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.
Every time someone says "thank you for your service" to me, I want to ask them: "Oh, you want to thank me for serving in a war that nearly destroyed us, from which we still suffer because too many of you refuse to recognize what really happened?" I'm surprised no one heard my scream when I found and read the report by the NSA analyst of the Tonkin Gulf Incident (of which I was a bit player, the event by which I divide my life into Before and After), in which he presdented a compelling argument that the "lights in the water" they took for enemy torpedo boats was actually the moonlight and lightning flashes reflected off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf at that time of year. The "reason for war" was flying fish.
During a teaching session some years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh informed the audience that his movement of peace activists in Vietnam in the 1960s were simply farmers. “We were not communists or capitalists, we simply worked the land,” Thay (“teacher” in Vietnamese) said. We learned that one of his students was pictured on the front cover of an American periodical, his life alit in flames, his expression aghast, as a statement against the murderous actions of the invading US forces.
But America had been sold the Big Lie of the 1960s, that communists were ready to take ahold of Asia, subsequently leading to the loss (murder) of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and American lives. As a high school student then, I remember another picture on another magazine cover in America, of a woman from my hometown laying dead at Kent State University, during a peaceful protest, until the National Guard was sent in to disturb the peace. The picture shows the dead woman and a second woman kneeling, her expression aghast .....
Yesterday, I spent time at our local Civil War Monument, and read aloud the hundreds of names of local men who died in that war. Poignant is this ongoing human experience of men taking to violence to quell one’s own dis-ease.
Perhaps I will spend some of today on my own patch of land, remembering those: who worked the land in Vietnam; who followed orders throughout our history, and those souls who courageously challenged the orders. Every generation, ongoing war and resistance ....
Today is a time to remember the burning of Greenwood, Tulsa, OK, exactly 100 years ago
Vietnam was a true awakening for the ills that our country put dedicated soldiers, doctors and nurses through. I marched in moratoriums in DC then. Met my husband, 6 months after he returned from Nam. War is hell and the aftermath, even more so. It sure is a helluva way to decrease countries populations.
I shall long remember your words which seem to apply to much of human misery..." this ongoing human experience of men taking to violence to quell one’s own dis-ease". Well put!
Thx Elizabeth; after many years of study with Thich Nhat Hanh and others, I’ve retained some of this ancient Buddhist wisdom. Of course, “I” haven’t retained, in the Ultimate Truth sense, but the Relative Truth of “I” retains some things. But that’s another topic ......
Thank you for sharing your memories of your friends AND thank you for your service. It can be both/and, not just about you or them. I am sorry for your losses and for the losses experienced by your friends’ families.
You had many choices from the time you took the military oath through your entire six years in the Marines. Conscientious objectors made a different choice. Some young men at the time used connections of privilege to avoid the draft. Others took drastic action to disqualify themselves from service, such as starving themselves.
War is hell. You clearly had to routinely summon courage to survive and gain rank. I suspect you had resilience and support, hopefully, to have functioned in the years since then through trauma experienced in the war.
So yes, thank you for your service, thank you to those who supported you, and thank you for sharing the memories of your friends.
I never condemned those who made the decisions they did during the sixties. It was personal choices made when forced into a situation that could not be solved easily. We each did what we thought was right at the time. Some are still paying for those decisions.
At 19, I was still growing up and not mature. I enlisted after visiting my one cousin. He was a Master Gunnery Sergeant, another cousin flew F4 Phantoms, another was in the Army, and my friends were either in college, in the service, or off doing things.
At 19, people are on the brink of adulthood. I made a decision unknowingly and my father a WWII veteran was scared. I was fortunate the Corp trained me and placed where I was. An English Prof. would send me books to read; Porter, Rand, McCarthy, Dickens, etc. Some officers would borrow them at times.
My enlistment ended and the hard core press to re-enlist did not change my thinking. It was time to leave. Fifty three years ago I met a pretty young woman who lived in NYC between two of my aunts and a flock of young cousins who would rat on her. Fifty years ago this last April, we were married.
Life has not been terrible. I wonder what could have been for them.
For me? Helped raise three children and get them through college. I hold a Master's degree from a Jesuit university who has a pretty good basketball team. I traveled through Europe and much of Asia working, consulting, and meeting suppliers, lectured college students on how not the be an Ugly American. Did not need a fork and ate some different foods.
Some how, I chose a road that made all the difference. I have come pretty far from a family where the dad did not complete grade school and a mom who had a high school diploma.
Thank you for your comment. I hope that answers some of your thoughts.
I'm going to use this day as an excuse to promote a book, Rufus: A Boy's Extroardinary Experiences in the Civil War, Phoebe Sheldon. Sheldon is Rufus Harnden's great great granddaughter. She constructed a narrative from Rufus' letters home.
Rufus enlisted in 1862, at 17. He was preternaturally wise, and provides a soldier's eye view of the war, including the battles of Gettysburg, where he recalled fighting hard, and suddenly being confronted by the presence of three southern soldiers, badly wounded, who he tried to help until a blast above his head knocked him out; and Chancellorsville, in which Stonewall Jackson was killed.
A number of months after Chancellorsville, Rufus was working as a pillboy in a Northern field hospital in Vicksburg. One night at dinner he overheard some Southern doctors talking about the death of Stonewall. He eavesdropped. The seemingly weird thing about Stonewall was that apparently a lot of the Northern soldiers had a lot of deep respect and admiration for him, including Rufus.
Referring to a point in the Battle of Chancellorsville--the second night--where Stonewall's army was routing the Northerners, one of the doctors says, ""They say some fool yank boys come poppin' up out of a thicket. Just stumbles outa the bushes alongside the road, lost behind our lines. One of them damn fools up and fires a shot at the general's party."
Rufus' narrative continues, "His words froze the very air inside my chest into shards of ice. My heart felt like it stopped its beating in a terrible cramp. I couldn't cetch (sic) my breath for anything. For I knew in an instant the identity of that damn fool yank he was talking about I was that very same man."
Rufus suffered a lot of cognitive dissonance over that, as he strongly believed in the cause of freedom for the slaves, and he--like many North and South--believed the South would have won Gettysburg had Stonewall been there. He also believed in the North's cause, especially freeing the slaves.
It should be available on Amazon. (It's not my favorite place, either, but I'm not sure it's available anywhere else.) If you have trouble finding it, and you're on fb, you can contact Phoebe Sheldon there. If you're not, contact me at holzmandc at outlook dot com.
Bill, thank you for sharing your story. I once asked an active serving Marine Major ‘What does one call a person who served as a Marine but did not serve til retirement?’ He proudly said ‘ a Marine’! My late friend Marine Capt Ted Noble, who passed last year from a cancer whose seeds were sown in the Tet offense, taught me about the brotherhood shared by those who served as A Marine. I hope that you will remove the ‘x’ when referring to your service as a Marine!
"Thank you for your service" has become the GI version of "Have a nice day". When do I most often hear it? Immediately after the person saying finishes a rant about some minor inconvenience in their shopping life.
I was not at Hue so I can not tell you how realistic the portrayal it was in the movie "Full Metal Jacket." I can tell you, boot camp as portrayed in that movie was the one I experienced. Being thinner, a backpacker, and a runner paid off of me. I also learned fast and was only hit twice by the Sergeants.
I could have done without it. I ignore the comment mostly or ask them to thank my friends.
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?
I too am from Texas--and worry so about the direction of our state, where nearly every bill recently passed focuses on assuring the Republicans that they will stay in power. Texas had more FBI arrests from the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection than any other state. Our two Republican senators, our governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general all are such disappointing leaders that our only hope is to get them out of office. I am grateful for Heather's story about Beau--and am eternally grateful that my husband returned from his tour in Vietnam, after my first letter was "guess what I am pregnant?" How lucky to meet him at the airport as I could barely fit under the steering wheel. We always knew my son David, now 54 could have been born having lost his father in the war.
My Texas state representative cosponsored the permit-less carry gun law! I asked him if for his next bill if he was going to get rid of driver's licenses and have license-less driving. 3,893 people died in car accidents in 2020 in Texas; 3,683 people died from guns.
They do not deserve to be called "leaders." They are white supremacist thugs who have finagled their way into office via extreme gerrymandering. Now, they plan to stay there via extreme voter suppression mandates and by granting themselves power to decide who wins and who loses.
Here's the top story in today's Kerrville Daily Times: "A 28-year-old Kerrville man was jailed after local law-enforcement officers intercepted a message indicating he was preparing to carry out a mass shooting at Walmart, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office."
Oh my. I'm almost afraid to go anywhere these days. I do all my shopping online or curbside. But there's nothing that can stop a barrage of bullets from WMD fired out of passing vehicles - oversized trucks with Confederate flags for the most part. We are living in precarious times.
Just wrote to my Texas state representative again mentioning this and saying "Thanks for making me feel less safe in Kerrville!" The answer to guns is not more guns. Anyone can fire a gun. What is missing is the training and intelligence to act responsibility in these situations. Otherwise innocent people are killed.
Who would have thought 5-6 years ago that Americans would be discussing entirely seriously the loss of democracy in their country. It would have sounded daft then. Now it is entirely reasonable conversation to have...yet still faintly absurd.
I often think of what will be the turning point, beyond which there is no rescue, for ameliorating climate change. When will become literally impossible to subdue severe ravages?
I am beginning just lately to think the same way about America and democracy. It is clear that battle lines have been drawn. It is obvious that Republicans have set themselves on a course that could bring ruin to America. The bitterly ironic aphorism, We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”, comes to mind when I think about their wanton perfidy and recklessness.
Did we cross a final line when the Republicans filibustered the 1/6 inquiry? Did that utter fool Matt Gaetz paint the future clearly when he spoke this past week about the need to use the Second Amendment to overthrow the government (piously adding that he hoped it never comes to that, a total canard on his part).
Or is there still time to save America and chart a new course. Nominally there is a potentially brilliant Democratic government which could, in two terms, do so much good for Americans and America. But we all know now that the operative word is “nominally”. The Democrats have lost control of the Senate between Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and that sly opportunist Kirsten Sinema.
And it’s becoming evident that President Biden, no flamethrower, is still hoping to bring the Congress of the past back to life. It is amazing to me that there are still negotiations on vis-à-vis thé Infrastructure Bill and that the Democrats have chopped their original proposed expenditure in half - without result. That is especially telling after the Republicans bargained for three concessions on the Commission Bill, got all of them - and still “voted” it down. Winning 54-35 counts a loss in this Mad Hatter world.
I’m still inclined to think that we haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet, that the House will conduct its own inquiry and its results will be accepted as valid, in the light of the revelations they extract. I think that a wave of appropriately severe jail sentences will make a number of the knuckleheads still hellbent on the joy of destruction begin to think twice. If Amy Berman Jackson is representative, the judiciary takes the concept of a free America seriously. And finally, it may all come down to how the former guy is disposed of. If he too is sent to prison and not with a slap on the wrist, America will have shown that it can rise to the occasion. The Republican Party will collapse like a pricked balloon and they will take years to recover enough to win elections.
