Something for the weekend. Judy Garland singing the song of the Seabees seems appropriate for a Labor Day weekend.
At the outset of World War II, the Navy faced a task of unbelievable difficulty. Around the globe, and especially in the Pacific, the Navy would be fighting in regions practically untouched by the modern world. Everything to support military operations would have to be built from scratch: bases, ports, airstrips, and an endless parade of other facilities. The task was daunting, perhaps impossible. However, the Navy had a secret weapon: the American worker. (more…)
“When the world had given us up for dead, the interview with Matthews put the lie to our disappearance.”
Che Guevara, January 1958
(Originally posted at The American Catholic, I thought the history mavens of Almost Chosen People might enjoy it.)
Alas, if the mainstream media had only been half as questioning of Castro as the late Stuart Novins was when Castro appeared on Face the Nation on January 11, 1959. Novins published several stories detailing Castro’s embracing of Communism and the blood stained methods he used to sustain his rule. In short, Novins was a serious journalist interested in reporting the facts and alerting the American people to developments in Cuba.
Most of his colleagues had a different story to tell about Castro as detailed in Humberto Fontova’s book, The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro. In writing this book Fontova certainly has rich examples to choose from. Go here to view a sample of pro-Castro reporting over the decades in the US media.
It could be argued that Castro became dictator in Cuba largely due to the favorable coverage he received in The New York Times, courtesy of Herbert Matthews:
An audio recording of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 taking advantage of the division in Republican ranks that would lead Theodore Roosevelt to bolt the party and run as the standard bearer of the Bull Moose party that he created. Wilson’s matter of fact, dry delivery, so in keeping with his profession of professor, reminds me of how in so many ways he was the anti-Roosevelt in style, although the similarities in domestic policy between him and Roosevelt were closer that either of them, both of whom cordially detested the other, were comfortable with.
A tribute to the progress of medicine, of US military deaths in World War II, only 28% were non-battle related. In all earlier wars battled deaths had been exceeded by non-battle deaths:
In the Civil War out of 650,000 deaths, 291,000 were battle deaths.
In World War I out of 116,000 deaths, 53,000 were battle deaths.
In the American Revolution out of 25,000 deaths, 8,000 were battle deaths.
In the War of 1812 out of 15,000 deaths, 2,260 were battle deaths.
In the Mexican War out of 13,000 deaths, 1,733 were battle deaths.
In the Spanish-American War out of 2,000 deaths, 385 were battle deaths.
Since World War II the trend of diminishing non-battle deaths has continued: (more…)
Nominated for an academy award in 1943, and starring Elisha Cook, Jr., one of the best character actors, think The Maltese Falcon, of his day, this training film is head and shoulders above most produced by the Army in World War II. This film attempted to prepare men for what combat was like. As the debacle at Kasserine Pass in 1942 illustrated, combat was always a shock for green troops, particularly if they were up against veterans. Some things of course no amount of preparation can truly prepare anyone for, and combat is the prime example of that type of experience. However, the film would let troops know that it was common for all soldiers to be concerned about combat, and that such thoughts did not mean that a man was a coward. Additionally the combat scenes were quite graphic by the mild standards of 1943 and would give the soldiers viewing it a small taste of what combat was going to be like. Better than nothing.
“I was surprised at her beauty and intelligence, and believe it or not, her esprit de corps. Like any other Marine, she was enjoying a bottle of beer with her comrades. She was constantly the center of attraction and was fully aware of her importance. If she failed to receive the attention she felt her due, she would deliberately walk into a group of Marines and, in effect, enter the conversation. It was obvious the Marines loved her.”
Lieutenant General Randolph Pate
One of the most beloved members of the Marine Corps went into battle on four feet. A mare of Mongolian mixed breed, the horse who would become Sergeant Reckless was foaled in 1948 in South Korea. Originally named Ah Chim Hai, Morning Flame, she was sold to Lieutenant Eric Pederson, USMC, for $250.00 in October of 1952. (The owner was a stable boy who needed the money to buy an artificial leg for his sister who had stepped on a land mine.)
Pedersen bought the horse, which had been a race horse, to serve as a pack animal for his recoiless rifle platoon of the 5th Marine regiment. The platoon called her Reckless after the platoon’s nickname of Reckless Rifles. Gunnery Sergeant Joseph Latham gave Reckless an equine version of boot camp, known in her case as hoof camp. He taught her how to avoid getting tangled up in barbed wire, how to lay down under fire, and to run to a bunker when hearing the shout “Incoming”. Latham had his wife mail a pack saddle from the states so that Reckless could better fulfill her role of being a pack animal from the platoon. Reckless quickly became a platoon favorite and was given the freedom to roam the platoon encampment at night and to enter tents at will. She loved cokes and beer, and would eat with enthusiasm whatever she could get her mouth on, including, one dark day, $30.00 worth of winning poker chips of Latham.
