Belleau Wood: Soldiers and Marines Stop a Huge German Attack in 1918

I visited Belleau Wood in northeastern France, site of a battle unlike most of the terrible trench warfare of World War I. In Belleau Wood, newly arrived American Soldiers and Marines reinforced the allied armies against a new German attack. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were transferred to the west as Russia left the war to fall into revolution.  

At Belleau Wood the Americans first stopped the German assault then counterattacked, never stopping to dig trenches or retreat from the attacking army.   At one point, a French commander told the Americans to fall back and dig trenches.  A Marine captain said, "Retreat? Hell no. We just got here."  

The story of the battle is available form many sources.  I visited to see how the world heals itself from the horror of war.  Belleau Wood is beautiful.  The rolling wheat fields that surround it where so many Marines died in a direct assault in June of 1918 were fallow, long past harvest at the end of October a century  later.  The wood itself, splintered by millions of bullets and tens of thousands of rounds of artillery, are peaceful, carpeted with leaves and showing no signs of rage and death.  

The cannons that ring the monument to the Marines in a clearing in the wood are black, somber and as peaceful as the woods around them. On this trip I will visit battle sites and Holocaust sites to see how life goes on after slaughter.  Belleau Wood and the rolling farm country around it could hardly be more different than the temporary terror of 1918.  Moments of heroism and long years of peace are both part of the human condition: both very real and a very real paradox that both exist in the same place--though not at the same time.  

Bicycling in Paris: the Daily Training Race

One of the groups circling L'Hippodrome in Paris

On my first full day in Europe, and the only day in Paris before leaving for battlefields in eastern France and Belgium, I rode the daily training race in Paris.  Each day, year round, the two-mile perimeter road around l'Hippodrome, the horse racing track in southwest Paris, is closed to traffic from 10am till dark. 

Every day groups of cyclists ride the circle, most in groups, some by themselves.  The speeds vary from two guys in their 80s I saw on my second lap going about 10mph to the first group I rode in which was averaging 22 mph.  I stayed with that group for a couple of laps and joined a group we passed which was traveling about 2mph slower. 

The road around the horse racing track rises slightly on the east side and goes down through the turn to the west.  The road is fifty feet wide on sides of the oval, but narrows to fifteen feet on the turn at the south end and is just a six-foot wide path at the north end. 

When the pack is silent, it is clearly no different than any pack I have ridden in anywhere in the world. The following distances, the way people pass each other, and even the young kid who attacks the group racing ahead, only to get caught on the uphill stretch where there was a headwind, is the same in Philadelphia, Paris or Prague.  Between the wind and my inadequate skill in listening to spoken French, I did not catch much of the conversation, but no one speaks deeply in a fast-moving group of 20 riders. 

If the weather is good and my knee is still good, I hope to ride again in Paris near the end of the trip.

The grandstands of l'Hippodrome seen from the east side.

"You and Your Doctor are Crazy" says the Physical Therapist in the Next Seat

With 90 minutes to go in the overnight flight to Europe, I spoke to the passenger in the window seat as we ate breakfast before landing.  We had an empty seat between us and she had slept through most of the flight. I was jealous.

I asked about her trip. She said she leaves the country anytime she has enough time off to get away.  She has lived in Paris, speaks four languages--English, Spanish, French and Russian--and loves to be in Paris in every season.  This trip will also take her to Rome and Vienna. She grew up in Puerto Rico where she learned Spanish and English. She learned French and Russian in Paris.

We introduced ourselves. Her name was Ady. She asked where I was traveling. I told her about riding in Europe and Israel. That switched the conversation from travel and language to her day job as a physical therapist.  

"Wait," she said. "You just got a knee replacement and you're riding across Israel?" I protested that I got the knee replacement more than six months ago, to which she answered, "Right. Just got a knee replacement. The first year is the recovery period." I told her my physical therapists said most knee replacements go wrong from lack of exercise. She agreed that happens, but said the knee is the most delicate joint in the body, with no supporting socket joint. "It just hangs out there, waiting to be--overused." 

Ady said, "Not like you would take my advice anyway, but you might want to think about limiting your time on the bike."  I told her that the doctor at the Orthopedic Urgent Care last night, and the surgeon, and PTs all told me to "Listen to my body." So I planned to do that.

