I wrote the following last year for a dear friend who had recently passed. She was the middle sister in this story, and as we grew up, she told us stories of Beau so that he came alive, although he died 19 years before I was born. Maybe it’s because I am a historian, but for the life of me I cannot think of those who died in our wars without thinking of the terrible holes their deaths tore in the fabric of our lives. This year, as I thought of what I might want to say about Memorial Day, it kept coming back to this: who would men like Beau have become, and what has the world lost by never knowing their children?
I am 72 now and an XMarine Sergeant who attained rank in two years during the Vietnam era. I am always being thanked for my service. It is something I hide from as I am still here.
If you must thank someone, thank my friends such as Tim Gilson who was with 7th Marines and head shot while going to relieve another platoon of Marines who were surrounded. He was my friend through Boot Camp and ITR.
Paul Placzek and I were in Boy Scouts together. We camped together and did many thing until we left high school. He enlisted in the Army. While in country, he stepped on a land mine and was blown to bits. I can remember his father raging on the news in Chicago about the draft dodgers. Paul was a good person and friend.
Bobby O'Million lived on the first floor while we had the basement apartment. I used to go to his home in Highland Park, IL ands stay there, We would explore the area as it was still undeveloped. Bobby was killed while coming back from a hunting trip with his Sergeant First Class and five others in the Army. They were hit head-on by a drunk.
Three senseless losses for what, lies, human fragility, and things that should never have happened? Too much for the politics of the time. Being thanked for my service is an affront to me. Thank my friends as I always think about them.
On this Memorial Day, I thinking about how we stop the next war from happening ... the one that was triggered on January 6, 2021, and is now festering and growing until it is ready to burst out like pus from a boil. The cause like most wars is economic greed. Income disparity has handed all the raises that working people should have gotten over the last few decades to the ultra rich. Now a family needs two incomes to survive and the elite complain about the lazy workers that won't take minimum wage jobs that won't even pay for childcare. It is also about education that has been starved by budget cuts again for decades. Civics and character and how to think (not what to think) is not being taught. So now we have too many Proud Boys who need to carry a big gun to feel powerful. We have too many people who don't understand the with rights come responsibilities to protect the rights of all. Without that responsibility, that freedom these people insist they deserve is nothing but anarchy and narcissism. If the For the People Act doesn't pass I intend to join the non-violent resistance. If the For the People Act does pass I'm afraid the Insurrectionists will be called to overthrow those nasty socialists. They will say they are justified and this is what the Second Amendment is for -- to take back the government for the few with the many guns. But there will be no "well regulated militias" just anarchists. I fear we're in for a rocky ride. There's still some hope although time is rapidly running out. By December, the 2022 election will be all we hear about along with the obstruction of government. And, if the Republicans who don't believe in the climate crisis take back the House and Senate in November 2022, which is a likely scenarios by some counts, democracy is dead and the planet will be dying. Maybe it will be the military who saves America yet again. But at what cost. How many Beaus? Will it be as bad as the first Civil War ... or worse?
Allow me to put this story into a wider context, since the history of the Eighth Air Force is "in my wheelhouse" as an historian.
August 12, 1943, was one of the worst days of the first year of the Eighth's campaign. At that time, the bombers were without fighter escort past the Dutch border with Germany. The Germans knew how far the fighters could come, and they waited just beyond that point. Aircrew I have interviewed said you could see "clouds" of enemy fighters ahead.
At the time, a "tour" was 25 missions to go home. With a loss rate per mission that was often above the 5% of the force that was "sustainable" and closet to 10%+, a man flying his 5th mission was, statistically, flying "someone else's time." It was statistically impossible at that time for a man to survive more than 10 missions; most crews were lost before they finished their 5th.
The Eighth Air Force flew its first mission on August 7, 1942, the same day the Marines landed on Guadalcanal. Between then and the end of April 1945, when the last combat mission was flown, the Eighth Air Force took more casualties, killed and wounded, than the Marines did in the entire Pacific War.
