World War II

This past Wednesday, November 28 was a big day for historians when an enormous archive of German war records was finally made available to the public. Accessibility to the data also means that some Holocast survivors and their families, who have been waiting 60 years, may finally get some answers about the fate of their loved ones at the hands of the Nazis.

The eleven countries that oversee the International Tracing Service finally reached an agreement allowing for the unsealing of 50 million pages of records, a staggering amount of information. Previously the material had only been available for locating missing persons, reuniting families, and providing documentation in cases of compenstaion claims.

While most experts agree that the records aren’t going to change the big picture of what we know about the Final Solution and Nazi Germany itself, they are likely to add new depth to the story and to answer many personal questions. The archive contains references to 17.5 million individiuals and covers 16 linear miles.

As an historian who has conducted research in archives I can tell you that the sifting process will consume the efforts of generations of my colleagues. While computers and technology have dramatically changed how we collect and store data, there are still connections and conclusions that can only be drawn by the mind of man (or woman) laboring over dusty folders and armed with an already intimate understanding of the topic at hand. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust were not my particular area of expertise, but I can freely admit that when I saw the photo above (a screen capture from the original ABC news story, which you can read here), I was fairly itching to get in there and start reading.

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WWII, World War II, Nazi, archive, Holocaust, International Tracing Service

Hello everyone! It’s your errant WWII blogger emerging from the holiday mists. I really didn’t intend for our Thanksgiving break to be quite this long, but sometimes circumstances have a way of jumping in the driver’s seat and taking control. So, as a friend said, we’re three-quarters of the way through the Hallothankmas holiday season and trying to keep our heads above the ho-ho-ho waters until 2008 rolls in and we can breathe again.

The last time we talked I shared a story about a P-38 uncovered by beach eroision in Wales. Now I have a report of a Douglas-C47 that has turned up in Bosnia near Sarajevo. It last flew 13 years ago during the Bosnian war for independence when bullets riddled the fuselage. But this is one tough plane. It’s been around since 1944 and flew as an unarmed cargo plane during the Normandy invasion when it dropped paratroopers behind enemy lines to sabotage German batteries preparatory to the landings.

The plane will be taken to Merville, Normandy, restored, and displayed in the local museum. The radio operator on the craft, Joseph “Buck” Buckner died in 2003 but his son said he could recite the plane’s tail number without hesitation. The plane was so heavily damaged at Normandy with holes in the wings and fuselage it couldn’t take off again after its final drop. Engineers patched it up and it went in again for Operation Market Garden, the mission in the Netherlands immortalized in A Bridge Too Far. Ditto for a mission to Belgium. And it appears the C-47 continued to get shot up right through 1994.

This baby deserves to rest quietly in a museum and have its story told. (Click here to read the Houston Chronicle’s article on this story.)

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WWII, World War II, Normandy, C-47

Really, it was the photo that got me. The image I’ve used here is a screen shot from the original story posted at ABC News. (Click here to read.) What you’re seeing is an American P-38 fighter plane that made an emergency landing in 1942 on the Welsh coast. It’s been buried under sand and water for 65 years until erosion of the beach revealed the wreckage in July. Do I even need to say, “How danged cool is that?”

But wait, it gets better. Using the serial number to track the plane, it may well be the oldest of its kind in existence and the oldest plane that flew with the 8th Air Force to have survived. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has surveyed the site and will collaborate with museum experts in Britain to recover the craft which, though fragile, is largely intact. A number of museums have expressed interest in the find.

The exact location of the plan is being guarded since the archaeologists need to stay ahead of potential looting to protect their find. When the tides expose the plane, it is being guarded, however for the time being the craft is once again safely encased in sand. The U.S. Air Force regards planes lost prior to 1961 to be “formally abandoned” and would only get involved if human remains are found, which won’t be the case with this plane.

The pilot of this plane was 2nd Lt. Robert F. “Fred” Elliott of Rich Square, N.C. He was forced to make a belly landing when he ran out of gas on a training mission on Sept. 27, 1942. Elliott, who was just 24 at the time, was shot down three months later on a combat mission over Tunisia. Neither he nor his plane was ever recovered.

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WWII, World War II, P-38, historic aircraft

Today I’ll dodge the bugles — not turn on the television set, walk out of the room during the news broadcast — because I can no longer hear the bugler blow “Taps” without crying. Oh yes, I set my jaw. I tell myself I won’t do it this time. And still the hot tears roll down my cheeks unbidden and uncontrollable.

Since my father died Veteran’s Day is an intensely personal commemoration for me and a difficult one — the lone trumpets, the rifle salutes, the missing man formation. It is a confusing feeling of pride and pain so intimately intermingled I cannot begin to separate one from the other.