However, Reckless quickly demonstrated that she was not a mere mascot or pet. In the battle of Hedy’s Crotch she proved fearless in transporting shells for the recoiless rifles of the platoon. At first alarmed by the sounds of the rifles going off, by the end of the day she was calmly going about her business. A highly intelligent horse, she only needed to be led the first few times, and afterwards would make the trips bringing up the shells on her own.
At the battle of Outpost Vegas, March 26-28, she received a promotion to Corporal for her sterling service, including on one day 51 solo trip bringing up 386 shells. She was slightly wounded twice during the engagement for which she was awarded two Purple Hearts.
Outside of battle Reckless performed many functions, including stringing telephone lines. It was said that she could string telephone lines at a rate that it would take 12 men to match. She enjoys the distinction of being the only horse to participate in a Marine Corps amphibious landing. (more…)
Something for the weekend. Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott by the Statler Brothers. A 1974 lament of how tawdry the movies had become, it fastened on Randolph Scott, king of B-movie westerns, as an icon for a better day when kids could be taken to the movies without parents being concerned about what they would be exposed to. I heard this song endlessly when it came out, my parents’ radio blaring it most mornings in the kitchen in 74 in the hour before I and my brother got up to prepare for yet another day in high school.
Scott was born as far from the West as it was possible to be in Virginia and raised in North Carolina. His family had money so he was educated in private schools. During World War I he served as an artillery observer in France, a highly dangerous post. (After Pearl Harbor, the 43 year old Scott attempted to enlist as a Marine, but was rejected due to his bad back.)
After his service in World War I, he worked for a time with his father in the textile industry in North Carolina. In 1927 he moved to California to embark on an acting career with a letter of introduction from his father to Howard Hughes. The next few years saw him develop his acting skills with bit parts and small roles. In 1931 he had his first leading role in the film Women Men Marry. In the film Heritage of the Desert (1932) Scott played his first leading role in a Western, the first of ten films he would make based on Zane Grey novels.
Until the conclusion of World War II, Scott starred in a variety of film genres, but after the War he concentrated solely on Westerns. Scott was a modest man and always underestimated his considerable skill as an actor. He was comfortable in Westerns and decided to stick with them. It was an inspired choice. As he aged his handsome features took on a weathered, stoic look, and helped make him a Western icon.
Scott did not financially need to make films after the War. Shrewd land purchases in California helped make him a multi-millionaire, and he increasingly looked upon his acting as a hobby. By 1962 he was ready to retire, but he was convinced to make one last Western with his friend Joel McCrea. McCrea and Scott had much in common: both had become very wealthy through land purchases and neither needed to work in film, post World War II McCrea had gravitated to B Westerns, and both he and Scott were staunch Republicans.
The film that they made in 1962 is now regarded as a classic. Ride the High Country was the second film to be directed by Sam Pekinpah. It tells the tale of two former Old West lawmen who have fallen on hard times. Steve Judd, Joel McCrea, has been hired by a bank in the early years of the last century to bring back 20,000 in gold from a mining camp. Judd is elated because this is the first lawman like job that he has had in a very long time. He runs into his old friend Gil Westrum, Randolph Scott, who is making a meager living running a shooting gallery in a circus. Judd invites Westrum and his young friend Heck Longtree, Ron Starr, to join him in the job. They agree, Westrum and Longtree planning to steal the gold. As the film proceeds it becomes obvious that Judd still holds to the same code of honor and honesty that he upheld as a law man. Westrum does not, having grown bitter with age and viewing the gold as his reward for his courage as a law man, a courage that was not rewarded monetarily and has left him facing a hard scrabble old age. Ultimately Judd realizes what Westrum is up to and disarms both him and Longtree, planning to put them on trial for attempted robbery. The plot is complicated by Elsa Knudsen, Mariette Hartley in her screen debut, who the trio rescue from a miner she has just married who plans to have her serve not only as his bride but also as the “bride” of his four brothers. Longtree grows to admire Judd for his courage and stubborn honesty while Westrum escapes, only to ride to the rescue at the end of the film to help Judd.
