Soldiers Under Any Flag Can Be Great Warriors: The Forgotten Soldier

 A 17-Year-Old draftee 

on the Eastern Front

for the entire war. 

I just started re-reading "The Forgotten Soldier." First published in English in 1971, the book is a memoir by a 17-year-old French boy drafted into the German Army in 1942.  The book is 600 pages of wrenching details about the life of a German soldier on the Eastern Front for nearly the entire war.

Though he had no choice about serving, Guy Sajer was scorned when he tried to go home after the war.  He suffered cold and every sort of misery and finally defeat, then came home to rejection by family and friends.  At the end of World War II, Guy Sajer was just 21 years old and a veteran of nearly four years of continuous combat with a losing army. He was on his way to the front when news reached his convoy of the Russian victory over the German 6th Army at Stalingrad.

I read this book in 1977 when I was a 24-year-old tank commander in West Germany, waiting for a million-man Soviet Army to invade Western Europe starting in Fulda and leaving me and and everyone in 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division dead on the field just west of the Fulda Gap.

Reading this book helped me to understand how the southern men I served with could venerate soldiers who fought to keep other men enslaved.  It was clear from this memoir, that a soldier can be a hero in a bad cause.

In 2017 when I visited the German Military Cemetery at Normandy, I thought of Guy Sajer--a kid drafted into a losing cause who serves with honor and heroism until the end.  I honor him as a man while knowing the flag that he served under is a symbol of hatred.

After the war, Sajer became a comics artist, creating comics under his own name and pen names.  He is 94 years old and lives in Paris.

I will be writing more about specific parts of the book.  Anyone interested in the life of a soldier in combat, especially the life of a soldier in a losing cause, this book is a haunting reminder of how terrible war is.

“What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees. There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor...” 
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

And about how war can tear up our souls:

“Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb. From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

Basic Training to Combat Deployment: Just 37 Years!

C-130 Hercules: I flew on one of these on my first military 

flight in 1972 and in Iraq 37 years later.

All my life I have been late doing things:

• Nine years after high school gradation, I went to college. 
• Many kids learn to swim shortly after learning to walk. I learned to swim when I was 59 years old.  
• Ten years ago today, February 1, 2009, I was flying to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on my way to Iraq. It had not occurred to me before that I was leaving for my first combat deployment 37 years after I started basic training on February 1, 1972.  

I enlisted during the Vietnam War, but the war ended and I never went to that one.  In 1976, I went to West Germany and served on the border in the Cold War, but thankfully, that war never happened.  I left the Army in 1980 to go to college.

Then in 2007, I re-enlisted in the Army National Guard and ten years ago today was on my  way to Iraq.

I connected the two dates because basic training and the trip to Iraq both began with saying goodbye to my family and flying away.

The very first flight in my life was the flight from Boston to San Antonio for Basic Training.  That first flight gave me a love for flying that led me to travel every chance I could on military flights.  For $10 I could fly across the nation or across an ocean.

But it was funny to think that the gap between starting Basic Training and serving in a war was 37 years.  I went to Basic at 18 years old and to Iraq at 55.

Most people had long retired at the age where my career hit one of its big milestones.

By the time I went to Iraq, I had three college degrees, but learning to swim was still four years in my future.  And it's only in the past year that I started to meditate and practice Yoga.

Who knows what I'll learn or do this year?

Happy February 1! It's a big day for me.

Ten Years Ago I Was Writing My Name on My Underwear--and Everything Else

The faded laundry mark from January 2009 

after a few hundred machine washings.

Ten years ago there were piles of Army uniforms and clothes and gear of all kinds on my living room floor.  I was sitting on the floor with my wife and occasionally one of the kids.  I was writing my name on every piece of gear I was carrying in duffel bags to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then to Camp Adder, Iraq.

Underwear is not easy to write on, even with a marker. It was a long process to put my last name or my laundry mark (Last Initial, Last four of the Social Security Number) on t-shirts, shorts, belts, pants, shirts, hats, ammo pouches, boots, gloves and backpacks.

But write I did. Because when there is only one laundry service and everyone has sand-colored underwear, the best way to keep your stuff is to mark it.

Marking my clothes made the deployment seem oddly real.  Although we knew the deployment was coming since November of 2007, and we had several two or three-week training sessions, marking my gear meant I was really leaving.  Although I had been in and out of the military since 1972, the last time I went overseas with the Army was in the mid 70s.

As I marked my clothes, it seemed more real than before that I was leaving for an entire year.

Right now, ten years later, it is still strange to think that Fort Sill and Camp Adder are in the list of places I have lived, not just visited.

War Between Science and Religion? The Real Enemy was Catholic Immigrants

Hating immigrants is nothing new in America

The anti-immigrant tradition in America is old and deep in America.  People accepted now as "white" people were hated and reviled more than 100 years ago, none more than Catholics.