It’s funny in an ironic way, to think of how much could ride on the hitherto obscure Allen Weisselberg.
We are big boys and girls here. We get over things. It was a curious beginning, I’ll grant you that, but I have nothing but the highest respect for you based on everything that you have posted here. Introductions can sometimes be rocky, through no fault of anyone. Who cares. It’s all good.
Amy Berman Jackson is exactly a figure needed on the Supreme Court. Weisselberg, I imagine, is singing like a canary and that will be a good thing. Maybe America will start healing if indictments and prison are invoked. That would definitely give new meaning to “Memorial Day”.
I resonate deeply with the if...then...else at the core of your message, Cathy Learoyd (Texas). I also see 2022 as the crucible for American democracy in our time. Pondering immediate next steps, but for me it starts with reading - Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King - and looking for training programs in preparation for sustained non-violent resistance.
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.
I also studied non-violence resistance with George Lakey. He teaches gently and with humor in such a way one comes away grasping what once seemed complicated and scary. I also had the good fortune to work with him and many others on a community project. Remarkable man. An elder in my world. Read his books on economy to understand how simple (and how flexible) socialist economics really is.
Bill, both NAACP and various Quaker associations have online training in exactly that. The full name of the Quakers is Religious Society of Friends, but our offerings are not religious in nature: the goal is to teach people from all kinds of backgrounds the principles of planning and carrying out pacifist principles and actions (and usually have some fun while we are at it). NAACP tends to be more focused but the purpose and teachings are similar. There are other sources of non-violent training as well, but in my mind these are two of the best.
It will be worse. It won't be limited to particular geographic areas. Think of the civil wars that happen in the less-developed world, where the fighting is close to "everywhere."
I agree that if it happens it will be much worse because of the was these militias have permeated all of our states. Now Flynn calling for a military coup. All of it is scary.
Yes, indeed, MaryPat, we have work to do. Let's not forget: We ARE the majority. We HAVE skills. If we can organize OUR community, then coordinate with YOUR community, then connect and spread the word to THEIR community, we CAN together protect and defend We the People and Democracy.
I think you nailed it, Cathy and thank you for pointing this out. This is about as serious a moment in our history as ever has been. When we think about the “Beaus” and my father and his father before him who went to war willingly. knowing they might not come back, it begs the question of what are we willing to do to preserve democracy, in our own country? Their acts of bravery and sacrifice truly humble me.
We should all be concerned MaryPat, in fact, very concerned, but not terrified. Terror is when you face the unknown and unbeatable and, right now, we are more numerous, more thoughtful and more likely to work together to defeat this insidious menace. There is a need for effective strategies short of violence because, if it comes to open warfare, identifying the "enemy" will be the biggest challenge because they will look just like us.
The only thing that should be set on stun is our phasers. For the sake of those who come after us, we don't want to kill another 600,000 Americans, we want all of us to be able to sit down and reason together.
And that’s the exact thing Matt Goetz was calling for earlier this week. The Democrats need to be more decisive and build a supermajority coalition with the few remaining Republicans to protect the country. Quickly.
Agree and add that Geotz's comments are a misrepresentation of the Second Admendment as justification for anarchy, not for protection of the nation by patriots. That he was cheered is more than a little concerning.
This is key: Without that responsibility, that freedom these people insist they deserve is nothing but anarchy and narcissism."
And it is with reluctance I write on this day that I believe we are already at this point. I hold out hope that Pelosi and Schumer and wise heads in the House and Senate (which would eliminate all the trumplicans) have some plan to ensure passage of the For the People Act. Look what just almost happened here in Texas last night...it will happen everywhere if that Act is not signed into law. It's our only hope now that Abbott is planning to bring the same bill back in a special session. We are in that zone now, I fear, where We the People have no power - it's up to those who were elected. And in Texas, we have two seditionist insurrectionists who have the power in the Senate and a whole bunch of numbskulls of like mendacity in the House.
How eloquent, Cathy, how bone-rattling, how heartbreaking. An appropriate emotional response from my core on this sad and scary Memorial Day weekend 2021. Yes, I, too, fear we're in for a rocky ride. I so hope we're both dead wrong.
Wars usually have sides. The 1860 Civil War used the Mason Dixon Line. I am at a loss to imagine where a line would be drawn in the USA today. Wouldnt it be wiser to focus on a common enemy ...climate change? Tornados, floods and drought, earthquakes, pollution, species extinction and rising sea levels should have priority. War is not the answer. We don’t need more destruction. War mongers better channel their energy into something constructive. No one wins a war.
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.
TC, my great uncle was a gunner in the ETO and because he was over 30, his crew mates called him Gramps. He made it--discharged because of a serious back injury, I believe, incurred when he had to bail from the plane--but his younger brother did not. He was a paratrooper who died on D-Day. His body was never recovered, but now the military at Fort Knox is trying to identify remains buried in France of soldiers from D-Day who were not identified and I am supplying them with a DNA sample, although I suspect it is a remote possibility that his remains made it to the beach--he was shot down over the Channel.
My dad had a cousin I knew when growing up. Cousin Barnard had a son, ten years or so older than me, named Charles David. I always found it odd that there was never a diminutive or nickname for him. He was always "Charles David" in the family. His grandfather was my great-uncle, named Nelson. It wasn't until my dad was in his nineties and reminiscing about the war years that he spoke one day about Barnard's two older brothers, Charles and David, who had left college to join up because Uncle Nelson was the chair of the local draft board and neither of them wanted to sit at home while their dad sent their friends ands classmates to war. They both were assigned to the Big Red One, and both died in Normandy.
What I was about to say, TC. I'm not one for war accounts, but that's not what you are writing. You are writing about human beings getting through some pretty awful stuff, and you do it movingly, in beautifully spare language that illuminates their lives. "Bridgebusters" arrived a couple days ago and has been airing out on the mudporch (used books always arrive smelling like perfumed air freshener these days. I hate it.) I thought it would be an interesting intellectual enterprise to read along with a reread of Catch 22. Without even having started yet, I've changed my mind about that after seeing some of your other prose. I'll read Catch 22 later. Right now, I'd like to immerse myself in "Bridgebusters". Soon as it starts smelling like a book again.
Thank you for this stunning account TC. I sometimes wonder if the video war games so popular now should include actual virtual deaths. Once shot down, the player is removed permanently from the game. It might provide lessons on the real consequences of war.
Thank you for this additional history. There is so much more history I have learned since subscribing to Dr Heather last fall, from not only her, but this community we've formed. Thank you.
Wow, TC, thank you for this detailed information, which infuses facts with a sense of being there, to give us a feeling of what they experienced. It’s so hard to fathom, all of it.
TC, my dad was a ball turret gunner out of Polebrook England. 351st Bomb Group. He was recalled for Korea & remained in the Air Force u till he retired in 1968 as a tail gunner on B52's....he retired because he was about to be deployed to Guam for missions to Viet Nam & said 2 wars was enough.
He never spoke about WW2 & until I went to my first 351st reunion, didn't realize that he had been a ball turret gunner. He was 5'10" but said he scrunched down because he wanted the position! I've heard some interesting stories from the vets over the years. Our group has shrunk & now joins the 8th AF for their annual reunions. This year is Savannah, GA in October.
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.
A schoolmate of mine (class of '64 he was) went to 'Nam. I followed more like Ralph's path, though being female, I wasn't going to be sent anywhere. Years later, when we re-connected and were talking about the war I told him I couldn't speak for other protesters, but many of us were not against the GIs; we were against the men who sent them there. As Ralph so movingly put it, our faith in the system was irreparably sundered.
Like Ralph, too, my dad served in WWII, so I grew up hearing all the stories, watching the John Wayne movies, went to the local VFW community events, etc.
But yesterday it hit me, as Heather described in her letter, that there none from that generation left in my life, indeed, even some of their children are gone. I was polishing a family heirloom yesterday when the realization hit that it will probably end up in an antique or junk shop, as there is no one left who has any attachment to it. It is a handmade, mahogany silver chest my uncle made for my aunt before I was born, and she willed to me when she passed, having no children of her own. I've cherished it, but there's no one left to pick up that torch.
"We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass..............."
Thanks, Pamsy. I suspect many of us here can relate. I fully understand now my dad's comment to an old neighbor a month before he died. Neighbor asked how he was doing, and Dad said, "I'm just waiting around to die." He didn't say it with any self-pity or maudlin inflection; it was a statement of fact. Most of his friends had passed, he was not well, and I think he was ready. He died about six weeks later.
I wasn't trying to bring anyone down, either. I'm certainly not wishing for the end, just recognizing that it's out there, waiting patiently.
Your words grew ending with mahogany silver chest made by your uncle. It has been a treasure for you and your aunt. The chest has had a good life. Losses sometimes seem to live in objects, when they actually stir in our hearts.
You're right, of course, Fern. I guess what makes me sad is that there is no one left to treasure it, no one who knows its history. I've only recently started coming to terms with that reality. It's not that I'm sad to leave it behind, but that no one who cares is there to take it up and pass it along.
Sandra, Someone may buy the chest or receive it with delight. Might you write a note to slip inside, giving the approximate date it was made and a couple of lines about the circumstances. That would add a very touching aspect to its origins. There might be a shop or acquaintance to appreciate such a treasure.
Thanks, Pamsy. In my coffee house daze, I always heard Dino Valenti wrote the song, but then saw an attribute to Chet Powers. Turns out, they were one and the same. Here's part of an interview with Jesse Colin Young that cleared it up:
Jun 09, 2020 · Jesse Colin Young: I didn’t know Dino Valenti and never met him. He was a folk singer whose real name was Chet Powers. He wrote the song “Let’s Get Together” in Los Angeles in 1963.
A moment of reckoning occurred for me when I realized that none of my nieces or their spouses and none of their children had any desire whatsoever for the cherished family heirlooms that had been passed down lovingly over the years - regardless of how simple or ornate. So here am I, with no children, the keeper of all of my dad's WWII paraphernalia, letters, metals, scrapbooks, some uniforms, etc. and no one in this close-knit extended family wants them. They are interested only in whatever Ikea or Wayfair offers, and whatever they can toss easily when they tire of it. My mother's treasures, my dad's keepsakes, photos...none of it fits into their almost nomadic way of life. Add to that the fact that I have all of my late husband's GRANDMOTHER'S keepsakes, his mother's and his own. I am drowning in unwanted generational heirlooms, whose only value appears to be gathering dust in an antique shop or resale shop!
I think my moment's "sunlight" has about turned to dusk! LOL. (To avoid being mistaken for a hoarder, I have most of it in a storage unit.)
Ellen, Consider contacting the branch of the Army that your father was in. Given his role in the war and that he was a POW, there may be interest in his papers. TCinLA may be helpful. Why not ask him what he thinks? As for your other treasures and keepsakes, would you think of a shop and or antiques dealer to look over what you have. A few of them might find people who would appreciate having them. Do you want to continue to keep them in the dark, while paying for storage? I felt some sadness in your comment. What if you kept one treasure, which you particularly care about? Your feelings stir in the heart not in an object. Could you smile, while letting some things go?
