Dancing the days away

I went into town, invited to a dinner and dance affair, lots of chatting and slow dancing before chow. I was the only solo dame at the shindig and I danced with every one of the husbands there, some of them two and three times.  The boys exhausted me.  I thought it was merely a matter of courtesy that they offered to trip the light fantastic with me, or I did until I noticed the looks, or should I say glares, that their wives were giving me.

It took me a while to notice that while the husbands spent a goodly amount of time shoulder-tapping each other to get their turns with me, a lot of the wives were never asked to dance even once, even by their husbands. That was not my fault. I was invited to a dance party and I danced.  I was amused by it because it was the wives who had invited me. They planned to solicit me to become a financial supporter.  I knew that was their plan and I probably would have but they became so resentful over nothing they forgot their goal. Ladies, emotions and business don't mix, especially nasty emotions. Keep your eye on the prize. Will I become a financial supporter? Haha. Ha. Ha. Will I recount this episode? Well, I is, ain't I?

 

Incidentally, or maybe not, the venue was an opportunity to notice how many women let themselves go once they've been married a while.  Don't do that.  It's an insult to yourself, and, even more, it's an insult to your husband.  You should always make sure he considers you his prize and never has cause to look at another woman and think he made a mistake with you. 

They reminded me of some woman I read on the internet who was advocating what she called "duty sex" with husbands.  Don't even pretend you're interested, just let the sad sack climb on you and do his thing for three minutes. That's what she did with her husband, whom, apparently, she had not a spark of interest in. I wondered why she married him. Just to get a room mate to share expenses with? Was that why he wanted to marry her?

I really and truly do not understand that. I just don't. I've written before about how I felt about my dear husband. And that included sex.  I wanted him and I wanted him to want me. All the time, anywhere, however he wanted it. His desire for me was an enormous turn on for me. We were on an endless honeymoon. You think that's an exaggeration. It's not. It was the way it was. As I've mentioned before, he photographed me, carved and sculpted me and every session involved me teasing him to turn him on, and every session I got turned on just by the act of getting him aroused, and every session ended in him well and truly nailing me to both his and my great satisfaction.  I was crazy about the big lunkhead. The years we were together never diminished my affection and desire for him.  I think English has a four-letter word for that emotion.  One's not supposed to mention it, though, so I won't.

******

I've been dancing a lot with my second cousin.  He belongs to a ball-room dance club at the academy and has gotten very good and wants to stay in practice. We dance mambo, Cuban salsa and freestyle as well as the more traditional styles, including the tango. We've even started doing the French Apache. Sometimes my uncle drops by and I dance with him.  He is, as I've mentioned before, an excellent dancer. Sometimes I wish I had somebody to dance with who wasn't a relative, but then I think it's best I don't. 

My cousin has suggested we go somewhere with a live band like we did a while back, so we might do that. I'm going to have to fly down to Argentina pretty soon, and I've invited them both to come along. It will be fun to tango in its home country.

Yeah, I bought the estancia.  It's a sheep operation with a good return.  I'm going to have a landing strip built so I can fly directly to it, gravel, 100x5,000 ft. is what I'm looking at, a hanger, fuel facility (eventually), PAPI, REIL, MIRL with PCL and an AWOS among other goodies. That may sound like overkill, but the weather there is a bitch and the terrain will get your attention. 

By the way, I love, love, love my KA260. I don't want to fly anything else. I do still enjoy the Baron, but...you know....

Oh, another by the way: In the actual world -- not the stupid on-line "world," men are supportive and encouraging and even pleased to see me engaged in the endeavors that I am, while -- not all, but a significant number of -- women react with coolness, nay iciness, when they discover what I do. That used to puzzle me, but I've come to expect it. I think the main cause is that I represent a challenge to and a reproval of them for slouching through life or something.  But that's not true.  I have no opinion on their lives, their achievements, lack of them or anything else.  We each live our own lives as fortune steers us. My own life has certainly not been smooth sailing along my desired path. It's gone this way and that, uphill and downhill until, for the nonce, here I am.

Some things I am and some things I can do, but others I am not and yet others I could not do even when I tried.   