In the 1870s two acclaimed American academics each published blockbuster books about the "War Between Science and Religion."  They were both brilliant men in their disciplines.  John William Draper was one of the first presidents of the American Chemical Society and was a pioneer in photographic chemistry. Andrew Dickinson White was the first president of Cornell University.

It is an old truism that being brilliant in your own area of expertise makes one libel to spout off with idiocy in an area where one has no training.

But fame and publishing best-selling books in the 19th Century turned to derision in the 20th Century.  Draper and White today are known today as the chief promoters of the discredited "Conflict Thesis" describing a two millenia war between science and religion.  The thesis is simply anti-immigrant bullshit.

Larry Principe, a professor of the history of science at Johns Hopkins University, teaches a course in which he uses Draper's book as an example of how not do history.  If you are interested in the field, Principe's lectures on "The Great Courses" are brilliant.

But the smell lingers.  Wretched writers like Dan Brown use the lies and half-truths in Draper and White to write trash thrillers like The "DaVinci Code."

So why did Draper and White trash the history of the Church?  Their target was not all religion, but the Catholic faith. Draper and White were rabidly anti-Catholic and were writing propaganda, not history.  In the 19th Century, anti-immigrant people tried to take control of the political system through secret groups.  The Whig Party fell apart in 1856 and was replaced by the Republicans in part because of internal divisions over slavery and immigrants.

Draper and White, for example, popularized the myth that the Church taught the earth was flat and Columbus proved otherwise.  That the earth is round and has a diameter of roughly 8,000 miles was known to every educated person since about 300 B.C. Anyone reading the Divine Comedy, written in the late 1,200s is quite aware of the earth as a sphere.

But like any propagandists, Draper and White began with a message and massaged all their facts to fit the message. So in order to prove the Catholic Church is anti-science they twisted facts to fit their message.

A secondary effect of their campaign against Catholics was to make add another layer of anti-intellectualism to a country already prone to making lunacy into policy.

Although they were both men intellectuals in their own fields, their real legacy in America putting stupidity in power.  The anti-vaxx movement, the John Birch Society, the Young Earth Creationists, the climate change deniers, birthers, and every kind of anti-immigrant movement can look back to Draper and White and see inspiration.

Last Child to College—Snow Problem!

The view for much of the 500-mile round trip

On Saturday, I rented a Nissan Rogue SUV to drive my youngest son to college in Johnstown, Pa. We filled the silver 4-wheel-drive with clothes and luggage and drove west, leaving at Noon. The forecast said snow from mid-afternoon to the following morning.  Right on time, the snow started about 30 minutes before we arrived in Johnstown.

My plan was to drop my son off, get him settled in the room, go to Pittsburgh, then return in the morning and check how things were going at school before I returned to Lancaster. 

By 4:30 pm, I was on the road to Pittsburgh in steady but light snow. I was immediately glad I was in an SUV and not our 2001 Toyota Prius. When I got to Pittsburgh, I planned to stay in the Liberty area and go again to the Tree of Life Synagogue, two miles away on top of one of the hills of Pittsburgh. I drove to the Squirrel Hill neighborhood and stopped near the Synagogue, walked around and remembered the victims. 

Then I drove down Wilkins Avenue from Tree of Life Synagogue. Google maps told me to turn right on South Negley Street.  I followed the map and climbed a short, steep grade to the crest at Fair Oaks Street.  I started downhill toward Fifth Avenue and was immediately feeling the brake pedal pulse back as the Nissan slid down the steep, icy grade. I was slowing, but not enough for me to stop at the red traffic light at the bottom of the hill. The curbs are low on Negley, so I slid the Nissan to the right so the right-side tires were rubbing the curb.

I stopped.  I went the last block to Fifth Avenue at about 3mph pumping the brake. On the far side of the intersection three cars had slid together.  I turned right and went to Liberty.  By now it was close to 9pm.  I got a call from home that my wife was not feeling well.  So instead of staying the night, I got back on the road.  I was wearing an Army workout jacket that was a great fashion choice.

Just as I was turning to the on-ramp for I-376, I saw flashing lights in my mirror. It turns out this fully automatic car turns on its own headlights, but not the taillights.  The officer told me I had no taillights. I told him it was a rental. I spun the turn-signal handle and the lights came on. He still checked my license.

When he came back, he asked my what kind of motorcycle I rode. I have a motorcycle endorsement on my license. We talked bikes and Army for a few minutes, and then I was on my way on a snowy 250-mile drive that would last until 2:30 a.m.

For the first hundred miles, the snow was steady. The turnpike was wet, clear and empty.  After the tunnels the temperature was colder and the road got icy. I slowed down, and then got a lot slower behind a wall of snowplows. After ten miles of 20 mph, I pulled off at I-81 and started on the route to Harrisburg.

