Today, Katie Benner of the New York Times broke the story that former president Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is an hour before Sunday, and I wondered why Heather wrote as much as she did, until I read it. Good and evil came off the page.
I looked at the photo of General Eisenhower with the soldiers. My husband, Mark, was one of 73,000 American soldiers that landed in Normandy. He and a few of his war buddies went back a couple of times after the war.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
When the Attorney General of Texas publicly admits to tampering with ballots to change the outcome of an election, I can only wonder what they’re not telling us. This is so bazar it’s difficult to believe. Where are the indictments?
Thanks for the clarification Rebecca. This reminds me of what we once called racketeering - using legal means with the intent to achieve an illegal objective.
What an arrogant idiot Paxton is. Feels so insulated with Bannon and thinking that the current laws PROPOSED by Texas now allow him to say what occurred after the election. I am outraged for the voters of Texas challenged to believe their votes did not matter, did not count, and they are officially disenfranchised according to Bannon’s guests. Double whammy.
Actually, I am quite sure the likes of Bannon and Paxton and Bannon do not have the word “apology” in their lexicon.
I was thinking that we will hear a national response from Biden’s administration.
This is like a natural disaster. I’m concerned for the millions of voters right now that literally were told their votes were shit.
There must be a response is what I am praying for. If I could address them all right now, I would. I cannot even imagine my rage if one of DeSantis’s goons nationally announced my vote did not count.
He’s already been indicted for a first class felony and a couple of third class ones. Serious charges, too. My guess is the TX GOP want him out, hence Jed’s son running against him.
Until some of these anti-democracy conspirators are punished, they will continue their assault. Not only are they getting more aggressive by the day, they also are no longer shy about expressing their motives. How Manchin and Sinema can continue to oppose the For the People Act is breathtaking.
Isn’t it a little fishy that two senators from Georgia gave the president the slimmest democratic margin with which to pass the legislation that will save the economy, our people, and our democracy — and exactly TWO democratic senators nullify that advantage? I understand the situation these two senators are in, and that they have supported the filibuster before. But all of a sudden they have become immovable. They have reasonable sounding explanations, mostly having to do with the will of their electorate; however, their voters sent them to Washington as Democrats. Doesn’t that count for something? Anymore? It makes me physically ill to even consider this, but what might have changed hands? What promises were made?
By the way, my father was a Navy hospital corpsman in WWII on a sea plane tender ship, then transferred to a hospital ship that was assigned to Japan after the war, to help with the victims of the atomic bombing. He was called up from the Reserves to serve as a Marine combat medic in Korea. (The marines get their medics from the navy).
It was my honor to enlist in the army to serve as an infantry combat medic in Vietnam. After I came home we understood each other in an indescribably profound way, but my service, and that of my generation, will never equal his or generation’s. I treasure his Purple Hearts.
Thanks for letting me get personal for a moment. Folks like me could not begin to tell how the former entity’s term twisted our very souls in agony after we volunteered our lives for this country. And how much we have invested in the success of our current leadership team!
And deepest thanks to all those who so warmly welcomed me to this group! I have learned so much from our Professor and her Colloquy, and I will try not to disappoint this group.
Gustav, I can imagine how these past several years would inflict such pain on those of you who sacrificed and suffered so much in the defense of our country. Thank you for sharing your personal story and for being among us.
Gustave, thank you for sharing your thoughts-- I think we need to hear from all our veterans how they experience the GOP's final attempt at a total coup against our country. Respect for our veterans who offered their lives for democracy and those who offered their lives for wars that maybe should not have been, but they did what they were requested for love of country are voices that rise above all others against authoritarianism.
I love Oregon, wish constantly that I could afford to move back to the state I was born in and grew up in, and raised my children in. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful state in the country. I am impressed by its growing social and cultural awareness, and the diversity it has.
But over the last few decades, there have been too many people in elected positions or other positions of influence who do not recognize the responsibility they also carry to behave responsibly. They seem most dedicated to obstruction. In spite of those few, the Oregon legislature has initiated some excellent social programs, faced some difficult truths head on, and created a vision for the state's future that has already begun to be implemented.
I am disappointed and disgusted by people like Nearman and a few others in both houses. Dallas Heard, Senate republican is a man who seems to have no compass and seems to have difficulty grasping even simple concepts. These people are most intent, not on bettering the lives of Oregonians, but creating a schism and distorting the narrative about what is happening in the Capitol, and in many communities. The media has not always been helpful in countering those mis-truths, focusing cameras and print instead on the distracting noise.
I watch good people in both parties work hard to rebuild the kind of Oregon we once were on a steady path toward. That path is still there, and though rocky, I think achievable. I have been deeply troubled to watch legislators, grown adults, behave in childish ways, to the point of tantrums, within the chambers. At the same time, I am deeply moved by the efforts of other legislators whose dedication has kept them working long hours, Dem and Repub alike, to make it possible to keep on track. And the staff: an amazing group of dedicated people who somehow serve as glue to hold things together.
It was strange and disturbing to watch Nearman, who has a clear sense of how the legislature works but a poor sense of *why* it works the way it does, teach his audience how to bypass the safety measures meant to keep both legislators and the public safe. His willingness to serve as servant to people known to be violent is criminal. That he fails to see that is why he needs to resign.
Annie, perhaps it is the ultimate irony that Oregon was founded as a "whites only" state. The criminals like Norman clearly intend to return to those bad old days.
I am leery of ascribing motivations to people. I don't know what his intent was. His behavior is what will be judged. That's enough. Oregon is by no means the only state that was founded as a whites only state. It is one of the few that have taken active steps to address the issues from that. Some of the legislation that has come out of even this difficult session have been remarkable.
Another observation: Oregon is close to 1/3 Spanish speaking now, Though many also speak English, so many non-Hispanics speak Spanish. There is not a county in Oregon that does not have some Hispanic community members, and some counties are substatially Hispanic. Indigenous cultures are becoming more visible, and more influential. The black communities are dynamic. Asians-Americans have long been a potent force in the state, and there are a number of Asian origins represented. And, I might add, in the legislature. There is a BIPOC caucus who have been responsible for getting a wide range of social issue bills passed on a bipartisan basis. So Oregon is redefining itself.
Nearman knew exactly what he was doing and hope that this new video insures that he receives what he deserves which is at the very least expulsion. I live next door to a former pol at the county level and he is totally disgusted by what the R party has become and has had D signs in his yard. Lately when the Rs do not like something in the legislature, they walk out. That has happened more than once. Kate Brown is very unpopular, but does not deserve all the nastiness. She has handled the pandemic relatively well, but we have people here in my area (and we are still at extreme risk in Marion County) who won't get vaccinated in the hopes of spiting Kate. But we may get free soon because enough of the state will have been vaccinated. Oregon is very beautiful (I grew up in Indiana), but it won't be if we don't get some more rain and deal with climate change.
This is outrageous! "But that was not the only news of the day. We also learned that the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a public show that had he not been able to block a great deal of mail-in voting in 2020, Biden would have won Texas." I hope every voter in Texas particularly in the large metropolitan areas hear this and act on it. This should hearten and energize Texans that Texas is turning purple and ultimately blue. We need to overcome the barriers to voting in all legal, non-violent ways possible. The more People participate in democracy the stronger we'll all be. We need to make voting the social and responsible and safe thing to do.
