December 2023 – Historical Easter Eggs

December 20, 1874 The Beautiful Story of the “Ugliest Woman in the World”

Historical Easter eggs

Wanted: The Ugliest Woman. Nothing Repulsive Maimed or Disfigured. Good Pay Guaranteed and Long Engagement for Successful Applicant. Send Recent Photo – Newspaper advertisement

Mary Ann Webster arrived in this world on December 20, 1874, borne of a working class family in the East London township of Plaistow. Hers was a normal childhood, no different than any of her seven siblings. At the age of 20, she qualified to become a nurse.

If the last three years have taught us anything about the nursing profession, it’s a heartfelt respect for those who care for others. Sometimes, at no small risk to themselves.

Today we revere the profession, but such was not always the case. No less a person than the “mother of modern nursing” Florence Nightingale once described the job, as being for ‘those who were too old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stupid or too bad to do anything else’.

When Mary Ann Webster joined the profession, it certainly wasn’t for the money.

Then came the day Mary Ann met a farmer named Thomas Bevan. The couple fell in love and and were wed in 1903. Over time, the union produced four children. Theirs was a happy marriage until that day in 1914, when Thomas entered their small cottage and dropped dead at her feet.

A terrible storm was gathering in 1914 Europe, about to plunge a continent into war. Left without her principle source of support with four children to feed Mary Ann Bevan faced a terrible storm of her own, even then taking place within her own body.

Acromegaly is a neuroendocrine disorder, known to cause excess growth hormones in the body.

“Dalip Singh Rana is an Indian retired professional wrestler and wrestling promoter better known by his ring name The Great Khali” – hat tip wikipedia

Usually caused by a non-malignant tumor on the pituitary gland, Acromegaly results in gigantism when the condition begins before puberty. If you’re a professional wrestling fan, think of the Punjabi wrestler “The Great Khali”, or Andre the Giant.

When contracted in adulthood, Acromegaly results in a thickening of the skin, enlargement of extremities and facial features and a deepened, “husky” voice accompanied by severe headaches and joint pain.

Today the condition can be dealt with, if detected early. Early 20th century medicine offered no options for the treatment of such a disease.

In a world beset by the catastrophe of World War I, Mary Ann Bevan was left with four children to feed, no husband and a rapidly developing personal horror about to render her own appearance, a thing of the past.

As the condition advanced, coworkers and patients alike were at first put off by her changing facial features and then disgusted. Reviled and alone work went from difficult to impossible, leaving the young widow nothing but odd jobs to support herself and her children.

Then one day the newspaper arrived, in 1920:

Wanted: The Ugliest Woman. Nothing Repulsive Maimed or Disfigured. Good Pay Guaranteed and Long Engagement for Successful Applicant. Send Recent Photo.
Newspaper ad

If you’ve ever thought to yourself that people seem judgmental in the age of social media, you’re not alone. You’re not wrong either, but that’s nothing new. People have flocked to gawk at and ridicule “freaks of nature” going back to medieval days, if not before. In the court of King Charles I, two conjoined brothers called Lazarus and Joannes Baptista Colloredo were a source of mean-spirited entertainment. 2-foot 5-inch Matthias Buchinger amazed 18th century crowds in England and Ireland with feats of magic, art and music, despite having no hands and no feet.

So minutely detailed was Buchinger’s calligraphy the locks of his own hair seen in the self-portrait above, are actually 7 biblical psalms and the Lord’s Prayer. But I digress.

This sort of voyeurism came to a pinnacle in the form of the “Freak Show” of late 19^th and early 20^th century United States and England. Which brings us back to Mary Ann Bevan. The man behind the newspaper advert was Claude Bartram, agent for the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Allthatsinteresting.com writes: “She was paraded alongside other notable sideshow acts including Lionel, the Lion-Faced Man, Zip the “Pinhead,” and Jean Carroll, the Tattooed Lady. Dreamland visitors were invited to gawk at the 154 pounds she carried on her 5′ 7″ frame, as well as her size 11 feet and size 25 hands. Bevan bore the humiliating treatment calmly. “Smiling mechanically, she offered picture postcards of herself for sale,” thus securing sufficient money for herself and for her children’s education”.

