A couple minor corrections about the D-Day material (since this happens to be the kind of history I am a recognized Subject Matter Expert on). Eisenhower is visiting the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne, who would be the first Allied soldiers to land in France. The ships carrying the troops had departed England on June 4, since D-Day w…
A couple minor corrections about the D-Day material (since this happens to be the kind of history I am a recognized Subject Matter Expert on). Eisenhower is visiting the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne, who would be the first Allied soldiers to land in France. The ships carrying the troops had departed England on June 4, since D-Day was supposed to be June 5. However, the weather intervened. The invasion hung in the balance - if they were recalled there was a good chance momentum would be lost to try a do-over and the forecast for the rest of June was worse. The ships were milling around in the English Channel and there was every chance the Germans would spot them. Finally, Eisenhower's weatherman, Colonel Stagg, detected what he thought might be a momentary break in the weather - he figured the odds were 60% in his favor. So a few hours before Eisenhower visited the Screaming Eagles, he OKed the invasion for June 6. As it was, there was a 36 hour break in the bad weather, after which it was worse, as forecast. But the initial invasion had made it. The greatest invasion in history was on a knife edge of failure all the way.
Today is also the 79th anniversary of the victory at the Battle of Midway. Following the destruction of the four Japanese carriers at the heart of the Mobile Fleet on June 4, Admiral Yamamoto ordered the fleet to turn around that night.
I had the privilege of knowing the guy who won the battle, Dick Best, whose almost single-handed attack on the Akagi turned the tide from what had been an American defeat to what would be victory. He always thought, though, that he served his country better than that day over the Japanese fleet, when he was the Librarian at RAND Corp, and "turned a blind eye" to Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo's smuggling of the Pentagon Papers out of RAND. "The American people deserved to know what had been done in their name."
They really were The Greatest Generation. Being able to know them and write about them has been the privilege of my life.
My former screenwriting partner's father was the navigator on one of the attack transports taking the troops to Omaha Beach. He was the only man on the ship besides the captain who knew all of what was going on. The code word for being one of that select few was "Bigot," and someone with that clearance was "Bigoted." He used to love to tell the story of being "the only officially-Bigoted Jew at Normandy."
TCinLA I have a box of letters my father wrote durning WWII. I have never looked at them. Except that they are all organized in envelopes with post dates. He was greatly damaged by the war. He tried to manage his pain with alcohol. Painful for the whole family. I can imagine that they are quite descriptive. Is there a place I could send them that they may be useful? My father was a Lieutenant JG in the Navy. He drove a landing craft back and forth with soldiers at Normandy. greg.bonnie@gmail.com
Bonnie, you could check with the National Museum of the US Navy. Even if they don't have an archive for material like your father's letters, they'll probably know where such an archive is kept. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn.html
My dad was a private in the infantry. His unit was assigned to clear buildings in a German town. He watched his younger brother be killed. He came home and married my mother, but medicated his pain with alcohol until 1966, over 20years. The love and prayers of my mother saved his life. He told only very little bits about his service. After my oldest son joined the Army and was deployed numerous times, Daddy talked to him and spoke about things he never mentioned when l was growing up. Only then did l truly realize all the trauma he suffered, but didn’t talk about.
During “Operation Neptune”, the ‘USS Augusta’ was the flagship. Adm Kirk and Gen Bradley followed the landing operations from the deck of the cruiser.
Daddy was on board as a Lt jg. He said the brass (armed with binoculars) interfered with communication cables, while they scrambled for a good photo op.
Not advertising, but I have the story of the attack on Intrepid in my book "Tidal Wave." That was one of the first big kamikaze attacks and one of the three worst along with the Franklin and the Bunker Hill. That job of sewing the body bags must have been awful, since he probably knew many of them.
I am going to look for your book, TC. My beloved uncles were sailors, one in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific, during WWII. As Keith wrote about those he knew who served in that war, my uncles didn’t talk about it very much. I never heard Joe talk about his service. My Uncle Jenks told me about his ship, which fueled other ships, being nearby when another ship was either torpedoed or experienced an explosion (I was young and my Uncle is gone now). What I remember most is that his ship was rocked by the blast. A sailor came out of a little machine room, not a scratch on him, they smiled shakily at each other, and the other man collapsed and died.
I looked up my uncle’s ship. It was the USS Mindanao (ARG-3), and it was servicing an ammunition ship, the Mount Hood, when it exploded, killing many crew members on both ships.
Jeanne, did you read Sally Jenks Roth’s comments about her father’s service? If your Uncle Jenks was in the Pacific instead of Atlantic theater, it’s still an interesting Jenks connection.
I did see her story, too! My Uncle Joe was in the Atlantic. I know his ship had a one-syllable name but have yet to hear back from my siblings who might know the name. I loved reading all the experiences of the Greatest Generation via their family members today.
I just realized you meant the name “Jenks!” My Uncle’s name was actually William Jennings Ryan, but we all called him Jenks or even Jinks. Many of the family members in my Mom’s Ryan family went by their middle names, and I think Jennings was too long.
TC,may I ask what you do and how one might obtain your book(s). Not trying to invade your privacy, just attempting to learn more about your work. Thanks.
Amazon is the place where the majority of my income comes from. Unfortunately there are few bookstores, and the only chain that survives is the worst one, the one that swallowed all the good ones. I refer to B&N. If you're not going to buy my books somewhere, I request you not buy them there. They once made a deal with Osprey for special promotion of one of my books. When I contacted the nearest one to see about doing a book signing, they were happy to do so, if I invited all my friends to come there and buy it - they didn't want to do anything. So kindly kill off B&N if you're against something.
TC, I'm very sorry to step on your income source with my comment. I almost always order what books that I buy from my local bookstore. It takes longer for them to arrive and I have to park and walk a few steps when I am otherwise in town. Perhaps they simply order them form Amazon. I have never asked, and I probably should. I want to walk my talk and Amazon is terrible for humanity. As long as folks can buy a book with a click and have it arrive at their doorstep their is little incentive to buy locally. Our school needs that tax money. Education is too important. I value your skills and ability and gifts to our world and believe you should receive compensation. I did purchase The Frozen Chosen, but it has yet to arrive. I will continue to do my best to not use Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but continue to support cute small bookstores wherever I find them. I own too many books but I love them dearly. There are few indoor spaces I love more than a library or a good bookstore. My best to you.
What a touching story, Spooky. They suffered so much, and so many still do. I’ll never understand why we humans do the atrocious things we do that cause this senseless loss of life, and life-long trauma.
We lived in Ferring, Sussex, on the south coast of England and my dad, Comdr. Alan Burnett R.N., worked at the Admiralty in Combined Ops preparing the invasion. Every morning, he’d walk a mile along a path between the rail line and the fields to the nearest railway station at Goring and take the train to London. Of course, what he did in London we only learned of later.
There were soldiers everywhere, encamped nearby, Canadian troops. When they heard that there was a beautiful French woman in the village, soldiers from Quebec would come to the door to chat my mother up. Something very touching about that. I remember their “brown” uniforms.
My father worked on the materiel for Operation Overlord, the huge caissons to be brought in to form breakwaters, given the deliberate choice after the disastrous Dieppe raid to create harbors instead of trying to take existing ones; the landing craft, aircraft, amphibious vehicles, etc. etc. Planning was very meticulous.
Dad told me that, while the British did thorough prior research before building and testing prototypes—mathematical calculations, models, wind-tunnel work on models, etc. etc., the Americans built prototype weapons, aircraft and so on, directly, then tested them. I remember Dad and Brits of his generation complaining of the huge wastefulness, so many prototypes turning out to be junk, so many men killed testing them, especially test pilots. Maybe this fits in with TCinLA’s remark on how hard it was to fly the B-24.
[This thing about American waste I was also to hear from my French history professor speaking of French reactions to the novelties brought in by US troops in WW1. The contrast between a peasant society, making and mending, and a thoroughly industrialized one; so that French soldiers sewed up and patched their uniforms in the trenches while Americans didn’t even darn their socks; they threw them away and were issued with new ones. This shocked the French!
Similar remarks by my headmaster in the ’50s about many-times-repeated failures to build runways capable of supporting the weight of the huge new B-36 bombers. Again, trial and error. Surprising, given the quality of US engineering. .