I couldn’t have said it better myself but didn’t dare for fear of being thrashed by “the real patriots”. Throwing young men and women into useless barbaric wars to support higher ups agendas is not my idea of patriotism. I admire people who have withstood it and wonder where they got the courage to do so but I abhor those who make it happen for lust and greed and wrap it up in a pretty package.
Too true. My extended family has believed in military service as a core patriotic duty going back literally to the French and Indian War. We have fielded combat officers and enlisted men in literally every single American war since then.
But Vietnam, my father’s war, was the beginning of the end.
And then came all the Reagan and Bush senior era deployments to Latin America … brutal little “security actions” to prop up dictators so amoral that even diehard Republicans began to wonder what the heck we were fighting for.
And then all the Gulf Wars, big and little (Monica Storm anyone?) My brother deployed to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait so many times in the 90s that it seemed like “somewhere in the middle of the F-ing desert with spiders in my tent” was his permanent address.
And then Iraq and Afghanistan. One cousin did 15 combat deployments. Seriously. What comes home after 15 combat deployments? There’s a certain point where PTSD stops being a symptom and simply becomes your default setting.
Military families are worn out. These aren’t our grandfathers’ wars anymore. And this isn’t our grandfather’s military. This is perpetual war that grinds on decade after decade with mission creep and moving goal posts as the new normal.
We don’t talk nearly enough about this. And we should. Because it imperils our security — and our democracy.
Ralph Averill, just brilliant. Piter Poel of Templeton Dubrow & Vance was my first. Salomon Brothers & Hutzler had fired my dad, would fire me. I went to Englewood for lunch. Piter from Ratzeburg Germany was a closeted fascist, a Brown Shirt come to NJ, a small time intolerant. He asked, aren’t you the son of Cy Lewis? You’re smart, you’re American, you want my business, answer one question: what will happen in Saigon. We have 15,000 troops in support. North Vietnam is coming. China is up there. What will America do? I answered, he wrote it down and quoted me. We will ramp to 500,000 and lose 50,000, we will be there for 10 years, we will lose, Vietnam will change America. He asked, what makes you say that? I answered: 1) Korea. Armistice. IKE’s lie. No peace. Eternal war. 2) American post WWII arrogance, we are containing communism. 3) Dulles. 4) military industrial complex. 5) indifference 6) putting Blacks where we can pay them and kill their hopes. 7) end of the Draft, a volunteer paid army of mercenaries, leading to fascism. 8) credit Nobel Milton Friedman, the monetary whiz that destroyed democracy. Piter was nothing special, had three daughters, died recently in Boulder CO and is forgotten. Just another intolerable intolerant German that supported German intolerance - that’s rising here.
"7) end of the Draft, a volunteer paid army of mercenaries, leading to fascism." Whoa. Never thought of it that way, and do not believe this in total, but, Whoa. You really have me thinking, Sandy
Draft is democratic. A nuisance. Draft boards rule. Exemptions are granted. Clout works. Conscientious objector. Draft dodgers and Canada… Milton Friedman was right wing pro war.
Draft is equitable. Rich or poor. But unpopular. Mercenary is hiring the poor… and the army is willing and rolls to fascism quickly… income disparity rules.
During Vietnam, I was definitely anti-draft. The benefit of 50+ years along with the Law of Unintended Consequences, has shifted my perspective totally. Your points are well taken, Sandy. Afghanistan and Iraq saw us sending the same folks, over and over again.
So poignant, Ralph Averill. I had the same experience with "the crack in my faith" in this "patriotic blanket of righteousness." The most crushing blow was watching my dear father become increasingly misled, deluded, angry, even enraged, by decades steeped in Faux News and Crush Limbaugh. He had been a navigator in the Army Air Corps.
He could not grasp the irony of his having fought against the exact kind of diabolical force gripping the nation today. He proudly, happily, defiantly voted for The Orange Menace.
During the Vietnam War, we were exposed to un-doctored and remorseless coverage of our classmates and neighbors shown in battle, night after night on TV. We saw the flag draped coffins delivered in huge masses to Dover. It was shown to us in awful, despairing and sickening clarity. Our local newpapers printed the lists of our dead friends every day. When they began to "freeze" the National Guard units in our state, I begged my (then) affianced fellow to GET OUT (he had already served and was just staying in for the weekend tidbits he got through training). He did. Had he not, he would not have become my husband because he no doubt would have been one of the first to jump from a helicopter and get mowed down. When media stopped showing the true horror of war, when Dover was no longer a constant drumbeat in our lives, when the dead were no longer listed in our newspapers, it's like the entire nation wrapped itself in a shroud and refused to confront the ugliness of death and destruction that war IS - not a movie, not some pretty thing where the "good guys" recover and ride off into the sunset. The Proud Boys and Girls and Oath Keepers have feasted on a "romanticized" version that keeps them motivated. We need to starve them out.
And this year - seeing the listing of the almost 600,000 souls taken by this virus? Its yet another form of war at home. Definitely a lot wrong with the US priorities still.
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 am the mom of a 20 year now retired Army Sergeant. He retired just last year, thank God. When people thank me for his service, I want to say, “Vote for programs that will provide ALL the top notch care veterans need when they no longer serve.” Tell your representatives to do just that.
I never thought one of my 3 kids would become an instrument of foreign policy. My son was one of the people searching for those nonexistent WMD’s, another big lie.
It seems to me that this country has a whole long list of “Big Lies” used to justify whatever stupid idea some politicians have come up with. Big lies cost lives at home and around the world.
To those families who have or have had family members in service, thank you for all you have endured to support your service member. They could not have endured without you. For those who are struggling to be supportive of their service member or veteran, hang in there. Your love and support are essential. May God protect our troops.
As fewer politicians are themselves veterans, I worry about their (sometimes seemingly cavalier) decisions to send others’ sons and daughters into war, declared or not.
My husband just died last fall of ALS. (Upwards of 20% of people diagnosed with ALS in any one year are current or former military.) Glen was a Vietnam era vet and was served by a great team of physicians, nurses and therapists at the VA hospital here in Minneapolis. But walking through that hospital and seeing the devastation in all generations of those who haved served and are serving was one hell of an eye opener. And caring for someone dying of ALS is not for the faint of heart as I well know.
Thank you for acknowledging those who support their service members and let me add in the staffs of every VA facility around the world. Their expertise, caring attitudes and tireless efforts are critical to those who have sacrificed so much- no matter the bs politics behind the wars.
Debbie, I love this as a comment on "Thank you for your service." How beautiful, not only to say "I am sorry that we asked you to do that on our behalf," but also to say it only, sensitively, when there is an opportunity to connect more deeply. Perfect.
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.
....”The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.”....
Wisely correct, Diane. Indifference means a self-serving shrug of the shoulders to not bother with love when it does not serve one. That’s the politics in our Capitol today. The hate is left to those who will resort to violence to crush that which a leader tells them to oppose.
Oh Diane, that is so beautifully written. Thank you for sharing a painful part of your life. So many of us have similar stories of parents taken from us for reasons that we will never understand, and which are so “unfair.” I lost my own father to a tragic death when I was four, and it was at least partly attributable to PTSD and his wartime experience and I felt utterly abandoned. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. So I know what you speak of. I send you love today, too.
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?
Our nation will be able to survive this “slow burning coup d’etat” through which we are living because down deep, enough Americans will remember, even beyond this Memorial Day, those who fought and died to preserve our freedoms, which never did include the freedom to tear apart the nation nor destroy democracy.
I have been thinking deeply about you and the Russian people, and I will send you a message on an older thread, rather than divert today’s discussion. HCR May 24
When you say “wise,“ I interpret that as being dryly sarcastic. So then I use the word “dry“ to make a silly James Bond joke. Shaken, not stirred. Dry martini.
Yes, thank you Diane. Only, pardon me for saying this but, even if I should write something that makes sense, please don't use that adjective for me. It's safer to reserve value judgments for words and actions, not persons.
I'm bound to appreciate kind comments from people whose judgment I respect -- and there are plenty here -- but I know myself too well, so praise can come as a reminder of the opposite...
“ . . . many of those who overcame the Nazis never found freedom.”
Peter why don’t you tell us a personal story to commemorate Memorial Day. We know that the so-called Eastern Front battles (the name given to them from the German perspective), the battles between Russia and Germany, were horrific and devastating.
Dear Roland, I've told far too many personal stories here today and ever since I attached myself to this community. Except where these illustrate a valid point or enable us to understand better where each is coming from, it's better not to overindulge in suchlike.
Your thoughts are your business, I can't do anything about them and why should I want to? But as a matter of courtesy, can't you avoid tying them to what I write like a bunch of clattering cans?
The only "personal" story I can add that has any bearing whatever on your apparently fixed view of me as "a Russian operative" concerns my father, a Royal Navy officer who served in the Arctic, escorting convoys of merchant ships around North Cape to Murmansk and Archangelsk. He told me how, at Stalin's urgent request, they'd brought a squadron of fighter aircraft to the USSR but, when they got there, were told to take them back... The Russians had meanwhile produced their own.
I have photos of his ship with decks and guns caked in ice in the morning... He told, too, of being refueled at sea by a Russian tanker with an all-woman crew, and how the ship's doctor, commenting later on the specimens viewed through his microscope, said of what he saw: "Every one of the little buggers is flying the hammer and sickle".
In the 1970s I worked alongside a Frenchman from Alsace who'd been forcibly drafted into the Kriegsmarine and told me he'd been stationed at North Cape, directing the bombardment of passing convoys...
I hope all these barely relevant details satisfy your curiosity.
If you feel that you have shared too much detail about yourself already, ok. Thank you for letting us know. Of course we respect that. *Of course.*
Allow me to be clear, however, that I have no personal curiosity about your life history. Your life history is completely your business, and none of my business, and in no way am I trying to pry. You share, you do not share, at your discretion. It is a gift if you do, an honored contribution to the stories told, and it is your right, your well-respected right, if you do not.
I am not playing poker, the Cold War spy game, despite my silly and ill-advised James Bond jest that clearly misinterpreted Diane’s intent and went over like a lead balloon, as we say. Failed miserably. I am a private citizen, a complete nobody, and in no way am I fishing for information about you. That is final. I give you my word on that.
I was just offering an invitation, a human invitation, in the spirit of deep mourning. I realize it was a provocative request, but it was an honest invitation.
As for the “clattering cans,” please forgive me for the excessive messages, with perhaps provocative content. Yesterday’s message to you, the message which includes talk of the origins of Russian Orthodox Christianity, is the last of it. I feel complete. The mental traffic jam has calmed down and disappeared.
Clearly I have irritated you. If irritation is the strongest thing you feel, then I am encouraged. If the irritation is the tip of the iceberg, and you have stronger feelings below, well, ok then. Let’s have at it. That is the nature of discussion. Outrage, disgust, hope, deep confidence, your oft-mentioned pessimism (and perhaps despair), is all fair game. We are not children, you and I. We can have strong feelings, perhaps very strong feelings. And share them. Or deal with them by ourselves.
I sent that message because I felt compelled, out of a duty to you, a duty to the Russian people, a duty to humanity. I hope you can understand that.