Five days after the mission HRC writes about here, they flew the Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission; Schweinfurt was the main center of the German ball bearing industry, the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg produced half the Bf-109 fighters in the German air force. Bierne Lay, Jr. - later the co-writer of the movie "Twelve O'Clock High" (the best movie about this part of the war, very truthful - get the longer "director's cut') - flew the mission. He wrote: "After we had been under attack for a solid hour, it appeared our group was faced with annihilation. Seven had been shot down, the sky was still mottled with rising fighters, with the target still thirty-five minutes away. I doubt if a man in the group visualized the possibility of our getting much further without one hundred percent loss."
The average age of Eighth Air Force aircrew was 21; a pilot over 25 was considered an "old man."
On October 11, 1943, they went back to Schweinfurt and the Germans shot down 60 of 290 bombers and damaged so many of the others that the force was unable to field 25 flyable airplanes the next day. They'd been defeated. Fortunately, winter came early that year and the weather closed in until the middle of December before they could fly another mission. By that time, the fighters had long range gas tanks and could go all the way with them. and there were so many new groups they could take 60 shot down over Berlin on March 6, 1944, and have them replaced in 48 hours. By the middle of April, the Germans had lost 60% of their experienced fighter pilots, and on the fourth mission to Berlin, the Luftwaffe didn't come up.
They fought in the fuselage of an airplane that was only 6 feet in diameter. The airplanes weren't pressurized, and at 25,000 feet the temperature outside was 40 below.
I never met one of the survivors (they're all gone now) who didn't tell me he was as scared on his final mission as he was on his first. And yet they went.
Every Memorial Day the nation runs back to WW II, skipping over Korea, (the war that has never officially ended,) Vietnam, and now, our latest military adventures in the Middle East and Central Asia.
WW II was my late father's war. (USN ensign on an LST, invasions of Borneo and the Philippines.) It was the war I grew up with. I watched all the "Victory at Sea" "documentaries", cheered John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in "Sands of Iwo Jima", and, along with every other boy, read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" about the Doolittle Raid. I believed, I believed, I believed.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the day they shot JFK, the crack in my faith started, and grew and grew with each new assassination. Vietnam finished the job. I didn't believe any more. I felt the anger one feels when one realizes the one you love has been lying to you all along.
I joined with the anti-war movement. Because I refused college, formal education was on my "You lied to me!" shitlist and I had a low opinion of those young men who went to college to avoid the draft, I was a prime candidate for the draft.
My father, the WW II veteran, told me, "I got through my war by saying to myself that I do this so my son won't have to. If you go off to this stupid war in Vietnam, then everything I did was for nothing." Almost his exact words. He took me to the Quakers, who were very active in helping young men avoid the draft. They told us there was a new process coming; a lottery, where young men would at least know the likelyhood of being drafted. I was to be in the first wave. See how you do with that and we'll go from there. The lottery was nationally televised. My birthday got a very high number. I wouldn't be drafted.
All this is to say let's leave WW II alone for a while. Those who fought and those who didn't fight but sacrificed in other ways, are mostly gone. We resurrect them on Memorial Day to wrap ourselves in a patriotic blanket of righteousness that is not available from what came after. That is what we need to acknowledge on our Memorial Days. That, and dedicating ourselves to never doing it again.
This made me cry. Both for Beau, and for another wonderful young man lost in WWII who left a huge hole in my own family.
I grew up hearing my father’s stories of his uncle Brent Creelman. Brent’s jokes and escapades. The way Brent brought the classics alive for his high school Latin students. The old wooden skis on which he had skied the lip at Tuckerman Ravine — an almost unimaginable athletic feat even on modern skis.
Dad’s stories about Brent were so vivid that it took me years to realize they were actually my grandmother’s stories. My father was born in 1945. Brent died in 1943, when his PT boat hit a mine off the coast of Italy.
Brent’s widow never remarried. And he left a hole in two families that extended through generations of missing children, cousins, and grandchildren. But we are still telling stories about him all these years later….
We have raised “thanks for your service” to an art form in this country. I don’t say it. I just vote for those who will fully fund veteran benefits and programs.
Military members are but one branch of the group society relies upon to do the unpleasant tasks we must do. Ambulance fire police military medical are all required by the larger group of people who cannot do the messy work.