There is next to zero voter fraud in Texas and they know it. Last July, I attended as a guest the three day webinar put on by the Texas Secretary of State Elections Office on Election Law. This is put on every year for all the County Election Administrators. One presentation was on the ERIC database (Electronic Registration Information Center used by 35 states to analyze voter registrations) where in a 2016 study 11.5 records were analyzed by ERIC there were 112 probable cases of improper voting - 24 instate double votes, 81 cross-state double votes and 7 votes on behalf of a deceased voter. 112 out of 11.5 million is .001 percent!
Good morning all! And a special good morning to HCR, who decided to post a letter when she could have been giving herself a real weekend. I know: summer is a little less stressful for those of us in the Ed Biz (as Tom Lehrer used to say), but I still admire HCR's fortitude to keep on providing us with this interesting and informative mix of historical assessment and current events. This also gives all of us a forum to communicate, one for which I am very grateful, as I would never have met any of you--whom I count as friends, not just fellow-substackers--had I not happened upon HCR's letters 18 months ago.
Which leads me, briefly, to today: isn't it interesting that Texas didn't even need voter suppression laws in order to suppress the vote? I have to assume that the intention was to enshrine the double-dealing and the racist neo-Jim Crow restrictions so that future attorneys general don't have to expend even an ounce of energy in order to ensure that Dems and Center-Left independents cannot vote. So those of us who see the future of the USA slipping into autocracy, run by petty and ignorant dictators whose army of hooligans "enforce" the "law," have minimal resources to stem this tide because the Dems have basically ignored it all, favoring the pretense that they are going to tap into some airy-fairy wellspring of support and overrun the powers of evil. This fantasy has been in place for 50 years. This fantasy is the reason why we have no decent grassroots organizations in most of the USA. This is the reason why Stacey Abrams is tired--and that her organization, carefully constructed over a 10-year span, cannot work in other states as hastily thrown-together, last-minute attempts to stem the tidal wave of autocracy.
The only way out of this morass--and it is a tough one--is to vote and to challenge all the voter suppression laws, as they plod their way through the courts which are the only venues for blocking them, since the obstructionists Manchin and Cinema refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes, by deliberately flouting them. That means driving people to the polls, going into neighborhoods and working on getting everyone the picture IDs most states now require (this has to happen at least six months before Election Day in 2022), and having armies of poll watchers to counter those on the right. And there will be violence. And we will get arrested. And we will go to jail.
So who is up for this? I fear that most Dems are not.
Morning, Lynell! There is a move afoot to "reform" Oregon's vote by mail. All of the Republiqans are trumpeting that it is needed. Our 25 year history of vote by mail has (I believe) a .143% total of fraudulent ballots noted; mostly from dead people as I understand it. This is some sort of mass delusion on the part of the Republiqans these days.
Morning, Ally!! It seems nothing is good enough, no matter what you do. Cynical, I know, but I believe if there was a way to allow only Republican mail-in ballots to be counted, that's the only thing that will make them happy.
I just listened to Secy of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, on Meet the Press this morning. She said back in December 2020 there was overwhelming bipartisan support for energy infrastructure that Biden put in the American Jobs Plan but that Republicans did not put in their counterproposal, for example, investment in the transition grid. As well, she said Republicans and Democrats were asking for the technology and the pipelines to take carbon pollution out of fossil fuel production and put it in the ground (carbon capture). Again, it wasn't in their counterproposal.
So yeah, we have to keep up the pressure to get as many of these bills passed as we can.
I live in Salem and have voted happily by mail all that time. One of the problems we had was the R election worker in Clackamus County filling in what voters had left blank. That's why two people open the ballots. I would guess the dead voters were still alive when the ballots went out. Counties issue both death certificates and ballots, so I would think dead voters are rare.
Have no fear Linda or anyone. This kind of fear is totally normal. Just remember voting is our right! It’s our right, dang it. Not something we have to ask permission for. And count on millions of Republicans and NPA’s right by the Dems’ side. And the military. The real military called out by OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF, not the former.
I have no hesitation calling their bluff. How dare they.
There is a lot we can do from our homes before any elections come about. Write, email, phone your representatives and senators at the state and federal levels. Use postcards to ensure they are delivered without security checks. Write a lot of them! Make your voice heard. They will get tired of us, but perfectly fine. The Democrats will understand they have support, and the Republicans will understand they are not helping the majority. Let's get HR1 passed so that most of these state level manipulations are null and void. Write to Manchin and Sinema and tell them to wake up to reality. Attend any public forums your legislators are holding.
My father-in-law was on one of those ships and was one of four men from his battalion to survive. He came home a different person than the one who left home to serve his country. Here we are, 77 years later, and the republic he went to war to defend is on the ropes. It's hard to be hopeful.
Just Wow <snip> The video, which shows Nearman winking and nodding at setting up the invasion, has raised questions about whether other Republicans worked with insurrectionists in other settings. <unsnip>
It is very clear that other Republican members of Congress encouraged the insurrectionists. That is why they all voted against the bipartisan special commission on January 6th. I keep wanting to write June 6th when I intend to write January 6th. The two days are at the opposite ends of history - one defending democracy with their lives, the other destroying democracy with their lies.
Absolutely! Or on a t shirt. Having a protest with everyone wearing that would be freak'in awesome. 13 words of TRUTH next to Heather's posted picture would be powerful. And how freak'in HARD is it to put on a t shirt in the morning? EASY PEASY.
I love this final sentence. So powerful. Could you make a video of yourself saying it and send it to The Lincoln Project? Or, if you want, we could create a video and eithercsend it to TLP or create a group like TLP with members here to spread encouragement for all to stand against the liars.
I know justice is slow but it is grinding forward. I agree there is a lot of mental illness too but I live nearby many sane people— I’m very grateful to live in one of the bluest states and this keeps me somewhat optimistic.
And once again I have to ask why people are so puzzled as to why I’m down on the future of the country. The Republicans are just going to cheat their way to power (where they haven’t already done so) and then once they have it, game the system so that they have it permanently.
I feel you have every right to feel as you do. However, I encourage you not to give up. Channel your outrage into taking action. There are still ways to turn this around if we can all stand up and use our voices and our votes. If the For the People Act isn't passed you'll find me in the non-violent resistance. I'm NOT going to give up.
Cathy Learoyd is President of her area League of Women Voters in Texas. She knows from whence she speaks! Let's ALL join our local and state chapter of LWV and get clear instructions from them on how we thousands of informed HCR readers can best non-violently resist!!!
When I'm on this forum, I'm speaking for myself alone although it is consistent with the League positions. The League does have a position on violence prevention. However, I don't believe it has any program on teaching non-violent resistance. What I recommend for non-violent resistance training is the Quakers and in particular George Lakey. I took a webinar on Non-violent Resistance with George Lakey. It was fabulous. Mr. Lakey's personal experiences over six decades with non-violence is a fountain of knowledge. One tip I learned from him is "If in doubt about what to do, sit down." That deescalates any situation.
