BAGHDAD — by The Associated Press — The U.S. military says American and Iraqi forces killed more than 50 Islamic State militants, including several commanders, in northern Iraq last month.
U.S. Central Command said Sunday that an Oct. 30 operation in Salahuddin province killed five ISIS leaders and more than 30 other militants, and that an operation the following day in the Makhmour Mountains killed around 20 ISIS fighters. It says the leaders killed in the first raid were responsible for coordinating attacks across northern and western Iraq.
It’s a short story, but there’s a nice shot of a grenade exploding in a hillside cave.
Patton, then 32, wrote a poem titled “Peace — Nov. 11, 1918” in which he expressed contempt for civilians cheering the silencing of the guns that would deprive him and other warriors of “the whitehot joy of taking human life.”
“The poem described Patton’s ‘dismay’ at the popular excitement that greeted the peace, which he characterized as the ‘cruel glee of the weak,’” the notes continue. “Patton’s poem mourned the loss during peacetime of the virtues that he believed war inspired, such as sacrifice and purpose.”
Patton was dyslexic, which left the poem full of misspelled words, but the original draft is on disply as part of a display by the Library of Congress.
The library’s notes say “an editor, possibly Patton’s wife Beatrice, has crossed out those lines that express especially strong sentiments like comparing peaceful life to ‘a festering sewer’ ” in the draft of the poem on exhibit.
The reference is to the following lines:
“Looking forward I could see
Life like a festering sewer
Full of the fecal Pacafists [sic]
Which peace makes us endure”
If you bring this up to current events, does it almost seem prescient, as in a vague way, a reference to the disturbances we see now in politics?
If you go back into the histories of both World Wars, neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Roosevelt wanted to be involved in the war in Europe. Both of them were Socialists in their thinking, with Wilson wanting a one world government through the League of Nations, and Roosevelt leaning toward government work programs to resolve the economic issues of the Great Depression. Both of them were reluctantly dragged into those wars, Wilson by a U-boat sinking the Lusitania in the Atlantic, and Roosevelt by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Neither of them understood (or seemed to want to understand) that pacifism of the kind that Angela Merkel has offered Europe for some time now leads to destruction of your society. And she’s lost her majority because the AfD received enough votes to take a seat in Parliament.
What Patton forgot, in his disdain for peacetime, was that while it is necessary to be prepared to defend your home from invaders, peacetime is the reward for successfully doing so… until the next bunch of barbarians show up at the gates.
While the Band of Brothers speech from Henry VI used to always be posted on St. Crispin’s Day, the date was unintentionally missed this year. Maybe it’s more appropriate to place that speech here today, on the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I.
It is therefore herewith provided, and while at the time, women did not participate in warfare (with the exception of Jeanne d’Arc) , perhaps you could include “and Sisters” in your mind during Kenneth Branagh’s rousing pep talk by Henry V to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt.
And set a place for those who did not make it home….
… and sing the “Non Nobis” and “Te Deum” and then… to home.
This was a well-kept secret. It was, in fact, so well-kept for over 50 years, that no one knew anything about it, including the families of these people who worked in this unit, until it was finally declassified. It was the Ghost Army, a replicated army of equipment, tanks, landing craft, planes, etc., placed where Hitler’s spies and army could see them, and be fooled into believing they were real.
Most of the people who participated in this project just put it behind them and got on with their lives, so much so, that when Bernie Bluestein, a local Chicago area artist who is now 95, decided he wanted to take an Honor Flight to Washington, DC, all those memories he’d let fade into the past started coming to the surface. When he went to Europe with his son Keith, now 63, he began to tell his son all of this buried, long-suppressed stuff, astonishing him.
Mr. Bluestein was 19 when he was drafted into the Army. Because of his ability to sketch comic strips and pinup girls in Cleveland, OH, he was placed with the 603rd Camouflage Engineers Battalion, the objective being to create an entire army that would fool Adolf Hitler’s spies and aerial observers. These people were all levels of skill in art, from professional artists to students. They created everything from fake airplanes parked on what appeared to be airfields to convoys emplaced in France, to inflatable tanks with loudspeakers playing tank noises – all to fool the German army. And they couldn’t tell their families where they were (23rd Headquarters Special Troops unit) or what they were doing.
To keep historical records intact, an organization titled The Ghost Army Legacy Project has been formed. The link is here: http://www.ghostarmylegacyproject.org
The first ever Ghost Army historical marker was dedicated September 26, 2018, in Bettembourg, Luxembourg.
11th November 1918 – Armistice ending World War I is signed.
General John Pershing continued the attacks on the Germans, because he did not know when/if the peace treaty (Armistice) would be signed. The HistoryNet article is well worth the time it takes to read it. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the Armistice ending World War I went into effect. Signed by all parties at 05:00 hours that morning, it meant that hostilities should have ended quickly. But troops were still sent into the field to fight and artillery was still fired to get rid of unspent munitions. GEN Pershing is quoted in the article below.
From the New York Times files below are archival photos taken on Armistice Day and after. You bubbleheads will note the crew of the USS Calumet, a submarine patrol, returning to the Brooklyn Marine Base from sea duty, taken on Nov. 17, 1918.