As a veteran and the wife of a veteran, I can say with complete trust and confidence that we, his brothers and sisters in arms, will always remember his and every sacrifice made by every veteran across all branches of service. We all raise our glasses in honor of those who paid the ultimate price and carry their memory in our hearts. We all willingly sign a blank check up to and including the price of our lives when we enter service, and we remember those who have made that ultimate sacrifice always. Know that he will never be forgotten, and we will forever honor the debt paid by the ones who came before us.
Dear Heather, after reading your beautiful tribute of Beau and the memories of many readers I’m left weeping for us all.
My own father served in WWII beginning with Omaha Beach on D day. Then later in the Korean War. He was my Mother’s great love, her childhood sweetheart, but, war changed him and he turned to alcohol. They separated in Japan, where he was stationed after Korea and my mother, brother who was 3 years old and I at 5, took the loneliest journey of our lives on a ship taking us and other, much happier, families home to the states.
It would be the last time we saw or heard from our father for 5 years. Then one day he showed up for a grand reunion and we spent a wonderful day together with promises he’d come again soon. He never did.
I found him in San Diego 50 years later where we had a lovely visit. He’d remarried, never had more children, and retired from the Army. Still handsome, genteel and humble he praised my mother and took full responsibility for the divorce. He described himself as a courageous soldier and yet an emotional coward who wasn’t able to face the issues that destroyed their marriage and his relationship with his children. He was a polite stranger who had walled off any emotional connection we might have had. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. It was the last time I saw him.
The first time I heard Paul Simon’s “Slip sliding away” I thought of my father and his inability to connect with his children. The wounds of war were never visible on him, but, they were deep.
Several years ago I visited his grave where the epithet on his headstone read simply: “A Good Soldier.” So much loss carried by all the survivors. Love and kindness are the only hope we have in this brutalized world. I send mine to all of you on this day of memories.
We all owe you heartfelt thanks, Dr. Cox Richardson, for this timely reminder of what so many young men died to preserve.
This lad was one among millions who gave their lives for our freedom—although, alas, many of those who overcame the Nazis never found freedom.
We owe it to their memory to resist with all our might today’s attempts to overthrow the institutions those young men died for.
For my part, I do not scare easily, yet I find America's current predicament terrifying. For Americans. For humanity at large.
My father and his companions did not fight for oligarchy.
It is in this spirit that I wrote the words that follow:
A SLOW-BURNING COUP D'ETAT
After his inauguration, President Trump proclaimed that the event had been attended by the biggest crowd ever seen at the ceremony.
Yet, the whole world had seen with their own eyes that this inauguration was far more sparsely attended than that of Trump’s predecessor, President Obama…
One wondered about the new president’s mental health…
Today, we are faced with major crimes TO WHICH THE ENTIRE WORLD IS WITNESS. Yet the principal criminal suspects have opted to use and abuse their residual—but still considerable—political power to block proper investigation of persons who have engaged in sedition and, possibly, treason.
Thus, a huge caucus of those representing the American people in Congress have blatantly broken and are continuing to break their oath to uphold the Constitution.
Terminal damage will be inflicted on the international power of the United States if the crimes we have all seen perpetrated are not investigated and duly prosecuted. Even disregarding the other wing of the conspirators' pincer movement, blatant countrywide action at state level to fix forthcoming elections, does not continuing action to prevent proper investigation of the January 6th insurrection in itself constitute sedition?
Might the crimes committed not conceivably constitute treason, given that a person could be convicted of treason for levying war against the United States only if there was an “actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design”? The whole world witnessed an actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design, namely to overthrow the government or resist its laws. In the light of these considerations, it is hardly surprising that the Republican majority in the Senate should have refused to impeach the President. And now they are doubling down on that refusal by blocking investigation of the actions of the same “assemblage of men” and their own part in the planning and execution of those actions.
Is there not a strong prima facie case now for suspending all the Administration’s official dealings with those Republican Congressmen who have blocked an investigation, since anything resembling “business as usual” could be construed as acceptance of the actions of January 6th as “normal” and constituting collusion with persons under strong suspicion of having levied war against the US?
Thank you, Dr. R for this. So true. The death of one is the stone that causes the ripples in the water. We can only imagine how our lives would have been had those who died in wars had lived. Too many eons of too many old men sending young men and women into war. We can change the pattern.