Here is a list Bill Ball put together for non-violent resistance resources:
I feel the same way Ian. I haven’t given up but I already know nothing that I do matters. It doesn’t and won’t matter because no one in positions of authority are doing anything about the brazenly illegal actions against democracy. There is nothing but talk and even that is weak.
Yeah, yeah, President Biden gave a great speech recently about things not passing due to Manchin & Sinema but then what? What is the DOJ up to? Oh, right, they have petitioned to drop the lawsuits against trump for clearing Lafayette Square the way he did. Why are AG’s and politicians not arrested after they publicly brag about their illegal actions? Why hasn’t Flynn been recalled so he can be charged with sedition? Where is the outrage from Pelosi on the votes against a Jan 6th commission? Why is she refusing to set up an alternative? And so on, ad nauseum.
The disregard for what citizens want isn’t just at our highest levels of government. I live in a small (13,000) town in a very red state and the local government has taken their cues from trump on how to govern. The door to the major’s secretary’s office is now locked. You can’t walk in and request an appointment or bring up an issue. You have to call into a looping voicemail system or leave an email request. For those who will say “well, that’s still a way to contact them” no, it is not. Some of the loops to another person’s email go to a message that says no one is available or there isn’t an voicemail available. When you can leave a voicemail or send an email, no one ever contacts you. I have managed to reach a real person 3 times about a specific issue and each time was told “oh, the head of this office will get back to you” and so far, no one has. I deliberately waited 1 month, then 2 weeks each time - nothing. They Just. Don’t. Care.
This deliberate lack of action and concern on the part of our elected officials, from this small town to the White House and Congress is incredibly demoralizing and depressing. I will keep trying but it won’t matter if those with the authority to change things and/or take legal action against illegal behavior won’t do anything.
Maybe we all need to pressure Pelosi and Kitzenger and others that have been trying to do what is right. Maybe they are “giving up” because they don’t hear from us? I am constantly writing to McConnell (I live in KY) and I used to get responses, but haven’t for a long time. I think that the Republicans are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what we want them to do. They are banking on ultimate power in the near future, so what we want want won’t matter anyway.
The only chance I can foresee that we have is to pressure the Democrats in power to fight for us.
Dawn comes early in England during the summer. At 0200, June 6, 1944, the rumble of 48 Pratt and Whitney R-2800s reverberated over the quiet English countryside surrounding the former RAF base of Beaulieau Roads between Southampton and Bournemouth that was now home to the 9th Air Force’s 365th Fighter Group.
On the taxiway, the big P-47s – resplendent in the black and white identification stripes hurriedly applied with mops and brooms by the ground crews two nights before – S-turned heavily under their loads of two 500-lb bombs on the wing shackles and a 110-gallon drop tank on the centerline mount, as they took their turn to fly off into the rising sun.
At the runway, the flagman checked each pair as they moved into position; the engines roared as the pilots advanced their throttles to takeoff power, then began their roll as they were waved off. In the middle of the sixteen P-47s of the 388th Fighter Squadron, 21-year old 2nd Lieutenant Archie Maltby ran his hands over his wool pants to dry his sweating palms, then pulled on his flying gloves. Today was the second mission he would fly since joining the group at the end of April.
The next two airplanes moved into position and took off. The ground crew signaled Maltby and his leader to move forward. He checked the engine instruments, worked the controls quickly in a last-minute check, and pushed the throttle forward. Halfway down the runway, the heavy Thunderbolt’s tail came up, and then he was airborne with the main gear thumping into the wells. A right turn brought the two Thunderbolts over the Isle of Wight in a matter of moments; they joined the rest of the formation, heading east across the English Channel toward the coast of Normandy in the partly-cloudy skies.
“I’ll never forget what it was like that day. There were so many airplanes in the sky that there was a serious risk of collision, and there were so many ships in the Channel it seemed that you could have walked from ship to ship from England to France.”
The assignment for the 365th F.G. that day was to patrol the Cotentin Peninsula, to insure the Germans were unable to reinforce their units facing the invading Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches. After an hour, the Thunderbolts were free of their bombs and most of their ammunition. Returning to base, the pilots told the excited ground crews what they had seen. After a quick meal, they were back in their planes for a second sweep of the beachhead. “We thought that was it for the day when we got back from the second mission, but all of a sudden there was a call that radar had picked up the Luftwaffe heading toward the beaches, and all the airplanes that had been fueled were scrambled.” In fact, the only two members of the Luftwaffe to make an appearance over the Normandy beaches on D-Day were Oberst Josef “Pips” Priller, Geschwader Kommodore of JG26, and his wingman. “By the time we got there, Priller had already made his famous run over the beaches and gotten out of there.”
When they returned, night had fallen on England. “It really was the longest day I can ever remember.”
And 11 months later, 22-year old Major Maltby was preparing the orders for the squadron's next mission, when he received the message to halt all air operations. "I put down the phone, and I looked over at the pilot board, and of the 48 men I had flown with on D-Day, there were six of us still there. Ten had gone home on completing their tours and 15 were known to be POWs. The rest had been blown out of the sky somewhere between Normandy and our base in western Germany."
You have a gift TC, my father and his oldest brother both flew TBF’s for the marines in the pacific theater. My uncle who lived to 101 and also fought in Korea was sent back to the states after fighting for a year in the South Pacific where he trained my father and others at Goleta in Santa Barbara and then San Diego. They needed to know what they were getting into. My other uncle flew reconnaissance for General Patton as they moved across Europe. He flew something like a Cessna 150 that was very slow directly over German lines so that his observer could take notes on their battle array, they then flew over Patton’s HQ and dropped leather tubes with the modified maps so that he could know what he was facing. The Messerschmitts flying 400 mph were always trying to shoot him down, but couldn’t get down below the tree line following the curves of the roads like he could. My grandfather told me that the happiest day of his life was the day that all 3 of his sons returned alive. My uncle that flew for Patton will be 101 this summer and just stopped driving last year, his name is Lionel and he’s the lion of the family. I’m lucky, I was raised by honorable men, when it was my turn I didn’t run but that’s another story. I was raised by men like the ones that you just described and that was indeed a privilege. Thanks for the story it rings like a bell 🔔.
That was prob ably a Piper L-4 Cub your uncle was flying for Patton, and yeah, the Germans couldn't get after it with a 109. One pilot fitted his with 6 bazookas under the wings and went hunting tanks with it - he got a few, too. Your uncle the TBF pilot was likely in the Solomons/Rabaul campaign - tough duty, when the Japanese were our combat equal! (my new book "Under The Southern Cross" deals with that war). Amazing you have two centenarians in the family! My friend Admiral Don Shelton just turned 100 on May 22. Reading his aviator's resume, he was the exception to the rule about there being old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. I'd love to find a way to talk to your Uncle Lionel - I'm sure there's an article there.
I will read this to my step-father tomorrow. He will love it. He has a few stories to tell. He was a child in Nazi Germany during the war, and saw some horrors. You've inspired me. I'll put his stories to paper in his words, to preserve them.
Agree! Using a voice recorder (such as an Olympus) makes it super easy. I recorded my father-in-law telling stories of his life and six months later he passed from a heart attack. That's the only record his kids have of him talking.
