World War II

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

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

Once upon a time there was a German historian named von Ranke who counseled his students that history must be written, “wie es eigentlich gewesen.” Rough translation - how it actually happened. There’s just one problem with that bit of 19th century advice. It can’t be done.

With all the discussion about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of what Ken Burns has put together in his documentary, “The War,” I feel that a little commentary on historiography is warranted. Short definition is that historiography is the study of the study of history. Trust me. Double-barreled snore and I have the graduate credits to prove it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a necessary part of becoming a so-called professional historian. You need to come to terms with the idea that history has been interpreted in different ways for different purposes — twisted for political agendas (think Nazi Germany), cleaned up to bolster a new nation (think Parson Weems, George Washington, and silly stories about cherry trees), or filtered to justify personal actions (see any political autobiography written in the past 50 years.)

I’ve always held that some sense of the Heisenberg principle — albeit somewhat garbled by the social sciences — is a better place for an historian to start. You know the old saw: the very act of observing a phenomenon changes that phenomenon. If it makes you feel better, go with Immaneul Kant. Everything we can know is based on our experiences. (Also a gross over-simplification, but good enough for government work.)

There is absolutely no way the historian can separate his individual identity, understanding, emotions, prejudices, or limitations from the history he writes, films, or records. Period. There is no way to write history as it was. Even if we were to develop a time machine and send the historian backwards to observe the events, his 21st century eyes would not be able to keep him from judging the tight morals of the Victorian world. And just for the record, Ken Burns isn’t an historian. He’s a director.

Invariably when the subject of film or documentary as history comes up, someone gets around to citing Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK.” Do I want a generation of Americans to think that’s the real story of the Kennedy assassination? Lord no! But can I see that the film itself is an historical document and the willingness of many to accept it as fact is a reflection of the society into which it was introduced? Yes. Do I think the film is “dangerous.” No. There’s too much other material pro and anti-conspiracy theory available on the subject, just as there is more than enough material available on the Second World War to make for a lifetime of study.

My mother reads “historical” novels. Any book with half-naked people in a clinch on the cover and text that includes phrases like “velvet throbbing” isn’t history. It is, however, to those who enjoy such, entertaining. Burns’ work is several notches about that kind of fiction and a notch or two below the elusive definitive history. In the long run it will be judged as an historical document of its time, a look at World War II produced against the backdrop of a hotly debated war in the Middle East and a sharp clash of neo-conservatives and liberals in American society. In the short-term, it’s also entertaining and much better done than the “throw the baby out with the bath water” critics are willing to admit.

WWII, Ken Burns, The War, historiography

Sometimes I get in sort of a mood about the war. In my house when you said “the war” you meant World War II, unless you were at a family reunion where the phrase could possibly still refer to the Civil War depending upon to whom you were speaking. (It’s a Southern thing.)

I confess I get cranky . . . no . . . I get angry when it seems that veterans and the war as a whole are being forgotten. Sure, I know we’re 66 years out from Pearl Harbor and young people today just look at the war as another question they need to get right to get the hell out of history class. I taught history after all and the indifference of 90 percent of my students to our collective past saddened, tortured, and infuriated me in equal measure back in the day.

But sometimes the neglect can get even more personal than that. I still maintain close ties to the little town in West Texas where I was born. My mother lives there as do many old friends. Several years ago the publisher of the local newspaper, the daughter of the former editor and publisher, himself a WWII vet, wrote a Veteran’s Day article about the town’s servicemen. The thing stretched on column after column and referred to many men both living and dead. It did not refer to my father. You see, the current editor and I have a personal feud. To get to me she ignored and insulted my father’s World War II service and left him out of the piece.

I won’t go into what followed. Suffice it to say I’d be hard put to walk across the street to spit on the woman if she were on fire. Since then, however, I’ve been even more sensitive to the feelings of living veterans who feel they’re forgotten. So this morning when I read this beautiful tribute to Seattle area veteran Al Weddle written by Robert L. Jamieson, Jr. for seattlepi.com, I cried. Yeah, I know, I cry alot about things related to the war. But what struck me most was the guy-to-guy tenderness of the piece. There are few things more touching than the respect of a young man for an old man. And I suspect there are few things old men enjoy more, even if they would never admit it.

At my own father’s funeral I was doing pretty well, holding it in and sucking it up to deliver the eulogy. Then I looked at the back of the church and saw two young men who worked for my Dad sitting erect, trying and failing to keep the tears from rolling down their cheeks. It is one of my most vivid images of that day. Those boys gave me a gift, although they didn’t realize it, in the love and respect they silently expressed for my Dad. And Jamieson’s piece is a gift to Weddle’s family and to World War II vets everywhere because it says, “I remember. I remember you and I remember your stories.” Bravo!

WWII, vets, Al Weddle, Paul Jamieson

From the day it happened to this sixth anniversary I think about how angry my father would have been about the attacks on September 11, 2001. People of his age (he would have been 87 this coming March) talk about where they were the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Papa always said that’s when he decided to enlist rather than wait to be drafted. He wanted to be a pilot, a job at first denied to him because he lacked a college education. “All those college boys got killed off pretty quick,” he’d say. “That’s when they created the rank of staff sergeant pilot and turned the rest of us loose.”