These photos cover an expanded period of time and are from various source, including London and Paris. Note the US troops in the parade through London’s Great Arch.
Armistice Day became an official holiday in the US in 1938, and in 1954, following World War II and the Korean War, President Eisenhower changed the name of the Armistice Day holiday to Veterans Day. The date was moved around several times but finally resettled on November 11, where it belongs. Note the differences in the VA health care system between 1930 and now.
World War I was supposed to b e the war to end all wars.
This link will take you to a full article (not pay-walled) on the Spanish flu pandemic, which may have originated in China as avian or swine flu, but erupted in a virulent way during and after World War I.
From the article: “The impact of this pandemic was not limited to 1918–1919. All influenza A pandemics since that time, and indeed almost all cases of influenza A worldwide (excepting human infections from avian viruses such as H5N1 and H7N7), have been caused by descendants of the 1918 virus, including “drifted” H1N1 viruses and reassorted H2N2 and H3N2 viruses. The latter are composed of key genes from the 1918 virus, updated by subsequently incorporated avian influenza genes that code for novel surface proteins, making the 1918 virus indeed the “mother” of all pandemics.”
Prior to World War I, the causes of influenza were unknown. There were no separate strain names for the various types, such as swine flu or bird flu. Anyone could catch a “congestion of the lungs” and subsequently die of pneumonia after recovering from the “congestion”. There were no vaccines for it or anything else back then.
The post-war flu pandemic resulted in 50 million to 150 million deaths worldwide, although there was no actual census count. But we had another serious scare in 2006. Remember the bird flu pandemic? The research for the 2006 pandemic had already started at CDC in 1995, with researchers reconstructing the virus’s structure from autopsied materials left over from WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Shortly after that, the 1997 H5N1 avian influenza A pandemic broke out in Hong Kong. The finding that H1N1’s descendants include swine flu and avian flu RNA resulted in corporations like the one I worked for at the time offering flu and pneumonia vaxes while at work, for a modest fee.
The UK had a popular TV series titled “Survivors”, which was about a worldwide pandemic caused by a combined RNA flu vaccine which was supposed to stop the flu, but instead it became as aggressive as the bug in Stephen King’s “The Stand”, which was based on the same idea. Both “bugs” were recombinant shifting antigen viruses constantly seeking new hosts for survival. In both stories, the surviving populations were sparse, and if the viruses shifted into new hosts such as dogs or cats, humans were doomed.
All I’m saying is, get your flu shot because the swine flu and avian flu viruses mutate and combine at will, always on the search for new hosts so that they can spread. It’s survival. Oranges and lemons help repel it. Must be something about ascorbic acid, eh? That, and bacon. And your VA flu shot is free, too.
Let’s just help the flu bugs not survive, because if there were two major episodes of flu in less than 10 years (1997 and 2006), with air transportation the way it is now, it will happen again.
Janice Charlotte Christensen of Waukegan died on April 26, 1965, without a veteran’s recognition for her World War II service in the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Known as WASPs for short, the more than 1,800 civilian volunteer young women flew almost every type of military aircraft as part of the experimental program that lasted two years.
Near her grave at the North Shore Garden of Memories cemetery in North Chicago on Friday, Capt. Christensen was honored by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider in a ceremony that formally recognized her status as a World War II veteran.
Schneider offered words of appreciation for the woman who learned how to fly at what is now Waukegan National Airport when she was 29, then helped establish the Waukegan Civil Air Patrol Squadron in 1942 and was accepted as a WASP in 1943.
“They were the elite and helped the war effort. They were brave,” Schneider said.
Though it was unavailable to be affixed Friday due to the morning’s wintry weather, a WASP medallion from the Department of Veterans Affairs will be permanently placed on Christensen’s grave at the North Chicago cemetery soon so the public can pay their respects properly, Schneider said.
“It’s a shame that Janice and WASP like her were denied veteran status after their service — a mistake not corrected for more than 30 years,” Schneider said. “But it is truly inspiring to me, and to everyone here, that our community has come together today to pay our respect to her and all the other WASP (personnel).”
It wasn’t until 2009 that veterans in the WASP program were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Barack Obama.
Christensen never got to see her service recognized, but her relatives said she would have been pleased with Friday’s ceremony.
“We were proud that my sister Janice joined the WASP (program). Her job was to take planes from where they were manufactured to where they were needed,” said Dagmar Joyce Noll, Christensen’s sole surviving sibling. “She knew that what she was doing was helping to win and end WWll.”
The rest of the story is at the link.
Unfortunately, Janice Christiansens is probably not the only WWII WASP pilot who has been overlooked. I think ChipNASA could probably supply us with a directional link to a roster of them. If you have a relative whose efforts went unrecognized please speak up.
They flew in all weather, under all conditions, to get the job done, and because they loved to fly, like their counterparts, the British transport pilots who ferried all planes of all kinds in all weathers from factories to air bases in England. They all faced great hazards that would probably ground a lot of current pilots, and did the job they were hired to do because they loved to fly.
It was not a hazard-free job, either. Some of these transport pilots died doing that job. So let’s give them a nod and lift a glass to all the air transport pilots, women and men both.