Cleary the most pressing business of the Senate is to pass some voting legislation if democracy is to live past 2022. That it all revolves around Joe Manchin dictates what needs to be done. He's insisting on bipartisan agreement on all of the proposed bills but there clearly is none to be found at this time.
So how can/should Democrats move forward on voting?
Dana Millbank has offered the best strategy I've read so far.
1. Have the votes and let Republicans prove to Manchin there is no hope of bipartisanship
2. Have votes on each of the items in the voting bills and force Republicans to vote down each one. Here's some examples of what the votes would be:
* Restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act
* Require 100% of the votes be backed up by paper
* Abolish gerrymandering
* End dark money contributions
* Require states to alert each other when voters apply for a driver’s license in a new state, to avoid duplicate voter registrations.
* Forbid Administration officials to lobby for 2 years and tighten lobbyist disclosure requirements
Would Republicans be willing to make public their stand on all or some of the above. If they proved they support none of the above would that force Manchin to change his position on the filibuster?
Thank you for the Dana Millbank article and its looking at next steps. That is necessary and helpful. We need to deepen our ability to converse in simple terms about each of these provisions that go beyond the over-arching issue of voting rights.
Every June 6th, I think about D-Day. As a young kid growing up in NJ in the 1950s I was raised by the men and women who served during WWII. They never talked about it. Life for them in the here and now was what mattered and by extension to all of us, too. Baseball, helping around our homes and yards, going to school, going to church, visiting relatives and hearing the adults talk and laugh together … that was my life. I knew nothing of privation. My parents had known about privation, endured the Depression and then, when enraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor they served their country. They used whatever the government gave them in the way of training and equipment and then they did what was expected. When the movie the Longest Day, came out we went to see it as a family. My parents didn’t say that much about it but I knew that it was right up there for them among the most important events in their lives and in the lives of all the adults who I knew… my friends parents, teachers, coaches even the doctors we visited. It was, very clearly, a shared experience among people who saw the threat for what it was and accepted their role to help defeat it. As I got older and read more and saw more films and presentations about D-Day and the events that led up to it, I began to realize how complicated and difficult an undertaking it was… how many died and suffered in the fighting and what a relief it was for people in France and around the world to know that Hitler and Nazi Germany could be pushed back. It’s hard for me to believe that so many of the trump insurrectionists are my age. Some will go to jail for their actions on January 6. These people, like me, had parents who served during WWII. It profoundly baffles me but ultimately doesn’t trouble me that much that they are such kooks. We’ve always had kooks in America; they don’t get to be in charge…except in those rare moments when they somehow grab the microphone like what happened with trump. That time is over for now. The great ship of America is, once again, steaming in the right direction. Like those who fought and died in WWII, I have deep confidence in our system of government because it’s whole purpose is to serve the will of the people. What a great idea. It’s a huge risk that it could fail… like D-Day was… but it won’t fail, as long as we all keep doing all that we can to do our part … and most of us will like the GA Secy of State did after the 2020 election and the Texas state legislatures just did to push back against the authoritarians who want to weaken our democracy for their misguided and truly kooky purposes. The battle goes on because it must if we want to keep improving our lives and protecting our democracy. So, remember D-Day, yeah…but keep your eye on the fastball that just got thrown your way and hit it hard….I know you will.
Keith, I love you for this one. I do. I can almost smile. Hear you breathing. Trying. Born Friday morning, Mozart’s birthday, 9:20, Willy Rashbaum’s grandfather Maurice officiated, as Dad traded bonds. Kids meant little to him until they could sit at Yankee stadium on Sunday and watch Frank Gifford, freezing. Getting pneumonia before penicillin by needle.
Our White Trash neighbors posted Trump or Sanders. It’s the ambivalent ignorant free lunch crowd ignoring incest in Willsoro, the place Stefanik did not come from. She’s from plywood. Trump is from Hunger in Queens, Rape at Burgdorfs.
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.
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."
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
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.
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. :-).
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.
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 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.
It is an hour before Sunday, and I wondered why Heather wrote as much as she did, until I read it. Good and evil came off the page.
I looked at the photo of General Eisenhower with the soldiers. My husband, Mark, was one of 73,000 American soldiers that landed in Normandy. He and a few of his war buddies went back a couple of times after the war.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Heather took me to church early.
Thank you, Heather
Amen!
When the Attorney General of Texas publicly admits to tampering with ballots to change the outcome of an election, I can only wonder what they’re not telling us. This is so bazar it’s difficult to believe. Where are the indictments?
They are not even hiding illegal voting suppression tactics. If that’s not a fascist power grab, I don’t know what is.
He didn’t admit to tampering, he won law suites to prevent mail-in voting. Big difference, nothing to indict.
Thanks for the clarification Rebecca. This reminds me of what we once called racketeering - using legal means with the intent to achieve an illegal objective.
The TX AG fought to minimize mail in ballots. Evidently, TX legally limited the number of allowable mail in ballots.
It’s why we need HR1. Period.
What an arrogant idiot Paxton is. Feels so insulated with Bannon and thinking that the current laws PROPOSED by Texas now allow him to say what occurred after the election. I am outraged for the voters of Texas challenged to believe their votes did not matter, did not count, and they are officially disenfranchised according to Bannon’s guests. Double whammy.
I pray that an apology will be forthcoming.
An apology? How about prison?
Actually, I am quite sure the likes of Bannon and Paxton and Bannon do not have the word “apology” in their lexicon.
I was thinking that we will hear a national response from Biden’s administration.
This is like a natural disaster. I’m concerned for the millions of voters right now that literally were told their votes were shit.
There must be a response is what I am praying for. If I could address them all right now, I would. I cannot even imagine my rage if one of DeSantis’s goons nationally announced my vote did not count.
Yes.. where is the Rule of Law anymore??
Well that too. 😂
Or buried under the prison.
From Paxton? The guy that sued other states for doing exactly what Texas had done with regard to Covid? Not a chance.
Who's going to indict them? They're all republicans.
He’s already been indicted for a first class felony and a couple of third class ones. Serious charges, too. My guess is the TX GOP want him out, hence Jed’s son running against him.
I don't know why I'm so shocked by this news after everything else that has come to light, but I am. And I am furious and disgusted.
Thanks, Heather. Rest well and enjoy your evening.
And I am both furious and disgusted that more people aren’t furious and disgusted!!
DITTO!!
Until some of these anti-democracy conspirators are punished, they will continue their assault. Not only are they getting more aggressive by the day, they also are no longer shy about expressing their motives. How Manchin and Sinema can continue to oppose the For the People Act is breathtaking.
Isn’t it a little fishy that two senators from Georgia gave the president the slimmest democratic margin with which to pass the legislation that will save the economy, our people, and our democracy — and exactly TWO democratic senators nullify that advantage? I understand the situation these two senators are in, and that they have supported the filibuster before. But all of a sudden they have become immovable. They have reasonable sounding explanations, mostly having to do with the will of their electorate; however, their voters sent them to Washington as Democrats. Doesn’t that count for something? Anymore? It makes me physically ill to even consider this, but what might have changed hands? What promises were made?
By the way, my father was a Navy hospital corpsman in WWII on a sea plane tender ship, then transferred to a hospital ship that was assigned to Japan after the war, to help with the victims of the atomic bombing. He was called up from the Reserves to serve as a Marine combat medic in Korea. (The marines get their medics from the navy).