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.
War is hell, and the soldiers sent to do the fighting were kids, some literally still teenagers. My friend's father was 19 years old fighting the Battle of the Bulge--wounded but survived.
As TPJ wrote, “The average age of Eighth Air Force aircrew was 21; a pilot over 25 was considered an ‘old man.’"
The average age of a soldier fighting in Vietnam was 22.
In World War II, the average age was 26.
As one person wrote, the human brain is not fully formed until the mid-20s. I usually tell this to young people to consider with their usage of drugs and alcohol—this another dramatic linkage to the state of development of one’s brain.
My dad graduated high school in June 1943 and two weeks later was in the Army. He was the only son. His older sister’s husband was also in the Army and she came home to live with her twin boys. My dad would talk about his service is I asked; I knew his unit liberated a concentration camp (he told me he did not go in). After he died I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau and became curious about his route through Europe with Patton’s 3rd Army. Although they were not ready on D-Day and landed in Europe later, Patton was a daring leader. Daddy was a private and gunner. A company was making oral histories of WWII vets and he told his story the year before he died. It was on TV just after he died. It is what he and his generation on young boys saw and sacrificed in WWII that makes me so passionate our democracy and angry at Republicans for their willingness to sacrifice it for their power.
Maybe Bergen-Belsen, taken by British troops, but Americans were present too. More family history: my father's first cousin was there, a senior officer in the medical corps. Before that, he had opened up the punishment camp for political prisoners at Fort Breendonk in Belgium, run by psychopaths taken out of Germany's prisons.
A few years later, my 3-year-old sister rummaged through our parents papers and found photos that he sent. The trauma went deep.
I can't endorse your last sentence strongly enough.
Special thanks to your father. My dad was born in The Netherlands in 1932 (adoptive father). Spared the worst horrors experienced in other countries, Patton’s army liberated the country and is my dad’s specific (Patton) and general (3d) hero.
Yet the words "War is hell" easily become an empty cliché. They are worth taking quite literally and, instead of being passed over quickly, contemplated at length. What is more, war has never been more hellish than today. Feeding living beings into vast mincing machinery.
I have many memories of WW2. As a child. London Underground stations turned into air raid shelters, hundreds sleeping on the platforms. Especially the night the first V1s fell.
Later in life, I worked for a Prussian boss, a good man whom I remember with gratitude and respect. He had a top job as an interpreter, but when he was found not to be a member of the Nazi party, he was fired at once and sent to the Eastern Front. There he was captured.
I was working alongside my best friend, a man of remarkable intellectual ability, when, one morning, I learned that he had just survived a head-on crash at high speed. My boss showed great kindness. One thing he told me then was how he, a man of over thirty at the time, had survived bitter cold and starvation in a Soviet P.o.W camp.
But, he said, all the strong, fit young men had died like flies, while he and those in his mature age group survived. Reading you, I remembered this.
Almost miraculously, my friend who will have been 27 at the time, lived and is still with us 50 years later. Living happily, despite brain damage. After years of great suffering, intellect gave way to sharp, swift humor and unfailing kindness to others.
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.
The cemeteries of Normandy are another somber and moving experience to visit. And a reminder that young people killed left behind grieving families in the U.S., Great Britain, Canada (practically massacred upon their landing), France (incredibly courageous Resistance fighters), Poland, Russia, and Germany (by then children conscripted as young as 10 years old).
Oh dear, strange way of publishing, but this must be about the first time that I've published a poem of mine (apart from a handful of translations) and I'm reassured that some of you like it... despite the fact that the formatting's come out all wrong. Thank you.
So few of my friends have any feeling for poetry.
I wrote this at the time of the first Gulf War, together with another short poem called LIBERATION, remembering how my Polish friend had risen one morning to find Red Army tanks below his window. He bid his parents and his country goodbye forever and did not stop until he reached England, where he joined the Polish armed forces in exile...
Most things written then are not like this but bitterly derisive...
From Manila to Cambridge, I have seen so many immense war cemeteries.
Well, Peter the Poet--you are officially published ! It is so beautifully, simply evocative. I love poetry and writing poetry. I am in a small group of close neighbors who also love reading poetry and once a month we have a Poet's Dinner. However, I am the only one who actually writes poems and it is a little embarrassing and awkward to share them, so I only do that a few times a year when it relates to the entire group or a birthday.
Will you please sign your poems from now on? And may I have permission to read this one at my next Poet's Dinner? They are all activists, older than me--one just turned 90 and I KNOW she will cherish this one! If you have more-- I, possibly We, would love to read them— if you are willing to share more. "Bitterly derisive" is appropriate considering events that inspire some poetry. Keep writing and sharing!
I have some lovely, large red poppies about to explode any day now. I always think of Flanders Fields when they bloom, and now I will remember your poem and our crazy world "where vice prevails among men" a wee bit too much (again) at this current moment in our world history.
If one wants a visual representation of the cost of war, the American cemetery in France is the place to see. The white headstones so on, and on, and on, and on ...
I’ve visited. The American cemetery is a monument to the magnitude of loss. The British cemetery is more personal; each family selected an inscription for the headstone of the lost family member. A very worthwhile visit to this lonely part of the French coast.
Thank you Mary Beth for this encouragement. I expect to travel to England this summer and often visit Cambridge at least once during such trips. I was not aware that there was an American Cemetery in the vicinity until reading HCR's message today, and immediately formed an intention to visit. Your post reinforces that intention.
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 wouldn’t have been born if my father hadn’t survived D-day on Omaha Beach. He was 20 and a private taking care of artillery. About 10 days after the landing he lifted his head out of a foxhole to sip some coffee and a mine went off slamming the left side of his body with shrapnel. His physical wounds were attended to in England but his ptsd lasted the rest of his life.
and there is another whole issue--PTSD, which was minimized and not even recognized as a diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Assn. until 1980. Another hell for surviving soldiers and their families, including as a contributing factor to substance abuse and family violence.
Daddy shut down. He channeled all that pain into a career in education. He never drank a drop or turned to substance abuse and he was not an abusive father. He was demanding, but not abusive. But his PTSD emerged in the form of nightmares that persisted throughout his life.
When "Saving Private Ryan" came out, I forced myself see it on the big screen. I remember crying uncontrollably during the opening scenes where so many perished. I called my mother and begged her NOT to let my dad see the movie, because we were learning just then that older people were losing their ability to "screen out" or "compartmentalize" trauma. I was fearful for his emotional welfare. She told me that I was too late - he had seen it and he WANTED his children to see it. He said it was the closest thing to his REAL experience - the one he could never talk about. I later asked him how a general could knowingly send so many thousands of young men to their deaths during that invasion - how could a general live with himself? Daddy's response, which I'll never forget: "It was a numbers game. That's all. If enough of us stormed that beach, we might have a chance. It was a gamble."
The postscript to this is that he did finally open up and begin to share some of the horrors he had experienced - but never what happened to him as a POW in the German "hospital" (I think it was actually a French villa or a church or something like that.) I do have his handwritten lists of names of other soldiers who were there with him and the German papers admitting him.
The inter-generational impact of wartime PTSD is being studied; the focus has been on the Viet Nam (and later) era veterans, although these studies are uncovering the impacts from WWI, WWII, and Korea as well. The sample size for the GWOT group is harder to deal with and track down; for the first time in our nation's experience, fewer combat soldiers* are serving multiple tours, and our GWOT soldiers are now second generation GWOT combatants.
The links of generational PTSD are also being examined in our Indigenous populations.
*I use "soldiers" in a blanket statement that includes Sailors, Airmen, and Marines.
"a war’s-end telegram to the mother of a 100th Bomb Group POW: 'The Secretary of War desires me to inform that your son S/Sgt Affleck, John W., has returned to Military Control.'”
For more on the Thorpe Abbotts airfield and its museum:
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.
Every time someone says "thank you for your service" to me, I want to ask them: "Oh, you want to thank me for serving in a war that nearly destroyed us, from which we still suffer because too many of you refuse to recognize what really happened?" I'm surprised no one heard my scream when I found and read the report by the NSA analyst of the Tonkin Gulf Incident (of which I was a bit player, the event by which I divide my life into Before and After), in which he presdented a compelling argument that the "lights in the water" they took for enemy torpedo boats was actually the moonlight and lightning flashes reflected off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf at that time of year. The "reason for war" was flying fish.
During a teaching session some years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh informed the audience that his movement of peace activists in Vietnam in the 1960s were simply farmers. “We were not communists or capitalists, we simply worked the land,” Thay (“teacher” in Vietnamese) said. We learned that one of his students was pictured on the front cover of an American periodical, his life alit in flames, his expression aghast, as a statement against the murderous actions of the invading US forces.
But America had been sold the Big Lie of the 1960s, that communists were ready to take ahold of Asia, subsequently leading to the loss (murder) of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and American lives. As a high school student then, I remember another picture on another magazine cover in America, of a woman from my hometown laying dead at Kent State University, during a peaceful protest, until the National Guard was sent in to disturb the peace. The picture shows the dead woman and a second woman kneeling, her expression aghast .....
Yesterday, I spent time at our local Civil War Monument, and read aloud the hundreds of names of local men who died in that war. Poignant is this ongoing human experience of men taking to violence to quell one’s own dis-ease.
Perhaps I will spend some of today on my own patch of land, remembering those: who worked the land in Vietnam; who followed orders throughout our history, and those souls who courageously challenged the orders. Every generation, ongoing war and resistance ....
Today is a time to remember the burning of Greenwood, Tulsa, OK, exactly 100 years ago
Vietnam was a true awakening for the ills that our country put dedicated soldiers, doctors and nurses through. I marched in moratoriums in DC then. Met my husband, 6 months after he returned from Nam. War is hell and the aftermath, even more so. It sure is a helluva way to decrease countries populations.
❤️😢
Totally agree. I posted awhile ago that the memorial happening there this weekend was news relegated to inside depth of local paper.
I shall long remember your words which seem to apply to much of human misery..." this ongoing human experience of men taking to violence to quell one’s own dis-ease". Well put!
Thx Elizabeth; after many years of study with Thich Nhat Hanh and others, I’ve retained some of this ancient Buddhist wisdom. Of course, “I” haven’t retained, in the Ultimate Truth sense, but the Relative Truth of “I” retains some things. But that’s another topic ......
Dear Bill,
Thank you for sharing your memories of your friends AND thank you for your service. It can be both/and, not just about you or them. I am sorry for your losses and for the losses experienced by your friends’ families.
You had many choices from the time you took the military oath through your entire six years in the Marines. Conscientious objectors made a different choice. Some young men at the time used connections of privilege to avoid the draft. Others took drastic action to disqualify themselves from service, such as starving themselves.
War is hell. You clearly had to routinely summon courage to survive and gain rank. I suspect you had resilience and support, hopefully, to have functioned in the years since then through trauma experienced in the war.
So yes, thank you for your service, thank you to those who supported you, and thank you for sharing the memories of your friends.
