thank You To France Poem by Saiom Shriver

James Mitchener in his book Chesapeake
quoted historians who described
the Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5th,1781.
The US had been losing the Revolutionary
War since 1776 until 1981. (Such drives for independence are called rebellions,
riots, mob action, insurgencies, insurrections,
uprisings or mutinies, e.g., by the ignorant and cruel who are in power.)
Soldiers often had no food, no pay, no arms, no shoes. At sea, many courageous
Americans lost their lives fighting the British.
The thirteen colonies who had named themselves The United States of America were
on their eastern coast rimmed by a band of iron... of British warships.. the
shore the British cannonized sending many to be canonized... The ships' blockade
continued and so did the British control of New York City... when suddenly after
years of lobbying by Ben Franklin 5500 French troops arrived and, . on the
horizon..
like the miracle of sunrising,
appeared the French fleet.
Temporarily they would be trapped within
the Chesapeake Bay.. but courageously
they broke out... and two lines five miles long! composed of
British and French warships faced each other. The battle
out at sea was seen by very few. One American civilian captain
described his witness role as being a gnat watching eagles.
The British admiral's tactics were to focus on killing
the French sailors, while the French tactics were
to disable the British ships. It was the French who beat the
British in this decisive
naval battle of the war and who helped America's troops
to surround Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia. With all our hearts may we say
'Thank you eternally to the people of France.! '