Okay, I do have at least one strong opinion about others:  Anybody who puts Ph.D after their name is an ass.  I have a Ph.D in a hard science, one that was hard-earned. Both my Ph.D mentor and thesis advisor were on the short list for the Nobel Prize. My research focused on traumatic brain injury, the signature injury of the GWOT, and I helped discover the cause of battlefield PTSD.  And Uncle Sam paid for everything. No student debt. But I would under no circumstances consider putting Ph.D after my name.  In my field, everyone had a Ph.D.  It wasn't even table stakes. It was one white chip. You would be laughed at if you pranced around telling everyone you were a Ph.D. It was assumed if you were doing that research you had a doctorate.  Nobody would be impressed by it.  It would just be something to list in your resume. People would be more interested in who your mentor was.  That was important.

 So why ain't I doing Ph.D stuff now? Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I've written about it before so I shan't go over it again. But maybe why I'm not is why I don't judge the life paths and achievements or lack of them of others. Fate, luck, circumstance, decisions made by others outside your control, bad decisions you've made yourself...and on and on.  Life can be like walking a tightrope while playing dodgeball. You're lucky to keep your balance as long as you do, and nobody ever makes it to the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, y'all!

Apparently, I do, indeed, have a southern accent.  I was not born in the  South.  I was a Navy brat and picked up the accent from the descendants of the Johnny Rebs I hung out with as a child. I found this explanation on line:

"It's a common belief that accents are passed down from parents, but that’s not typically the case. Instead, kids pick up accents from the people they interact with daily—usually their peers, teachers, and neighbors. While parents play a huge role in language development, accents are more about social adaptation than family influence. In fact, many people may not even realize how much they adapt to fit into their social groups, subconsciously choosing speech patterns that help them feel connected."

Well, a blonde with a southern accent might as well be carrying a sign saying, "I'm dumb."  I've been called a corn pone and laughed at because of my accent. That wouldn't be so bad if I actually was from the South.  But not to be a Southerner and to catch their grief...  No fair! Gee whiz.

Apparently the second, I am what they call a Third Culture kid, and one of that particular subset the military brat, with no particular place to call home. So I can equally be a southern California surfer girl, a Montana cowgirl or a Southern Belle gobbling goobers and grits -- or none of the above. Whatever, man.  But southern gal is okay.  I'm fine with that. Boy, howdy, I tell you what...wait -- is that southern or Texan?

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fifty years ago today

Marion Haley plays the
lady cop. She was Brenda
in the 1970 movie
Lovers and Other Strangers.

 Half a century ago, the country was celebrating it's 200th anniversary.  It was a big deal and people were proud of the accomplishments of our country and the sheer fact that we had made it for 200 years.  That was despite the fact that in 1976 there was, it would seem, not a lot to celebrate.  The country had just lost a war for the first time ever, and a brutal one that had lasted a decade and torn the country apart, with radicals setting off bombs, battles between "students" and "hard hats," the Kent State thing, and on and on.  There had been in recent years race riots in which dozens had been killed, political assassinations.  There was the Patty Hurst-Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping and bank robberies.  There had been a bird flu outbreak with mandated vaccinations that the public rebelled against, there had been the oil crisis and gas lines, there was a national speed limit of 55 mph, stagflation was in the news, unemployment and inflation were rising, Red China was admitted to the United Nations and Taiwan thrown out, Watergate and Nixon's resignation were fresh in memory, there was...Lord, I don't know but probably a lot more. Oh, right, disco. 

A postage stamp today costs 78¢

And yet the country seems to have been in a great mood.  My mother remembers it as a time of relief and celebration.  The bad old Sixties were in the past.  The gas lines were gone, the seemingly endless Viet Nam War was finally over and who cared if we won or lost as long as the damn thing was done with. We were sure never going to get into another mess like that. We had learned our lesson.

Anyway, here is a radio drama from this very day 50 years ago.  It's a routine cop story but does provide a window into what the world was like as our 200th anniversary approached.  Before the story begins there is a news commentary anticipating the very first Mars lander, expected to touch down on the Red Planet on July 4th, talking about what we might find there, including -- people really thought this was possible -- actual Martians. Notice that 50 years later we went to the moon again after two generations and nobody really seemed to pay much attention.