I never condemned those who made the decisions they did during the sixties. It was personal choices made when forced into a situation that could not be solved easily. We each did what we thought was right at the time. Some are still paying for those decisions.
At 19, I was still growing up and not mature. I enlisted after visiting my one cousin. He was a Master Gunnery Sergeant, another cousin flew F4 Phantoms, another was in the Army, and my friends were either in college, in the service, or off doing things.
At 19, people are on the brink of adulthood. I made a decision unknowingly and my father a WWII veteran was scared. I was fortunate the Corp trained me and placed where I was. An English Prof. would send me books to read; Porter, Rand, McCarthy, Dickens, etc. Some officers would borrow them at times.
My enlistment ended and the hard core press to re-enlist did not change my thinking. It was time to leave. Fifty three years ago I met a pretty young woman who lived in NYC between two of my aunts and a flock of young cousins who would rat on her. Fifty years ago this last April, we were married.
Life has not been terrible. I wonder what could have been for them.
For me? Helped raise three children and get them through college. I hold a Master's degree from a Jesuit university who has a pretty good basketball team. I traveled through Europe and much of Asia working, consulting, and meeting suppliers, lectured college students on how not the be an Ugly American. Did not need a fork and ate some different foods.
Some how, I chose a road that made all the difference. I have come pretty far from a family where the dad did not complete grade school and a mom who had a high school diploma.
Thank you for your comment. I hope that answers some of your thoughts.
Thank you for your story, Bill.
I'm going to use this day as an excuse to promote a book, Rufus: A Boy's Extroardinary Experiences in the Civil War, Phoebe Sheldon. Sheldon is Rufus Harnden's great great granddaughter. She constructed a narrative from Rufus' letters home.
Rufus enlisted in 1862, at 17. He was preternaturally wise, and provides a soldier's eye view of the war, including the battles of Gettysburg, where he recalled fighting hard, and suddenly being confronted by the presence of three southern soldiers, badly wounded, who he tried to help until a blast above his head knocked him out; and Chancellorsville, in which Stonewall Jackson was killed.
A number of months after Chancellorsville, Rufus was working as a pillboy in a Northern field hospital in Vicksburg. One night at dinner he overheard some Southern doctors talking about the death of Stonewall. He eavesdropped. The seemingly weird thing about Stonewall was that apparently a lot of the Northern soldiers had a lot of deep respect and admiration for him, including Rufus.
Referring to a point in the Battle of Chancellorsville--the second night--where Stonewall's army was routing the Northerners, one of the doctors says, ""They say some fool yank boys come poppin' up out of a thicket. Just stumbles outa the bushes alongside the road, lost behind our lines. One of them damn fools up and fires a shot at the general's party."
Rufus' narrative continues, "His words froze the very air inside my chest into shards of ice. My heart felt like it stopped its beating in a terrible cramp. I couldn't cetch (sic) my breath for anything. For I knew in an instant the identity of that damn fool yank he was talking about I was that very same man."
Rufus suffered a lot of cognitive dissonance over that, as he strongly believed in the cause of freedom for the slaves, and he--like many North and South--believed the South would have won Gettysburg had Stonewall been there. He also believed in the North's cause, especially freeing the slaves.
Thank you David. 🏆
Wow
Who knew? Thank you for the book reference. I will have to find it.Who knew? Thank you for the book reference. I will have to find it.
It should be available on Amazon. (It's not my favorite place, either, but I'm not sure it's available anywhere else.) If you have trouble finding it, and you're on fb, you can contact Phoebe Sheldon there. If you're not, contact me at holzmandc at outlook dot com.
Thank you for sharing such a testament to your friends.
Bill, thank you for sharing your story. I once asked an active serving Marine Major ‘What does one call a person who served as a Marine but did not serve til retirement?’ He proudly said ‘ a Marine’! My late friend Marine Capt Ted Noble, who passed last year from a cancer whose seeds were sown in the Tet offense, taught me about the brotherhood shared by those who served as A Marine. I hope that you will remove the ‘x’ when referring to your service as a Marine!
Thank you for keeping their memories alive.
❤️😥I’m glad you survived and are sharing with us about those that didn’t. 🙏
:’-(
"Thank you for your service" has become the GI version of "Have a nice day". When do I most often hear it? Immediately after the person saying finishes a rant about some minor inconvenience in their shopping life.
NTN:
I was not at Hue so I can not tell you how realistic the portrayal it was in the movie "Full Metal Jacket." I can tell you, boot camp as portrayed in that movie was the one I experienced. Being thinner, a backpacker, and a runner paid off of me. I also learned fast and was only hit twice by the Sergeants.
I could have done without it. I ignore the comment mostly or ask them to thank my friends.
That's a thought. There's a National Cemetery here. Perhaps I should point the thankers there...
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?
I too am from Texas--and worry so about the direction of our state, where nearly every bill recently passed focuses on assuring the Republicans that they will stay in power. Texas had more FBI arrests from the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection than any other state. Our two Republican senators, our governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general all are such disappointing leaders that our only hope is to get them out of office. I am grateful for Heather's story about Beau--and am eternally grateful that my husband returned from his tour in Vietnam, after my first letter was "guess what I am pregnant?" How lucky to meet him at the airport as I could barely fit under the steering wheel. We always knew my son David, now 54 could have been born having lost his father in the war.
My Texas state representative cosponsored the permit-less carry gun law! I asked him if for his next bill if he was going to get rid of driver's licenses and have license-less driving. 3,893 people died in car accidents in 2020 in Texas; 3,683 people died from guns.
Great response!!!!
God forbid, Texas leaders should put that much enthusiasm into learning how to turn the heat on in a climate crisis.
They do not deserve to be called "leaders." They are white supremacist thugs who have finagled their way into office via extreme gerrymandering. Now, they plan to stay there via extreme voter suppression mandates and by granting themselves power to decide who wins and who loses.
Here's the top story in today's Kerrville Daily Times: "A 28-year-old Kerrville man was jailed after local law-enforcement officers intercepted a message indicating he was preparing to carry out a mass shooting at Walmart, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office."
Oh my. I'm almost afraid to go anywhere these days. I do all my shopping online or curbside. But there's nothing that can stop a barrage of bullets from WMD fired out of passing vehicles - oversized trucks with Confederate flags for the most part. We are living in precarious times.
Just wrote to my Texas state representative again mentioning this and saying "Thanks for making me feel less safe in Kerrville!" The answer to guns is not more guns. Anyone can fire a gun. What is missing is the training and intelligence to act responsibility in these situations. Otherwise innocent people are killed.
This is a link to GA Gun Laws with a map to click on other states to view their gun laws. Texas may not be updated as of yet.
https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-gun-laws/georgia/
Who would have thought 5-6 years ago that Americans would be discussing entirely seriously the loss of democracy in their country. It would have sounded daft then. Now it is entirely reasonable conversation to have...yet still faintly absurd.
I often think of what will be the turning point, beyond which there is no rescue, for ameliorating climate change. When will become literally impossible to subdue severe ravages?
I am beginning just lately to think the same way about America and democracy. It is clear that battle lines have been drawn. It is obvious that Republicans have set themselves on a course that could bring ruin to America. The bitterly ironic aphorism, We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”, comes to mind when I think about their wanton perfidy and recklessness.
Did we cross a final line when the Republicans filibustered the 1/6 inquiry? Did that utter fool Matt Gaetz paint the future clearly when he spoke this past week about the need to use the Second Amendment to overthrow the government (piously adding that he hoped it never comes to that, a total canard on his part).
Or is there still time to save America and chart a new course. Nominally there is a potentially brilliant Democratic government which could, in two terms, do so much good for Americans and America. But we all know now that the operative word is “nominally”. The Democrats have lost control of the Senate between Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and that sly opportunist Kirsten Sinema.
And it’s becoming evident that President Biden, no flamethrower, is still hoping to bring the Congress of the past back to life. It is amazing to me that there are still negotiations on vis-à-vis thé Infrastructure Bill and that the Democrats have chopped their original proposed expenditure in half - without result. That is especially telling after the Republicans bargained for three concessions on the Commission Bill, got all of them - and still “voted” it down. Winning 54-35 counts a loss in this Mad Hatter world.
I’m still inclined to think that we haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet, that the House will conduct its own inquiry and its results will be accepted as valid, in the light of the revelations they extract. I think that a wave of appropriately severe jail sentences will make a number of the knuckleheads still hellbent on the joy of destruction begin to think twice. If Amy Berman Jackson is representative, the judiciary takes the concept of a free America seriously. And finally, it may all come down to how the former guy is disposed of. If he too is sent to prison and not with a slap on the wrist, America will have shown that it can rise to the occasion. The Republican Party will collapse like a pricked balloon and they will take years to recover enough to win elections.
It’s funny in an ironic way, to think of how much could ride on the hitherto obscure Allen Weisselberg.
Eric your posts are never less than superlative.
Agree totally. That was an amazing post, Eric.
I deeply appreciate your comment, as I feel the highest regards for your posts (and love the title of your book. Life: A Field Manual).
Unfortunately the circumstances under which we have met are not propitious.
We are big boys and girls here. We get over things. It was a curious beginning, I’ll grant you that, but I have nothing but the highest respect for you based on everything that you have posted here. Introductions can sometimes be rocky, through no fault of anyone. Who cares. It’s all good.
Did we have a disagreement? I honestly have no recollection of that whatsoever. Zero.
Of course, I’m in my pre-Alzheimer’s stage. :)
Awhile ago, a much older friend who blanked on my name asked me to forgive her because she's experiencing "halfzeimer's disease".
No disagreement, just a brief misunderstanding. I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you Eric.
“ . . . and love the title of your book. Life: A Field Manual.“
I think you just made my day Eric. I’m not sure anyone has ever told me that, one person maybe until you.
Thank you. 😊
Amy Berman Jackson is exactly a figure needed on the Supreme Court. Weisselberg, I imagine, is singing like a canary and that will be a good thing. Maybe America will start healing if indictments and prison are invoked. That would definitely give new meaning to “Memorial Day”.
I resonate deeply with the if...then...else at the core of your message, Cathy Learoyd (Texas). I also see 2022 as the crucible for American democracy in our time. Pondering immediate next steps, but for me it starts with reading - Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King - and looking for training programs in preparation for sustained non-violent resistance.
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's an interview with Mr. Lakey.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/facing-right-wing-violence-while-defending-election-coup-george-lakey/
I also studied non-violence resistance with George Lakey. He teaches gently and with humor in such a way one comes away grasping what once seemed complicated and scary. I also had the good fortune to work with him and many others on a community project. Remarkable man. An elder in my world. Read his books on economy to understand how simple (and how flexible) socialist economics really is.
Bill, both NAACP and various Quaker associations have online training in exactly that. The full name of the Quakers is Religious Society of Friends, but our offerings are not religious in nature: the goal is to teach people from all kinds of backgrounds the principles of planning and carrying out pacifist principles and actions (and usually have some fun while we are at it). NAACP tends to be more focused but the purpose and teachings are similar. There are other sources of non-violent training as well, but in my mind these are two of the best.
Thank you, Annie, for these pointers. As a Friend of mine might say, these look like "weighty" resources.