She burst into laughter and said, "You and your doctors are crazy. You don't tell someone like you to listen to their body. By the time you hear you body saying 'slow down' you are already way into injury." I could see that. 

She was right about me not listening to her. I rode the day after I arrived in the daily training ride around l'hippodrome in the southwest corner of Paris. I'll write about that soon. 

Knee Works Well Enough to Walk: Boarding in an Hour

Last night, I thought the sudden, painful swelling of my titanium knee could be the end of my trip.  I am still not sure how much I will be able to ride, but I can walk well enough to navigate train stations and Newark Airport.  In an hour I should be on the way to Paris to begin the trip.

I also wondered if carrying a backpack would be a problem, but so far, no problem at all.  While riding on the trains today, I have been making alternate plans of what I can see and if my bicycle riding is severely limited. Since I have only seen Jerusalem and nearby towns in all of Israel, there will be plenty to see.

The same is true in the Baltic States later in the trip.

This trip, like the one in 2017, is both a bike ride and a chance to visit Holocaust sites and memorials. In the Baltic countries, like Ukraine and Poland, the Jews were almost completely wiped out both by the Nazis and by their neighbors who killed Jews and took their property.  As with Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide was personal and horrible.

I know I will be surprised by things I see and discover.  On the last trip, one of the saddest places I visited was the German Military Cemetery at Normandy. While there, I swung back and forth between sadness and anger, because this cemetery is how America should have treated the Civil War. The Germans started a racist war and lost. They memorialize the dead soldiers, but not the leaders or the cause.  America should have done that.

Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, Germany is a civilized country.  More than 150 years after the Civil War, we elected a guy who says Nazis are fine people.

Israel Trip, Day Zero: Orthopedic Urgent Care!

My trip to Europe and Israel officially begins today, October 22, with a flight to Paris at 6:40p.m.  But at that same hour yesterday, I was icing a very swollen knee and on the phone with the Lancaster Orthopedic Urgent care.

I went on my usual Monday ride with Scott Haverstick and Delaine and Chris Peris.  I turned off the ride for the shorter way home at 15 miles.  I stopped at the bottom of a hill and put my foot down. My knee hurt, a lot. It was swollen. It had been fine before the ride.  I managed to ride home, but slowly. I could not stand up and pedal.  I remembered there was an orthopedic urgent care office, so I called and went there.

After the usual twists and pokes the doctor said I had a sprained MCL--the ligament on the inside of my knee. He told me to wear a brace and "listen to my body" as to how much I can do.  Since this is the knee I got replaced six months ago, the doctor was not sure if the swelling was normal for me. I told him it was a lot less this morning.

I had planned to ride the Paris Training Races on Thursday and ride south and west of Paris before going to visit World War II battlefields on the weekend.  It looks like my plans just changed. The doctor thinks if I might be able to ride in Israel if the swelling goes down in a week.  If not, Israel road trip! 

I planned to post about the trip. I thought I would be posting about riding, but maybe not so much.

Conferences and the Delight of Meeting New Friends

I went to the 12th Annual Conference on Racism and Antisemitism at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. I was only able to attend the second day of the two-day conference, but I heard some great talks and even watched a controversy play out on stage. 

But the best part was lunch. 

I knew no one at the conference. The weather was cool and clear.  Outside the hall where the conference was taking place, the organizers set up a tent and picnic tables.  I sat at one end of an empty table. A small group was at the other end of the table. I introduced myself, but they were talking in hushed tones about the woman who left the stage in protest. 

So I ate my sandwich as the tables filled up.  Then a group of five formed around me. I introduced myself as a Hannah Arendt Fan Boy--not an academic like most of the conference attendees.  To my right was a quiet man who is a professor of history.  To my left was Anna, a history teacher at a Bard-affiliated high school, a lawyer, an activist, and executive director of the The Conversationalist. Opposite me were two women about my age, Ellen and Kate.  Eventually Kate left and her seat was taken by Amy who was the moderator of the panel with the controversy.