Here, of course, account must be taken of the British war and postwar economy which left no room for choice: waste must be minimal in a society ruined by the war effort. In 1952, my aunt, who’d married an American, came to stay with us in Southsea, with my cousins. We, too, had been living more comfortably near Capetown after the war and conditions in Britain were hard. But for me, my aunt and my cousins’ constant complaints about conditions in England and how much bigger and better everything was in New York were humiliating. The irritation went so deep that it wasn’t until I was 54 that I at last visited them in NJ and came to know and love New York.
Interestingly, I contrasted Trump Tower with the Rockefeller Center and saw it as a sign of degeneration from an ambitious and heroic age to one with tinsel values… I knew nothing then about the man behind the building but, judging by how I reacted to its cheap vulgarity, I could never have imagined DJT making it to President of the USA. Even before that happened, when Putin compared his prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Al Capone, I remarked that Capone never made it to President…]
Back on subject: my Dad was not selected for D-Day. He was to be part of the assault on Japan and expected to die there. He said that, as islanders, he and his comrades expected the Japanese to fight to the last man for every inch of their territory. It is strange to reflect on my owing his survival to the atom bomb.
My elder sister, now no longer with us, told me about pilot Claude Eatherly whom she knew in his last years.
Pardon all these digressions into “little history”. Very little history…
My dad’s unit was not ready on D-Day (Patton’s Third Army) so they landed on the continent later. He fought all the way to Germany and V-E Day. It is his service and that of young American boys on D-Day that makes me so angry at what the Republicans are doing to give up our democracy.
My father likely knew your father, Peter! Mine was a career RN officer, commanding HMS Athersone during the St. Nazaire Raid to successfully destroy the German dry dock on the Atlantic side. His job was to pick up the men who jumped into the water just before the Campbelltown hit the gates and bring them to safety down the river. There sadly was huge loss of life. I have young commando friends who say that the Raid was considered textbook during their training.
My father wrote of all his wartime experiences (I typed it, before computers) but the manuscript was lost during multiple moves. He wrote to the family of every man he lost on one of his ships, sometimes actually going to visit them. We hope to attend the 80th reunion next year.
I'm enjoying all these comments but still ask: where are the 'checks and balances' that I heard so much about when I was studying to become a citizen back in 1983? We could certainly use them now! My father would be horrified about the state of affairs in the US today.
PS: He darned his own socks!
PPS: Not the least, thank you Heather for today's Letter, when you could have been resting.
I felt the same thing immediately after reading today’s Letter: my Dad would be so disgusted by today’s GOP. He was always a Democrat but respected some of the Republican leaders. Dave Durenberger was a good man, for instance, a MN Republican Senator. Whenever I ask about when the indictments will come, people say, they want to make sure the charges will stick. It certainly isn’t Blue Bloods quick. Matt Gaetz should be in prison at least.
The "daredevil" sounds like my father, he told me of some of his escapades! His men adored him but he refused to be "political" where promotions were concerned, part of the reason he didn't make it to high rank.
Dad was calm, quietly confident, not pushy. Something unusual: when he retired, the Admiralty told him privately that they’d made a mistake passing him over; they should have made him an Admiral.
Like so many young men, I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. But when, at the age of 20, I was given a trip to Gibraltar on a frigate—sea trials off the Portuguese coast, and the ship was leaving for a very long cruise in the South Atlantic—I realized that I’d made a big mistake. Not necessarily a 30-year commission like my father, but a few years at sea could have done me the world of good. The self-discipline, the strong, clear awareness that we’re all in this together, my love of Nature and of life at sea.
One quality I especially admired in my father was his ability to relax under the most trying circumstance—I’m far more nervous. He could take a short nap anywhere, any time. He told me that, when needed, he’d tell someone to look after his duty for a moment and sleep on the bridge for 15 minutes. On his feet. Then continue refreshed.
I had—I have—a very deep esteem for him and his comrades. They had a quality of inner certainty, even when faced with what may have seemed overwhelming odds. Not a trace of the crude might-is-right trust in material power alone which too many have inherited from the Nazis. He’d have been horrified by the idiotic nihilism of so many of today’s wealthy and powerful. Very conservative, like so many naval officers—we’d argue about everything, while always taking an interest in each other’s views—but nothing could disturb our fellow-feeling.
I see great qualities in many children, in many of the young. As we can see all too well, they will need all those qualities, and more. What I hope is that more and more will come forward motivated by the will to serve, not ego, but their fellow men.
As I often say, I wouldn't join the Navy again for $10 million, tax-free. And I wouldn't take $100 million for what I learned. I wouldn't have achieved what I have in my life without that knowledge. As I say to my friend Admiral Shelton every time he says "Call me Don!", "Admiral, you can take the boy out of the navy, but it's hard to take the navy out of the boy."
I love reading your words about your father, Peter, and how interesting the Admiralty regretted passing him over, and telling him! My father, like yours, loved nature, the sea and some classical music made him cry. He had a temper, but was quick to apologise.
My brother went into the Merchant Navy for a few years after school, and ended up with a successful yacht sales and service business in the Ballearics. I bumbled along, but did do an almost- circumnavigation on a S&S 47' in my 50's.
I admire so many of the youth of today and how they understand that they have to be engaged in their futures. My grand daughter graduates 8th grade in a few hours and I can't wait to hear her read the essay she's written. She often partners in my "activism".
I met a Japanese woman who's father was trained to be a kamikaze pilot. His mission was cancelled the day after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so she owed her life to the atom bombs.
While my dad was an officer in the U.S. Army, his teen cousin in Japan was being trained as a kamikaze pilot. This cousin, like your dad, survived due to the atom bomb ending the war.
One of the most impactful ways to appreciate history is to hear about it from people that made it especially those of the Greatest Generation. The story of the Battle of Midway is incredible; to hear it from Dick Best must have been so profound. I had the privilege of hearing Dick Cole, Doolittle's Co pilot talk about the bombing of Tokyo by the Doolittle Raiders when he was 100 years old at the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.
What my parents generation had was a strong sense of right and wrong. They knew sacrifice. Not so many sociopaths milling around in those days. They and their younger brothers and sisters that didn't remember the depression or fought the war after assisted with civil rights and ending Vietnam. I don't know what to make of a world where flat out lying has been given a pass because of freedom of speech and killing is given a hall pass because of the second amendment. Words written on a piece of parchment 250 years ago by men who never imagined this world but could imagine a free and just world.
Now their words are being interpreted by a whole generation that watched Entertainment Tonight instead of the nightly news, American Idol instead if 60 Minutes, The Gilmore Girls instead of MASH. Don't get me started on their unexplainable fascination with the Kardashians.
Most days I feel my hands are tied because I live in a blue state. The day DT was elected I went to war. I tore down every *friendship" that I had with those I knew or suspected had voted for him. I threw money at every Democratic election. I did not sit quietly at family dinners and allow people to think there was anything good about Trump. I quit Facebook. I marched in DC for women and science and gun control. My family and friends implored me to stay home for the BLM march because of Covid, not because I might be gassed by the commander-in-chief. I never waivered for 4 years. If it hadn't been for Covid would we have turned out in DC for Biden on Jan 6 to defend the democratic process like we did on Jan 21 2017? Why didn't we? Because we didn't believe what we suspected was true?
There is a cancer with multiple malignant tumors in Congress. McConnell is the silent killer, the sociopath that doesn't care about right or wrong. Manchin doesn't have the courage to take the fall from grace, if he helps kill the filibuster. Do we really believe he thinks the filibuster is important to democracy?
"I don't know what to make of a world where flat out lying has been given a pass because of freedom of speech and killing is given a hall pass because of the second amendment."
"Trump’s final aim isn’t simply to escape accountability for his crimes. The final aim is to replace democracy itself with a form of autocracy, under which he and his cronies are forever unaccountable for criminal actions. Normalizing lies and flooding the zone shatters the public sphere upon which democracy depends. Without that shared reality, Mueller poses no threat to Trump. Similarly, without a shared public sphere, Trump doesn’t have to worry about resistance. As Yale professor Jason Stanley says, without truth it is impossible to speak truth to power, so there is only power."
Want to hear something funny? The best radio interviewer I ever did a promotion with for one of my books, was a guy who had obviously read the whole thing himself, wasn't reading what some assistant wrote, and genuinely liked the book. It was Steve Bannon, a few months before he became "Steve Bannon."
Bannon is interesting - he has a huge chip on his shoulder. A Boulder, really. His world view could have gone in a positive direction, but I think he’s too bitter.