LOL, indeed! It sounds llike you already have some connections. That's great!
It will be worse. It won't be limited to particular geographic areas. Think of the civil wars that happen in the less-developed world, where the fighting is close to "everywhere."
I agree that if it happens it will be much worse because of the was these militias have permeated all of our states. Now Flynn calling for a military coup. All of it is scary.
We have work to do.
Yes, indeed, MaryPat, we have work to do. Let's not forget: We ARE the majority. We HAVE skills. If we can organize OUR community, then coordinate with YOUR community, then connect and spread the word to THEIR community, we CAN together protect and defend We the People and Democracy.
I think you nailed it, Cathy and thank you for pointing this out. This is about as serious a moment in our history as ever has been. When we think about the “Beaus” and my father and his father before him who went to war willingly. knowing they might not come back, it begs the question of what are we willing to do to preserve democracy, in our own country? Their acts of bravery and sacrifice truly humble me.
I agree 100% and I am 100% terrified.
We should all be concerned MaryPat, in fact, very concerned, but not terrified. Terror is when you face the unknown and unbeatable and, right now, we are more numerous, more thoughtful and more likely to work together to defeat this insidious menace. There is a need for effective strategies short of violence because, if it comes to open warfare, identifying the "enemy" will be the biggest challenge because they will look just like us.
Concerned. I will change to to concerned, with all my faculties off "stun" and on "effective strategies." For my children and grandchilden.
The only thing that should be set on stun is our phasers. For the sake of those who come after us, we don't want to kill another 600,000 Americans, we want all of us to be able to sit down and reason together.
Ditto.
MaryPat I agree 100% too, but feel like the frog in the pond as I don’t easily feel the rising heat in the water.
😧
And that’s the exact thing Matt Goetz was calling for earlier this week. The Democrats need to be more decisive and build a supermajority coalition with the few remaining Republicans to protect the country. Quickly.
Agree and add that Geotz's comments are a misrepresentation of the Second Admendment as justification for anarchy, not for protection of the nation by patriots. That he was cheered is more than a little concerning.
And you in Texas are in what the late Red Barber called the catbird seat, seeing it unfold before your eyes.
This is key: Without that responsibility, that freedom these people insist they deserve is nothing but anarchy and narcissism."
And it is with reluctance I write on this day that I believe we are already at this point. I hold out hope that Pelosi and Schumer and wise heads in the House and Senate (which would eliminate all the trumplicans) have some plan to ensure passage of the For the People Act. Look what just almost happened here in Texas last night...it will happen everywhere if that Act is not signed into law. It's our only hope now that Abbott is planning to bring the same bill back in a special session. We are in that zone now, I fear, where We the People have no power - it's up to those who were elected. And in Texas, we have two seditionist insurrectionists who have the power in the Senate and a whole bunch of numbskulls of like mendacity in the House.
How eloquent, Cathy, how bone-rattling, how heartbreaking. An appropriate emotional response from my core on this sad and scary Memorial Day weekend 2021. Yes, I, too, fear we're in for a rocky ride. I so hope we're both dead wrong.
Wars usually have sides. The 1860 Civil War used the Mason Dixon Line. I am at a loss to imagine where a line would be drawn in the USA today. Wouldnt it be wiser to focus on a common enemy ...climate change? Tornados, floods and drought, earthquakes, pollution, species extinction and rising sea levels should have priority. War is not the answer. We don’t need more destruction. War mongers better channel their energy into something constructive. No one wins a war.
The Rethuglicans don’t believe in climate change if they allowed such thinking their entire ideology would have to change.
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.
TC, my great uncle was a gunner in the ETO and because he was over 30, his crew mates called him Gramps. He made it--discharged because of a serious back injury, I believe, incurred when he had to bail from the plane--but his younger brother did not. He was a paratrooper who died on D-Day. His body was never recovered, but now the military at Fort Knox is trying to identify remains buried in France of soldiers from D-Day who were not identified and I am supplying them with a DNA sample, although I suspect it is a remote possibility that his remains made it to the beach--he was shot down over the Channel.
My dad had a cousin I knew when growing up. Cousin Barnard had a son, ten years or so older than me, named Charles David. I always found it odd that there was never a diminutive or nickname for him. He was always "Charles David" in the family. His grandfather was my great-uncle, named Nelson. It wasn't until my dad was in his nineties and reminiscing about the war years that he spoke one day about Barnard's two older brothers, Charles and David, who had left college to join up because Uncle Nelson was the chair of the local draft board and neither of them wanted to sit at home while their dad sent their friends ands classmates to war. They both were assigned to the Big Red One, and both died in Normandy.
That’s heartbreaking.
❤
Thank you, TC. I appreciate your detailed report of the Eighth Air Force. Puts a clearer perspective on what Beau was facing.
Harder than Kamikaze.
Not only a wider context,TC, but undeniable to any reader.
Thank you.
Thanks to all of you for your thank you's. You've just demonstrated why I continue to write.
What I was about to say, TC. I'm not one for war accounts, but that's not what you are writing. You are writing about human beings getting through some pretty awful stuff, and you do it movingly, in beautifully spare language that illuminates their lives. "Bridgebusters" arrived a couple days ago and has been airing out on the mudporch (used books always arrive smelling like perfumed air freshener these days. I hate it.) I thought it would be an interesting intellectual enterprise to read along with a reread of Catch 22. Without even having started yet, I've changed my mind about that after seeing some of your other prose. I'll read Catch 22 later. Right now, I'd like to immerse myself in "Bridgebusters". Soon as it starts smelling like a book again.
Thank you for this stunning account TC. I sometimes wonder if the video war games so popular now should include actual virtual deaths. Once shot down, the player is removed permanently from the game. It might provide lessons on the real consequences of war.
Thank you for this additional history. There is so much more history I have learned since subscribing to Dr Heather last fall, from not only her, but this community we've formed. Thank you.
You've outdone yourself TC. Absolutely stunning reporting.
Wow, TC, thank you for this detailed information, which infuses facts with a sense of being there, to give us a feeling of what they experienced. It’s so hard to fathom, all of it.
TC, my dad was a ball turret gunner out of Polebrook England. 351st Bomb Group. He was recalled for Korea & remained in the Air Force u till he retired in 1968 as a tail gunner on B52's....he retired because he was about to be deployed to Guam for missions to Viet Nam & said 2 wars was enough.
He never spoke about WW2 & until I went to my first 351st reunion, didn't realize that he had been a ball turret gunner. He was 5'10" but said he scrunched down because he wanted the position! I've heard some interesting stories from the vets over the years. Our group has shrunk & now joins the 8th AF for their annual reunions. This year is Savannah, GA in October.
Thank You.
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.
A schoolmate of mine (class of '64 he was) went to 'Nam. I followed more like Ralph's path, though being female, I wasn't going to be sent anywhere. Years later, when we re-connected and were talking about the war I told him I couldn't speak for other protesters, but many of us were not against the GIs; we were against the men who sent them there. As Ralph so movingly put it, our faith in the system was irreparably sundered.
Like Ralph, too, my dad served in WWII, so I grew up hearing all the stories, watching the John Wayne movies, went to the local VFW community events, etc.
But yesterday it hit me, as Heather described in her letter, that there none from that generation left in my life, indeed, even some of their children are gone. I was polishing a family heirloom yesterday when the realization hit that it will probably end up in an antique or junk shop, as there is no one left who has any attachment to it. It is a handmade, mahogany silver chest my uncle made for my aunt before I was born, and she willed to me when she passed, having no children of her own. I've cherished it, but there's no one left to pick up that torch.
"We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass..............."
I know exactly what you mean. I’m experiencing the very same feeling. And I love that song, which is a perfect fit for your poignant comment.
Thanks, Pamsy. I suspect many of us here can relate. I fully understand now my dad's comment to an old neighbor a month before he died. Neighbor asked how he was doing, and Dad said, "I'm just waiting around to die." He didn't say it with any self-pity or maudlin inflection; it was a statement of fact. Most of his friends had passed, he was not well, and I think he was ready. He died about six weeks later.
I wasn't trying to bring anyone down, either. I'm certainly not wishing for the end, just recognizing that it's out there, waiting patiently.
Your words grew ending with mahogany silver chest made by your uncle. It has been a treasure for you and your aunt. The chest has had a good life. Losses sometimes seem to live in objects, when they actually stir in our hearts.
You're right, of course, Fern. I guess what makes me sad is that there is no one left to treasure it, no one who knows its history. I've only recently started coming to terms with that reality. It's not that I'm sad to leave it behind, but that no one who cares is there to take it up and pass it along.
Sandra, Someone may buy the chest or receive it with delight. Might you write a note to slip inside, giving the approximate date it was made and a couple of lines about the circumstances. That would add a very touching aspect to its origins. There might be a shop or acquaintance to appreciate such a treasure.
Yes, I have thought about doing that. I probably will.
Here is the whole moving song and video. https://youtu.be/GdxUIZOzd5E
Thanks, Pamsy. In my coffee house daze, I always heard Dino Valenti wrote the song, but then saw an attribute to Chet Powers. Turns out, they were one and the same. Here's part of an interview with Jesse Colin Young that cleared it up:
www.wsj.com › articles › come-on-people-now-smile-on
Jun 09, 2020 · Jesse Colin Young: I didn’t know Dino Valenti and never met him. He was a folk singer whose real name was Chet Powers. He wrote the song “Let’s Get Together” in Los Angeles in 1963.
Trivial pursuit, anyone? 🙂
In my coffee house daze!! Takes me back. Good and important music and movement. Hippies need to rise and save the country, again.
We should compare notes sometime. 😁😉
Or maybe NOT!!
Thank You!
A moment of reckoning occurred for me when I realized that none of my nieces or their spouses and none of their children had any desire whatsoever for the cherished family heirlooms that had been passed down lovingly over the years - regardless of how simple or ornate. So here am I, with no children, the keeper of all of my dad's WWII paraphernalia, letters, metals, scrapbooks, some uniforms, etc. and no one in this close-knit extended family wants them. They are interested only in whatever Ikea or Wayfair offers, and whatever they can toss easily when they tire of it. My mother's treasures, my dad's keepsakes, photos...none of it fits into their almost nomadic way of life. Add to that the fact that I have all of my late husband's GRANDMOTHER'S keepsakes, his mother's and his own. I am drowning in unwanted generational heirlooms, whose only value appears to be gathering dust in an antique shop or resale shop!
I think my moment's "sunlight" has about turned to dusk! LOL. (To avoid being mistaken for a hoarder, I have most of it in a storage unit.)
Donate to a WW 2 museum? There’s one in New Orleans.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/
Another good possibility, Ellen.
Ellen, Consider contacting the branch of the Army that your father was in. Given his role in the war and that he was a POW, there may be interest in his papers. TCinLA may be helpful. Why not ask him what he thinks? As for your other treasures and keepsakes, would you think of a shop and or antiques dealer to look over what you have. A few of them might find people who would appreciate having them. Do you want to continue to keep them in the dark, while paying for storage? I felt some sadness in your comment. What if you kept one treasure, which you particularly care about? Your feelings stir in the heart not in an object. Could you smile, while letting some things go?