Through most of the lunch we did not talk about the conference, but about our different experiences of being Jewish in America. We had an especially lively discussion of when Jews became white. Kate was the only one who was not Jewish, but she grew up Irish-Italian Catholic post World War II. Her parents and family on both sides experienced discrimination both for religion and background when Irish and Italian Catholics were not quite white.

Ellen and I were the same age and grew up near big cities so could talk about being part of the big exodus of Jews to the suburbs after World War II.  A half-million Jews served in uniform in World War II. The GI Bill made it possible for many Jews to buy suburban houses and get a college education.  A million African-American soldiers served in uniform in World War II. They had very little access to GI Bill benefits, especially housing and education.

Anna's parents came to America from Russia in the 1970s. We talked about how different the experience of immigration was for blue-collar Jews like my grandparents in the early 20th Century and for her parents in the 1970s.  Her parents speak Russian and identify as Russian. My grandparents and uncles spoke Yiddish and in no way identified with the Tsarist Russia they escaped. 

Amy filled us in on the controversy on stage which has no explanation I can make simple. 

I enjoyed the presentations, especially the deep dive into "The Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. The four panelists traced the origins of this particular Anti-semitic conspiracy to post-World-War-II France.  It has been thoroughly debunked for anyone outside the lunatic world of the Alt-Right, Fox News, and the Trump White House, but inside those asylums it is a current threat to white nationalism.

When the torch-carrying Nazis at Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" they were quoting The Great Replacement conspiracy.  The murderer of Jews in Pittsburgh believed the same. 

As good as the presentations were, lunch was the most fun.  Laughing and sharing stories and insights with bright people in lovely place is in its own way as good as life gets. 

Continuing my 2017 Trip Across Israel and Europe

This map is posted on the former East-West German border 

where I served as a tank commander 40 years ago.

If all goes well, I will ride the length of Israel.

On October 22, I am going to resume my 2017 trip across Eastern Europe and Israel.  My last trip began in Eastern Europe followed by the World War II battlefields of Normandy. Then I went to Israel and finally a side trip to the oldest Formula 1 race track, the street circuit in Monaco.

This trip I will begin with World War II battlefields and a Formula 1 racetrack, then go to Israel and finish the trip in Eastern Europe, places I did not get to on the last trip.

A long time ago in 2013 when Donald Trump was just a Birther and a failing reality TV personality, I started learning Russian and planned a bicycle trip across Russia to retrace the route my grandfather used to escape the Tsar's Army in 1914. Grandpa walked from Odessa on the south coast of Russia to Helsinki on the Baltic Sea between August 1914 and the spring of 1915.  I was going to ride north across Russia, about 1,300 miles sometime after I retired.

Then Trump got elected. Steve Bannon had an office in the White House and America was looking bleak.  I changed the trip to ride across Eastern Europe visiting the worst of the Holocaust sites and then visit Israel. I had never been there.

I managed to visit 20 countries on that trip, but I could not ride as much as I hoped (I was on the way to knee replacement which happened six months ago) and did not make it to the Baltic States or Russia.  On that trip I had not planned to visit World War II battlefields, but took a day to do that in the middle of the trip.

So this time I will visit more battlefields, spend more time in Israel, and visit the countries I missed on the first trip, particularly the Baltic Sea states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and end the trip in St. Petersburg, Russia.

I want to see the countries where the Holocaust was the worst and learn more about them. I want to know their path of recovery from such horror.  And I want to see more of Israel. A vibrant Jewish state is so important in the global fight against anti-Semitism. 

Railroad cars on a siding between Auschwitz and Buchenwald

Concentration Camps where Jews were delivered from 

across Europe. As they left the cars they were sorted into

groups of those who were slave labor and those who were killed.

Bernard-Henri Levi said if it were not for The Holocaust, there would be 50 million Jews living in the world now instead of 15 million. Two years ago, Nazis marched openly in Charlottesville and the President refused to condemn them. Anti-Semitism is a plague that is not going away and, for me, learning about how The Holocaust happened is part of making sure it never happens again.

Kill a Commie for Mommy: Hating the Enemy During the Cold War and Before

On the rifle range in Basic Training in 1972 our drill sergeant 

yelled, "Kill a Commie for Mommy." 

Wars we lose have a lot in common.  One thing that America's lost or losing wars have in common is very restrictive Rules of Engagement: ROE.  In World War II there were no rules of engagement: see the enemy, kill the enemy.