Interesting? How so? Hard to fathom... Most reports lead me to see a callous opportunist, a snake oil salesman in the tradition of his “instructor/student”. (dependent on which one is telling the story).
And our media are printing photos of TFG again all the time. Can they report and not use photos and his name? Just warn us of his rallies and report on his court cases. but leave off the photos and giving his messages oxygen.
Martha, you are a warrior for democracy. You are one of the TRUE patriots. Thank you for your gumption and fierce love of this country. Keep it up and help us all do what we need to do.
I sorely miss my parents' generation. Good for you, Martha! I did pretty much the same, but marched in Tucson for Women, not DC. I've marched in VT and made signs for Gun legislation and Science and the Climate Crisis, never thought I'd be an "activist"! I've written hundreds of letters to potential voters, putting what Heather calls "skin in the game". We just have to do this, on behalf of our children and grandchildren, if not for ourselves!
We need a lot more Martha Woods in our country and the world right now!! Thank you for your true dedication to our democracy. It is way, way past time to show the world we will stand up to fascism and authoritarianism here.
Thank you, TC, for these amazing and beautifully written anecdotes. They bring history alive and into sharp focus. They give me such profound admiration for these men whose bravery was mythic.
We are so lucky that that generation shared their stories and passed them down. I cannot wait to return here this evening and read all these stories. What a wealth of information from this community. Thank you and your families for what they did for our world!
Yes. And love it. I used to live in Oregon. Those kids in Portland would not be shy about confronting hate, white supremest, proud boys marching in their city. Counter protest of such hate groups is the right thing to do. We are all anti fascists.
Unfortunately, there is a small group of people in Portland whose cause is vandalism and havoc. They are hiding behind legitimate protest and the people behind those protests do not want them doing this as they gave all protests a bad name. They use every excuse to rampage and break windows and start fires. Some of them have been arrested thankfully. We had a case of one 15 year old who did several thousand dollars worth of window breaking.
They dress all in black and may make that claim and paint the sign. However, they are just a bunch of mostly male white boys destroying things. They are not helping any legitimate cause.
I believe it was a Portland faction that did the window breaking downtown Seattle at the WTO protests back in '99. Gave the whacko media a real juicy field day.
Those of us – children of the Greatest Generation – who had the opportunity to know some of the men and women who served, are fortunate to have heard their accounts first-hand.
Dad was a decorated Naval Aviator (I was born in a Quonset Hut at NAS Pax River) who served in the Pacific. He died relatively young, never having spoken a word to me about his experiences except to say the “Jeep” was the most dangerous machine on the airfield.
My stepfather served in the 82nd Airborne Division, including Operation Market Garden, and we had the honor to return to Nijmegen with him in 2009. He wrote a book about his experiences and when I received my copy, he had included a note imploring my generation to never forget the lives lost to preserve the freedom we enjoy – the freedom that was now our duty to defend.
Again, thank you for keeping their stories – their sacrifices – alive.
TC, my great-uncle was a paratrooper with the 101st and he died in the air, shot down by German fire, attempting to land. My father was at Midway. I have my dad's dogtags (he died just over a year ago at the age of 96), which include two additional tags that are inscribed "654 Days Combat Australia to Japan." My maternal grandfather was in the Adjutant General's corps, and he accompanied Eisenhower from North Africa through Europe. I have the letters he wrote to my mother, who was a small child at the time.
Thank you for this post. For me, World War II was the only war worth fighting.
Same here Linda. I was given the name of an wartime hero, Uncle Bob and have recently posted my connection to that time on Memorial Day. (for those on twitter with inclination to read).
All our wars since, especially Vietnam for my generation were unnecessary wastes. Except for the protests that finally ended sending young men to worthless wars against their will.
My sister has one dogtag, and his photo ID badge (his photo on a pin) from his "service in San Francisco in WWII). I have the other. She wears hers at work, on patriotic holidays; mine is alongside the tags I wore at work until my retirement, and are now hung on the wall. He was in the USAAC as a meteorologist, spending 3 years in San Francisco, and 2 years in the China-Burma theatre, where he worked on setting up the weather net that helped the bombers over the "hump". My dad passed in 1987, and the only advice he ever gave me about enlisting was "well, go if you think you have to, but not the goddam Army." I have a friend whose Dad was a tailgunner on those planes flying over the hump; TC would know which ones those were. Her dad said they owed everything to the "guys on the ground." Wish I could have told my Dad that story.
My Uncle Bob flew a B-24 and wrote about how fysically tiring it was. Apparently manual control instead of hydraulic. You had to be a 22-year-old in good shape to do those long flights.
From one of my Uncle Bob’s letters to my grandmother:
June 5, 1944
"Not much change over here. The biggest change being they have checked me out as a first pilot. Yes Mom, I now have a crew of my own. I like it much better this way.
These missions we have are quite a thrill. I've been to France, Austria, Ploesti and many others.
Remember how tired I used to be when I came home from work. That is nothing like this. I'm usually so tired after one of these missions I can hardly get out of the plane. It will get easier as I learn more."
(I just noticed this was written the day before D-Day)
Yeah, that sounds like 15th AF out of Italy with that target list. They were almost all B-24s except for two groups of B-17s. "The Forgotten Fifteenth" they called themselves.
He was in his early twenties I think. I’m pretty sure it was a B-22, not the 24. There’s some reason why, I can’t remember fir this. Towards the end the Germans had their new jets in 1944-45 but not enough training to know how to shoot yet. The young German pilots would over fly the bombers and their bullets would miss. I was just a little boy when my silver haired Uncle told me these WW2 stories.
Ummm... I don't like pulling out my Expert's Cap, but there was no B-22. There was the B-24, used for bombing Germany, and the B-25, which didn't get closer to Germany than Austria as far as targets were concerned. There was also the B-26. Yeah, they were all incredibly young. the average age of aircrews in the Eighth Air Force was 21 - a guy over 25 was an "old man." Yes, the me-262 was so fast, they had a 3-second window once in range before they had to break off or collide, which isn't enough time to really aim - but with 4 30mm cannons, it only took a couple hits to knock down a B-17 or B-24. They were all lucky Hitler made a Genius Decision and declared it his "blitz bomber."
Well, hey there, expert! My dad, frustrated that his myopia and astigmatism disqualified him from pilot training in the Army Air Force, did his war as a B-24 bombsight mechanic at some airfield in England. The closest he got to combat (apart from occasional German air raids) was -- just after VE Day -- getting to fly over several of the destroyed cities his group's bombers had dumped their loads on. He also recalled working long shifts loading bombs for the Ploesti raids, but as those planes were flying out of Libya and Italy, I'm not sure what to make of that story. Guess I'll have to read up on it. Also -- speaking of dumped loads -- my father introduced my to the term "honey bucket". No need to go into detail.
He would have turned 101 last April if he hadn't died in 1980. He had a great sense of humor and a hot temper, never bore grudges and detested Richard Nixon. God only knows what he would think about today's world.
Regarding Ploesti - very likely he was there in North Africa. Two of the five B-24 groups that flew the mission came from the Eighth Air Force in England and would have brought their ground crews with them, since there weren't any extras in North Africa.
I'll have been 11 or 12 at school in England when one of our schoolmasters, addressing my class, said to us:
"If any of you ever have any influence on the matter when you grow up, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States."
I don't know what the other boys made of that, but as an 8 or 9-year-old in South Africa I'd already been reading in American magazines like the Saturday Evening Post about the HUAC hearings, Whittaker Chamber, Nixon, et al... Ugly faces...
Yes, Tricky Dicky was a pretty unsavory character as a congressman long before Watergate. I was the one who gave my father the news -- just before breakfast -- that Ford had pardoned Nixon. He sat down heavily and just said "Pour me some Jack Daniels".
My dad was an 18 year old on a destroyer in Japan, and had PTSD from that. His best friend, who was a few years older, spent the war flying a B24 over France, and his stories were terrifying. Later, he worked as a liason from CIA to congress during Watergate. They came to visit and my dad, a practical joker said “Haldeman talked” as our visitors got out of the car from the long drive. His knees buckled and he went white. They hated Nixon.
Thanks, TC, sounds pretty likely. Many years later, after a long career in government (Labor Dept., Atomic Energy Commission) Daddy took early retirement, learned to fly and spent his life's savings on a small plane (a Mooney). He was trying to figure out a way to fly it to Europe and then Africa when he died.