Thank you for this memory, Heather. My father piloted B-17s over Germany. He flew 11.5 missions (it may have been 12.5, but I cannot ask him). His plane was shot down over Belgium, and through a series of miracles, he, and all the members of his crew survived. Although they parachuted separately to earth, they came together in 1995 in Nashville with their progeny, with the exception of one crewman who had died in the interim. It was an extraordinary experience, listening to these almost strangers talk about my dad as a 23-year old hero.
I have been to the American cemetery near Cambridge. It is peaceful, beautiful, and so moving. In addition to the many graves for those who made it back to the airfield, like Beau, there are rows of names of those who crashed at sea. I recommend a visit to anyone visiting Cambridge. It is no far out of town and is lovingly maintained by the US government.
Let's applaud the Texas Democratic Senators for walking out of the Senate session last night and denying the Senate a quorum which kept the abhorrent voter suppression bill from being passed on the last day of the regular session of the state legislature. But, it isn't over yet because Governor Abbott now wants to call a special session to get it passed. He is up for reelection in 2022.
Thank you, Heather, for this. Your stories, and your heart, are always so on the mark for the moment. Thank you for Beau! And for all the enrichment you bring to my days. Happy Memorial Day to you and to Buddy, and to all those who are close to you. 🙏💗🙏
My father, too, was in the army air force and flew out of Thorpe Abbotts airfield in the winter of 1944/45 until his B-17, Miss Sweetness, was shot down in March over Germany. He and all but one of his crew survived and spent the last months of the war in Stalag I in Barth, Germany. The engineer had told my father that he would never jump out of a plane with a parachute (it was too scary for him) early that winter before they started flying missions. My father, Bob, was a radioman and waist gunner and shared the mid fuselage with Morris, the engineer. Morris went down with Miss Sweetness. My father bristled at the reflexive “thank you for your service,” that began to occur more often in his later years (he died at 84 in March, 2011). He said it Tottenham felt patronizing and considered it more a lack of than a sign of respect. He was a patriotic man, however, and chose to be interred at a military cemetery near where he lived in central Missouri. In the fall of 2019, my wife and I were able to visit Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, where we were graciously hosted by local volunteers who have for decades preserved much of the facility, ran a small museum and history of that time. The other comments here have reminded me to send the
I am 72 now and an XMarine Sergeant who attained rank in two years during the Vietnam era. I am always being thanked for my service. It is something I hide from as I am still here.
If you must thank someone, thank my friends such as Tim Gilson who was with 7th Marines and head shot while going to relieve another platoon of Marines who were surrounded. He was my friend through Boot Camp and ITR.
Paul Placzek and I were in Boy Scouts together. We camped together and did many thing until we left high school. He enlisted in the Army. While in country, he stepped on a land mine and was blown to bits. I can remember his father raging on the news in Chicago about the draft dodgers. Paul was a good person and friend.
Bobby O'Million lived on the first floor while we had the basement apartment. I used to go to his home in Highland Park, IL ands stay there, We would explore the area as it was still undeveloped. Bobby was killed while coming back from a hunting trip with his Sergeant First Class and five others in the Army. They were hit head-on by a drunk.
Three senseless losses for what, lies, human fragility, and things that should never have happened? Too much for the politics of the time. Being thanked for my service is an affront to me. Thank my friends as I always think about them.
I am here and my memories keep them alive.
On this Memorial Day, I thinking about how we stop the next war from happening ... the one that was triggered on January 6, 2021, and is now festering and growing until it is ready to burst out like pus from a boil. The cause like most wars is economic greed. Income disparity has handed all the raises that working people should have gotten over the last few decades to the ultra rich. Now a family needs two incomes to survive and the elite complain about the lazy workers that won't take minimum wage jobs that won't even pay for childcare. It is also about education that has been starved by budget cuts again for decades. Civics and character and how to think (not what to think) is not being taught. So now we have too many Proud Boys who need to carry a big gun to feel powerful. We have too many people who don't understand the with rights come responsibilities to protect the rights of all. Without that responsibility, that freedom these people insist they deserve is nothing but anarchy and narcissism. If the For the People Act doesn't pass I intend to join the non-violent resistance. If the For the People Act does pass I'm afraid the Insurrectionists will be called to overthrow those nasty socialists. They will say they are justified and this is what the Second Amendment is for -- to take back the government for the few with the many guns. But there will be no "well regulated militias" just anarchists. I fear we're in for a rocky ride. There's still some hope although time is rapidly running out. By December, the 2022 election will be all we hear about along with the obstruction of government. And, if the Republicans who don't believe in the climate crisis take back the House and Senate in November 2022, which is a likely scenarios by some counts, democracy is dead and the planet will be dying. Maybe it will be the military who saves America yet again. But at what cost. How many Beaus? Will it be as bad as the first Civil War ... or worse?