I couldn’t have said it better myself but didn’t dare for fear of being thrashed by “the real patriots”. Throwing young men and women into useless barbaric wars to support higher ups agendas is not my idea of patriotism. I admire people who have withstood it and wonder where they got the courage to do so but I abhor those who make it happen for lust and greed and wrap it up in a pretty package.
Too true. My extended family has believed in military service as a core patriotic duty going back literally to the French and Indian War. We have fielded combat officers and enlisted men in literally every single American war since then.
But Vietnam, my father’s war, was the beginning of the end.
And then came all the Reagan and Bush senior era deployments to Latin America … brutal little “security actions” to prop up dictators so amoral that even diehard Republicans began to wonder what the heck we were fighting for.
And then all the Gulf Wars, big and little (Monica Storm anyone?) My brother deployed to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait so many times in the 90s that it seemed like “somewhere in the middle of the F-ing desert with spiders in my tent” was his permanent address.
And then Iraq and Afghanistan. One cousin did 15 combat deployments. Seriously. What comes home after 15 combat deployments? There’s a certain point where PTSD stops being a symptom and simply becomes your default setting.
Military families are worn out. These aren’t our grandfathers’ wars anymore. And this isn’t our grandfather’s military. This is perpetual war that grinds on decade after decade with mission creep and moving goal posts as the new normal.
We don’t talk nearly enough about this. And we should. Because it imperils our security — and our democracy.
And our sanity.
Ralph Averill, just brilliant. Piter Poel of Templeton Dubrow & Vance was my first. Salomon Brothers & Hutzler had fired my dad, would fire me. I went to Englewood for lunch. Piter from Ratzeburg Germany was a closeted fascist, a Brown Shirt come to NJ, a small time intolerant. He asked, aren’t you the son of Cy Lewis? You’re smart, you’re American, you want my business, answer one question: what will happen in Saigon. We have 15,000 troops in support. North Vietnam is coming. China is up there. What will America do? I answered, he wrote it down and quoted me. We will ramp to 500,000 and lose 50,000, we will be there for 10 years, we will lose, Vietnam will change America. He asked, what makes you say that? I answered: 1) Korea. Armistice. IKE’s lie. No peace. Eternal war. 2) American post WWII arrogance, we are containing communism. 3) Dulles. 4) military industrial complex. 5) indifference 6) putting Blacks where we can pay them and kill their hopes. 7) end of the Draft, a volunteer paid army of mercenaries, leading to fascism. 8) credit Nobel Milton Friedman, the monetary whiz that destroyed democracy. Piter was nothing special, had three daughters, died recently in Boulder CO and is forgotten. Just another intolerable intolerant German that supported German intolerance - that’s rising here.
"7) end of the Draft, a volunteer paid army of mercenaries, leading to fascism." Whoa. Never thought of it that way, and do not believe this in total, but, Whoa. You really have me thinking, Sandy
Draft is democratic. A nuisance. Draft boards rule. Exemptions are granted. Clout works. Conscientious objector. Draft dodgers and Canada… Milton Friedman was right wing pro war.
Draft is equitable. Rich or poor. But unpopular. Mercenary is hiring the poor… and the army is willing and rolls to fascism quickly… income disparity rules.
During Vietnam, I was definitely anti-draft. The benefit of 50+ years along with the Law of Unintended Consequences, has shifted my perspective totally. Your points are well taken, Sandy. Afghanistan and Iraq saw us sending the same folks, over and over again.
Military Industrial Complex
Military Industrial Congressional Complex.
per President Dwight David Eisenhower:
Makes complete and awful sense now.
So poignant, Ralph Averill. I had the same experience with "the crack in my faith" in this "patriotic blanket of righteousness." The most crushing blow was watching my dear father become increasingly misled, deluded, angry, even enraged, by decades steeped in Faux News and Crush Limbaugh. He had been a navigator in the Army Air Corps.
He could not grasp the irony of his having fought against the exact kind of diabolical force gripping the nation today. He proudly, happily, defiantly voted for The Orange Menace.
😔
During the Vietnam War, we were exposed to un-doctored and remorseless coverage of our classmates and neighbors shown in battle, night after night on TV. We saw the flag draped coffins delivered in huge masses to Dover. It was shown to us in awful, despairing and sickening clarity. Our local newpapers printed the lists of our dead friends every day. When they began to "freeze" the National Guard units in our state, I begged my (then) affianced fellow to GET OUT (he had already served and was just staying in for the weekend tidbits he got through training). He did. Had he not, he would not have become my husband because he no doubt would have been one of the first to jump from a helicopter and get mowed down. When media stopped showing the true horror of war, when Dover was no longer a constant drumbeat in our lives, when the dead were no longer listed in our newspapers, it's like the entire nation wrapped itself in a shroud and refused to confront the ugliness of death and destruction that war IS - not a movie, not some pretty thing where the "good guys" recover and ride off into the sunset. The Proud Boys and Girls and Oath Keepers have feasted on a "romanticized" version that keeps them motivated. We need to starve them out.
And this year - seeing the listing of the almost 600,000 souls taken by this virus? Its yet another form of war at home. Definitely a lot wrong with the US priorities still.
Right on, sister Ellen. Very well said.
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.
I am the mom of a 20 year now retired Army Sergeant. He retired just last year, thank God. When people thank me for his service, I want to say, “Vote for programs that will provide ALL the top notch care veterans need when they no longer serve.” Tell your representatives to do just that.
I never thought one of my 3 kids would become an instrument of foreign policy. My son was one of the people searching for those nonexistent WMD’s, another big lie.
It seems to me that this country has a whole long list of “Big Lies” used to justify whatever stupid idea some politicians have come up with. Big lies cost lives at home and around the world.
To those families who have or have had family members in service, thank you for all you have endured to support your service member. They could not have endured without you. For those who are struggling to be supportive of their service member or veteran, hang in there. Your love and support are essential. May God protect our troops.
As fewer politicians are themselves veterans, I worry about their (sometimes seemingly cavalier) decisions to send others’ sons and daughters into war, declared or not.
My husband just died last fall of ALS. (Upwards of 20% of people diagnosed with ALS in any one year are current or former military.) Glen was a Vietnam era vet and was served by a great team of physicians, nurses and therapists at the VA hospital here in Minneapolis. But walking through that hospital and seeing the devastation in all generations of those who haved served and are serving was one hell of an eye opener. And caring for someone dying of ALS is not for the faint of heart as I well know.
Thank you for acknowledging those who support their service members and let me add in the staffs of every VA facility around the world. Their expertise, caring attitudes and tireless efforts are critical to those who have sacrificed so much- no matter the bs politics behind the wars.
Well and truly said. Thank you
If I have the opportunity to connect more deeply I have told veterans I’m really sorry for what we as a country asked of you.
Debbie, I love this as a comment on "Thank you for your service." How beautiful, not only to say "I am sorry that we asked you to do that on our behalf," but also to say it only, sensitively, when there is an opportunity to connect more deeply. Perfect.
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.
So go to hear your words Beth.
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.
....”The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.”....
Wisely correct, Diane. Indifference means a self-serving shrug of the shoulders to not bother with love when it does not serve one. That’s the politics in our Capitol today. The hate is left to those who will resort to violence to crush that which a leader tells them to oppose.
Oh Diane, that is so beautifully written. Thank you for sharing a painful part of your life. So many of us have similar stories of parents taken from us for reasons that we will never understand, and which are so “unfair.” I lost my own father to a tragic death when I was four, and it was at least partly attributable to PTSD and his wartime experience and I felt utterly abandoned. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. So I know what you speak of. I send you love today, too.
Thank you for your kindness Pamsy. There is a deep well of compassion in our group that I treasure.
Many were like this, all different.
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?
Our nation will be able to survive this “slow burning coup d’etat” through which we are living because down deep, enough Americans will remember, even beyond this Memorial Day, those who fought and died to preserve our freedoms, which never did include the freedom to tear apart the nation nor destroy democracy.
I hope you're right!
And I hope I am wrong to feel so anxious now. I always hope that my pessimism is misplaced.
Despite all of which, there is deep underlying confidence, and it is good to share that.
If we can use fear to motivate us and ideals to guide us, perhaps we can meet this moment.
Hello Peter, I am pleased to find you here today.
I would echo your deep underlying confidence.
I have been thinking deeply about you and the Russian people, and I will send you a message on an older thread, rather than divert today’s discussion. HCR May 24
“My father and his companions did not fight for oligarchy” says it all. Thank you Peter.
Posting this on facebook, adding my mother - WWII Army Nurse.
Thank you Diane. ❤️
Thank you Roland, I was quoting the wise Peter Burnett.
Dry sarcasm. Very dry. Shaken, not stirred. Do you take your sarcasm with or without an olive?
Not my drink of choice Roland. And now that I’m utterly confused, I’ll just dwell in the mystery. ❤️
When you say “wise,“ I interpret that as being dryly sarcastic. So then I use the word “dry“ to make a silly James Bond joke. Shaken, not stirred. Dry martini.
Yes, thank you Diane. Only, pardon me for saying this but, even if I should write something that makes sense, please don't use that adjective for me. It's safer to reserve value judgments for words and actions, not persons.
Duly noted.
I'm bound to appreciate kind comments from people whose judgment I respect -- and there are plenty here -- but I know myself too well, so praise can come as a reminder of the opposite...
“ . . . many of those who overcame the Nazis never found freedom.”
Peter why don’t you tell us a personal story to commemorate Memorial Day. We know that the so-called Eastern Front battles (the name given to them from the German perspective), the battles between Russia and Germany, were horrific and devastating.
Dear Roland, I've told far too many personal stories here today and ever since I attached myself to this community. Except where these illustrate a valid point or enable us to understand better where each is coming from, it's better not to overindulge in suchlike.
Your thoughts are your business, I can't do anything about them and why should I want to? But as a matter of courtesy, can't you avoid tying them to what I write like a bunch of clattering cans?
The only "personal" story I can add that has any bearing whatever on your apparently fixed view of me as "a Russian operative" concerns my father, a Royal Navy officer who served in the Arctic, escorting convoys of merchant ships around North Cape to Murmansk and Archangelsk. He told me how, at Stalin's urgent request, they'd brought a squadron of fighter aircraft to the USSR but, when they got there, were told to take them back... The Russians had meanwhile produced their own.
I have photos of his ship with decks and guns caked in ice in the morning... He told, too, of being refueled at sea by a Russian tanker with an all-woman crew, and how the ship's doctor, commenting later on the specimens viewed through his microscope, said of what he saw: "Every one of the little buggers is flying the hammer and sickle".
In the 1970s I worked alongside a Frenchman from Alsace who'd been forcibly drafted into the Kriegsmarine and told me he'd been stationed at North Cape, directing the bombardment of passing convoys...
I hope all these barely relevant details satisfy your curiosity.