But in the late stages of the Vietnam War, and throughout the Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and other conflicts in the War on Terror, there are rules about who, what, when and where American soldiers can fire at the enemy.

My job in the Air Force was live-fire testing of missiles from the Sidewinder all the way to the Minuteman.  We made sure those missiles were ready to shoot down a MiG or obliterate a city.

In the Army, I trained my tank crew to make one-shot kills of Soviet tanks at up to a mile distance.  There was no ROE. If the Soviets crossed the border we were to kill them. They were the enemy, the identifiable, uniformed enemy who was going to kill us if we did not kill them.

When we had an enemy, we had a goal: Defeat the enemy.

I wrote on the New York Times "At War" blog about how having an enemy, or not, affects marching songs.  In the 1970s when we marched, we sang about killing Commies. They were the enemy.  The current marching songs have no enemy.  Current marching songs also have no sex. For those of us who marched in the 70s and before, the idea of marching songs scrubbed of sex is as strange as those without enemies.

All through my professional life, in or out of the military, my best work was when I had a goal--and a leader with a clear idea of what winning looked like.

The wars we won--World War II and the Cold War--had an enemy and a goal: Victory.

The current wars are a mess because the goal is murky.  When the American military goes to war, we should be fighting to win.

In War and in Life, Love and Loss are Never Far Apart

I wrote about this soldier ten years ago, September 2009, when I was deployed to Iraq for year with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  I re-read this post and decided it says something I never want to forget.  

The deepest love must face the possibility of loss. The alternative is to avoid love, which is the greatest loss of all:

One of the administrative sergeants I run into once in a while was a Marine for 10 years before joining the Army National Guard. He is aloof and old enough that no one bothers him very much. He mostly keeps to himself, but will occasionally burst into a lecture about safety, security, the political situation in Iraq or how this war should be fought. His outbursts, like the lid sliding off a boiling pot, show that the heat has been building for a long time and finally he explodes. An early commentator on the Iliad wrote about Achilles saying, "An angry man never thinks he has spoken enough" and this sergeant proves it.

Today I was waiting for some other soldiers and had some time to sit and listen to this sergeant talk about his last deployment. It turns out the reason he keeps his distance and thinks about security issues goes back to his deployment three years ago. He was also on a large base then, but worked with people who went on convoys. For the most part he did not eat dinner, but one of the guys on convoy was a particular friend, another ex-Marine, so he would always change his schedule and eat dinner when his buddy was on base.

One day the aloof sergeant got the word that his dinner buddy got killed in a mortar attack. As he described it they were great friends, "And I decided I was not going to let that happen again. I'll talk to people but I don't want to care that much have them taken away. I still think about all the plans he had for his family, to travel--all gone."

The alternative to love is self-protection, keeping others at a distance so they won't hurt you by leaving. It's a choice we all make to some degree, to risk love or draw back.

Chinook Landing on a Roof in Afghanistan Honored in Original Art

On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter 

Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan.

Artist Larry Selman immortalized the event in a limited-edition print.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2009 with an Army helicopter brigade, nearly all the soldiers in our unit and every other unit were younger than me—a generation younger than me. But not the pilots.  Some were young, but many more were in their 40s and 50s.  Larry Murphy, a Chinook helicopter pilot, was one of the very few soldiers older than I was.  I was 56. He was 58. 

On Wednesday, 5 September 2019, Larry was honored with the unveiling of a painting commemorating an amazing bit of flying he and his crew did in Afghanistan in 2003.  Larry was deployed with a company of Chinooks and supporting equipment to Afghanistan. The tour was supposed to be a year and was extended to 16 months. The Chinook company was made up of soldiers from the Pennsylvania and Connecticut Army National Guard did not leave Afghanistan till 2004. They were in support of several companies of soldiers from the 10^th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, New York.

On 10 November 2003, Larry and the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 received an additional mission to pickup prisoners while they were on a resupply mission. These missions are a routine part of combat operations in Afghanistan.  But this mission was different. The prisoners had to be picked up from the side of a steep mountain at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level.  There was no place to land an aircraft with a 52-foot-long fuselage that is almost 100 feet long from tip to tip of its massive twin rotors. 