Allow me to put this story into a wider context, since the history of the Eighth Air Force is "in my wheelhouse" as an historian.
August 12, 1943, was one of the worst days of the first year of the Eighth's campaign. At that time, the bombers were without fighter escort past the Dutch border with Germany. The Germans knew how far the fighters could come, and they waited just beyond that point. Aircrew I have interviewed said you could see "clouds" of enemy fighters ahead.
At the time, a "tour" was 25 missions to go home. With a loss rate per mission that was often above the 5% of the force that was "sustainable" and closet to 10%+, a man flying his 5th mission was, statistically, flying "someone else's time." It was statistically impossible at that time for a man to survive more than 10 missions; most crews were lost before they finished their 5th.
The Eighth Air Force flew its first mission on August 7, 1942, the same day the Marines landed on Guadalcanal. Between then and the end of April 1945, when the last combat mission was flown, the Eighth Air Force took more casualties, killed and wounded, than the Marines did in the entire Pacific War.
Five days after the mission HRC writes about here, they flew the Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission; Schweinfurt was the main center of the German ball bearing industry, the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg produced half the Bf-109 fighters in the German air force. Bierne Lay, Jr. - later the co-writer of the movie "Twelve O'Clock High" (the best movie about this part of the war, very truthful - get the longer "director's cut') - flew the mission. He wrote: "After we had been under attack for a solid hour, it appeared our group was faced with annihilation. Seven had been shot down, the sky was still mottled with rising fighters, with the target still thirty-five minutes away. I doubt if a man in the group visualized the possibility of our getting much further without one hundred percent loss."
The average age of Eighth Air Force aircrew was 21; a pilot over 25 was considered an "old man."
On October 11, 1943, they went back to Schweinfurt and the Germans shot down 60 of 290 bombers and damaged so many of the others that the force was unable to field 25 flyable airplanes the next day. They'd been defeated. Fortunately, winter came early that year and the weather closed in until the middle of December before they could fly another mission. By that time, the fighters had long range gas tanks and could go all the way with them. and there were so many new groups they could take 60 shot down over Berlin on March 6, 1944, and have them replaced in 48 hours. By the middle of April, the Germans had lost 60% of their experienced fighter pilots, and on the fourth mission to Berlin, the Luftwaffe didn't come up.
They fought in the fuselage of an airplane that was only 6 feet in diameter. The airplanes weren't pressurized, and at 25,000 feet the temperature outside was 40 below.
I never met one of the survivors (they're all gone now) who didn't tell me he was as scared on his final mission as he was on his first. And yet they went.
That's the war Heather's post remembers.
Every Memorial Day the nation runs back to WW II, skipping over Korea, (the war that has never officially ended,) Vietnam, and now, our latest military adventures in the Middle East and Central Asia.
WW II was my late father's war. (USN ensign on an LST, invasions of Borneo and the Philippines.) It was the war I grew up with. I watched all the "Victory at Sea" "documentaries", cheered John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in "Sands of Iwo Jima", and, along with every other boy, read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" about the Doolittle Raid. I believed, I believed, I believed.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the day they shot JFK, the crack in my faith started, and grew and grew with each new assassination. Vietnam finished the job. I didn't believe any more. I felt the anger one feels when one realizes the one you love has been lying to you all along.
I joined with the anti-war movement. Because I refused college, formal education was on my "You lied to me!" shitlist and I had a low opinion of those young men who went to college to avoid the draft, I was a prime candidate for the draft.