In the finale of the film Judd and Westrum confront the remaining three deranged brothers in a point blank gun fight in the best B movie Western tradition:
British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s comment at the beginning of World War I:
A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week — he thinks it was on Monday, August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit in the space below on which we were looking. My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
All of our history since 1914 is a playing out of the consequences of the Great War. While on vacation I have been reading a superb book on American involvement in World War I The Last Days of Innocence by Meirion and Susan Harries. Published in 1997 it is a superb look at American involvement in World War I and the immense impact that the Great War had on this country. In the shadow of World War II, I do not think we appreciate the importance of World War I, particularly in the United States where it has become the least remembered of all our major wars. Here at Almost Chosen People we will help rectify that in the years to come. (more…)
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33
Archbishop John Hughes of New York, universally known to friend and foe as Dagger John, was a very tough and fearless man. After the anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia in 1844 he called on the mayor of New York, an anti-Catholic bigot, and informed him that if a single Catholic church was touched in New York, New York would be a second Moscow. (The reference was to the burning of Moscow in 1812 during Napoleon’s occupation of the city.) Not a Catholic church was touched. On another occasion when a threat was made to burn Saint Patrick’s cathedral the Archbishop had it guarded within hours by 4,000 armed Catholics. He earned his nickname!
Among his many accomplishments was his success in leading the New York Irish out of poverty. It is a fascinating story and relevant to our time. In 1997 in City Journal, William J. Stern wrote an article on how Dagger John did it:
My family and I are back again from our much needed vacation. As usual, Gen Con was a great deal of fun, and I did not get thrown in the Klingon jail, thanks to my daughter blowing her money on a fake fur “hoody” with fox ears! (Actually it looks quite good on her, weird, but good!)
Indianapolis is a great city for a historian, filled with monuments. My favorite is the huge Civil War memorial in down town Indianapolis dedicated to “Indiana’s Silent Victors”:
You can climb to the top of the Civil War memorial, all 331 steps. I did several years ago. My kids did it with ease. I thought halfway through that it would probably be difficult to remove my corpse from the cramped stairwell and I struggled somehow to the top, although I rode the elevator down.
Indiana also has the national memorial to the USS Indianapolis, immortalized in popular culture by the Jaws video clip at the beginning of this post. The cruiser delivered Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, to Tinian on July 26, 1945. On July 30, 1945 it was sunk by Japanese sub I-58. 900 of the crew made it into the water. SOS signals, contrary to the Jaws video clip, were sent off. Three Navy stations received the SOS signal. At the first station the commander was drunk. At the second station the commander had left orders not to be disturbed. The third station wrote off the SOS signal as a Japanese prank. The Navy denied that the SOS signals had been received for years, and only the release of declassified material revealed the criminal negligence involved. When the ship failed to dock at Leyte as expected on July 31, 1945, the port operations director Lieutenant Stuart B. Gibson inexplicably failed to report that the Indianapolis had gone missing.
This resulted in the men of the Indianapolis being in the water for 3 and a half days until they were spotted by a routine air patrol. Heroic efforts were then undertaken to rescue the survivors. 321 men were rescued, four of whom died soon thereafter. Most of the almost 600 men who escaped the ship and died in the water had been killed by hundreds of sharks who swarmed about the survivors. Among the dead was Lieutenant Thomas Conway, the ship’s Catholic chaplain. He spent his time in the water swimming from group to group, praying with the men, encouraging them, and reasoning with men driven to despair. When Father Conway died on August 2, 1945, he was the last American chaplain killed in World War II.
Captain Charles B. McVay III, the skipper of the Indianapolis, had been wounded in the sinking and was among those who survived to be rescued. He repeatedly asked why it took so long for the Navy to rescue his men, a question the Navy did not answer. Instead McVay was courtmartialed, a scapegoat for an episode that had tarnished the image of the Navy. He was convicted for not zigzagging, which was farcical since he had been told to use his discretion in regard to zigzagging, and with high-speed torpedoes and improved aiming devices aboard subs, zigzagging was not an effective technique for a ship to avoid being torpedoed by the end of World War II. Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, recognizing the fundamental injustice of the courtmartial, restored McVay to duty and he retired as a Rear Admiral in 1949. Although most of the surviving crewmen of the Indianapolis regarded him as a hero, McVay was eaten away by guilt over the deaths of his crewmen, guilt that was exacerbated by hate mail and hate phone calls he periodically revealed from a few of the families of some of the men who died in the sinking and its aftermath.
After the death of his wife in 1966, McVay took his own life, clutching in his hand a toy sailor given to him by his father. In 1996 a twelve year old school boy, Hunter Scott launched a campaign to clear McVay’s name. The campaign to clear McVay was supported by former Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto who had commanded the I-58 and who noted in a letter that zigzagging would have had no impact on his torpedo attack. (more…)
Donald R. McClarey
Paul Zummo
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