The pickup point was a shack on the side of a cliff.  Larry and the crew landed rear-wheels-only on the roof of the shack with the tail ramp lowered.  With the back of the helicopter on the shack roof, Larry and the other pilot, Paul Barnes, could not see the shack or any other close-in visual markers. From the cockpit, the pilots could see down the cliff to the valley 2,500-feet below.  The flight engineer James Duggan, crew chief Brian Kilburn and door gunner Margaret Haydock guided the pilots from the side and rear of the aircraft.  

Although technically a landing in the sense that the rear wheels were on the ground, the pilots were carefully keeping the full weight of the 25,000-pound (empty) helicopter from resting on shack, and keeping the front of the helicopter stable and level while the prisoners were brought aboard.

As soon as the prisoners were on board, the big helicopter returned to base. 

Five years ago, I was in a Chinook helicopter on Fort Indiantown Gap that landed rear-wheels-only on a cliff.  Twenty soldiers in full battle gear ran off the ramp and set up a security perimeter.  As the soldiers left the aircraft with their gear and heavy weapons, the weight of the aircraft dropped by 6,000 pounds, but the pilots held the helicopter level and steady.  I was looking out the door gunner’s window near the front of the aircraft. I saw nothing but sky above and rock-strewn valley hundreds of feet below.  I had heard about the roof landing since I joined the unit in 2007. It is amazing to see. It is more amazing to feel.

Larry Murphy signing prints at the Aviation Armory on 

Fort Indiantown, Pennsylvania  

The print by artist Larry Selman is available on his website.

In the years since the landing, the photo (above) has become an iconic image for Army Aviation, so much so that people question if the landing really happened.

Snopes.com answered the question: True. From their site:

I’m sure all of you have seen many choppers make some daring moves, but this one is spectacular. Hope you enjoy it. This attached shot was taken by a trooper in Afghanistan. Pilot is Larry Murphy, PA National Guard. Larry is a Keystone Helicopter Corp. EMS Pilot employee called to active duty. I must state that this is a “unique” landing operation. I understand that this particular military operation was to round up suspects.

We have some super reservists and National Guard folks out there in addition to our volunteer troops. God bless them all.

Attacking NATO Allies is Stupid and Dangerous

The Malmedy Massacre, 17 December 1944

Seventy years of peace and prosperity after centuries of nearly continuous war is an amazing treasure that no one should take for granted. Yet here we are with a fool in the White House who loves dictators and hates the the Allies who have kept the peace in Europe since the end of World War II.

Yesterday, September 1, 2019, is the 80th Anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.

Beginning 9am yesterday, I watched the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Belgium at the Spa Circuit that is located in the southeast corner of this small country that has suffered so many invasions. The track is just four miles from Malmedy where Nazi troops massacred 84 American prisoners on 17 December 1944. Spa is 35 miles from Bastogne where American soldiers were surrounded and held out in the last major Nazi attack of World War II.

Belgium is at the center of the European Union and the headquarters of NATO, the treaty organization at the center of peace across Europe since the end of World War II in 1945.

As I watched the race, I was more aware than usual that a French driver in an Italian car is leading a British driver in a German car. Drivers from Germany, Finland, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Poland, Holland, Russia, Australia, Spain follow the leaders. The series is now owned by Americans, though there is currently no American driver.

The 21 races are held in 21 countries on five continents. Ten of the races are in NATO member countries. Part of the reason these races and every other world sport can exist is more than 70 years of peace under NATO.

NATO held the line against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I served in both the Air Force and the Army off and on since 1972. The Cold War is the only clear victory in my years of service.

When I hear, see and read the President trashing NATO, I get ill. Europe has never been safer and more peaceful than the last seven decades and the foolish, shallow, friend of dictators in the White House is squandering this achievement.

Massive Fire Bombing of Stalingrad

On 23 August 1942, Nazis dropped thousands of bombs and thousands more incendiary bombs on Stalingrad at the opening of their attack.

The horror of fire bombing cities, slaughtering civilians in terrible infernos, was how the Nazi army began its attack on the city of Stalingrad.  The Luftwaffe flew 1,600 sorties on Sunday, 23 August 1942, dropping 1,000 tons of bombs and incendiary devices on the ill-fated city.