It was my honor to enlist in the army to serve as an infantry combat medic in Vietnam. After I came home we understood each other in an indescribably profound way, but my service, and that of my generation, will never equal his or generation’s. I treasure his Purple Hearts.
Thanks for letting me get personal for a moment. Folks like me could not begin to tell how the former entity’s term twisted our very souls in agony after we volunteered our lives for this country. And how much we have invested in the success of our current leadership team!
And deepest thanks to all those who so warmly welcomed me to this group! I have learned so much from our Professor and her Colloquy, and I will try not to disappoint this group.
Thank YOU, Gustav, for your service and for your enlightening comments here. You never disappoint!
Gustav, I can imagine how these past several years would inflict such pain on those of you who sacrificed and suffered so much in the defense of our country. Thank you for sharing your personal story and for being among us.
Gustave, thank you for sharing your thoughts-- I think we need to hear from all our veterans how they experience the GOP's final attempt at a total coup against our country. Respect for our veterans who offered their lives for democracy and those who offered their lives for wars that maybe should not have been, but they did what they were requested for love of country are voices that rise above all others against authoritarianism.
Thank you for your service Gustav. You are an enduring legacy of the Greatest Generation, following the example of your father.
I love Oregon, wish constantly that I could afford to move back to the state I was born in and grew up in, and raised my children in. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful state in the country. I am impressed by its growing social and cultural awareness, and the diversity it has.
But over the last few decades, there have been too many people in elected positions or other positions of influence who do not recognize the responsibility they also carry to behave responsibly. They seem most dedicated to obstruction. In spite of those few, the Oregon legislature has initiated some excellent social programs, faced some difficult truths head on, and created a vision for the state's future that has already begun to be implemented.
I am disappointed and disgusted by people like Nearman and a few others in both houses. Dallas Heard, Senate republican is a man who seems to have no compass and seems to have difficulty grasping even simple concepts. These people are most intent, not on bettering the lives of Oregonians, but creating a schism and distorting the narrative about what is happening in the Capitol, and in many communities. The media has not always been helpful in countering those mis-truths, focusing cameras and print instead on the distracting noise.
I watch good people in both parties work hard to rebuild the kind of Oregon we once were on a steady path toward. That path is still there, and though rocky, I think achievable. I have been deeply troubled to watch legislators, grown adults, behave in childish ways, to the point of tantrums, within the chambers. At the same time, I am deeply moved by the efforts of other legislators whose dedication has kept them working long hours, Dem and Repub alike, to make it possible to keep on track. And the staff: an amazing group of dedicated people who somehow serve as glue to hold things together.
It was strange and disturbing to watch Nearman, who has a clear sense of how the legislature works but a poor sense of *why* it works the way it does, teach his audience how to bypass the safety measures meant to keep both legislators and the public safe. His willingness to serve as servant to people known to be violent is criminal. That he fails to see that is why he needs to resign.
Shouldn’t there be repercussions for what he did?
There have been. There will be more.
Annie, perhaps it is the ultimate irony that Oregon was founded as a "whites only" state. The criminals like Norman clearly intend to return to those bad old days.
I am leery of ascribing motivations to people. I don't know what his intent was. His behavior is what will be judged. That's enough. Oregon is by no means the only state that was founded as a whites only state. It is one of the few that have taken active steps to address the issues from that. Some of the legislation that has come out of even this difficult session have been remarkable.
Another observation: Oregon is close to 1/3 Spanish speaking now, Though many also speak English, so many non-Hispanics speak Spanish. There is not a county in Oregon that does not have some Hispanic community members, and some counties are substatially Hispanic. Indigenous cultures are becoming more visible, and more influential. The black communities are dynamic. Asians-Americans have long been a potent force in the state, and there are a number of Asian origins represented. And, I might add, in the legislature. There is a BIPOC caucus who have been responsible for getting a wide range of social issue bills passed on a bipartisan basis. So Oregon is redefining itself.
Nearman. Dang I hate autocorrect.
Nearman knew exactly what he was doing and hope that this new video insures that he receives what he deserves which is at the very least expulsion. I live next door to a former pol at the county level and he is totally disgusted by what the R party has become and has had D signs in his yard. Lately when the Rs do not like something in the legislature, they walk out. That has happened more than once. Kate Brown is very unpopular, but does not deserve all the nastiness. She has handled the pandemic relatively well, but we have people here in my area (and we are still at extreme risk in Marion County) who won't get vaccinated in the hopes of spiting Kate. But we may get free soon because enough of the state will have been vaccinated. Oregon is very beautiful (I grew up in Indiana), but it won't be if we don't get some more rain and deal with climate change.
This is outrageous! "But that was not the only news of the day. We also learned that the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a public show that had he not been able to block a great deal of mail-in voting in 2020, Biden would have won Texas." I hope every voter in Texas particularly in the large metropolitan areas hear this and act on it. This should hearten and energize Texans that Texas is turning purple and ultimately blue. We need to overcome the barriers to voting in all legal, non-violent ways possible. The more People participate in democracy the stronger we'll all be. We need to make voting the social and responsible and safe thing to do.
If listen to the recording carefully, he frames it that his actions were part of preventing the fraudulent mailing of ballots.
There is next to zero voter fraud in Texas and they know it. Last July, I attended as a guest the three day webinar put on by the Texas Secretary of State Elections Office on Election Law. This is put on every year for all the County Election Administrators. One presentation was on the ERIC database (Electronic Registration Information Center used by 35 states to analyze voter registrations) where in a 2016 study 11.5 records were analyzed by ERIC there were 112 probable cases of improper voting - 24 instate double votes, 81 cross-state double votes and 7 votes on behalf of a deceased voter. 112 out of 11.5 million is .001 percent!
A solution in search of a problem.
And how would he know that the ballots were fraudulent??????
It’s just their practiced technique
That would seem to be a smoking gun..., and a confession that there was sufficient voting fraud to turn the election in Texas - to Trump.
Good morning all! And a special good morning to HCR, who decided to post a letter when she could have been giving herself a real weekend. I know: summer is a little less stressful for those of us in the Ed Biz (as Tom Lehrer used to say), but I still admire HCR's fortitude to keep on providing us with this interesting and informative mix of historical assessment and current events. This also gives all of us a forum to communicate, one for which I am very grateful, as I would never have met any of you--whom I count as friends, not just fellow-substackers--had I not happened upon HCR's letters 18 months ago.
Which leads me, briefly, to today: isn't it interesting that Texas didn't even need voter suppression laws in order to suppress the vote? I have to assume that the intention was to enshrine the double-dealing and the racist neo-Jim Crow restrictions so that future attorneys general don't have to expend even an ounce of energy in order to ensure that Dems and Center-Left independents cannot vote. So those of us who see the future of the USA slipping into autocracy, run by petty and ignorant dictators whose army of hooligans "enforce" the "law," have minimal resources to stem this tide because the Dems have basically ignored it all, favoring the pretense that they are going to tap into some airy-fairy wellspring of support and overrun the powers of evil. This fantasy has been in place for 50 years. This fantasy is the reason why we have no decent grassroots organizations in most of the USA. This is the reason why Stacey Abrams is tired--and that her organization, carefully constructed over a 10-year span, cannot work in other states as hastily thrown-together, last-minute attempts to stem the tidal wave of autocracy.