Yes, I shudder every day at the thought of what it have done to my father’s soul were he to be alive these past five years. As much as it hurts to be without him, I am glad that he is not alive in this world anymore.
My godfather flew a B17. I didn’t know it was so easy to take one down. I do remember most of the parts of the plane were replaced at one time or another, so that makes mores sense.
My Chinese uncle was the ball turret gunner on his B-17. He said he picked it because he got to sit down the whole time. It's a miracle people made it back alive from those missions.
The 30mm was the gun that could do that. If it hit the right place with explosive shells. Like an engine (which would blow up), or the wing spar (the wing folds up). Fortunately those were not the majority. B-17s were quite rugged. One can look at photos of airplanes that were flying wrecks and wonder how they managed to get home.
After I wrote my essay about my Hero Uncle Bob, I discovered he was in the 485 Bomb Group in Italy found their Webpage and attended their reunion in D.C. in 2012.
Meeting George Chaplin
September 28, 2012
George was the engineer and right waist gunner and the last remaining crew member who was on the B-24 the day it got shot down.
On June 23, 1944 the plane was hit from the front and a hole was blown into the flight deck behind the cockpit. That is where Uncle Bob, the co-pilot, navigator and radio operator got out of the plane. George said each of them from the flight deck was wounded but he didn’t know if Bob was injured. The nose gunner, Ray Meech was shot and went down with the plane and Jack Robbins, the left waist gunner jumped out but was never found. It is possible he went into the Danube and got carried away by the current. The ball gunner, Wilbur Mattison got burned and his chute got burned but he and the tail gunner, James Bright bailed out using one parachute. They jumped out late and were too low but landed in mud and survived.
So 8 of the 10-man crew survived that shoot down and were in German POW camps for a while in Romania.
I had the privilege to fly on a B-17 at an air show on Memorial Day several years ago. What an incredible experience! It gave me a greater appreciation for those who flew in them as an occupation in the military. Everything was solid metal. The noise and vibrations were so uncomfortable. It must have taken days for people to recover from that alone. And to get from front of plane, to back, you had to nimbly cross a narrow type of “bridge”. I couldn’t imagine having to do that while in flight and during maneuvers.
20 years ago, I took my wife with me to Van Nuys airport for the visit of the Collings Foundation's late and lamented B-17, "9-0-9". There were a number of B-17 vets there (all gone now) and while we waited for the arrival, she heard many stories. She took the stories with her as she made the tour of the airplane, and when she stepped out, she looked back, she said "I'll never think about that airplane and those guys the way I did before I came here."
Just looked at my pix from Feb 2013. The “9-0-9” was the B-17 I was walking thru and bumped my head. You had to be a skinny 20-something to crew those planes. I saw the plane wearing shorts & Polo shirt. Can’t imagine wearing a parka & parachute trying to get thru those passages or the ball turret. The B-24 I toured was Witchcraft, also with some narrow passages.
I was really grateful to the Collings Found. for this chance to touch something from my family history.
It’s ok. I made the same mistake many times, always saying B24, and my Dad ( Also a pilot Air National guard) would correct me. Uncle Dave didn’t pilot the 24. It was another bomber.
Now you have my attention. The possibilities are, flying in the ETO from England: B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-26 Marauder, A-20 Havoc (a two man crew, light attack bomber). In Italy, the B-26's place was taken by the B-25 Mitchell, and the others were all there..
Have you been to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum near the airport in Savannah, GA? A large contingent of Americans went to England and, flying B-17 and B-24 bombers, played an important part in the Battle of Britain. I didn’t realize how close the RAF came to losing that battle to Hermann Goring’s Luftwaffe, the critical role radar played in deploying the limited RAF planes, and the reality that the Lindon blitz, although it made for much hardship in the civilian population, actually provided time for the RAF to repair its planes and win the victory. I’m reminded of the Philip K. Dick book, “The Man in the High Castle”, that describes in lurid detail conditions in a U.S. of A. In which the Germans and the Japanese won WWII.
Dad was in that group of 101st paratroopers dropped on Normandy in advance of the invasion. His job was to lay out communications. He was shot and captured.
My Uncle Frank flew the P-38 out of North Africa. He was shot down over Italy, survived and was captured. He was placed in a POW camp in Italy. When the soldiers were put on a train to move to a POW camp further north, Uncle Frank and a couple of other soldiers escaped from the train. They hid in the hills of Italy above a small town. The towns people knew the soldiers were there and would leave them food. When winter came, the towns people hid them. The German/Italian soldiers never stopped looking for them. My Uncle, his family, and my Mother all went to Italy to visit the town in the 2000's. There was an old man, who was a child at the time, who remembered my Uncle. I believe the word 'Honor' is not often used now, but I learned a great deal about the word from Uncle Frank, my parents and others from the generations who experienced the World Wars, the Depression, and other events that may have brought them to their knees, but had the fortitude and wisdom to learn and stand up again.
Nick Hodges (History Buffs channel on YouTube) reviews historical movies, largely war movies. He starts out with an account of the actual history of the battle. In his review of the movie "Midway," I was pretty impressed with his description of the Battle of Midway. He was overall satisfied with the historical accuracy of the movie.
As an aside, I just want to say that the documentary, "Midway," which was made by the Navy along with other branches of the military is near to my heart. I saw it in a class in how history was portrayed in film. As I was watching, I noticed that the music sounded very much like the music my father, a film composer with a unique style, wrote. When I got home from class, I called him and asked if he had anything to do with that film, as he was in the Army Air Corps at that time, in the radio and filming unit. The film had no credits listed. He told me that he had written the music for it. I found it amazing that 30 years later I was able to recognize his style.
The movie was accurate on a "technical" level, but portraying Dick Best as some "Joisey Boy rebel" was the polar opposite of reality. And the airplanes bouncing off the ocean back into the air violated basic physics - such a thing never ever happened.
My USNA roommate's father had been given the choice of CO Torpedo 8, or a new "Jeep" Carrier; he took the ship! This well before the B of M. Chance and Fate.
A couple minor corrections about the D-Day material (since this happens to be the kind of history I am a recognized Subject Matter Expert on). Eisenhower is visiting the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne, who would be the first Allied soldiers to land in France. The ships carrying the troops had departed England on June 4, since D-Day was supposed to be June 5. However, the weather intervened. The invasion hung in the balance - if they were recalled there was a good chance momentum would be lost to try a do-over and the forecast for the rest of June was worse. The ships were milling around in the English Channel and there was every chance the Germans would spot them. Finally, Eisenhower's weatherman, Colonel Stagg, detected what he thought might be a momentary break in the weather - he figured the odds were 60% in his favor. So a few hours before Eisenhower visited the Screaming Eagles, he OKed the invasion for June 6. As it was, there was a 36 hour break in the bad weather, after which it was worse, as forecast. But the initial invasion had made it. The greatest invasion in history was on a knife edge of failure all the way.
Today is also the 79th anniversary of the victory at the Battle of Midway. Following the destruction of the four Japanese carriers at the heart of the Mobile Fleet on June 4, Admiral Yamamoto ordered the fleet to turn around that night.
I had the privilege of knowing the guy who won the battle, Dick Best, whose almost single-handed attack on the Akagi turned the tide from what had been an American defeat to what would be victory. He always thought, though, that he served his country better than that day over the Japanese fleet, when he was the Librarian at RAND Corp, and "turned a blind eye" to Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo's smuggling of the Pentagon Papers out of RAND. "The American people deserved to know what had been done in their name."
They really were The Greatest Generation. Being able to know them and write about them has been the privilege of my life.
My former screenwriting partner's father was the navigator on one of the attack transports taking the troops to Omaha Beach. He was the only man on the ship besides the captain who knew all of what was going on. The code word for being one of that select few was "Bigot," and someone with that clearance was "Bigoted." He used to love to tell the story of being "the only officially-Bigoted Jew at Normandy."
TCinLA I have a box of letters my father wrote durning WWII. I have never looked at them. Except that they are all organized in envelopes with post dates. He was greatly damaged by the war. He tried to manage his pain with alcohol. Painful for the whole family. I can imagine that they are quite descriptive. Is there a place I could send them that they may be useful? My father was a Lieutenant JG in the Navy. He drove a landing craft back and forth with soldiers at Normandy. greg.bonnie@gmail.com
This is absolutely the best place to send them! Check out their story..
https://www.chapman.edu/research/institutes-and-centers/cawl/index.aspx
There is also the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, which will do very well by that collection. They specialize in D-Day.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/
Bonnie, you could check with the National Museum of the US Navy. Even if they don't have an archive for material like your father's letters, they'll probably know where such an archive is kept. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn.html
Thank you I will
Don't do the Navy. They're mostly busy parboiling history. I speak from experience dealing with them.