The dense black cloud from the fires rose more than two miles into the air above the ill-fated city. The fire could be seen to the horizon in every direction.

I just read a long account of the raid and its aftermath in the novel Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman.  A reporter and correspondent throughout the war, Grossman arrived in Stalingrad the day after the massive raid. He spoke to witnesses and saw the aftermath of the bombing.

I love the book and have written about it other parts of it here.  Stalingrad is Volume I of a two-part, 1,800 page novel about the central battle of the war in Russia. It is the War and Peace of the 20th Century.

I read Volume II Life and Fate three years ago. Volume I was not available in English until this year. For those interested in the war from the Soviet perspective, it's a great book.

Ironman 5th Anniversary

Today is five years since the longest exercise day in my life. On August 24, 2014, my wife and I started the Ironman event in Louisville, Kentucky at 7:20 a.m.  We jumped off a pier in a boat channel together, and I did not see her again until I finished at 11:54 p.m., an hour after she finished. 

The 2,600 entrants ran off three piers and started swimming. It took 40 minutes to get everyone in the water.  We were in about 1,300th place when we jumped off the pier together at the start of the 2.4-mile swim in the Ohio River.  At the end of her swim, Annalisa was in 1,000th place having passed 300 swimmers in the water. I finished in 2,595th place with a lifeguard kayak next to me. I lost 1,295 places in the water. 

When I started the 112-mile bike I was so far back I saw only three cyclists in the first 20 miles. Eventually I passed a thousand more racers on the bike, but a couple of hundred of them passed me during the marathon that ends the event and I finished nearly last among the 1,800 who finished the full 104.6-mile distance.

At 11:54 pm, I crossed the finish line.  I slowly walked and wobbled to the car. Annalisa and I drove to the hotel. We had leftover pasta from dinner the night before. Annalisa ate hers cold. I put mine in the microwave. I started to eat the pasta, but the effort of lifting the fork was too much. I went to bed. 

The next day we got up and drove back to Pennsylvania. 

It turns out that Ironman event was the last running race I will ever do. Five months ago I had my left knee replaced.  The surgeon said if I run it will be damaged, maybe need repair.  No more running. 

Annalisa leads a running group and could swim an Ironman distance tomorrow. She would have to train for the bike.  So she could do another Ironman. The whole thing was her idea. And we finished a year ahead of the initial plan.

Also, no more Tough Mudder competitions.  This post has reports of my Tough Mudder and Ironman events.

Can Faith Wield Power and Remain Faith?

Captain Jack Aubrey from the movie 

"Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" 

leading a boarding party.

Should Chaplains be part of the military? The question brings up the larger question of what place religion has in a state.

As commissioned officers, chaplains represent their faith, but they also represent a state claim to spiritual power, a power that the state wants on its side, on the state’s terms.

When I read Captain Aubrey’s musings on Chaplains in the Royal Navy (more below) in the “Master and Commander” books, I thought, ‘Yes! This is what bothers me about faith and power.’   

Specifically, I believe faith in the service of power is always evil.  Always.

But Aubrey does not think in universals, he simply does not like Chaplains on his ship. He believes they are bad luck. He sees the contradiction of having services on board the ship.  Aubrey drills and trains his gun crews to “smash enemy ships to splinters.” 

When necessary, Aubrey loads his guns with grape shot—a shotgun blast from a cannon with hundreds of pieces of metal and chain—and slaughters the enemy crew while they are on deck manning the guns and the rigging.  He has watched blood pour off the deck scuttles (drains) from the slaughter of a dozen cannons firing grape shot. 

When Aubrey leads his men on a boarding party, they carry pikes and axes and swords and pistols. They kill everyone in front of them as they swing from their ship to the enemy ship, firing, cutting and stabbing.

In a moment of reflection, Aubrey thinks about the deep contradiction when he has a Chaplain on board. On long voyages, a Chaplain will give weekly sermons, exhorting the men to love their neighbor, love their enemy, and any number of things that Captain Aubrey has trained out of his men.  They can’t really love their neighbor in the French frigate and pound his wooden ship to splinters with 24-pound cannonballs, then jump onto the enemy ship as they crash together and impale his neighbor on an 8-foot-long pike or split his skull with an axe. 