The ads are interesting relics of the times.  For instance, there's a commercial for a pressure canner.  How many people can their own fruits and vegetables today? Fifty years ago, it was common enough that a national radio program carried ads for canners, as it did for women's magazines promoting recipes.  CB radio was the hot new thing. I find the style of songs backing some of the commercials also interesting, very sweet and pleasant.

The story itself has interesting elements.  The cop duo who solves the crime consist of the old, jaded guy looking forward to his retirement and a young, eager-beaver girl cop new on the job. I know, what a yawn.  But I guess back then it wasn't.  Then there is a reference to the new phenomenon of public pornography, X-rated, explicit, as they called them, movies.  And an amusement park that features a professional chess master that customers pay a dollar to try to beat.  If they do, they win two dollars.  Do amusement parks today tout, "Try to beat our chess master"?  Does the average amusement park-goer even know how to play chess today? 

Anyway, for old time's sake, give it a listen. 

  "Checkmate," first broadcast over CBS Radio Mystery Theater on June 21, 1976.

 

 

 

 

California roots

 My first ancestor in California that I know of was William Wolfskill who came to Los Angeles  in 1831 (yes, it existed then) and tried hunting fur seals, but the Russians, who were all over the California coast with their Aleut sidekicks, had pretty much cleaned them out (as well as killed off the Channel Island Indians). He married a Spanish señorita and settled down to develop vineyards and citrus orchards, then got into cattle ranching, doing quite well in all his endeavors.  One of his descendants helped finance the Chaffey brothers in establishing Etiwanda and had extensive citrus groves in that area.

 Years later, another one of my ancestors, part Northern Cheyenne (I've written about how this came to be a couple of times), scouting for the Bartleson emigrant wagon train, made it to California in 1841.  Years later, one of his sons participated in the  second  Pitt River expedition of  1857 against the hostiles under Gen. George Crook. When the Civil War broke out, he tried to go east to join Crook's boys in the Army of West Virginia but ended up joining a cavalry unit in Nebraska that didn't serve with Crook but fought the Cheyenne and Sioux in the war that erupted after the Chivington Massacre. So he was probably fighting some of his own distant  relatives, a kind of civil war of its own, if you will.

Another of my ancestors, who made his fortune in ranching and mining in Montana, came to southern California around the turn of the 20th century and invested in real estate, oil, the early movie industry and the rising aviation industry.  He hired the architect Horatio Cogswell to design houses on his real estate projects.  Cogswell created the quintessentially classic Los Angeles bungalow as well as such houses as Pickfair for Mary Pickford, who was a good friend of my great-grandmother.  I have seen a photo of her (my great-grandmother) with Pickford and Anne Morrow before she became Mrs. Lindbergh at some social function at Pickfair.

 He invested in the Keystone Film Co. of Mack Sennett and sprung for $100,000 in 1915 to build Mabel Normand a studio at Fountain and Brae. He was driven out of the movie industry by the arrival of gangsters from back east, specifically the goons of Murder, Inc., the Bugsy Siegel mob.

My great-grandfather became friends with Donald Hall when he worked at Douglas in Santa Monica before he moved to Ryan in San Diego and designed The Spirit of St. Louis.  While he was serving in the Navy as an aviator, he (my great-grandfather) met and became friends with Charles Lindbergh at Panama in 1929 when he (Lindbergh) visited the USS Saratoga after the completion of Fleet Problem IX, probably in part because great-grandpa knew Hall, so they had a mutual acquaintance to spark the friendship.

Bits and pieces

I'm not sure, but I think I may have mentioned that in my wild and woolly days I was a photographer's model, even was a calendar girl.  Well, Some people have asked me if I am not concerned that my boys might come across these photos and wouldn't that be...awkward, and rather embarrassing?

Honestly, no.  It's unlikely they would ever see them, but if they did, so what?  They've seen their mom in her birthday suit before. As I've mentioned before, my husband photographed me in the nude and also used me as his model for his wood carvings.  He displayed the photos and sculptures in his office and workshop here at the ranch. The kids don't even notice them.  They prefer the ones he made of wolves, mountain lions, dogs, horses and bulls, not their dopey mom.

Also, we all used to go skinny dipping. I don't do that with them anymore because they are growing up, faster every day, it seems.

