Unforgettable Moment, B-52s Scramble, Hill Air Force Base, 1974

B-52 Bombers taking off on full throttle on Strategic Air Command alert

I was stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, from 1972-74. Early in 1974, Strategic Air Command stationed a wing of B-52s on Hill.  

My duty station was four miles from the airfield on the north end of the base.  Sometimes I went to the hangar for electronic parts.  On a warm spring day, I happened to be in the hangar when I heard an enormous roar, then another, then another, and another.  

Six B-52s filled the air with black smoke and the howl of 48 jet engines on throttle. The planes took off one after the other less than a minute apart. When all six formed up in the sky above the base, the giant airplanes flew east toward the Rocky Mountains and disappeared.

It was magnificent.

I was 21 years old when those planes took off.  Those airplanes were about my age, first entering service in 1952, a year before I was born. Like me they have had a lot of maintenance, but still have an active life today. Some of them, like me, are in their 60s.  

Loving the Book is not the Same as Liking the Author

Mark Helprin, I love his books, hate his politics

 My two favorite living authors are very different men. I have read all of the novels of each man and re-read my favorite novel by each. I plan to re-read more and, of course, read anything else they write. C.S. Lewis said “Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love.” He also cautioned that a reader who loves an author’s work should not believe he would like the company of the author.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Noble Prize in Literature, 2017

I started reading Kazuo Ishiguro in 2014 on the recommendation of a good friend. The first novel I read by him was “Remains of the Day.” In January of this year I finished “The Unconsoled,” making my reading of Ishiguro complete. Two years ago I re-read Remains of the Day, still my favorite, although “TheBuried Giant” is a close second. The Buried Giant was published in March 2015. Two months later Ishiguro spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  After hearing Ishiguro speak, I was quite convinced I would love to have a drink with him. His Nobel Prize address last year made me even more sure I would love to hang out with him if the opportunity ever presented itself. That address is moving, brilliant and sad, the common threads in everything Ishiguro writes.

In February 1983, when I was still in graduate school, I first read Mark Helprin in the New Yorker magazine.  I read the story “Jesse Honey Mountain Guide” in the last issue of the month.  The story was a chapter in his second novel “A Winter’s Tale” published the following September. I was hooked.  I read his first novel and two short story collections published to that point. In the years since I read every other novel as each published. I have re-read Winters Tale and plan to re-read Helprin’s most recent novel “Paris in the Present Tense” this year or next year. “Paris in the Present Tense” is now my favorite.

I was so taken with Jesse Honey, I wrote paper in grad school about Helprin’s precise use of exaggeration in the story, comparing to the Walter Mitty stories by James Thurber.  

Over the years I read Helprin’s editorials in the Wall Street Journal and other essays. He is a conservative, so I never imagined we could have a totally friendly conversation, but in 2015 and 2016 Helprin spoke out against Trump and seemed to be a Never-Trump conservative.  Maybe we could have a drink?

Alas, that was in 2016. After Nazis marched in Charlottesville in 2017, Helprin wrote in Trump’s defense in The Claremont Review of Books. Next month Helprin is speaking in New York. I have never heard Helprin speak, and I would like to, but I won’t be attending the event.  He is the featured guest at “Socrates in the City” an occasional gathering organized by author and total Trumpian Eric Metaxas. In 2011, Metaxas wrote a biography of a martyr to the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Despite writing about a victim of the Nazis, Metaxas is a full-throated supporter of a man whose campaign was built on the Birther form of racism and spread to every other non-white group as soon as the campaign began.

So I won’t be paying Metaxas to hear Helprin speak. In addition to Helprin, the event is a launch party for a new Children’s book by Metaxas “Donald Drains the Swamp.” Metaxas is a very funny guy. He is one of the creators of the “Veggie Tales” series. But, sadly, in his new book he is not ironical. Metaxas really sees Trump as the savior of the western world. The irony runs the other way though: no one in Washington has ever been more corrupt than the Swamp-Creature-in-Chief. 

When I think of Veggie Tales now, I imagine Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber being thrown into a Black Car driven by the Veggie Gestapo. Bob and Larry plead that wanted to salute The Orange Fuhrer, weakly protesting, “But we don’t have arms!”