The only way out of this morass--and it is a tough one--is to vote and to challenge all the voter suppression laws, as they plod their way through the courts which are the only venues for blocking them, since the obstructionists Manchin and Cinema refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes, by deliberately flouting them. That means driving people to the polls, going into neighborhoods and working on getting everyone the picture IDs most states now require (this has to happen at least six months before Election Day in 2022), and having armies of poll watchers to counter those on the right. And there will be violence. And we will get arrested. And we will go to jail.
So who is up for this? I fear that most Dems are not.
I'm ready to take to the streets, peacefully, to give voice to the millions who are out there shaking their heads about voter suppression. Enough.
The aforementioned heroes of WW2 had no guarantee of victory over fascism. They fought anyway. We must do the same any way we can.
Morning, Lynell! There is a move afoot to "reform" Oregon's vote by mail. All of the Republiqans are trumpeting that it is needed. Our 25 year history of vote by mail has (I believe) a .143% total of fraudulent ballots noted; mostly from dead people as I understand it. This is some sort of mass delusion on the part of the Republiqans these days.
Morning, Ally!! It seems nothing is good enough, no matter what you do. Cynical, I know, but I believe if there was a way to allow only Republican mail-in ballots to be counted, that's the only thing that will make them happy.
I just listened to Secy of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, on Meet the Press this morning. She said back in December 2020 there was overwhelming bipartisan support for energy infrastructure that Biden put in the American Jobs Plan but that Republicans did not put in their counterproposal, for example, investment in the transition grid. As well, she said Republicans and Democrats were asking for the technology and the pipelines to take carbon pollution out of fossil fuel production and put it in the ground (carbon capture). Again, it wasn't in their counterproposal.
So yeah, we have to keep up the pressure to get as many of these bills passed as we can.
...as the Big Lie trickles down into little lies, and fear of loss of control grows, the fearful unravel our working systems.Shame on them!
I live in Salem and have voted happily by mail all that time. One of the problems we had was the R election worker in Clackamus County filling in what voters had left blank. That's why two people open the ballots. I would guess the dead voters were still alive when the ballots went out. Counties issue both death certificates and ballots, so I would think dead voters are rare.
Have no fear Linda or anyone. This kind of fear is totally normal. Just remember voting is our right! It’s our right, dang it. Not something we have to ask permission for. And count on millions of Republicans and NPA’s right by the Dems’ side. And the military. The real military called out by OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF, not the former.
I have no hesitation calling their bluff. How dare they.
There is a lot we can do from our homes before any elections come about. Write, email, phone your representatives and senators at the state and federal levels. Use postcards to ensure they are delivered without security checks. Write a lot of them! Make your voice heard. They will get tired of us, but perfectly fine. The Democrats will understand they have support, and the Republicans will understand they are not helping the majority. Let's get HR1 passed so that most of these state level manipulations are null and void. Write to Manchin and Sinema and tell them to wake up to reality. Attend any public forums your legislators are holding.
HR1 already passed isnt it?
My bad. Labeled it wrong. S1 is stuck in the Senate.
Yes, passed in the House. Now in the Senate as S1. But I think people still call it HR1, though the 2 may be slightly different.
Very well said Linda. Thank you.
My father-in-law was on one of those ships and was one of four men from his battalion to survive. He came home a different person than the one who left home to serve his country. Here we are, 77 years later, and the republic he went to war to defend is on the ropes. It's hard to be hopeful.
Yes it’s hard to be hopeful but what’s the alternative. We must be hopeful enough to stay alert and act where we are able.
But we must be hopeful, together, for our new leaders, each other, and the decent majority of our nation. I am with you, Julene. We are with you!
Not just hooeful, but actively calling them out. Fight!
Join your local League of Women Voters. "Power of the People" we said in the 70's. Power of The People, all of Us This Time in 2021!
Just Wow <snip> The video, which shows Nearman winking and nodding at setting up the invasion, has raised questions about whether other Republicans worked with insurrectionists in other settings. <unsnip>
It is very clear that other Republican members of Congress encouraged the insurrectionists. That is why they all voted against the bipartisan special commission on January 6th. I keep wanting to write June 6th when I intend to write January 6th. The two days are at the opposite ends of history - one defending democracy with their lives, the other destroying democracy with their lies.
That last line should be on a billboard or somewhere. It’s perfect.
I just posted it on FB.
Absolutely! Or on a t shirt. Having a protest with everyone wearing that would be freak'in awesome. 13 words of TRUTH next to Heather's posted picture would be powerful. And how freak'in HARD is it to put on a t shirt in the morning? EASY PEASY.
I love this final sentence. So powerful. Could you make a video of yourself saying it and send it to The Lincoln Project? Or, if you want, we could create a video and eithercsend it to TLP or create a group like TLP with members here to spread encouragement for all to stand against the liars.
Your astute observation just gave me a chill. Dang it, Cathy. This is beyond tolerance.
Woooohooooo! Hot diggity dawg!
OK Cathy, you clever warrior. We have our slogan. Agree everyone? Let’s make sure Heather sees this comment from Cathy.
Criminals do not invite investigations into their own behaviors! We have a fetid mess in Congress!!!
Given that the modern Trump Party are all traitors, of course they did.
Traitors and thugs.
Yes, but there’s a problem. They are deluded. Mass psychosis.
I think people, especially here, just cannot get their minds around this reality.
It’s the leadership that must be arraigned as soon as possible.
Behead the conspiracy. The only way of tackling the problem.
I know justice is slow but it is grinding forward. I agree there is a lot of mental illness too but I live nearby many sane people— I’m very grateful to live in one of the bluest states and this keeps me somewhat optimistic.
Absolutely
What? Cannot get OUR minds around this reality? Surely you jest.
Behead which leadership? The insurrection worships an idol.
And are funded by the Freedom Foundation, a group of conservative $bilk-ionaires. Power of the People, All of Us This Time!!
Thank you, Christine.
Yeah, my very own "home grown" Republiqan.
😣
And once again I have to ask why people are so puzzled as to why I’m down on the future of the country. The Republicans are just going to cheat their way to power (where they haven’t already done so) and then once they have it, game the system so that they have it permanently.
I feel you have every right to feel as you do. However, I encourage you not to give up. Channel your outrage into taking action. There are still ways to turn this around if we can all stand up and use our voices and our votes. If the For the People Act isn't passed you'll find me in the non-violent resistance. I'm NOT going to give up.
See you there, Cathy. I WILL NOT be underestimated.
I don’t think any of us can afford to get too despondent about the future— we need to preserve our energy and good spirits.
I have a tshirt that says "Underestimate me, that'll be fun!" Never underestimate a determined woman!
I have one that says, "Assuming I'm just an old lady was your first mistake."
Love it! When I go to a doctor's appointment I wear my M.I.T. tshirt so they don't treat me like a senile old lady... It works!
Cathy I love your spirit— we all need to share our strengths.
Those of us wo the credentials must use our wits to dissuade them! LOL
Maybe your last mistake.
Can we order it on sashes, like the suffragists wore?!