And anyway I make sure they they meet lots of pretty girls to focus their attention on, not their dumb old mom.  Pretty soon they will have girlfriends and be deep in puppy love and their mother will fade into the background. Which is how it should be.

****** 

My second cousin, of whom I've written, has come to spend his summer vacation on the ranch, working the odd jobs that always need doing.  He broke up with his girlfriend but doesn't seem upset about it at all.  He just shrugged when I asked about her and said it was fun while it lasted but you know how those things go. I suppose it wasn't that serious. Then he said he still had a crush on me and I said, oh, pshaw, when did you ever have a crush on me and he said you know. But I didn't. Not then, whenever it was, and not now. 

I do see echoes of the diffident, shy guy he was before he went off to the academy, but he is much more of a self-confident person than he was. It's hard to believe he's just 21. He takes charge like a much more mature man. 

My boys look up to him and hang out with him whenever they can. He takes them out in the sailboat and teaches them how to sail it, tacking and reaching and so forth. He also teaches them water rescue techniques and lifeguard stuff that he has learned.  They all go skinny-dipping. I'm tempted to do it, too. But I just stay on shore fixing the picnic lunch.  My daughter doesn't swim with them, either, let alone go skinny-dipping with them, although she used to.  She's getting to be all grown up and instinctively knows it's not wise.  The innocence of childhood passes so quickly.

****** 

I came across the assistant ranch manager, good old Mr. Shoe, sitting in the shade looking rather glum and I asked him what was wrong. I was afraid it was some ranch trouble, but he asked if I had a minute, which I did, so I sat down beside him while he told me of some of his personal problems. I couldn't help him with any of them, but just getting things off his chest seemed to lighten his mood. To help cheer him up, I told him I had some old shoes I was planning to throw away, but if he wanted any.... 

He perked right up and we went up to the house where I let him browse my shoe closet (yes, I have a shoe closet) and pick out a pair of heels.  I really wasn't going to throw any away, I just said that.  And no he doesn't wear them. He has a shoe fetish.  It's a harmless quirk  -- which I can kind of understand; I love shoes, too, but not in that way, heh. He is valued and I need him so I let it go. He said he would return the shoes after he was done but I said not necessary, you can keep them. He seemed a bit disappointed so I said okay bring them back. That made him happy and he asked if I would wear them after he returned them and I said sure I guess and that made him really happy.  But I won't. Maybe I won't. Well...they are really nice shoes.  It would be a shame not to wear them anymore.

 ******

My mother and father are both baby boomers and they have always been the best in my mind. I love, admire and respect them more than I could ever express. They have always been my role models and from as far back as I can remember I always wanted to have the life my mother has had and always wanted to marry a man like my dad, which I did. The people who educated me, trained me, helped me achieve my goals, develop my abilities, were almost all boomers.  All good people that I looked up to and relied on.

So I really can't get my head around all this hatred of boomers I see whenever I venture onto on-line sites where people let fly with all their resentments, hostilities, complaints and just plain bitchiness. I don't get it.   

Oh? You're going to explain it to me? Listen, kimo sabe, I don't care. Put a sock in it.  Talk to the hand because the face doesn't care. ¿Comprende? 

These Sixties kids had no idea that they would become the target of burning hatred from their ungrateful spawn half a century later just for living their lives as best they could, making their way through a world they never created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 How to Regain Your Soul

by William Stafford

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep
long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way
when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,
when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you
     again. 


So Much of the World

by Gregory Djanikian

So much of the world exists
without us

the mountain in its own steepness

the deer sliding
into the trees becoming
a darkness
in the woods' darkness.

So much of an open field
lies somewhere between the grass
and the dragonfly's drive and thrum

the seed and seedling,
the earth within.

But so much of it lies in someone
standing alone at the edge of a field
with a life apart

feeling for a moment
the plover's cry
on the tongue

the curve and plumb
of the apple bough
in limb and bone.

So much of it between
one thing and another,

days of invitation,
then of release and return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, yes

 

 

  

So there!

I'm not hyper masculine.
In fact, I'm quite feminine.
I've been tested! 