Larry and Bob

I will keep reading Helprin, because the things he writes, like all creations, are from, not of, the person who created them.  And 70-year-old conservatives can become cranky—at least that’s what I’ve heard. 

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Military Movies and "The Rule"

Dick Winters, inspiration for the book and video series Band of Brothers

The world is full of good, great and terrible things to watch: movies, TV, and videos. To figure out what to watch, I have The Rules.

The Rule is, I won't watch anything about which I know technical details. Of course, I have exceptions, but in general, if I want to be entertained, I stay away from subjects that are part of my actual experience. I watch car racing; I don't watch car racing movies.

Next on my suspect list are war/military movies.  Even when I like part of a war movie, I know I am going to hate part of it too.  For instance, the first half of "Full Metal Jacket" is amazing. The second half is so predictable it could be a John Wayne movie.

I loved the movie "Fury" which was so right about procedures inside the turret of the tank. But, as with Full Metal Jacket, the final 30 minutes would make John Wayne blush.

And speaking of John Wayne movies, is there a veteran anywhere who does not think "The Green Berets" is the worst war movie ever made? In 1977 in the dayroom of Bravo Company, 1-70th Armor in Wiesbaden, West Germany, that movie came on the one TV channel we had--Armed Forces Network. Half the company crowded into the dayroom throwing rolled up socks and popcorn at the TV and howling about how bad that movie is.

Using The Rule, I will happily watch shows and movies about Secret Agents, Drug Dealers, Mobsters, Undercover Police, Surgeons, and Pirates.  I have no experience in any of those jobs, so when the they get the technical details wrong, I don't know it.  I have watched medical shows with real medics.  That's a hoot, listening to them flare up and yell, "No way! No one does a tracheotomy that way!" I have not had the chance to watch "The Sopranos"with a mobster or "Rome" with a Centurion, but that would be fun!

Just as an aside, I enjoyed all five seasons of "Breaking Bad" until the final episode. I know nothing about teaching high school or cooking meth and the series was brilliant. But when the star of the show welded a remote controlled M-60 machine gun into the trunk of a Cadillac and fired it with a key fob, killing a half-dozen Neo-Nazi drug dealers: "That's Bullshit!" was my reaction.

That's how I acted at the end of "Saving Private Ryan" when the German tanks went into a built up area, just so they could get blown up. "No armor commander would be that stupid" I spluttered in the theater eliciting glares from those around me.  I calmed down, but when I left the theater I called an old friend from 70th Armor and said, "The end of that movie is bullshit....." and we laughed about all the movies we dissed over the past two decades.

The glaring exception to my criticism of military video is "Band of Brothers." I found nothing to criticize in that amazing tribute to Major Dick Winters and the paratroopers he led from D-Day to VE Day.  When I re-enlisted and went to Iraq in 2009, I found many fellow critics of military-themed movies, but I never heard anyone criticize "Band of Brothers."

Next on my "To Watch" list is a video series: To Watch is a real list I keep in the Task List of Google Calendar. When I hear about something good to watch, I add it to the list.  Anyway, next is the final season of "The Americans" on FX. What a great show. I know nothing about being a Russian sleeper cell secret agent.

The Painting in My Living Room by a Prisoner of War

 A Picture of Bavaria on My Living Room Wall

Painted by an Afrika Korps Prisoner of War

When I look up from reading on the couch at night when the house is quiet, I see this painting. It was painted by an enlisted man serving in the Afrika Korps who was a Prisoner of War of the American Army.

The POW camp he was a prisoner in for more than two years was in Reading, Pennsylvania. The site is now the Reading Airport.

The painting was a gift from the prisoner to the camp commandant, my father, Capt. George Gussman. When my father took command of the camp in 1944, most of the prisoners had been there for more than a year.

On the day he took command, my father lined up the officers to introduce himself and let them know what he expected from the prisoners. One of the officers whispered that my father was a Jew. Which is true. He was also a ranked middleweight boxer before he enlisted. He called the man out of formation and hit him hard enough to lay him out cold in front of the other officers.

Dad then sent his guards into the barracks for and inspection that led to confiscating hundreds of Hershey bars the prisoners had bought with the money they earned in work on local farms.  These candy bars became my mother's engagement present from Dad.  That story is here.

My Dad never went overseas in World War II. He enlisted before the war started at 34 years old. As a rule, the Army did not send soldiers that old into combat during World War II.