You so have that straight, sister.
Gotta order that from my local T-shirt guy in red, white and blue!
Me too!
I agree even though I don’t have that t-shirt🙌🏻
Cathy Learoyd is President of her area League of Women Voters in Texas. She knows from whence she speaks! Let's ALL join our local and state chapter of LWV and get clear instructions from them on how we thousands of informed HCR readers can best non-violently resist!!!
When I'm on this forum, I'm speaking for myself alone although it is consistent with the League positions. The League does have a position on violence prevention. However, I don't believe it has any program on teaching non-violent resistance. What I recommend for non-violent resistance training is the Quakers and in particular George Lakey. I took a webinar on Non-violent Resistance with George Lakey. It was fabulous. Mr. Lakey's personal experiences over six decades with non-violence is a fountain of knowledge. One tip I learned from him is "If in doubt about what to do, sit down." That deescalates any situation.
Here is a list Bill Ball put together for non-violent resistance resources:
George Lakey:
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/facing-right-wing-violence-while-defending-election-coup-george-lakey/
and also a collection of resources on Waging Nonviolence:
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/facing-right-wing-violence-while-defending-election-coup-george-lakey/NAACP
https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/nonviolent-philosophy-and-self-defense/
Religious Society of Friends
https://www.afsc.org/resource/quaker-action-resources-resistance-summer-2017
War Resisters International
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wri_handbook_2014_inner_AMENDED.compressed1.pdf
Correction: NAACP should be a new line and not part of the wagingnonviolence link above.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/facing-right-wing-violence-while-defending-election-coup-george-lakey
NAACP
https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/nonviolent-philosophy-and-self-defense/
Here's an interview with Mr. Lakey.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/facing-right-wing-violence-while-defending-election-coup-george-lakey/
I am firm participant in LWV chapter in Florida.
Sounds like a plan. I joined our branch recently.
I'm with you Kathy ... forever.
Together we can prevail. Thank you, Bruce.
I love your spirit, Cathy!
Amen Cathy.
Yes!
I feel the same way Ian. I haven’t given up but I already know nothing that I do matters. It doesn’t and won’t matter because no one in positions of authority are doing anything about the brazenly illegal actions against democracy. There is nothing but talk and even that is weak.
Yeah, yeah, President Biden gave a great speech recently about things not passing due to Manchin & Sinema but then what? What is the DOJ up to? Oh, right, they have petitioned to drop the lawsuits against trump for clearing Lafayette Square the way he did. Why are AG’s and politicians not arrested after they publicly brag about their illegal actions? Why hasn’t Flynn been recalled so he can be charged with sedition? Where is the outrage from Pelosi on the votes against a Jan 6th commission? Why is she refusing to set up an alternative? And so on, ad nauseum.
The disregard for what citizens want isn’t just at our highest levels of government. I live in a small (13,000) town in a very red state and the local government has taken their cues from trump on how to govern. The door to the major’s secretary’s office is now locked. You can’t walk in and request an appointment or bring up an issue. You have to call into a looping voicemail system or leave an email request. For those who will say “well, that’s still a way to contact them” no, it is not. Some of the loops to another person’s email go to a message that says no one is available or there isn’t an voicemail available. When you can leave a voicemail or send an email, no one ever contacts you. I have managed to reach a real person 3 times about a specific issue and each time was told “oh, the head of this office will get back to you” and so far, no one has. I deliberately waited 1 month, then 2 weeks each time - nothing. They Just. Don’t. Care.
This deliberate lack of action and concern on the part of our elected officials, from this small town to the White House and Congress is incredibly demoralizing and depressing. I will keep trying but it won’t matter if those with the authority to change things and/or take legal action against illegal behavior won’t do anything.
Maybe we all need to pressure Pelosi and Kitzenger and others that have been trying to do what is right. Maybe they are “giving up” because they don’t hear from us? I am constantly writing to McConnell (I live in KY) and I used to get responses, but haven’t for a long time. I think that the Republicans are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what we want them to do. They are banking on ultimate power in the near future, so what we want want won’t matter anyway.
The only chance I can foresee that we have is to pressure the Democrats in power to fight for us.
Yes, I just posted a question: what if we all call their offices on a daily basis requesting they address these issues.
Keep trying. Don't give up. Join your local League of Women Voters.
See what you started Ellie Kona et al!
I hear you.
Here's a story I wrote 20 years ago:
Dawn comes early in England during the summer. At 0200, June 6, 1944, the rumble of 48 Pratt and Whitney R-2800s reverberated over the quiet English countryside surrounding the former RAF base of Beaulieau Roads between Southampton and Bournemouth that was now home to the 9th Air Force’s 365th Fighter Group.
On the taxiway, the big P-47s – resplendent in the black and white identification stripes hurriedly applied with mops and brooms by the ground crews two nights before – S-turned heavily under their loads of two 500-lb bombs on the wing shackles and a 110-gallon drop tank on the centerline mount, as they took their turn to fly off into the rising sun.
At the runway, the flagman checked each pair as they moved into position; the engines roared as the pilots advanced their throttles to takeoff power, then began their roll as they were waved off. In the middle of the sixteen P-47s of the 388th Fighter Squadron, 21-year old 2nd Lieutenant Archie Maltby ran his hands over his wool pants to dry his sweating palms, then pulled on his flying gloves. Today was the second mission he would fly since joining the group at the end of April.
The next two airplanes moved into position and took off. The ground crew signaled Maltby and his leader to move forward. He checked the engine instruments, worked the controls quickly in a last-minute check, and pushed the throttle forward. Halfway down the runway, the heavy Thunderbolt’s tail came up, and then he was airborne with the main gear thumping into the wells. A right turn brought the two Thunderbolts over the Isle of Wight in a matter of moments; they joined the rest of the formation, heading east across the English Channel toward the coast of Normandy in the partly-cloudy skies.
“I’ll never forget what it was like that day. There were so many airplanes in the sky that there was a serious risk of collision, and there were so many ships in the Channel it seemed that you could have walked from ship to ship from England to France.”
The assignment for the 365th F.G. that day was to patrol the Cotentin Peninsula, to insure the Germans were unable to reinforce their units facing the invading Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches. After an hour, the Thunderbolts were free of their bombs and most of their ammunition. Returning to base, the pilots told the excited ground crews what they had seen. After a quick meal, they were back in their planes for a second sweep of the beachhead. “We thought that was it for the day when we got back from the second mission, but all of a sudden there was a call that radar had picked up the Luftwaffe heading toward the beaches, and all the airplanes that had been fueled were scrambled.” In fact, the only two members of the Luftwaffe to make an appearance over the Normandy beaches on D-Day were Oberst Josef “Pips” Priller, Geschwader Kommodore of JG26, and his wingman. “By the time we got there, Priller had already made his famous run over the beaches and gotten out of there.”
When they returned, night had fallen on England. “It really was the longest day I can ever remember.”
And 11 months later, 22-year old Major Maltby was preparing the orders for the squadron's next mission, when he received the message to halt all air operations. "I put down the phone, and I looked over at the pilot board, and of the 48 men I had flown with on D-Day, there were six of us still there. Ten had gone home on completing their tours and 15 were known to be POWs. The rest had been blown out of the sky somewhere between Normandy and our base in western Germany."