My father, the WW II veteran, told me, "I got through my war by saying to myself that I do this so my son won't have to. If you go off to this stupid war in Vietnam, then everything I did was for nothing." Almost his exact words. He took me to the Quakers, who were very active in helping young men avoid the draft. They told us there was a new process coming; a lottery, where young men would at least know the likelyhood of being drafted. I was to be in the first wave. See how you do with that and we'll go from there. The lottery was nationally televised. My birthday got a very high number. I wouldn't be drafted.
All this is to say let's leave WW II alone for a while. Those who fought and those who didn't fight but sacrificed in other ways, are mostly gone. We resurrect them on Memorial Day to wrap ourselves in a patriotic blanket of righteousness that is not available from what came after. That is what we need to acknowledge on our Memorial Days. That, and dedicating ourselves to never doing it again.
This made me cry. Both for Beau, and for another wonderful young man lost in WWII who left a huge hole in my own family.
I grew up hearing my father’s stories of his uncle Brent Creelman. Brent’s jokes and escapades. The way Brent brought the classics alive for his high school Latin students. The old wooden skis on which he had skied the lip at Tuckerman Ravine — an almost unimaginable athletic feat even on modern skis.
Dad’s stories about Brent were so vivid that it took me years to realize they were actually my grandmother’s stories. My father was born in 1945. Brent died in 1943, when his PT boat hit a mine off the coast of Italy.
Brent’s widow never remarried. And he left a hole in two families that extended through generations of missing children, cousins, and grandchildren. But we are still telling stories about him all these years later….
We have raised “thanks for your service” to an art form in this country. I don’t say it. I just vote for those who will fully fund veteran benefits and programs.
Military members are but one branch of the group society relies upon to do the unpleasant tasks we must do. Ambulance fire police military medical are all required by the larger group of people who cannot do the messy work.
I salute them all.
As a veteran and the wife of a veteran, I can say with complete trust and confidence that we, his brothers and sisters in arms, will always remember his and every sacrifice made by every veteran across all branches of service. We all raise our glasses in honor of those who paid the ultimate price and carry their memory in our hearts. We all willingly sign a blank check up to and including the price of our lives when we enter service, and we remember those who have made that ultimate sacrifice always. Know that he will never be forgotten, and we will forever honor the debt paid by the ones who came before us.
Dear Heather, after reading your beautiful tribute of Beau and the memories of many readers I’m left weeping for us all.
My own father served in WWII beginning with Omaha Beach on D day. Then later in the Korean War. He was my Mother’s great love, her childhood sweetheart, but, war changed him and he turned to alcohol. They separated in Japan, where he was stationed after Korea and my mother, brother who was 3 years old and I at 5, took the loneliest journey of our lives on a ship taking us and other, much happier, families home to the states.
It would be the last time we saw or heard from our father for 5 years. Then one day he showed up for a grand reunion and we spent a wonderful day together with promises he’d come again soon. He never did.
I found him in San Diego 50 years later where we had a lovely visit. He’d remarried, never had more children, and retired from the Army. Still handsome, genteel and humble he praised my mother and took full responsibility for the divorce. He described himself as a courageous soldier and yet an emotional coward who wasn’t able to face the issues that destroyed their marriage and his relationship with his children. He was a polite stranger who had walled off any emotional connection we might have had. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. It was the last time I saw him.
The first time I heard Paul Simon’s “Slip sliding away” I thought of my father and his inability to connect with his children. The wounds of war were never visible on him, but, they were deep.
Several years ago I visited his grave where the epithet on his headstone read simply: “A Good Soldier.” So much loss carried by all the survivors. Love and kindness are the only hope we have in this brutalized world. I send mine to all of you on this day of memories.
We all owe you heartfelt thanks, Dr. Cox Richardson, for this timely reminder of what so many young men died to preserve.
This lad was one among millions who gave their lives for our freedom—although, alas, many of those who overcame the Nazis never found freedom.
We owe it to their memory to resist with all our might today’s attempts to overthrow the institutions those young men died for.
For my part, I do not scare easily, yet I find America's current predicament terrifying. For Americans. For humanity at large.
My father and his companions did not fight for oligarchy.
It is in this spirit that I wrote the words that follow:
A SLOW-BURNING COUP D'ETAT
After his inauguration, President Trump proclaimed that the event had been attended by the biggest crowd ever seen at the ceremony.