After the initial drama, Dad had no more trouble and got along well with the prisoners.  The prisoners were repatriated several months after the war ended, and few applied to stay in America and pursue citizenship.

The painting reminds of the ironies of war--that soldiers from the country that killed millions of Jews would be prisoners in a POW camp run by the son of Jewish immigrants.  I keep that token of respect and affection on my wall. It hung on the wall of the home I grew up in. I will pass it to the next generation.

The prisoners my father was in charge of were captured far from home in a war that was already going against Germany. Prisoners of War in any Army are brave men who faced the enemy and death and survived.

Reality Catches Up With Fiction 70 Years After World War II

B-25 Bomber Pilot 1st. Lt. Bernard "Bernie" Steed Receiving 

the Distinguished Flying Cross for Bravery 

on a Mission over Avignon, France.

Last month a friend started a Facebook discussion about the worst book we ever read. One of the books that came up was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Published in 1961, the novel was based on life in an Army Air Corps bomber squadron flying B-25 "Mitchell" medium bombers over Italy, Southern France and across the Mediterranean Sea.

B-25 "Mitchell" Medium Bombers

I jumped into the discussion saying Catch-22 was one of my favorite books. I put the comment on my own page and one of the responses was from a guy I worked with almost 20 years ago.  Joseph Steed’s comment:

“My Dad literally lived Catch 22. He was assigned as a pilot to his bomber squadron in Europe within a month of the arrival of a young bombardier from New York City named Joseph Heller. Heller flew as Dad's bombardier on several missions. In the Avignon mission which was a significant scene in the book, like the author, Dad saw one of his friends shot down for the first time. On the same mission, Dad's plane lost an engine and he had to ditch it in the Mediterranean. Dad had told me about the ever-increasing number of missions required before being allowed to leave (he flew 66), and about the one guy in their unit who refused to fly again after reaching 40, the latter becoming the model for the guy who claimed he was crazy to avoid flying but whose sanity was proved by his not wanting to fly -- the original catch 22. When I discovered the Heller connection, Dad was in his 80s. He had heard of the book, but was not aware it was written by one of his bombardiers about their shared time in Europe. We looked up an old picture of Heller, and Dad remembered him as a little guy always running around with a notebook in his hand and writing things down. I got a copy of the book for him, but he made it only a couple of chapters in. He couldn't deal with being satirical about the experience.”

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Joe’s Dad, Bernard “Bernie” Steed was drafted in 1942 at 19-years-old. He qualified for flight training and within a year was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and training to fly B-25 “Mitchell” twin-engine bombers. These planes were made famous in the “Doolittle Raid” in which the big planes flew from aircraft carriers and bombed Tokyo in 1942. Bernie Steed’s life included the terror and humor of war. While still in pilot training in Georgia, shortly after landing in his trainer plane from a routine flight, a second plane’s propeller began chewing through their plane’s tail section, destroying it most of the way to the cockpit. The guy never saw them until he hit them. “Pilot inattention."

Bernie Steed in pilot training

By May 1944, Bernie Steed was 21-year-old pilot flying bombing missions from a base in Corsica across the Mediterranean theater of operations. On one mission Steed lost an engine, but managed to land the plane safely in the sea and get all of his crew into the life raft. They were rescued by a seaplane just a few hours later.  Bernie Steed earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for that mission and earned many other awards and decorations for flying 66 combat missions.

Joseph Heller was from Brooklyn and was a year younger than Bernie when he was assigned as bombardier in the 488th Bombardment Squadron in May 1944. He flew a couple of missions as part of Bernie’s six-man crew.

Joseph Heller in the Bombardier Compartment of a B-25 Medium Bomber

The characters in Catch-22 were composites of more than one person, Heller said. But about the action described, he said, “All the physical details, and almost all of what might be called the realistic details do come out of my own experiences as a bombardier in World War II. The organization of a mission, the targets—most of the missions that are in the book were missions that I did fly on.”

Thanksgiving Dinner, 1944, on the 488th Bomber Squadron Base, Corsica

A month before I learned about Bernie Steed, I saw a copy of Catch-22 at a book sale and bought it, thinking I would like to re-read it. Now that I know more about the author and one of the heroes in the squadron the novel is based on, I will definitely be re-reading the book.