Which brings me back to this issue of faith and power.  In defending their own Holy Lands, a Muslim or a Jew split an enemy’s skull or run them through with a pike. Islam and Judaism have a territorial imperative.

But Christianity can never take power and be true to itself. Jesus had every opportunity for money, power and glory and pushed it away.  Based on the words of Jesus, no one could raise an army, conquer a foreign land, kill an enemy or run a government, which means having exclusive control of the means of violence.  The horrors of the Crusades, the conquest of the New World, African Slavery, the Hundred Years War, and every conflict waged with a Christian label is simply wrong.  There has never been a Christian nation based on the words of Jesus. It is always Moses, twisted into theological pretzel.

As an officer in what he considers a Christian nation, Captain Aubrey is fine with religion away from his ship and nods his hat to Christian morality as he sees it, but he is clear-eyed enough to know that his duty for that Christian nation is a flat contradiction of what a Chaplain tells his men. 

In another passage I quoted at length, Aubrey’s great friend Dr. Maturin muses on how power corrupts the men who pursue it. 

Jews ached for and prayed to return to Israel for two millennia until seventy years ago when a Jewish state came into being in 1948: including Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the Land of Israel and Judaism. Even before they had a state, Jews developed a pioneer army that became one of the toughest of all the armies on earth.  Protecting Israel means fighting when necessary.

Islam has holy sites and the promise of a Caliphate. The Koran describes the sites and the land. Conquest and holding an empire is consistent with Islam.

Buddhism, from what I have learned about it, has a very uneasy relationship with this world, power, territory and all that makes a state.  A Buddhist state seems to me to have the same inherent contradiction is a Christian state. Buddha, like Jesus, said nothing that could be construed as encouraging the taking and wielding of power.

Christianity goes completely wrong every time and in every way when it takes power.  The concept of a Christian nation is so foreign to the words of Jesus, that it seems to me as crazy as a Vegan hog butcher.  Every institution with a Christian label that takes power contradicts Jesus. Every one. And the hypocrisy is evident to those inside and outside the Church. Every Church that has become a state Church has thrown away the Gospel in pursuit of power.

Ever since I first believed, after being a vaguely agnostic nominally Jewish teenager, I have thought power was antithetical to faith. The Jewish state must protect itself so it can only exist by wielding power. But the dangers of the pursuit of power are just as real for those who rise through the ranks of the Israeli Army as any other Army.

There is no territorial imperative in Christianity.  There are no words of Jesus say take earthly power, hold earthly territory, and conquer in His name.  Nothing.

I truly believe that Christianity plus power equals evil.  Always.

White Evangelical America will collapse under the weight of its lust for power just as every nation that has conquered in the name of Jesus in the last 1,500 years. And every expression of Christianity that aligns with the pathetic pandering of the Evangelical majority will be tarred with the same brush as the Crusaders and post-Reformation wars of religion.

In the 1970s, I remember a prominent Baptist talking about sending missionaries to the “spiritual wasteland” of Europe.  Well there was a project that failed.  He confidently said secularism and 19^th Century philosophy had made Europe secular and resistant to faith. 

He never once mentioned that the churches in Germany expelled Jews who were confessing members in 1935, just two years after Hitler took power. Nearly all of those believers were killed in the Holocaust. Churches of every kind across Europe embraced or fell in line with Nazi rule. In his history of the Holocaust “Black Earth” Timothy Snyder said that churches across Europe utterly failed as protectors of the weak and persecuted.  And now the American Evangelical Church is following that well-worn path of pandering for power.  In his book “The Immoral Majority” Ben Howe says 68% of Evangelical Christians in America believe they have no responsibility for refugees. The people who are supposed to show God’s love to the world are the worst group in America for “caring for the least of these.”

Captain Aubrey is a man of action, not philosophy. Soon after his deep reflections on the paradox of power and faith, he joined the boarding party on a ship on which he was a passenger. With his injured right arm tied to his side, he swung a cutlass left handed and led a party of men jumping onto the enemy ship, fighting hand to hand. 

But the conflict in his mind will not leave my mind.  Real faith and pursuit of power will always be in conflict and deep contradiction.