Yet, the whole world had seen with their own eyes that this inauguration was far more sparsely attended than that of Trump’s predecessor, President Obama…
One wondered about the new president’s mental health…
Today, we are faced with major crimes TO WHICH THE ENTIRE WORLD IS WITNESS. Yet the principal criminal suspects have opted to use and abuse their residual—but still considerable—political power to block proper investigation of persons who have engaged in sedition and, possibly, treason.
Thus, a huge caucus of those representing the American people in Congress have blatantly broken and are continuing to break their oath to uphold the Constitution.
Terminal damage will be inflicted on the international power of the United States if the crimes we have all seen perpetrated are not investigated and duly prosecuted. Even disregarding the other wing of the conspirators' pincer movement, blatant countrywide action at state level to fix forthcoming elections, does not continuing action to prevent proper investigation of the January 6th insurrection in itself constitute sedition?
Might the crimes committed not conceivably constitute treason, given that a person could be convicted of treason for levying war against the United States only if there was an “actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design”? The whole world witnessed an actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design, namely to overthrow the government or resist its laws. In the light of these considerations, it is hardly surprising that the Republican majority in the Senate should have refused to impeach the President. And now they are doubling down on that refusal by blocking investigation of the actions of the same “assemblage of men” and their own part in the planning and execution of those actions.
Is there not a strong prima facie case now for suspending all the Administration’s official dealings with those Republican Congressmen who have blocked an investigation, since anything resembling “business as usual” could be construed as acceptance of the actions of January 6th as “normal” and constituting collusion with persons under strong suspicion of having levied war against the US?
We remember all those lost and only pray for leadership that does not waste the treasure of our young women and men in political wars of no value.
Semper Fi Brothers and Sisters.....
Thank you, Dr. R for this. So true. The death of one is the stone that causes the ripples in the water. We can only imagine how our lives would have been had those who died in wars had lived. Too many eons of too many old men sending young men and women into war. We can change the pattern.
Thank you for this memory, Heather. My father piloted B-17s over Germany. He flew 11.5 missions (it may have been 12.5, but I cannot ask him). His plane was shot down over Belgium, and through a series of miracles, he, and all the members of his crew survived. Although they parachuted separately to earth, they came together in 1995 in Nashville with their progeny, with the exception of one crewman who had died in the interim. It was an extraordinary experience, listening to these almost strangers talk about my dad as a 23-year old hero.
I have been to the American cemetery near Cambridge. It is peaceful, beautiful, and so moving. In addition to the many graves for those who made it back to the airfield, like Beau, there are rows of names of those who crashed at sea. I recommend a visit to anyone visiting Cambridge. It is no far out of town and is lovingly maintained by the US government.
Let's applaud the Texas Democratic Senators for walking out of the Senate session last night and denying the Senate a quorum which kept the abhorrent voter suppression bill from being passed on the last day of the regular session of the state legislature. But, it isn't over yet because Governor Abbott now wants to call a special session to get it passed. He is up for reelection in 2022.
Thank you, Heather, for this. Your stories, and your heart, are always so on the mark for the moment. Thank you for Beau! And for all the enrichment you bring to my days. Happy Memorial Day to you and to Buddy, and to all those who are close to you. 🙏💗🙏
My father, too, was in the army air force and flew out of Thorpe Abbotts airfield in the winter of 1944/45 until his B-17, Miss Sweetness, was shot down in March over Germany. He and all but one of his crew survived and spent the last months of the war in Stalag I in Barth, Germany. The engineer had told my father that he would never jump out of a plane with a parachute (it was too scary for him) early that winter before they started flying missions. My father, Bob, was a radioman and waist gunner and shared the mid fuselage with Morris, the engineer. Morris went down with Miss Sweetness. My father bristled at the reflexive “thank you for your service,” that began to occur more often in his later years (he died at 84 in March, 2011). He said it Tottenham felt patronizing and considered it more a lack of than a sign of respect. He was a patriotic man, however, and chose to be interred at a military cemetery near where he lived in central Missouri. In the fall of 2019, my wife and I were able to visit Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, where we were graciously hosted by local volunteers who have for decades preserved much of the facility, ran a small museum and history of that time. The other comments here have reminded me to send the