 

The Fleet

  I found this photo of the Fleet Model 2 that my grandfather was posing with when he was a young man.  It looks like the kind of picture you would take of your new car, doesn't it? Maybe this was taken the day he got it. I don't know. But it's a nice-looking airplane.  It's in pretty rough shape now, neglected for I don't know how long, decades,probably.

It's kind of sad to see it that way, but that's the way all our material possessions end up. Things we dearly longed to have eventually finish as just some old junk, stored in the attic or basement and forgotten, tossed out, donated, hauled to the dump. All the wishes to have, all the work you do to save the money to buy the most wonderful thing in the world and it ends up just being trash.

Oh, stop that, Wanda. You're going to depress yourself.  So okay, maybe I will have the Fleet restored.  It would make another great project for my boys, especially if they know once they get it in flying condition they can take to the skies in it and zoom around like Ace Drummond in the 1930s. ♫"Oh give me a ship and a song!"♬  Knowing them, one will pilot the Fleet and the other the Waco and they will dogfight each other. And their mom will be on the ground shouting up at the sky, "Be careful!"

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead at 24

Forgot to publish this! 

For the week of Memorial Day

Today, May 30, is the real Memorial Day, as my grandparents assured me.  They hated that all our holidays were turned into three-day weekends, erasing their importance and meaning.  Memorial Day used to be a day everyone took off from work specifically to take them out of their ordinary lives to remember and honor those of their fellow Americans who no longer had lives, ordinary or otherwise, because they had been killed in our wars. There were parades, speeches, prayers, visits to cemeteries.

Oh, well.

Then 2nd Lt. Stiles when a B-17 co-pilot.

Here's one of my relatives from the Colorado branch of the family killed in World War II, lst Lt. George Wilbert "Bert" Stiles.  He flew 35 missions as the co-pilot of a B-17 with the 401st Bomb Squadron of the 91st Bomb Group from March through August, 1944, then volunteered for a fighter squadron flew P-51s with the 505th fighter Squadron of the 339th Fighter Group, which he joined in late October, 1944.  He was killed November 26, 1944 on his 16th mission in a dogfight with FW-190s over Hanover, which was defended by 400 Luftwaffe fighters.  He is credited with shooting down one FW before he failed to pull out of a dive while pursuing another, probably because G forces caused him to black out.  That was a common occurrence in those days before the invention of the G-suit. He was 24.

 Bert's passion was to be a writer. The Saturday Evening Post  published four of his short stories about life as a forest ranger in Estes Park, and he had others published in Liberty, The Writer and The American Mercury. While in England, he wrote articles for the Daily Mail as well as Yank and Air Force magazines.

I've read “Portrait of a Guy Thinking About an Island” which was published in Air Force, November, 1944; “Situation Normal” also in Air Force, February, 1945; “It’s a Sad World, Cardwell” published in The American Mercury, April, 1942;  “The Case of the Lucky Amateur” published in The Writer, June, 1943; “Solo” published in Yank, October 15, 1943; “You Can’t Win with Women” published in The Saturday Evening Post, November 22, 1941 (guys have been writing the same lament forever!); and “The Ranger Is a Dame” published in The Saturday Evening Post, February 27, 1943, about a female forest ranger (Do take note trad wife enthusiasts: even back in the good old days you'd be hard-pressed to find one. Women worked "men's" jobs even then.).

 I think Bert would have been a successful and popular writer had he lived.  He had an easy, friendly, conversational style, evidenced in his autobiographical Serenade to the Big Bird. If you want to know what a difficult job it was to fly a B-17 in formation, give it a read.

I can't help but wonder how much talent we lost in that stupid war that was none of our business.  Even the Pacific war, where the Japs attacked us first, we could have avoided if we had not started the Spanish-American war, and thus acquired the Philippines and Guam.  So the fighting in East Asia wouldn't have affected us. And had we adhered to the Neutrality Acts, we could have avoided any involvement in the European fracas.  Yeah, fracas.  Those Euros are always going at each other; they're doing it today.  It's what they love best, slaughtering each other.  Not our business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, yer mother wears combat boots!

My daughter found an old photo of me in Afghanistan the other day. It was poorly exposed and out of focus so she ran it through ChatGPT to clean it up. Chat-chan did an okay job but got some things a little wonky.  The M249 looks like the magazine has been replaced by a Kleenex box or something, for one thing.