Ten miles after leaving the Turnpike, I was behind another wall of plows on I-81. So I changed to Route 581. The roads got better on the east shore and I finally got home at 2:30 a.m.  I was exhausted, but also really happy. Driving can often be dull, but a night that causes a four-wheel-drive to slide made the drive a real challenge.

I called him at 9:30 a.m. and said I was already home. He said he was fine and glad to hear Mom was okay.

Instead of driving, I can take the Amtrak Pennsylvanian train from Lancaster to Johnstown. There are also cheap flights from Lancaster to Pittsburgh. If there is snow the next time I visit my son, I will take a train or a plane, no automobiles. 

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First Book of 2019: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

The first book I read this year is “The Plot Against America”by Philip Roth.  It is a counter-factual history of America that has FDR losing the Presidential election in 1940 to Charles A. Lindbergh, the Republican candidate, but really, the “America First” candidate.

This fast-paced book is told from the perspective of a Jewish boy living in Newark, New Jersey. He is the younger of two boys over a working class family who are the children of immigrants to America. 

As the book unfolds, America seems to inexorably drawn into World War II in support of the allies who are in headlong retreat from the Nazis and Imperial Japan. The forces against war are united by the slogan “America First.” Charles Lindbergh really was a leader in this movement and really did want America to stay out of the war, but in the book, Lindbergh improbably becomes the nominee of the Republican Party by showing up at a deadlocked convention and winning in a 3 a.m.  ballot. 

Then the book gets eerie. Lindbergh crisscrosses America flying himself from city to farm town holding rallies.  At these rallies he stays with his anti-war and pro-Nazi message and wins the election in a landslide (not by 80,000 votes).

With his election, anti-Semitic policies begin, first with youth programs, then forced relocation and America becomes more and more an ally of the Nazis. The end of the Lindbergh Presidency is very quick. I won’t give spoilers. But the compromises and lies that lead the nation to the brink of a Jewish pogrom are told in a way that seems all too plausible. 

Having the whole story narrated by a young boy allows Roth to use hysterical narration and remain completely plausible. 

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My Favorite Book of 2018

My favorite book of 2018: These Truths by Jill Lepore

My favorite book of 2018 is Jill Lepore's new book "These Truths: A History of the United States." At 960 pages, the book is so good it feels too short.

The most haunting section of the book is on pages 284-5 about the arrival of Charles Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" in America. Darwin’s book was published in 1859; just two years after the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court Case said people of African descent could never be American citizens.

Part of the reasoning in that decision was the belief that races were fundamentally different and, worse still, that all Black people were inferior, the descendants of the Ham, the bad son of Noah.

Henry David Thoreau filled six notebooks as he read The Origin of Species. For abolitionists like Thoreau, Darwin's book was proof that all people really are equal. And all genetic evidence since the discovery of the structure of the genome a century later in 1953 says the same.

Races of Homo sapiens differ very little from each other. More importantly, the definition of a species is the ability to produce fertile offspring. Every race of Homo sapiens on earth can have children with every other race. These children can have more children. We are all one species.

It goes without saying that the South rejected Darwin. Slave owners believed themselves superior to Blacks, and all other non-white races. In defeat, the spread Jim Crow laws across the South to disenfranchise Blacks.

Today, Charles Darwin remains the leading villain of anti-science Evangelicals and other fundamentalists. The Creation Museum in Kentucky links Darwin to every social problem in the last 150 years. But the truth is, Evolution, no matter how it is misunderstood and misappropriated, says we are all one species.

The Creation Museum and other Evangelical history blames Darwin for inspiring Nazis.  The irony is that Nazis, like Creationists, twist science to their own needs. But as to inspiration, Hitler was truly inspired by the Jim Crow South. Hitler did not originally plan extermination. The American South gave Hitler a blueprint for a society with separated races: a master race and inferior races.

Lepore also makes clear that keeping slavery was the cause of the Civil War. She tracks the increase in the price of slaves in the decade before the Civil War and shows that Louisiana and other slaves states wanted to re-open the slave trade to satisfy growing demand for slaves. Following the money shows that slavery was the center of the secessionist states leaving the union. States Rights was a lie told later.

Lepore also tells the story of Quaker dissenter Benjamin Lay. He was a minister during “The First Great Awakening” a religious revival in the 1730s. While the revivals roared through country, Lay preached against those who had faith experience, but kept the slaves they owned. Lay said all who kept slaves were Apostates, they were wasting their time proclaiming religious conversion. The Abolitionist movement began long before the country was founded. Preachers like Benjamin Lay led the fight against slavery that ended slavery in the North. In the South, slave owners found preachers to twist the Bible into a pro-slavery shape just for them.

The book covers all of American history from 1492 to 2017. It says very little about wars, but looks deeply at the history of women, minorities, religion and the social movements of the last 500 years. I am sure I will read it again.