My dad was a private in the infantry. His unit was assigned to clear buildings in a German town. He watched his younger brother be killed. He came home and married my mother, but medicated his pain with alcohol until 1966, over 20years. The love and prayers of my mother saved his life. He told only very little bits about his service. After my oldest son joined the Army and was deployed numerous times, Daddy talked to him and spoke about things he never mentioned when l was growing up. Only then did l truly realize all the trauma he suffered, but didn’t talk about.
I had my Uncle Bill's letters that he wrote to my grandmother.
I wrote about those at the end of my essay about him.
https://twitter.com/roboyte/status/1398751295813586953?s=20
Ultimately we donated his letters to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. This is my Uncle Bill's
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/bib/77896
During “Operation Neptune”, the ‘USS Augusta’ was the flagship. Adm Kirk and Gen Bradley followed the landing operations from the deck of the cruiser.
Daddy was on board as a Lt jg. He said the brass (armed with binoculars) interfered with communication cables, while they scrambled for a good photo op.
I love it when irony shows up IRL
Not advertising, but I have the story of the attack on Intrepid in my book "Tidal Wave." That was one of the first big kamikaze attacks and one of the three worst along with the Franklin and the Bunker Hill. That job of sewing the body bags must have been awful, since he probably knew many of them.
I am going to look for your book, TC. My beloved uncles were sailors, one in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific, during WWII. As Keith wrote about those he knew who served in that war, my uncles didn’t talk about it very much. I never heard Joe talk about his service. My Uncle Jenks told me about his ship, which fueled other ships, being nearby when another ship was either torpedoed or experienced an explosion (I was young and my Uncle is gone now). What I remember most is that his ship was rocked by the blast. A sailor came out of a little machine room, not a scratch on him, they smiled shakily at each other, and the other man collapsed and died.
I looked up my uncle’s ship. It was the USS Mindanao (ARG-3), and it was servicing an ammunition ship, the Mount Hood, when it exploded, killing many crew members on both ships.
Jeanne, did you read Sally Jenks Roth’s comments about her father’s service? If your Uncle Jenks was in the Pacific instead of Atlantic theater, it’s still an interesting Jenks connection.
I did see her story, too! My Uncle Joe was in the Atlantic. I know his ship had a one-syllable name but have yet to hear back from my siblings who might know the name. I loved reading all the experiences of the Greatest Generation via their family members today.
❤️🤍💙🇺🇸
I just realized you meant the name “Jenks!” My Uncle’s name was actually William Jennings Ryan, but we all called him Jenks or even Jinks. Many of the family members in my Mom’s Ryan family went by their middle names, and I think Jennings was too long.
TC,may I ask what you do and how one might obtain your book(s). Not trying to invade your privacy, just attempting to learn more about your work. Thanks.
Local bookstore will order Tidal Wave no doubt. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5425772.Thomas_McKelvey_Cleaver
Amazon has 3 of his works. All with good reviews.
Christine, I will never encourage anyone to purchase from Amazon as long as there are alternatives. I despise monopolies.
bookshop.com will take your book order and credit your chosen local bookstore with the sale.
That is awesome 🤩 Joan! Thank you! I will check it out!
Amazon is the place where the majority of my income comes from. Unfortunately there are few bookstores, and the only chain that survives is the worst one, the one that swallowed all the good ones. I refer to B&N. If you're not going to buy my books somewhere, I request you not buy them there. They once made a deal with Osprey for special promotion of one of my books. When I contacted the nearest one to see about doing a book signing, they were happy to do so, if I invited all my friends to come there and buy it - they didn't want to do anything. So kindly kill off B&N if you're against something.
TC, I'm very sorry to step on your income source with my comment. I almost always order what books that I buy from my local bookstore. It takes longer for them to arrive and I have to park and walk a few steps when I am otherwise in town. Perhaps they simply order them form Amazon. I have never asked, and I probably should. I want to walk my talk and Amazon is terrible for humanity. As long as folks can buy a book with a click and have it arrive at their doorstep their is little incentive to buy locally. Our school needs that tax money. Education is too important. I value your skills and ability and gifts to our world and believe you should receive compensation. I did purchase The Frozen Chosen, but it has yet to arrive. I will continue to do my best to not use Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but continue to support cute small bookstores wherever I find them. I own too many books but I love them dearly. There are few indoor spaces I love more than a library or a good bookstore. My best to you.
I love libraries. I recently asked mine to consider inclusion of a few books. Including TC’s.
Well, I imagine TC, the author and others I
know get a majority of their income from them so they can keep writing masterful works that do not get recognized at many “alternative” sources.
My Amazon page for all my books is here:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thomas+mckelvey+cleaver&i=stripbooks&crid=2TROL9PRUVCRT&sprefix=Thomas+McKelvey+Cleaver%2Caps%2C222&ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_23_ts-doa-p
THANK YOU! Pretty darn impressive.
Just ordered for my friend whose father fought in the Pacific Theatre. Thank you TC
What a touching story, Spooky. They suffered so much, and so many still do. I’ll never understand why we humans do the atrocious things we do that cause this senseless loss of life, and life-long trauma.
This is all great stuff.
Mine’s the memories of a 4-year-old.
We lived in Ferring, Sussex, on the south coast of England and my dad, Comdr. Alan Burnett R.N., worked at the Admiralty in Combined Ops preparing the invasion. Every morning, he’d walk a mile along a path between the rail line and the fields to the nearest railway station at Goring and take the train to London. Of course, what he did in London we only learned of later.
There were soldiers everywhere, encamped nearby, Canadian troops. When they heard that there was a beautiful French woman in the village, soldiers from Quebec would come to the door to chat my mother up. Something very touching about that. I remember their “brown” uniforms.
My father worked on the materiel for Operation Overlord, the huge caissons to be brought in to form breakwaters, given the deliberate choice after the disastrous Dieppe raid to create harbors instead of trying to take existing ones; the landing craft, aircraft, amphibious vehicles, etc. etc. Planning was very meticulous.
Dad told me that, while the British did thorough prior research before building and testing prototypes—mathematical calculations, models, wind-tunnel work on models, etc. etc., the Americans built prototype weapons, aircraft and so on, directly, then tested them. I remember Dad and Brits of his generation complaining of the huge wastefulness, so many prototypes turning out to be junk, so many men killed testing them, especially test pilots. Maybe this fits in with TCinLA’s remark on how hard it was to fly the B-24.
[This thing about American waste I was also to hear from my French history professor speaking of French reactions to the novelties brought in by US troops in WW1. The contrast between a peasant society, making and mending, and a thoroughly industrialized one; so that French soldiers sewed up and patched their uniforms in the trenches while Americans didn’t even darn their socks; they threw them away and were issued with new ones. This shocked the French!
Similar remarks by my headmaster in the ’50s about many-times-repeated failures to build runways capable of supporting the weight of the huge new B-36 bombers. Again, trial and error. Surprising, given the quality of US engineering. .
Here, of course, account must be taken of the British war and postwar economy which left no room for choice: waste must be minimal in a society ruined by the war effort. In 1952, my aunt, who’d married an American, came to stay with us in Southsea, with my cousins. We, too, had been living more comfortably near Capetown after the war and conditions in Britain were hard. But for me, my aunt and my cousins’ constant complaints about conditions in England and how much bigger and better everything was in New York were humiliating. The irritation went so deep that it wasn’t until I was 54 that I at last visited them in NJ and came to know and love New York.
Interestingly, I contrasted Trump Tower with the Rockefeller Center and saw it as a sign of degeneration from an ambitious and heroic age to one with tinsel values… I knew nothing then about the man behind the building but, judging by how I reacted to its cheap vulgarity, I could never have imagined DJT making it to President of the USA. Even before that happened, when Putin compared his prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Al Capone, I remarked that Capone never made it to President…]
Back on subject: my Dad was not selected for D-Day. He was to be part of the assault on Japan and expected to die there. He said that, as islanders, he and his comrades expected the Japanese to fight to the last man for every inch of their territory. It is strange to reflect on my owing his survival to the atom bomb.
My elder sister, now no longer with us, told me about pilot Claude Eatherly whom she knew in his last years.