What struck me, though, was how young I was then. I still think of myself as the same as I was in those days, the same as I have always been, but old photos put the lie to that. Would I like to be that young again? Not if I had to go through all that I have in the years since then.  At least now they are all in the past. What a blessing that is.

Oh, I was just posing with the M249.  Some guy wanted to take my picture with it (and have my hair down rather than in its usual bun). I had other duties assigned to me by the Great Black Father in Washington.  

That thing was heavy.  With the 200-round drum magazine  it weighed something like 25 or 30 pounds, if I'm remembering correctly.  Anyway, it was heavy.  And needed lots of CLP to keep it working. I can still hear guys cussing it out. Each fire team had one and the poor guy who lugged it also carried a spare barrel or two, three or four ammo drums plus all the usual crap everybody humped, PPE and ruck, so the guy could easily be loaded down with 150 lbs. or more. No wonder so many now suffer knee and back problems. 

I was always armed with my service pistol, the Beretta M9. Due to green on blue incidents, orders were to have it in Condition 1 -- magazine inserted, round in the chamber, slide forward, hammer down and safety on -- at all times and be prepared to defend myself at any moment. Somebody told me that about a quarter of all American deaths in Afghanistan were green on blue, meaning they were the result of Afghan Army soldiers turning on us. I remember one incident where three MARSOC men were killed while meeting with the local police chief in Sangin. He invited them to dinner with him, then murdered them while they were eating.  That same day at FOB Delhi in Garmsir, three other Marines were gunned down by an Afghan Army soldier. With allies like that....

Just thought I'd throw this in here. Good for a laugh. IYKYK, lol.

By the way, Afghanistan had a population of about 28 million people in those days and is the size of Texas.  We put 100,000 troops in there with sort of hand-wavy orders (and lots of ROE) to stop it from being a haven for terrorists, the Taliban and assorted bad guys.  Now you might think 100,000 troops is a lot, but consider that for the army there were something like 14 support troops for every trigger-puller.  I think the Marines claim 10. So in actuality there were, what, at the very most 7,000 guys outside the wire patrolling Indian country trying to keep a lid on things.

Oh, that was gonna work.  Fer shure. 

Get real.

I've heard the American armed forces described as a military of lions led by sheep, but my dad said it's more like a military of lions led by jackasses. And I agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever

I read some post by a woman telling women what types of dresses they should and shouldn't wear.  Yeah, okay, I guess -- if she is saying this is what I like to wear. None of it concerned me because I am going to wear whatever I like and I don't care about some stranger's opinion of what I'm wearing.  But I was curious, so I read on, until she said her husband pointed out a woman wearing a dress at the mall and suggested they could become friends because they were both wearing dresses.  Besides that being a really lame reason to try to befriend someone, what got me was the woman rejecting the suggestion because she didn't like the style of dress the woman was wearing.

Okie-dokie.

That got me musing about how I think I am a conservative but it always turns out I don't have much, if anything, in common with conservative women.  They are always judgemental. What about? Everything! What you wear, what you say, how you sit, what work you do, what you cook, how you raise your children, how you interact with your husband.... The list is endless.  But at the top of it is always something to do with sex and how, by God, you better sit up straight and keep your knees together and never, ever smile at a bawdy joke, let alone laugh.

Phooey on that.

Around the ranch I wear 5.11s or jeans, baggy shirts and clodhoppers.  About the sexiest I get is in summer wearing cut-offs made from worn out jeans and an old tied-off shirt, blouse, cut down tee-shirt or tank top. Some guys do like that, it's true, although my intent is my own comfort and if a work gang stops what they are doing when I walk by and I hear a few muttered Oh, my Gods I can't say I mind. But when I go out high steppin' it's look out boys, Wanda's back in town! 

 

 

 

 I can hear Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee saying, "You call that a boner? Now this is a boner!"

 

 

Need any help with that?

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great War

 For the week of Memorial Day

(Updated information on Kay Tusing and Egbert Beach, 5-30-26) 

 

 The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of Nineteen Eighteen.  The end of the war to end all wars.  The war to make the world safe for democracy.  We mustn't forget.  Neither the war nor the propaganda.

