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 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.

         

Yeah? And what else?

 
 Some women on one of these social media sites called me hyper-masculine because I was in the Navy or because I fly airplanes or whatever. I give that an eye roll and a tongue click. Please.  That's funny to me because when I was first in the Navy I was chastised for being too feminine, too empathetic, not hardened enough.  And you know what?  In my first NEC trajectory that was true.  No doubt. But I honestly think that a lot of the guys sincerely appreciated that I wasn't.  In that rough, gotta be tough world, there were times when a guy swimming up out of his haze of shock and pain saw a female face bending over him, whispering to him, it meant something. It helped him. It did. Ultimately, it hurt me too much to continue. I took too much of their pain inside me and couldn't do it any more.  I was too soft.  That is why I radically changed career paths. It was not easy.  But I did it.  I've written about all of that before.  No need to rehash it.

Anyway, believe me, flying airplanes is not masculine coded. And lots of women fly planes.  Have done so right from the beginning. So phooey on that. I mean, really.  Is driving a car masculine coded? A tractor? How about handling a team of horse and wagon? Plowing behind a mule? Women do and have done those things routinely.

But it did annoy me to be called hyper-masculine by other women.  If you are a guy reading this, how would you like it if other men called you hyper-feminine? Ew, no!  Right? Especially if you weren't in any way, but maybe liked to do something some see as female coded like... I don't know... sewing your own clothes, even though there have always been tailors.  You'd be a bit peeved.

This reminds me of what Nora Vincent wrote in her book,  Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man. When she was herself as a woman, other women considered her "butch."  But men, believing her to be a man, thought "he" was very effeminate. So maybe the wannabe mean girls gossiping about the crab who escaped the bucket think I'm masculine, but all the guys know I'm a feminine female from topknot to toenail.

 I was tempted to say to one harridan, hey, lady, give me five minutes alone with your husband and he'll forget your name.  Ten minutes alone with me and he'll forget his own name!  Haha.  But I didn't.  Rule No.1 when dealing with internet nuts is don't engage!  Walk on by. Anyway, why would I want to have anything to do with that gleeb's husband? Probably has breath so bad that it would scorch the paint off a Buick.  

I don't know if men police other men's behavior the way women do other women, but there is a certain type of woman who allies with others of her ilk to drag down women who attempt to excel...at anything really, but especially at things...beyond.  Not all women, but there is that type.  I think they are full of themselves.  They think they are the cat's meow and the bee's knees and they absolutely do not like it if some other woman outdoes them. If it's making a better rhubarb pie, it's bad enough, but if you become a heart surgeon or an astronaut, Katie bar the door because they are coming after you, going to do whatever they can to drag you down, belittle you, humiliate you...whatever they can think of.  Well, that doesn't work with me, nor with women like me, of which there are plenty in various fields, various accomplishments, achievements and successes, but we are all sisters in character.

Books my newsman relative left to me.

A job I took as an undergrad was freelancing articles for a national magazine. I didn't know how to go about reporting and writing articles so I asked my newsman relative, of whom I've written, who retired after 40 years on a major metropolitan newspaper.  He counseled me, helped me revise and edit. I learned a lot from him and when I got a piece to the stage where he said, "It'll do," I submitted it.  My articles were well-received by the editor, often becoming cover stories. I even got quoted in Time magazine, was a guest (via phone) on WOR-AM, appeared on some CNBC show, had agents call me wanting to shill me to other outlets. And what did the women staffers on the magazine say to me?  Well, one, in a very bitter tone, told me that everything had been just fine until I showed up and started writing these blockbusters.  Blockbusters.  Her word.  I didn't consider them "blockbusters" just stories my relative said were adequate.  I considered them half his, anyway.  Other women gossiped that I was an alcoholic (oh, please!), a drug addict, and, of course, that I was a lesbian.  When somebody's car was hit and damaged in the parking lot they accused me of doing it even though my car didn't have a scratch on it.  I'd rushed and had it repaired, you see.

Sigh.  Well, that whole experience soured me on wanting to have anything to do with journalism.  And also wised me up to a certain type of woman.  Not all.  There was another girl there, a full-time staffer, who was very good, certainly far better than me because she was doing it all on her own, not having a pro to coach her, and whom the other women and even the men, attacked viciously, so viciously that she quit, which was the goal of the harassment. Never underestimate the nastiness of underachievers, second-raters and the lazy. She and I were friends, allies against the malevolent midgets. When I dropped by the office to hand in my copy, we would have lunch.  The other staffers had done such a number on her self-confidence that she would start crying telling me of the abuse -- and it really was abuse -- she was subjected to and wondered if she was any good. I told her, truthfully, that I thought she was the only good writer they had and I read her stuff with interest and to help me to learn how to organize and present complicated facts in a readable style. Oh, yeah, she was accused of being mannish, too aggressive, by the other women.  Hyper-masculine, if you will. Same old same old.

As an aside, one of the "no fairs" of life:  I had a journalism pro, bound to me by blood, to help me do well in a job I was only doing as a temporary side gig.  I had no intent or desire to become a journalist. Yet the person who wanted that as a career, had the J-school degree, had no such connection, no one to coach her.  She was on her own with no helping hand. And probably a mountain of student loan debt. She got a good job and thought if she worked hard, did good work, she would establish her career and advance.  But instead, her stellar ability only earned her animus. Had she been a mediocre smoozer ... well, you know how that goes. 

I never heard from her again after she quit and, thinking about her now, for the life of me I can't remember her name. I hope that she has had a successful career, the one she deserved.

Musing on all this, I got thinking about my boy-crazy era.  I've mentioned before that I posed as an artist's and photographer's model and I really got a kick out of doing that, especially being a photographer's model, both professional and amateur. As I've written, I started  posing when I was still in high school and kept at it through college.  I think I liked posing for the amateurs more than the pros because those guys got so excited. I could tell. What a vanity high that was.  If my mom knew what I was up to she would have killed me. My dad would have killed the guys. And that there, bub, is a big difference between the female and the male. Mom would have yelled at me, informed me that she had brought me into this world and I shouldn't make her regret doing it and then grounded me till I was passed menopause.  Dad would have had a come-to-Jesus meeting with the boys and explained the lay of the land, their perilous position in it and suggested it would be in the best interest of their health to find another hobby -- now. But first he would have winked at me. 

Anyway, I don't think any of those guys would have considered me hyper-masculine. 

Not even, I'm sure.