Hello Peter,
If you feel that you have shared too much detail about yourself already, ok. Thank you for letting us know. Of course we respect that. *Of course.*
Allow me to be clear, however, that I have no personal curiosity about your life history. Your life history is completely your business, and none of my business, and in no way am I trying to pry. You share, you do not share, at your discretion. It is a gift if you do, an honored contribution to the stories told, and it is your right, your well-respected right, if you do not.
I am not playing poker, the Cold War spy game, despite my silly and ill-advised James Bond jest that clearly misinterpreted Diane’s intent and went over like a lead balloon, as we say. Failed miserably. I am a private citizen, a complete nobody, and in no way am I fishing for information about you. That is final. I give you my word on that.
I was just offering an invitation, a human invitation, in the spirit of deep mourning. I realize it was a provocative request, but it was an honest invitation.
I'm too tired to answer you properly today. Tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I have a rhetorical question we can all think about:
What is trolling?
*smiling*
Touché.
As for the “clattering cans,” please forgive me for the excessive messages, with perhaps provocative content. Yesterday’s message to you, the message which includes talk of the origins of Russian Orthodox Christianity, is the last of it. I feel complete. The mental traffic jam has calmed down and disappeared.
Clearly I have irritated you. If irritation is the strongest thing you feel, then I am encouraged. If the irritation is the tip of the iceberg, and you have stronger feelings below, well, ok then. Let’s have at it. That is the nature of discussion. Outrage, disgust, hope, deep confidence, your oft-mentioned pessimism (and perhaps despair), is all fair game. We are not children, you and I. We can have strong feelings, perhaps very strong feelings. And share them. Or deal with them by ourselves.
I sent that message because I felt compelled, out of a duty to you, a duty to the Russian people, a duty to humanity. I hope you can understand that.
And now I will stop pestering you.
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.
War is hell, and the soldiers sent to do the fighting were kids, some literally still teenagers. My friend's father was 19 years old fighting the Battle of the Bulge--wounded but survived.
As TPJ wrote, “The average age of Eighth Air Force aircrew was 21; a pilot over 25 was considered an ‘old man.’"
The average age of a soldier fighting in Vietnam was 22.
In World War II, the average age was 26.
As one person wrote, the human brain is not fully formed until the mid-20s. I usually tell this to young people to consider with their usage of drugs and alcohol—this another dramatic linkage to the state of development of one’s brain.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-age-of-soldiers-serving-in-wars-throughout-history
My dad graduated high school in June 1943 and two weeks later was in the Army. He was the only son. His older sister’s husband was also in the Army and she came home to live with her twin boys. My dad would talk about his service is I asked; I knew his unit liberated a concentration camp (he told me he did not go in). After he died I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau and became curious about his route through Europe with Patton’s 3rd Army. Although they were not ready on D-Day and landed in Europe later, Patton was a daring leader. Daddy was a private and gunner. A company was making oral histories of WWII vets and he told his story the year before he died. It was on TV just after he died. It is what he and his generation on young boys saw and sacrificed in WWII that makes me so passionate our democracy and angry at Republicans for their willingness to sacrifice it for their power.
Maybe Bergen-Belsen, taken by British troops, but Americans were present too. More family history: my father's first cousin was there, a senior officer in the medical corps. Before that, he had opened up the punishment camp for political prisoners at Fort Breendonk in Belgium, run by psychopaths taken out of Germany's prisons.
A few years later, my 3-year-old sister rummaged through our parents papers and found photos that he sent. The trauma went deep.
I can't endorse your last sentence strongly enough.
Special thanks to your father. My dad was born in The Netherlands in 1932 (adoptive father). Spared the worst horrors experienced in other countries, Patton’s army liberated the country and is my dad’s specific (Patton) and general (3d) hero.
Power ... and greed!
Thank you, Ellie, for expressing this so well.
Yet the words "War is hell" easily become an empty cliché. They are worth taking quite literally and, instead of being passed over quickly, contemplated at length. What is more, war has never been more hellish than today. Feeding living beings into vast mincing machinery.
I have many memories of WW2. As a child. London Underground stations turned into air raid shelters, hundreds sleeping on the platforms. Especially the night the first V1s fell.
Later in life, I worked for a Prussian boss, a good man whom I remember with gratitude and respect. He had a top job as an interpreter, but when he was found not to be a member of the Nazi party, he was fired at once and sent to the Eastern Front. There he was captured.
I was working alongside my best friend, a man of remarkable intellectual ability, when, one morning, I learned that he had just survived a head-on crash at high speed. My boss showed great kindness. One thing he told me then was how he, a man of over thirty at the time, had survived bitter cold and starvation in a Soviet P.o.W camp.
But, he said, all the strong, fit young men had died like flies, while he and those in his mature age group survived. Reading you, I remembered this.
Almost miraculously, my friend who will have been 27 at the time, lived and is still with us 50 years later. Living happily, despite brain damage. After years of great suffering, intellect gave way to sharp, swift humor and unfailing kindness to others.
So true. My father hated it!
Correction: As TCinLA wrote, “The average age of Eighth Air Force aircrew was 21; a pilot over 25 was considered an ‘old man.’"
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.
The cemeteries of Normandy are another somber and moving experience to visit. And a reminder that young people killed left behind grieving families in the U.S., Great Britain, Canada (practically massacred upon their landing), France (incredibly courageous Resistance fighters), Poland, Russia, and Germany (by then children conscripted as young as 10 years old).
theory
when virtue prevails in the world
angels prosper
and so do we
when vice prevails among men
titans arise
poppy fields
flower
and stones
fall in line
Peter-- that is so poignant. Who is the poet?
Oh dear, strange way of publishing, but this must be about the first time that I've published a poem of mine (apart from a handful of translations) and I'm reassured that some of you like it... despite the fact that the formatting's come out all wrong. Thank you.
So few of my friends have any feeling for poetry.
I wrote this at the time of the first Gulf War, together with another short poem called LIBERATION, remembering how my Polish friend had risen one morning to find Red Army tanks below his window. He bid his parents and his country goodbye forever and did not stop until he reached England, where he joined the Polish armed forces in exile...
Most things written then are not like this but bitterly derisive...
From Manila to Cambridge, I have seen so many immense war cemeteries.
Thank you for sharing, quietly powerful.
Well, Peter the Poet--you are officially published ! It is so beautifully, simply evocative. I love poetry and writing poetry. I am in a small group of close neighbors who also love reading poetry and once a month we have a Poet's Dinner. However, I am the only one who actually writes poems and it is a little embarrassing and awkward to share them, so I only do that a few times a year when it relates to the entire group or a birthday.
Will you please sign your poems from now on? And may I have permission to read this one at my next Poet's Dinner? They are all activists, older than me--one just turned 90 and I KNOW she will cherish this one! If you have more-- I, possibly We, would love to read them— if you are willing to share more. "Bitterly derisive" is appropriate considering events that inspire some poetry. Keep writing and sharing!
I have some lovely, large red poppies about to explode any day now. I always think of Flanders Fields when they bloom, and now I will remember your poem and our crazy world "where vice prevails among men" a wee bit too much (again) at this current moment in our world history.
Thanks, Penelope, and of course you are more than welcome.
Maybe I should try to publish, but the quality is so variable, and I like good poetry, which means I'm rarely satisfied with my own production.
I often prefer my translations.
Nowadays I'm sometimes writing things that don't seem to fit into any category. Anyway, not prose.
If you or anyone want more, we can maybe find a venue.
Thank you, Peter, that would be interesting to have a Poet Venue. How many poets are out there?
And Peter, you speak of translations-- can you explain what you are referring to?
If one wants a visual representation of the cost of war, the American cemetery in France is the place to see. The white headstones so on, and on, and on, and on ...
I’ve visited. The American cemetery is a monument to the magnitude of loss. The British cemetery is more personal; each family selected an inscription for the headstone of the lost family member. A very worthwhile visit to this lonely part of the French coast.
And the people in Normandy to this day express appreciation for their liberation.
Thank you Mary Beth for this encouragement. I expect to travel to England this summer and often visit Cambridge at least once during such trips. I was not aware that there was an American Cemetery in the vicinity until reading HCR's message today, and immediately formed an intention to visit. Your post reinforces that intention.
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.
I just commented on your earlier post, not having seen this one. Everything now hinges on passage of the For the People Act. Everything.
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 wouldn’t have been born if my father hadn’t survived D-day on Omaha Beach. He was 20 and a private taking care of artillery. About 10 days after the landing he lifted his head out of a foxhole to sip some coffee and a mine went off slamming the left side of his body with shrapnel. His physical wounds were attended to in England but his ptsd lasted the rest of his life.
and there is another whole issue--PTSD, which was minimized and not even recognized as a diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Assn. until 1980. Another hell for surviving soldiers and their families, including as a contributing factor to substance abuse and family violence.
Yes Ellie all of the above. How smart we are if we stay out of war.
Daddy shut down. He channeled all that pain into a career in education. He never drank a drop or turned to substance abuse and he was not an abusive father. He was demanding, but not abusive. But his PTSD emerged in the form of nightmares that persisted throughout his life.
When "Saving Private Ryan" came out, I forced myself see it on the big screen. I remember crying uncontrollably during the opening scenes where so many perished. I called my mother and begged her NOT to let my dad see the movie, because we were learning just then that older people were losing their ability to "screen out" or "compartmentalize" trauma. I was fearful for his emotional welfare. She told me that I was too late - he had seen it and he WANTED his children to see it. He said it was the closest thing to his REAL experience - the one he could never talk about. I later asked him how a general could knowingly send so many thousands of young men to their deaths during that invasion - how could a general live with himself? Daddy's response, which I'll never forget: "It was a numbers game. That's all. If enough of us stormed that beach, we might have a chance. It was a gamble."
The postscript to this is that he did finally open up and begin to share some of the horrors he had experienced - but never what happened to him as a POW in the German "hospital" (I think it was actually a French villa or a church or something like that.) I do have his handwritten lists of names of other soldiers who were there with him and the German papers admitting him.
Thank you. I understand better. Your father's experiences affected your family.
The inter-generational impact of wartime PTSD is being studied; the focus has been on the Viet Nam (and later) era veterans, although these studies are uncovering the impacts from WWI, WWII, and Korea as well. The sample size for the GWOT group is harder to deal with and track down; for the first time in our nation's experience, fewer combat soldiers* are serving multiple tours, and our GWOT soldiers are now second generation GWOT combatants.
The links of generational PTSD are also being examined in our Indigenous populations.
*I use "soldiers" in a blanket statement that includes Sailors, Airmen, and Marines.
Oh, the heartbreak of the news to the families:
"a war’s-end telegram to the mother of a 100th Bomb Group POW: 'The Secretary of War desires me to inform that your son S/Sgt Affleck, John W., has returned to Military Control.'”
For more on the Thorpe Abbotts airfield and its museum:
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/in-the-footsteps-of-the-mighty-eighth-15806031/#:~:text=Rattlesden%20and%20Thorpe%20Abbotts%20are%20in%20Suffolk%2C%20one,mouth%20for%20the%20U.S.%20Army%E2%80%99s%20Eighth%20Air%20Force.
Was that a notification that remains had been found? Identified?
volunteer group a donation for their work.