Three of my relatives were killed in that war:  Pvt. Kay Tusing, Pvt. Charles Kayser, and Lt. Egbert Beach.  All were killed in France.  Pvt. Kayser and  Pvt. Tusing are buried there still.  Lt. Beach was brought home after the war and buried in the family plot.

Immediately above is a remembrance card for Private Kay Tusing, my great-great uncle, who was killed in action in France during World War I.
The printed copy lists his date of death as October 1, 1918, but someone has penciled in a 6. Checking with Dept. of War records, he was killed in action on the 16th. The person who penciled in the correct date was probably his sister, Mrs. Effie Canfield. 

Kay was drafted in the summer of 1918 and served with the 80th, "Blue Ridge," Division. On October 16, 1918, the Division was engaged in a brutal, multi-day struggle to capture the Grand Carré Farm and clear the southern edges of the Bois de Bantheville. This was part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in which the division faced grueling combat against entrenched German troops who had occupied the area for years. Fighting in densely wooded terrain, the division suffered heavy casualties from German machine-guns and relentless artillery barrages. The Bois de Bantheville was strongly fortified by the Germans as part of the Kriemhilde Stellung (the last of the Hindenburg Line's defensive positions). The woods and farm areas were subject to constant enfilade fire and poison gas attacks. I do hope Kay was not killed by poison gas.  What a horrible way to die.

Second Lieutenant Egbert Beach survived the sinking of his troop transport by a German U-Boat the night of February 5, 1918, (267 American troops and 10 ship's crewmen drowned) making it ashore to the Isle of Islay in the Irish Sea from which he was rescued and sent on to France.

Beach was killed on April 27, 1918.  While mapping out trenches near the village of Villers-Tournelle for an infantry working party, he died when a German 155 mm artillery shell exploded nearby. At the time of his death, he was serving with Company B of the 1st Engineering Battalion of the 32nd Infantry ("Red Arrow" Division). The area near Villers-Tournelle was an active, heavily shelled front line trench warfare sector enduring daily high-explosive bombardments and gas attacks. On this exact day, units recorded sustained heavy shellfire across their trenches, leading to numerous casualties. 

Beach had graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and enlisted when America entered the war.

 Private Charles Kayser was killed in September, 1918, on the 29th. I know something of his death because his sister Henrietta wrote to his unit commander and asked what happened.  Major Lucius Salisbury, 106th Infantry Sanitary Detachment, 27th Infantry, replied:
"Following over the top with the company, your brother stopped near the Knoll, and, exposed to heavy machine-gun and shell fire, had dressed the wounds of one man and started to dress those of another when a shell exploded and killed all three.  Your brother offered his life for the cause without regard to personal danger...."  There followed some lines of sympathy.
Reading a little bit of the history of the war, I found that during the night of September 24 – 25, 1918, the 27th Division relieved the British 18th and 74th Divisions near Ronssoy, France. At 5:30 a.m., September 27, 1918, the 106th Infantry attacked as part of a major frontal assault in what was called the Battle of St. Quentin Canal, its assigned objective the capture of Bois de Malakoff, or as the troops called it, the Knoll.  During that battle, more than 13,000 American doughboys became casualties.  Pvt. Kayser had a lot of company.

"You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next Spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there.
I repeated my thoughts to my wife, but she said it was not difficult to understand about battlefields: The blood of the men killed on the field, and the bodies buried there, fertilize the ground and stimulate the growth of vegetation. That was all quite natural she said.
But I could not agree with this, too-simple, explanation: To me it has always seemed that God is so sickened with men, and their unending cruelty to each other, that he covers the places where they have been as quickly as possible."

~ William March, Company K

 March served as a sergeant in Co F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 4th Brigade of Marines, Second Division of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force. He saw his first action at Verdun near Les Éparges. He fought at Belleau Wood, where he was wounded. He participated in the battles of Soissons and Saint-Mihiel. He received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Cross for valor.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 ~ Wilfred Owen

2nd Lt. Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal.
 

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori

For the week of Memorial Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a poem about the Battle of the Bulge. 

The Battle
by Louis Simpson

 Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat

Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead

Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat

The night on every side was turning red.