Pardon all these digressions into “little history”. Very little history…
My dad’s unit was not ready on D-Day (Patton’s Third Army) so they landed on the continent later. He fought all the way to Germany and V-E Day. It is his service and that of young American boys on D-Day that makes me so angry at what the Republicans are doing to give up our democracy.
And... what are they giving it up FOR? A transparent liar.
My father likely knew your father, Peter! Mine was a career RN officer, commanding HMS Athersone during the St. Nazaire Raid to successfully destroy the German dry dock on the Atlantic side. His job was to pick up the men who jumped into the water just before the Campbelltown hit the gates and bring them to safety down the river. There sadly was huge loss of life. I have young commando friends who say that the Raid was considered textbook during their training.
My father wrote of all his wartime experiences (I typed it, before computers) but the manuscript was lost during multiple moves. He wrote to the family of every man he lost on one of his ships, sometimes actually going to visit them. We hope to attend the 80th reunion next year.
I'm enjoying all these comments but still ask: where are the 'checks and balances' that I heard so much about when I was studying to become a citizen back in 1983? We could certainly use them now! My father would be horrified about the state of affairs in the US today.
PS: He darned his own socks!
PPS: Not the least, thank you Heather for today's Letter, when you could have been resting.
I felt the same thing immediately after reading today’s Letter: my Dad would be so disgusted by today’s GOP. He was always a Democrat but respected some of the Republican leaders. Dave Durenberger was a good man, for instance, a MN Republican Senator. Whenever I ask about when the indictments will come, people say, they want to make sure the charges will stick. It certainly isn’t Blue Bloods quick. Matt Gaetz should be in prison at least.
That's probable, Sally. These officers all knew each other.
He spoke of someone involved in that raid as the most crazy daredevil commander... It's a pity I didn't record more of the things he told me.
The "daredevil" sounds like my father, he told me of some of his escapades! His men adored him but he refused to be "political" where promotions were concerned, part of the reason he didn't make it to high rank.
Dad was calm, quietly confident, not pushy. Something unusual: when he retired, the Admiralty told him privately that they’d made a mistake passing him over; they should have made him an Admiral.
Like so many young men, I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. But when, at the age of 20, I was given a trip to Gibraltar on a frigate—sea trials off the Portuguese coast, and the ship was leaving for a very long cruise in the South Atlantic—I realized that I’d made a big mistake. Not necessarily a 30-year commission like my father, but a few years at sea could have done me the world of good. The self-discipline, the strong, clear awareness that we’re all in this together, my love of Nature and of life at sea.
One quality I especially admired in my father was his ability to relax under the most trying circumstance—I’m far more nervous. He could take a short nap anywhere, any time. He told me that, when needed, he’d tell someone to look after his duty for a moment and sleep on the bridge for 15 minutes. On his feet. Then continue refreshed.
I had—I have—a very deep esteem for him and his comrades. They had a quality of inner certainty, even when faced with what may have seemed overwhelming odds. Not a trace of the crude might-is-right trust in material power alone which too many have inherited from the Nazis. He’d have been horrified by the idiotic nihilism of so many of today’s wealthy and powerful. Very conservative, like so many naval officers—we’d argue about everything, while always taking an interest in each other’s views—but nothing could disturb our fellow-feeling.
I see great qualities in many children, in many of the young. As we can see all too well, they will need all those qualities, and more. What I hope is that more and more will come forward motivated by the will to serve, not ego, but their fellow men.
As I often say, I wouldn't join the Navy again for $10 million, tax-free. And I wouldn't take $100 million for what I learned. I wouldn't have achieved what I have in my life without that knowledge. As I say to my friend Admiral Shelton every time he says "Call me Don!", "Admiral, you can take the boy out of the navy, but it's hard to take the navy out of the boy."
Great!
And that reminds me: We operate on a first-name basis on this ship. My name is Captain.
I love reading your words about your father, Peter, and how interesting the Admiralty regretted passing him over, and telling him! My father, like yours, loved nature, the sea and some classical music made him cry. He had a temper, but was quick to apologise.
My brother went into the Merchant Navy for a few years after school, and ended up with a successful yacht sales and service business in the Ballearics. I bumbled along, but did do an almost- circumnavigation on a S&S 47' in my 50's.
I admire so many of the youth of today and how they understand that they have to be engaged in their futures. My grand daughter graduates 8th grade in a few hours and I can't wait to hear her read the essay she's written. She often partners in my "activism".
Oh, and thank you for that PPS!
I met a Japanese woman who's father was trained to be a kamikaze pilot. His mission was cancelled the day after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so she owed her life to the atom bombs.
While my dad was an officer in the U.S. Army, his teen cousin in Japan was being trained as a kamikaze pilot. This cousin, like your dad, survived due to the atom bomb ending the war.
Great story. Thanks Peter.
One of the most impactful ways to appreciate history is to hear about it from people that made it especially those of the Greatest Generation. The story of the Battle of Midway is incredible; to hear it from Dick Best must have been so profound. I had the privilege of hearing Dick Cole, Doolittle's Co pilot talk about the bombing of Tokyo by the Doolittle Raiders when he was 100 years old at the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.
You were lucky. I met him 10 years earlier. If you didn't know the story, you'd never guess he was The Guy.
What my parents generation had was a strong sense of right and wrong. They knew sacrifice. Not so many sociopaths milling around in those days. They and their younger brothers and sisters that didn't remember the depression or fought the war after assisted with civil rights and ending Vietnam. I don't know what to make of a world where flat out lying has been given a pass because of freedom of speech and killing is given a hall pass because of the second amendment. Words written on a piece of parchment 250 years ago by men who never imagined this world but could imagine a free and just world.
Now their words are being interpreted by a whole generation that watched Entertainment Tonight instead of the nightly news, American Idol instead if 60 Minutes, The Gilmore Girls instead of MASH. Don't get me started on their unexplainable fascination with the Kardashians.
Most days I feel my hands are tied because I live in a blue state. The day DT was elected I went to war. I tore down every *friendship" that I had with those I knew or suspected had voted for him. I threw money at every Democratic election. I did not sit quietly at family dinners and allow people to think there was anything good about Trump. I quit Facebook. I marched in DC for women and science and gun control. My family and friends implored me to stay home for the BLM march because of Covid, not because I might be gassed by the commander-in-chief. I never waivered for 4 years. If it hadn't been for Covid would we have turned out in DC for Biden on Jan 6 to defend the democratic process like we did on Jan 21 2017? Why didn't we? Because we didn't believe what we suspected was true?
There is a cancer with multiple malignant tumors in Congress. McConnell is the silent killer, the sociopath that doesn't care about right or wrong. Manchin doesn't have the courage to take the fall from grace, if he helps kill the filibuster. Do we really believe he thinks the filibuster is important to democracy?
"I don't know what to make of a world where flat out lying has been given a pass because of freedom of speech and killing is given a hall pass because of the second amendment."
-- "Flood the zone with <confusion>." per Steve Bannon, described by a piece by Teri Kanefield in Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/trump-lies-kavanaugh-khashoggi.html
"Trump’s final aim isn’t simply to escape accountability for his crimes. The final aim is to replace democracy itself with a form of autocracy, under which he and his cronies are forever unaccountable for criminal actions. Normalizing lies and flooding the zone shatters the public sphere upon which democracy depends. Without that shared reality, Mueller poses no threat to Trump. Similarly, without a shared public sphere, Trump doesn’t have to worry about resistance. As Yale professor Jason Stanley says, without truth it is impossible to speak truth to power, so there is only power."
Yup, and that Bannon can still take to the airwaves is disgusting.
Want to hear something funny? The best radio interviewer I ever did a promotion with for one of my books, was a guy who had obviously read the whole thing himself, wasn't reading what some assistant wrote, and genuinely liked the book. It was Steve Bannon, a few months before he became "Steve Bannon."
Seriously, TC? That is incredulous? What happened to him, in your opinion?
Was just going to ask that. What turned him? Then I came across this from BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37971742
Bannon is interesting - he has a huge chip on his shoulder. A Boulder, really. His world view could have gone in a positive direction, but I think he’s too bitter.
Interesting? How so? Hard to fathom... Most reports lead me to see a callous opportunist, a snake oil salesman in the tradition of his “instructor/student”. (dependent on which one is telling the story).