Who Fights Our Wars: Marine Veteran on a Local Train

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Recently I rode to Philadelphia from Lancaster. After 50 miles, I knew I was going to be late, so I rode to a station and caught a local train.  I had to walk to the end of the first car with my bike. After ten minutes, I stood and turned around to adjust the bike.  A guy two seats away traveling with his grandson. When I sat back down he said, “When did you serve?” He saw the tattoo on my right leg.  I told him when I served.

He told me he was a Marine in Vietnam, 1969-70. He pulled his t-shirt to the right at his neck to show me two scars on his shoulder where he was shot. He told me briefly about the fire fight, about getting hit twice and the medics carrying him away from where he fell. His grandson, who was about 20 smiled as his grandfather told the story.  Clearly, he had heard before how his grandfather was wounded, but he liked that Grandpa had someone to talk to who was also a veteran.

In telling me the story of his getting wounded and going back into combat, he said several times, “Best year of my life, worst year of my life.” That got a smirk out of his grandson who clearly heard that phrase a lot. Then the Marine said, “Wait, you re-enlisted and went to Iraq? You must have been……”

“…..56,” I said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” 

He laughed. The grandson laughed with us. Then the conductor called the stop and they got up to leave.  Both waved as the walked up the aisle.  He was proud of those scars and clearly had vivid memories of getting wounded. But he served in an unpopular war.  I hope there are people thanking him for his service and listening to his stories now. I’m glad I got to hear his story and see his grandson’s face as we talked.

The Philosopher of War and Terror and Politics: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt 1906-1975

Today a friend asked and I were talking about politics and how refugee problems have led to wars in the past. Then we talked about how much current trouble stems from the way countries handle refugees at their borders. 

Which led me to recommend the books of Hannah Arendt. I am an obsessive reader. Arendt is one of about a dozen authors of whom I read most or all of their work.  So I thought I would make an annotated list of Arendt’s works. 

Hannah Arendt is a philosopher. She studied under Martin Heidegger, completing a PhD in 1928 at age 22 at the University of Heidelberg.  She escaped Germany in 1933 moving to France then to America where she became a citizen and is identified as an American Philosopher. 

I comment briefly on the books I have read. I also include at the end the books I have not yet read.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: Arendt’s most well-known book and most controversial is not philosophy, but reporting for the New Yorker magazine about the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.  In this book Arendt uses the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. Because Eichmann was responsible for deporting three million Jews to Death Camps, many wanted to see him as evil incarnate. But he was a failed salesman with a talent for logistics, a failure twisted into evil, not an evil mastermind.

Origins of Totalitarianism is a long and brilliant work on how modernity and the crisis of refugees and stateless people led to both world wars and to the creation of totalitarian states in Russia, Germany and later in China.  The book also clearly defines totalitarianism as a new form of government based on isolation and terror that did not exist before the 20^th Century.

The Human Condition: This brilliant book is not about Human Nature, but the circumstances of our collective life.  The book begins with the launching of Sputnik and the effect that event has had on all of humanity. 

On Revolution: The book I am reading now about the relatively modern phenomenon of revolution. She describes how the American Revolution succeeded and why nearly every other revolution has failed. 

Love and Saint Augustine: This book was her PhD thesis. I have never read anyone who better understands Christianity and what happened to the faith when it went from the margins to the center of political power.

Between Past and Future is a book of essays. All the essays are good, but the essays on education and tradition are stunning in their insight and how much they speak to problems right now.

The Promise of Politics follows up on the Origins of Totalitarianism with more analysis of Marxism and how the world of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens, still sets our expectations in the world of politics.

I have not read her collection Jewish Writings or Men in Dark Times because they essays are about the lives of people who I am unfamiliar with and Arendt takes for granted that the reader will know the work and significance of the subjects. I also have not read The Life of the Mind nor have I read On Violence. That will be next. If Democracy fails in America as it has in every other nation on earth. I want to have Arendt’s advice on violence fresh in my mind. 

If I could only read one book by Arendt, it would be The Human Condition. I wrote something on EVERY page of my copy. Next would be the Origins of Totalitarianism. Then Love and Saint Augustine.

I started reading Hannah Arendt shortly after I returned from Iraq.  I did not know it at the time, but in November 2016 I would become a political activist. Hannah Arendt describes clearly the best of politics and the worst. Because of Arendt, I am keenly aware of what political activism really means.  