They halted and they dug. They sank like moles

Into the clammy earth between the trees.

And soon the sentries, standing in their holes,

Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.

At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.

Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.

This lasted many days. The snow was black.

The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.

Most clearly of that battle I remember

The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin

Around a cigarette, and the bright ember

Would pulse with all the life there was within.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

"During World War II, from 1943 to 1945 Simpson served with the 101st Airborne Division. He fought in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. His company was involved in a very bloody battle with German forces on the west bank of what is now the Carentan France Marina -- Simpson wrote his poem "Carentan O Carentan" about being ambushed there. In the Netherlands, he was involved in Market Garden and Opheusden fighting. At Veghel, his company suffered 21 killed in a brutal shelling while in the local church yard. At Bastogne, he and his fellow paratroopers endured bitterly cold temperatures while under siege by German forces."

Carentan O Carentan 

Trees in the old days used to stand

And shape a shady lane

Where lovers wandered hand in hand

Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal

Where we came two by two

Walking at combat-interval.

Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground

Was soft and bright with dew.

Far away the guns did sound,

But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke

Hung still above the sea

Where the ships together spoke

To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass

You would have said a walk

Of farmers out to turn the grass,

Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits

Waited till it was time,

And aimed between the belt and boot

And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is

A hammer at my knee.

And call it death or cowardice,

Don’t count again on me.

Everything’s all right, Mother,

Everyone gets the same

At one time or another.

It’s all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,

Down such a leafy lane.

I never drank in a canal,

Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves

And it is not the wind,

The twigs are falling from the knives

That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,

The way to turn and shoot.

But the Sergeant’s silent

That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly

Our place upon the map.

But the Captain’s sickly

And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what’s my duty,

My place in the platoon?

He too’s a sleeping beauty,

Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan

Before we met with you

We never yet had lost a man

Or known what death could do.

This poem is about what came to be known as the battle of Bloody Gulch. Carentan was a vital crossroads that separated the American landing zones at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. Capturing the town and its canal system was essential for the Americans to merge their two beachheads into a single, continuous front and establish a secure defensive line. The approaches to Carentan led through marshy fields that could only be crossed by four bridges over the canal or across the Barquette Lock. The Germans flooded the area, funneling the American troops onto these narrow passageways. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the 101st's paratroopers seized the Lock and held it against German counter-attacks. Between June 10 and 15, the paratroopers engaged in brutal, house-to-house combat to push out the German 6th Parachute Regiment.

Not forgotten

 In honor of Memorial Day, I thought I'd repost this entry from an old blog I had.  The lieutenant was one of my great uncles.

**************** 

Lieutenant George Schuncke

The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Lieutenant George William Schuncke, United States Naval Reserve, for extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Navy Combat Plane in Composite Squadron SIXTY-FIVE (VC-65), attached to the U.S.S. ST. LO (CVE-63), in action
against enemy Japanese forces on Saipan in the Marianas Islands on 2 July 1944. Lieutenant Schuncke valiantly launched an attack against two Japanese armored cars firing on a U.S. Navy seaplane. Despite the terrific and concentrated anti-aircraft fire he flew in low to attack, holding persistently to the heavily armored targets until his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed behind enemy lines. His courageous initiative and determined aggressiveness were directly instrumental in saving the seaplane from probable destruction and reflect the highest credit on himself and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

General Orders: Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin No. 338 (May 1945)

His ship didn't long survive him.

USS St. Lo

The St. Lo, hit by a kamikaze, doomed, Battle off Samar 10-25-44.

At 10:47, the task unit came under a concentrated air attack by the Shikishima Special Attack Unit. A Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero—perhaps flown by Lieutenant Yukio Seki—crashed into the flight deck of St. Lo at 10:51. Its bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded on the port side of the hangar deck, where aircraft were in the process of being refueled and rearmed. A gasoline fire erupted, followed by six secondary explosions, including detonations of the ship's torpedo and bomb magazine. St. Lo was engulfed in flame and sank 30 minutes later.Of the 889 men aboard, 113 were killed or missing and approximately 30 others died of their wounds.

William was a descendent of  Christian Ludwig Schuncke, the early 19th century German pianist, composer and close friend of Robert Schumann.