On the wall here beside me in my study is a framed photographic arrangement of eight men. My Uncle Louis starts the assemblage, a 17-year-old boy who volunteered for the American Expeditionary Force and served as a machine gunner in the Argonne in World War I. Uncle Alf was at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and Papa flew bombers in North Africa and Italy. Uncle Curly was a telegraph operator, Uncle Jack served in the Army, and my cousin Junior died in the South Pacific when the plane on which he was a bombadier was shot down. Cousin Alf flew Hellcats for the navy and his little brother Charlie was in the Marines.

They are my people. My soldiers. The descendants of men who fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Southerners to a man, they put their country first, over dreams and sweethearts, safety and security. We’ve taken to calling them the “greatest generation,” but I know my Dad wouldn’t have liked that. Often when I gaze at this photo my eyes fall on my cousin, the boy who went to war and came home in a casket after the fighting stopped. (I’ve written about him before.) He was a handsome young man and I wish I’d had a chance to know him.

For so many World War II vets we have only the fragments of their fight, the letters home, the stray photos. And we have the bugles that blow the sad notes of “Taps,” — we have tears intermingling memories both happy and sad. On this Veterans Day — still Armistice Day in my mind — I wish the guns could truly fall silent around the world.

WWII, WWI, World War I, World War II, Veterans Day, Armistice Day

The story of the death of Osmond family patriarch George Virl Osmond, Sr., age 90, has occupied a fair amount of space in the news this past week. In part that’s because Marie is a popular contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” right now. In part that’s because Oprah brought more than 100 of his direct descendants — children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — together for a show on Friday. But to a large degree, George Osmond’s death is news because the man led a fairly remarkable life, guiding the careers of his famous children while maintaining a tight knit and seemingly well-balanced family. There aren’t a lot of stage parents who can boast of that accomplishment.

Just simply based on the man’s age I could have guessed Osmond was a World War II vet, but it wasn’t until his daughter danced a perky quick step to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (in sequin bedecked khaki that would have made the Andrews Sisters proud) on “Dancing with the Stars” that that fact was confirmed for me. Marie described how her parents met during the war and how dancing was a part of their courtship. She dedicated her performance to her father who was watching. He died peacefully the next day.

We are reaching that stage with our World War II vets when things like proud legacies and good-byes well-spoken are important to the men and women themselves, but also to their families and friends. Mr. Osmond was granted both and while many this week have eulogized him for his contribution to an entertainment legend — his own children — let’s take a minute to pause and remember he was also a soldier who went to war as part of the Greatest Generation. I hope he and his wife are enjoying dancing together once again.

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Want to look around the 451Press Neighborhood? Read this entry on WatchingRealityTV.com about week seven of “Dancing with the Stars” or check out the Valkyrie featurette on PopCultureBuzz.com.

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WWII, World War II, George Osmond

With life still interfering with the much more important business of blogging, I’ve been trying to get to the keyboard for a couple of days now to write about the death of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, a B-29, that dropped the Hiroshima atomic bomb, Little Boy, on August 15, 1945. General Tibbits died on November 1 at age 92.

The plane was named for his mother and like Tibbets, will live forever in the history books as the agent of the dawn of the atomic age. In an interview with Studs Terkel, Tibbets said plainly that he had no regrets. He joined the air corps to defend his country to the best of his ability. “I knew we did the right thing becasue when I knew we’d be doing that I thought, yes, we’re going to kill a lot of people, but by God we’re going to save a lot of lives. We won’t have to invade [Japan].” (For the full interview, click here.)

Tibbets sentiments echoed my father’s own remarks about the bombing raids he conducted in North Africa and Italy with conventional weapons. Most of my Dad’s stories about the war were humorous and interesting, but rarely graphic. One time he did say to me that he would always wonder how many women and children he killed when he dropped his bombs. But like Tibbets, Papa felt he was doing his job in a time of war.

It is terribly easy for us now in an age where we fully understand the horrific geo-political ramifications of nuclear arms, to condemn the men who developed “Little Boy” as well as those who planned and executed its delivery that day in Hiroshima. All too often we fail to put ourselves in the mindset of 1945 after four bloody years of fighting in both Europe and the South Pacific. Without a doubt an invasion of Japan would have been bloody and horrific. As bloody and horrific as Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Frankly, probably not, but Tibbets and the others involved in the raid didn’t know that, nor were the long-term implications of the new destructive technology readily apparent. It took the Cold War to bring that reality home and now we live in fear that instability in nations like Pakistan will lead to a horrible repeat of that August day in 1945.

But that is now and Tibbets’ moment in history was then. And then, Paul Tibbets was a soldier doing his job without question and for that, we honor his memory at his passing.

(There’s a guest book online for General Tibbets that has already run to 32 pages of electronic signatures. Many of them brought tears to my eyes.)

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Ready for some more blog reading? Check out “Bush-Cheney’s Psychosis Diagnosis” on currenteventswatch.com or read “Halloweentime” about the latest nasty bugs going around on dailysciencedose.com.

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WWII, World War II, Paul Tibbets, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Enola Gay