And our media are printing photos of TFG again all the time. Can they report and not use photos and his name? Just warn us of his rallies and report on his court cases. but leave off the photos and giving his messages oxygen.
Thank you. I think we both understand what the war is now we need to fight the fight.
Martha, you are a warrior for democracy. You are one of the TRUE patriots. Thank you for your gumption and fierce love of this country. Keep it up and help us all do what we need to do.
I sorely miss my parents' generation. Good for you, Martha! I did pretty much the same, but marched in Tucson for Women, not DC. I've marched in VT and made signs for Gun legislation and Science and the Climate Crisis, never thought I'd be an "activist"! I've written hundreds of letters to potential voters, putting what Heather calls "skin in the game". We just have to do this, on behalf of our children and grandchildren, if not for ourselves!
(Sweden) Dear Martha Woods. What a smashing comment for hope in the US and the world!
We need a lot more Martha Woods in our country and the world right now!! Thank you for your true dedication to our democracy. It is way, way past time to show the world we will stand up to fascism and authoritarianism here.
Good for you, Martha!!
Thank you, TC, for these amazing and beautifully written anecdotes. They bring history alive and into sharp focus. They give me such profound admiration for these men whose bravery was mythic.
We are so lucky that that generation shared their stories and passed them down. I cannot wait to return here this evening and read all these stories. What a wealth of information from this community. Thank you and your families for what they did for our world!
I notice a lot of Antifa heritage & gratitude here.
Have you seen this new ad from the Lincoln Project? https://youtu.be/3xtLXDTxJsA
Yes. And love it. I used to live in Oregon. Those kids in Portland would not be shy about confronting hate, white supremest, proud boys marching in their city. Counter protest of such hate groups is the right thing to do. We are all anti fascists.
Unfortunately, there is a small group of people in Portland whose cause is vandalism and havoc. They are hiding behind legitimate protest and the people behind those protests do not want them doing this as they gave all protests a bad name. They use every excuse to rampage and break windows and start fires. Some of them have been arrested thankfully. We had a case of one 15 year old who did several thousand dollars worth of window breaking.
Oh yeah, there s that. But not the kids I’m referring too.
Yes but right now they are ones doing most of the "protesting" and they are not helping.
most of the protesting recently.
Do they identify as Antifa?
They dress all in black and may make that claim and paint the sign. However, they are just a bunch of mostly male white boys destroying things. They are not helping any legitimate cause.
I believe it was a Portland faction that did the window breaking downtown Seattle at the WTO protests back in '99. Gave the whacko media a real juicy field day.
That’s fabulous!
Yes-- and fascists have been to make Anti-fascism almost a dirty word!
Thank you TC and my father who died in 2000 and who stormed Omaha Beach was one of these amazingly humble men.
Thank you for that, TC.
Those of us – children of the Greatest Generation – who had the opportunity to know some of the men and women who served, are fortunate to have heard their accounts first-hand.
Dad was a decorated Naval Aviator (I was born in a Quonset Hut at NAS Pax River) who served in the Pacific. He died relatively young, never having spoken a word to me about his experiences except to say the “Jeep” was the most dangerous machine on the airfield.
My stepfather served in the 82nd Airborne Division, including Operation Market Garden, and we had the honor to return to Nijmegen with him in 2009. He wrote a book about his experiences and when I received my copy, he had included a note imploring my generation to never forget the lives lost to preserve the freedom we enjoy – the freedom that was now our duty to defend.
Again, thank you for keeping their stories – their sacrifices – alive.
Was this book published, and is it still available?
Strike and Hold: A Memoir of the 82nd Airborne in World War II
I imagine it was especially meaningful and moving to have read that note from your Dad, R. Dooley. Which makes these times so heartbreaking.
TC, my great-uncle was a paratrooper with the 101st and he died in the air, shot down by German fire, attempting to land. My father was at Midway. I have my dad's dogtags (he died just over a year ago at the age of 96), which include two additional tags that are inscribed "654 Days Combat Australia to Japan." My maternal grandfather was in the Adjutant General's corps, and he accompanied Eisenhower from North Africa through Europe. I have the letters he wrote to my mother, who was a small child at the time.
Thank you for this post. For me, World War II was the only war worth fighting.
Same here Linda. I was given the name of an wartime hero, Uncle Bob and have recently posted my connection to that time on Memorial Day. (for those on twitter with inclination to read).
https://twitter.com/roboyte/status/1398751289950060556?s=20
All our wars since, especially Vietnam for my generation were unnecessary wastes. Except for the protests that finally ended sending young men to worthless wars against their will.
My sister has one dogtag, and his photo ID badge (his photo on a pin) from his "service in San Francisco in WWII). I have the other. She wears hers at work, on patriotic holidays; mine is alongside the tags I wore at work until my retirement, and are now hung on the wall. He was in the USAAC as a meteorologist, spending 3 years in San Francisco, and 2 years in the China-Burma theatre, where he worked on setting up the weather net that helped the bombers over the "hump". My dad passed in 1987, and the only advice he ever gave me about enlisting was "well, go if you think you have to, but not the goddam Army." I have a friend whose Dad was a tailgunner on those planes flying over the hump; TC would know which ones those were. Her dad said they owed everything to the "guys on the ground." Wish I could have told my Dad that story.
My great Uncle Dave flew bombing raids on Nazi Germany in the B-22.
A minor correction, B-24. A real "pig" of an airplane to be the pilot.
My Uncle Bob flew a B-24 and wrote about how fysically tiring it was. Apparently manual control instead of hydraulic. You had to be a 22-year-old in good shape to do those long flights.
Yes, I have never met a B-24 pilot who didn't describe flying it as driving an 18 wheeler without power steering.
From one of my Uncle Bob’s letters to my grandmother:
June 5, 1944
"Not much change over here. The biggest change being they have checked me out as a first pilot. Yes Mom, I now have a crew of my own. I like it much better this way.
These missions we have are quite a thrill. I've been to France, Austria, Ploesti and many others.
Remember how tired I used to be when I came home from work. That is nothing like this. I'm usually so tired after one of these missions I can hardly get out of the plane. It will get easier as I learn more."
(I just noticed this was written the day before D-Day)
Yeah, that sounds like 15th AF out of Italy with that target list. They were almost all B-24s except for two groups of B-17s. "The Forgotten Fifteenth" they called themselves.
He was in his early twenties I think. I’m pretty sure it was a B-22, not the 24. There’s some reason why, I can’t remember fir this. Towards the end the Germans had their new jets in 1944-45 but not enough training to know how to shoot yet. The young German pilots would over fly the bombers and their bullets would miss. I was just a little boy when my silver haired Uncle told me these WW2 stories.
Ummm... I don't like pulling out my Expert's Cap, but there was no B-22. There was the B-24, used for bombing Germany, and the B-25, which didn't get closer to Germany than Austria as far as targets were concerned. There was also the B-26. Yeah, they were all incredibly young. the average age of aircrews in the Eighth Air Force was 21 - a guy over 25 was an "old man." Yes, the me-262 was so fast, they had a 3-second window once in range before they had to break off or collide, which isn't enough time to really aim - but with 4 30mm cannons, it only took a couple hits to knock down a B-17 or B-24. They were all lucky Hitler made a Genius Decision and declared it his "blitz bomber."
Well, hey there, expert! My dad, frustrated that his myopia and astigmatism disqualified him from pilot training in the Army Air Force, did his war as a B-24 bombsight mechanic at some airfield in England. The closest he got to combat (apart from occasional German air raids) was -- just after VE Day -- getting to fly over several of the destroyed cities his group's bombers had dumped their loads on. He also recalled working long shifts loading bombs for the Ploesti raids, but as those planes were flying out of Libya and Italy, I'm not sure what to make of that story. Guess I'll have to read up on it. Also -- speaking of dumped loads -- my father introduced my to the term "honey bucket". No need to go into detail.
He would have turned 101 last April if he hadn't died in 1980. He had a great sense of humor and a hot temper, never bore grudges and detested Richard Nixon. God only knows what he would think about today's world.
Regarding Ploesti - very likely he was there in North Africa. Two of the five B-24 groups that flew the mission came from the Eighth Air Force in England and would have brought their ground crews with them, since there weren't any extras in North Africa.
"Detested Nixon." I like him already. :-).
I'll have been 11 or 12 at school in England when one of our schoolmasters, addressing my class, said to us:
"If any of you ever have any influence on the matter when you grow up, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States."