After Pearl Harbor our nation knew on whom it was to be turned loose. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo — all identifiable enemies representative of a dangerous totalistarianism threatening to sweep the globe. The trapped men inside the USS Arizona had to be avenged. And there are other images, images that make tears run down my face as I write. The gallant Poles who went out to meet the Nazi Panzer divisions on horseback armed with pikes, the British soldiers who kept fighting even as they were backed into the sea at Dunkirk, the British citizens who went to get them in anything that would float and then endured the long months of the Blitz, the Resistance fighters all over Europe, the victims of the Holocaust, the boys who died in the surf on Omaha Beach, and in the sea the day the USS Indianapolis went down. There’s a reason we say World War II was the last good war.

On this morning six years ago as I watched the Trade Center Towers collapse live on television I knew I was watching the Pearl Harbor of my generation. I won’t profane this day with talk about the “rightness” of our current war. Although I was born late in my parents’ lives, in 1962, I am a child of World War II. I stand when the flag passes, my eyes fill with tears during the National Anthem, and I openly cry when I hear a bugle blow Taps. And each September 11, I put a small pin on my collar, the World Trade Center Towers wrapped in a black ribbon and covered by the American flag.

My father was a citizen soldier and six years ago men, women, and children who never had the choice to enlist as he did died in the opening battle of a new conflict, one that perhaps we do not yet fully understand and one whose end we cannot yet place in our sights. There were towering acts of heroism that September day. Think today about the firemen and police officers who never hesitated to go into those buildings. Think about the first responders who never hesisted in their determination to reach that smoking pile of rubble to try to help. Think about the soldiers who died at the Pentagon with no opportunity to defend themselves. And think about the passengers on that plane who knew they were going to die and chose to do it on their feet, fighting.

I am not wise enough to answer cosmic questions about the afterlife, but I believe there is a special quiet, a special peace for the people who died this day. There was a song written in 1942 called “There’s a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere,” which said “only Uncle Sam’s great heroes get to go there.” In the company of heroes may the dead of 9/11 feel our pride and our sorrow on this day.

WWII, 9/11, Pearl Harbor

During World War II the Nazis transferred the collection of the Prussian State Library in Berlin to 29 sites throughout the Third Reich in an effort to protect the treasures from Allied bombs.

Five hundred wooden crates containing manuscripts and documents were placed in the Sudety Mountains at Ksiaz Castle, although they were later moved farther south.

Here’s the problem, when the Polish border was shifted to the west at the end of the war, the collection fell into the hands of Polish authorities who moved it to Krakow at the Jagiellonian University Library.

Some of the materials went back to Germany in 1977, the remainder are still in Poland. They include original manuscripts by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Goethe. Germany wants them back.

Poland, a country that endured a merciless five-year occupation that led to the death of six million Poles has essentially responded with, “Yeah, so?”

The official statement issued by the Polish Foreign Ministry read in part, “all artworks, library and archive materials and all other objects of German origins that found themselves on Polish territory in connection with World War II were taken over by the Polish state on the basis of appropriate legal acts.”

The Ministry made it clear the opinion is the last word on the subject and that they have no intention of entertaining any more groundless claims.

The position of the Polish government is understandable in an emotional sense but for that matter, so is Germany’s. The issue raises the questions, when is a war really over?

There’s universal agreement that works of art taken by the Nazis are to be returned to their legal owners whenever possible. And yet anti-German sentiment is still sufficiently strong that German national treasures are not accorded the same respect.

It’s a difficult subject, one to which I have no answers, but I find it an incredible example of just how recent the war really is in our collective societal memory.

WWII, Poland, Germany, artwork, Prussian State Library

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of the nuclear bomb euphemistically named “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Seventy-thousand people died and almost 70 percent of the city was turned into a wasteland. In the months that followed another 60,000 died of their injuries and from the effects of radiation.

One hundred and thirty thousand dead from a single device that ushered in the nuclear age. That’s a staggering statement and one that still causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. You see, I grew up during the Cold War. Oh, not the height of it. Not the days of “duck and cover” drills. I was still in my Mother’s womb during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But still there was a pervading sense of “us and them,” the comments my Dad would make about how we should have gone ahead and whipped the Russians when we had the chance, and the anti-communist rhetoric that seemed a staple of political addresses well into the Reagan administration. When the Berlin wall came down I remember thinking that in a way it really signalled the end of World War II, the easing of a degree of global tension that had overshadowed the world since that morning in Hiroshima.

As a young person I really did worry that the world would end in a nuclear conflageration. Now I fear other methods of our global demise but I’m also old enough to know that if it is destined to end, there’s not much I can do about it.

Paul Tibbets, the man who was at the stick of the Enola Gay sixty-two years ago once said, “I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.”

Today, pause for a moment to remember the people of Hiroshima, the men who dropped the bomb that day, and all of us who have been effected by the shadow of those events these many years. Let’s hope that of all the legacies of World War II the use of nuclear weapons as a means to “resolve” conflicts is not one that will endure.

WWII, Hiroshima, Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, Cold War