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Battle of the Tanks, Kursk, 1943: A Review

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In July of 1943, the German Army’s ability to attack the Soviet Army ended in smoking wrecks and twisted bodies.  The German attack on Kursk was supposed to turn the war around and put the Wehrmacht back on the offensive. A series of delays that gave the Soviets time to prepare massive defenses doomed the attack from the start—before the start.

In his book, Battle of the Tanks, Kursk, 1943, Lloyd Clark tells the story of Kursk beginning with the rise to power of both Hitler and Stalin. Clark makes the case that the strengths and weaknesses of these two men made the biggest tank battle in history inevitable.

Clark mixes eyewitness accounts of tank crews and other soldiers on both sides with the high-level view of Generals and the two Supreme Commanders.  He begins in the 1930s when both leaders consolidated power and traces decisions on both sides that led to what remains the largest tank battle in the history of the world. 

One of the key differences between Hitler and Stalin in the view of Lloyd is that while both retained the title of Supreme Commander, Stalin was willing to name Georgy Zhukov his deputy and ceded much power to him in deciding the conduct of the battle. 

Hitler trusted no one else. In the view of most of Hitler’s generals, the battle should have begun on schedule in April. In Kursk Hitler repeated his error of 1941 in delaying Operation Barbarossa until June 22.  Hitler held back his forces until the arrival of Panther and Tiger tanks.  But in the three months that the Germans delayed, the Russians added layers and depth to their defenses.   By July, the Russians were dug in and outnumbered the Germans nearly two to one.

In the grinding dozen days of battle total casualties far exceeded a million killed and wounded. The Russians lost more men by far than the Germans, but, as the Germans lamented, the Russian reserves seemed inexhaustible and the German reserves were exhausted. 

After Kursk, the German Army fell back for nearly two years until the Soviet Army captured Berlin.

Lloyd does a good job of telling the story of the battle as well as keeping the broader context. 

Animal Farm: George Orwell's Story of the Soviet Union and Revolution

The original title, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

On July 3, I was talking to a friend who mistrusts politics of every kind. After thinking about what he said, I realized the George Orwell’s book Animal Farm agreed with him. I re-read Orwell’s tale, alternately laughing and cringing at this dark view of human nature. 

The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. Like many other tales in this genre, before Disney, this fairy tale ends sadly.

Animal Farm can be read as a very good re-telling of the history of the Soviet Union from the death of Lenin until the end of World War II.  For years after the death of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky fought for control. Trotsky was a revolutionary idealist. Stalin was ruthless. Stalin won.  And over time, Stalin erased the memory of Trotsky and other heroes of the Revolution.

Orwell’s tale also describes the fate of nearly all revolutions except the American Revolution.  I will be writing later about Hannah Arendt’s book On Revolutions. She explains why America did not descend into the fate of France, Russia, and nearly every revolution of the last two centuries. 

In the revolt on the Manor Farm, the animals throw the farmer off his land and run the farm themselves.  The pigs are the cleverest creatures and take over management of the farm.  At first they set up a socialist utopia, but strife begins, especially between the two pigs vying for leadership: Napoleon (Stalin) and Snowball (Trotsky). Eventually Napoleon trains attack dogs and exiles Snowball.  He continues to consolidate pig power, until finally the pigs make friends with their human neighbors and oppress the rest of the animals as badly as the humans. 

After overthrowing the Tsar, the common people of Russia ended up with worse oppression in the form of the Soviet Union. By the end of Animal Farm the animals other than pigs were worse off than they were under the farmer. 

My friend’s view of politics is vindicated in Orwell.  Checks and balances are all that stands between any nation and its own Animal Farm. Orwell said his goal in writing was to promote Democratic Socialism. He wanted to ensure no ruler could consolidate absolute power, left or right. 

So I can read Orwell as a call to go and fight for democracy. My friend can read Orwell as a parable of why political involvement will lead nowhere good. 

We both agreed in our conversation, that the history of the Church taking power was simply bad.  Every government run in God’s ends with people saying they are doing God’s will when they crush others.

In Animal Farm the pigs set up a government based on Seven Commandments of how animals should behave. Over time the pigs violate, rewrite and finally erase all of the commandments and replace it with a new one: 

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

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