I don't know what the other boys made of that, but as an 8 or 9-year-old in South Africa I'd already been reading in American magazines like the Saturday Evening Post about the HUAC hearings, Whittaker Chamber, Nixon, et al... Ugly faces...
Yes, Tricky Dicky was a pretty unsavory character as a congressman long before Watergate. I was the one who gave my father the news -- just before breakfast -- that Ford had pardoned Nixon. He sat down heavily and just said "Pour me some Jack Daniels".
My dad was an 18 year old on a destroyer in Japan, and had PTSD from that. His best friend, who was a few years older, spent the war flying a B24 over France, and his stories were terrifying. Later, he worked as a liason from CIA to congress during Watergate. They came to visit and my dad, a practical joker said “Haldeman talked” as our visitors got out of the car from the long drive. His knees buckled and he went white. They hated Nixon.
"on a destroyer in Japan..." What?
If you look at all of today's Big Gargoyles in the GOP, they all got their start as Small Gargoyles working for that S.O.B.
Ya gotta give Dick Nixon credit. At least he used to blink and sweat when he lied. Now our lives are polluted by his spawn.
Thanks, TC, sounds pretty likely. Many years later, after a long career in government (Labor Dept., Atomic Energy Commission) Daddy took early retirement, learned to fly and spent his life's savings on a small plane (a Mooney). He was trying to figure out a way to fly it to Europe and then Africa when he died.
Yes, I shudder every day at the thought of what it have done to my father’s soul were he to be alive these past five years. As much as it hurts to be without him, I am glad that he is not alive in this world anymore.
Gustav, agree, agree, agree! Well said.
My staunch Republican of a Father died in February 2015. I am so thankful that he never witnessed the extreme decline of his beloved party.
Let's just say there would be no "War of the Cleavers" between my dad and me today; the war we did have stopped with Watergate.
My godfather flew a B17. I didn’t know it was so easy to take one down. I do remember most of the parts of the plane were replaced at one time or another, so that makes mores sense.
My Chinese uncle was the ball turret gunner on his B-17. He said he picked it because he got to sit down the whole time. It's a miracle people made it back alive from those missions.
The 30mm was the gun that could do that. If it hit the right place with explosive shells. Like an engine (which would blow up), or the wing spar (the wing folds up). Fortunately those were not the majority. B-17s were quite rugged. One can look at photos of airplanes that were flying wrecks and wonder how they managed to get home.
After I wrote my essay about my Hero Uncle Bob, I discovered he was in the 485 Bomb Group in Italy found their Webpage and attended their reunion in D.C. in 2012.
Meeting George Chaplin
September 28, 2012
George was the engineer and right waist gunner and the last remaining crew member who was on the B-24 the day it got shot down.
On June 23, 1944 the plane was hit from the front and a hole was blown into the flight deck behind the cockpit. That is where Uncle Bob, the co-pilot, navigator and radio operator got out of the plane. George said each of them from the flight deck was wounded but he didn’t know if Bob was injured. The nose gunner, Ray Meech was shot and went down with the plane and Jack Robbins, the left waist gunner jumped out but was never found. It is possible he went into the Danube and got carried away by the current. The ball gunner, Wilbur Mattison got burned and his chute got burned but he and the tail gunner, James Bright bailed out using one parachute. They jumped out late and were too low but landed in mud and survived.
So 8 of the 10-man crew survived that shoot down and were in German POW camps for a while in Romania.
Wow! What a survival story! I’m amazed any of them could survive after the plane was hit like that.
I had the privilege to fly on a B-17 at an air show on Memorial Day several years ago. What an incredible experience! It gave me a greater appreciation for those who flew in them as an occupation in the military. Everything was solid metal. The noise and vibrations were so uncomfortable. It must have taken days for people to recover from that alone. And to get from front of plane, to back, you had to nimbly cross a narrow type of “bridge”. I couldn’t imagine having to do that while in flight and during maneuvers.
And wearing heavy winter clothing if at altitude. I bumped my head enuf to bleed while walking thru a B-17 standing still on the ground.
20 years ago, I took my wife with me to Van Nuys airport for the visit of the Collings Foundation's late and lamented B-17, "9-0-9". There were a number of B-17 vets there (all gone now) and while we waited for the arrival, she heard many stories. She took the stories with her as she made the tour of the airplane, and when she stepped out, she looked back, she said "I'll never think about that airplane and those guys the way I did before I came here."
Just looked at my pix from Feb 2013. The “9-0-9” was the B-17 I was walking thru and bumped my head. You had to be a skinny 20-something to crew those planes. I saw the plane wearing shorts & Polo shirt. Can’t imagine wearing a parka & parachute trying to get thru those passages or the ball turret. The B-24 I toured was Witchcraft, also with some narrow passages.
I was really grateful to the Collings Found. for this chance to touch something from my family history.
Not only all that, there was no insulation. When they peed on the wall (fuselage?), the urine froze.
Yikes
It’s ok. I made the same mistake many times, always saying B24, and my Dad ( Also a pilot Air National guard) would correct me. Uncle Dave didn’t pilot the 24. It was another bomber.
Now you have my attention. The possibilities are, flying in the ETO from England: B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-26 Marauder, A-20 Havoc (a two man crew, light attack bomber). In Italy, the B-26's place was taken by the B-25 Mitchell, and the others were all there..
My godfather flew the Flying Fortress.
Might be the 20. It would fit more with his stories. I’ll find out.
TC, I had to correct my Dad, in his eighties now. Uncle Dave flew the Martin Marauder, B-26
My other great Uncle, His brother Bill, served in the Navy, Pacific Fleet.
Have you been to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum near the airport in Savannah, GA? A large contingent of Americans went to England and, flying B-17 and B-24 bombers, played an important part in the Battle of Britain. I didn’t realize how close the RAF came to losing that battle to Hermann Goring’s Luftwaffe, the critical role radar played in deploying the limited RAF planes, and the reality that the Lindon blitz, although it made for much hardship in the civilian population, actually provided time for the RAF to repair its planes and win the victory. I’m reminded of the Philip K. Dick book, “The Man in the High Castle”, that describes in lurid detail conditions in a U.S. of A. In which the Germans and the Japanese won WWII.
Dad was in that group of 101st paratroopers dropped on Normandy in advance of the invasion. His job was to lay out communications. He was shot and captured.
LOVE, and HONOR this, TC.
My Uncle Frank flew the P-38 out of North Africa. He was shot down over Italy, survived and was captured. He was placed in a POW camp in Italy. When the soldiers were put on a train to move to a POW camp further north, Uncle Frank and a couple of other soldiers escaped from the train. They hid in the hills of Italy above a small town. The towns people knew the soldiers were there and would leave them food. When winter came, the towns people hid them. The German/Italian soldiers never stopped looking for them. My Uncle, his family, and my Mother all went to Italy to visit the town in the 2000's. There was an old man, who was a child at the time, who remembered my Uncle. I believe the word 'Honor' is not often used now, but I learned a great deal about the word from Uncle Frank, my parents and others from the generations who experienced the World Wars, the Depression, and other events that may have brought them to their knees, but had the fortitude and wisdom to learn and stand up again.
Nick Hodges (History Buffs channel on YouTube) reviews historical movies, largely war movies. He starts out with an account of the actual history of the battle. In his review of the movie "Midway," I was pretty impressed with his description of the Battle of Midway. He was overall satisfied with the historical accuracy of the movie.
https://youtu.be/4qQim09n6mY
As an aside, I just want to say that the documentary, "Midway," which was made by the Navy along with other branches of the military is near to my heart. I saw it in a class in how history was portrayed in film. As I was watching, I noticed that the music sounded very much like the music my father, a film composer with a unique style, wrote. When I got home from class, I called him and asked if he had anything to do with that film, as he was in the Army Air Corps at that time, in the radio and filming unit. The film had no credits listed. He told me that he had written the music for it. I found it amazing that 30 years later I was able to recognize his style.
The movie was accurate on a "technical" level, but portraying Dick Best as some "Joisey Boy rebel" was the polar opposite of reality. And the airplanes bouncing off the ocean back into the air violated basic physics - such a thing never ever happened.
I read that your first word, TC, was “airplane,” pronounced “o-plane.”
It was indeed! At age 11 months. I have been "very verbal" a long time. :-)
My USNA roommate's father had been given the choice of CO Torpedo 8, or a new "Jeep" Carrier; he took the ship! This well before the B of M. Chance and Fate.