You have a gift TC, my father and his oldest brother both flew TBF’s for the marines in the pacific theater. My uncle who lived to 101 and also fought in Korea was sent back to the states after fighting for a year in the South Pacific where he trained my father and others at Goleta in Santa Barbara and then San Diego. They needed to know what they were getting into. My other uncle flew reconnaissance for General Patton as they moved across Europe. He flew something like a Cessna 150 that was very slow directly over German lines so that his observer could take notes on their battle array, they then flew over Patton’s HQ and dropped leather tubes with the modified maps so that he could know what he was facing. The Messerschmitts flying 400 mph were always trying to shoot him down, but couldn’t get down below the tree line following the curves of the roads like he could. My grandfather told me that the happiest day of his life was the day that all 3 of his sons returned alive. My uncle that flew for Patton will be 101 this summer and just stopped driving last year, his name is Lionel and he’s the lion of the family. I’m lucky, I was raised by honorable men, when it was my turn I didn’t run but that’s another story. I was raised by men like the ones that you just described and that was indeed a privilege. Thanks for the story it rings like a bell 🔔.
That was prob ably a Piper L-4 Cub your uncle was flying for Patton, and yeah, the Germans couldn't get after it with a 109. One pilot fitted his with 6 bazookas under the wings and went hunting tanks with it - he got a few, too. Your uncle the TBF pilot was likely in the Solomons/Rabaul campaign - tough duty, when the Japanese were our combat equal! (my new book "Under The Southern Cross" deals with that war). Amazing you have two centenarians in the family! My friend Admiral Don Shelton just turned 100 on May 22. Reading his aviator's resume, he was the exception to the rule about there being old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. I'd love to find a way to talk to your Uncle Lionel - I'm sure there's an article there.
Tell Lionel I said said thank you very much for ensuring my father’s safety with Patton’s army.
What an incredible man! What stories they have to tell. So glad your family members came home alive.
I will read this to my step-father tomorrow. He will love it. He has a few stories to tell. He was a child in Nazi Germany during the war, and saw some horrors. You've inspired me. I'll put his stories to paper in his words, to preserve them.
Would like to read them!
I have a fellow historian friend who has three words he always says to someone who says something like this, and I echo them: "Do. It. NOW!"
Agree! Using a voice recorder (such as an Olympus) makes it super easy. I recorded my father-in-law telling stories of his life and six months later he passed from a heart attack. That's the only record his kids have of him talking.
Cleary the most pressing business of the Senate is to pass some voting legislation if democracy is to live past 2022. That it all revolves around Joe Manchin dictates what needs to be done. He's insisting on bipartisan agreement on all of the proposed bills but there clearly is none to be found at this time.
So how can/should Democrats move forward on voting?
Dana Millbank has offered the best strategy I've read so far.
1. Have the votes and let Republicans prove to Manchin there is no hope of bipartisanship
2. Have votes on each of the items in the voting bills and force Republicans to vote down each one. Here's some examples of what the votes would be:
* Restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act
* Require 100% of the votes be backed up by paper
* Abolish gerrymandering
* End dark money contributions
* Require states to alert each other when voters apply for a driver’s license in a new state, to avoid duplicate voter registrations.
* Forbid Administration officials to lobby for 2 years and tighten lobbyist disclosure requirements
Would Republicans be willing to make public their stand on all or some of the above. If they proved they support none of the above would that force Manchin to change his position on the filibuster?
Is there a better way? I haven't seen one yet.
I read that article also. It is an interesting idea. The Dem leadership has GOT to be looking 6 steps ahead on the chessboard and have a solid plan.
Agree... how can this happen?
Thank you for the Dana Millbank article and its looking at next steps. That is necessary and helpful. We need to deepen our ability to converse in simple terms about each of these provisions that go beyond the over-arching issue of voting rights.
Do you have a link to the Dana Millbank article on what Dems should do about S1?
Sorry, it was on the 4th, not today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/04/force-republicans-filibuster-democracy-again-again/
Ellie, I think the link below may be the one that you're looking for:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/04/force-republicans-filibuster-democracy-again-again/
Below is another good Opinion by Millbank:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/republicans-arent-looking-forward-theyre-stepping-into-jim-crow-past/
Today's WaPo Morning Mix.
Remember our Greatest Generation who saved the world while one party of our current generation work to destroy it!
Every June 6th, I think about D-Day. As a young kid growing up in NJ in the 1950s I was raised by the men and women who served during WWII. They never talked about it. Life for them in the here and now was what mattered and by extension to all of us, too. Baseball, helping around our homes and yards, going to school, going to church, visiting relatives and hearing the adults talk and laugh together … that was my life. I knew nothing of privation. My parents had known about privation, endured the Depression and then, when enraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor they served their country. They used whatever the government gave them in the way of training and equipment and then they did what was expected. When the movie the Longest Day, came out we went to see it as a family. My parents didn’t say that much about it but I knew that it was right up there for them among the most important events in their lives and in the lives of all the adults who I knew… my friends parents, teachers, coaches even the doctors we visited. It was, very clearly, a shared experience among people who saw the threat for what it was and accepted their role to help defeat it. As I got older and read more and saw more films and presentations about D-Day and the events that led up to it, I began to realize how complicated and difficult an undertaking it was… how many died and suffered in the fighting and what a relief it was for people in France and around the world to know that Hitler and Nazi Germany could be pushed back. It’s hard for me to believe that so many of the trump insurrectionists are my age. Some will go to jail for their actions on January 6. These people, like me, had parents who served during WWII. It profoundly baffles me but ultimately doesn’t trouble me that much that they are such kooks. We’ve always had kooks in America; they don’t get to be in charge…except in those rare moments when they somehow grab the microphone like what happened with trump. That time is over for now. The great ship of America is, once again, steaming in the right direction. Like those who fought and died in WWII, I have deep confidence in our system of government because it’s whole purpose is to serve the will of the people. What a great idea. It’s a huge risk that it could fail… like D-Day was… but it won’t fail, as long as we all keep doing all that we can to do our part … and most of us will like the GA Secy of State did after the 2020 election and the Texas state legislatures just did to push back against the authoritarians who want to weaken our democracy for their misguided and truly kooky purposes. The battle goes on because it must if we want to keep improving our lives and protecting our democracy. So, remember D-Day, yeah…but keep your eye on the fastball that just got thrown your way and hit it hard….I know you will.
Thank you for this hopeful message.
Keith, I love you for this one. I do. I can almost smile. Hear you breathing. Trying. Born Friday morning, Mozart’s birthday, 9:20, Willy Rashbaum’s grandfather Maurice officiated, as Dad traded bonds. Kids meant little to him until they could sit at Yankee stadium on Sunday and watch Frank Gifford, freezing. Getting pneumonia before penicillin by needle.
Our White Trash neighbors posted Trump or Sanders. It’s the ambivalent ignorant free lunch crowd ignoring incest in Willsoro, the place Stefanik did not come from. She’s from plywood. Trump is from Hunger in Queens, Rape at Burgdorfs.
Very beautiful, Sandy …wonderful poetry and true art.
In a just world, or perhaps in an earlier world the former President would be in prison , as would his cohorts.