Postcards like this earned her as much as $12 apiece, sold at fairgrounds.

What it is to appear in a carnival freak show, I leave to the imagination. The sneers and taunts, the comments… Mary Ann found romance in later life with a giraffe keeper, remembered only as Andrew. She even agreed to a beauty makeover one time, at a New York salon. With her face made up complete with a massage, new hairdo and manicure, one of the snottier commenters asserted: ”the rouge and powder and the rest were as out of place on Mary Ann’s countenance as lace curtains on the portholes of a dreadnought.”

Mary Ann herself looked in the mirror and sighed saying simply, “I guess I’ll be getting back to work.”

Mary Ann Bevan performed at Coney Island until the day she died on December 26, 1933. She was only 59. She is buried at Southeast London’s Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery.

Save for aficionados of the American sideshow circuit she faded from history after that, until 2000. The Hallmark greeting card company used her image in an unfunny and cruel joke about blind dates, raising no small storm of criticism from the public. To their credit, Hallmark removed the card from the market.

If there is a last word on the subject of personal appearance, let it go to Mary Ann herself. During two years of performing in New York and enduring the humiliation, sneers and derision of strangers the young mother more than provided for her family, earning the equivalent of 1.6 million dollars in today’s value.

December 16, 1775 Boston Tea Party

The hated Tea Act actually reduced the price of tea, but colonists saw the measure as an effort to buy popular support for taxes already in force.

During the time of Henry VIII, military outlays as a percentage of British central government expenses averaged 29.4%. During the 18^th century that number skyrocketed to 74.6%, and never dropped below 55 percent.

The Seven Years’ War alone, fought on a global scale from 1756 – 1763 saw England borrow the unprecedented sum of £58 million, doubling the national debt and straining the British economy.

For the American colonies, the conflict took the form of the French and Indian Wars. In the view of the British government, the colonists themselves were the beneficiaries of much of that expense, for which the government expected reimbursement.

In the Americas, a never-ending succession of English wars meant until this time that colonists were left alone to run their own affairs.

Several measures were taken to collect revenues. Colonists bristled at the heavy handed taxation policies of the 1760s. The Sugar Act, the Currency Act: in one 12-month period Parliament passed the Stamp Act, Quartering Act, and the Declaratory Act, and deputized Royal Navy Sea Officers to enforce customs laws in colonial ports.

The merchants and traders of Boston cited the “late war” and related expenses, concluding the Boston Non-Importation Agreement of August 1, 1768. That agreement prohibited the importation of a long list of goods, ending with the statement ”That we will not, from and after the 1st of January 1769, import into this province any tea, paper, glass, or painters colours, until the act imposing duties on those articles shall be repealed”.

The ‘Boston Massacre’ of 1770 was a direct result of the tensions between colonists and the “Regulars” sent to enforce the will of the Crown. Two years later, Sons of Liberty looted and burned the HMS Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, RI.

The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, was less a revenue measure than it was an effort to prop up the British East India Company, by that time burdened with debt and holding eighteen million pounds of unsold tea. The measure actually reduced the price of tea, but Colonists saw this as an effort to buy popular support for taxes already in force, and refused the cargo. In Philadelphia and New York, tea ships were turned away and sent back to Britain while in Charleston, the cargo was left to rot on the docks.

British law required a tea ship to offload and pay customs duty within 20 days, or the cargo was forfeit. The Dartmouth arrived in Boston at the end of November with a cargo of tea, followed by the tea ships Eleanor and Beaver. Sam Adams called for a meeting at Faneuil Hall on the 29^th, which then moved to Old South Meeting House to accommodate the crowd. 25 men were assigned to watch Dartmouth, making sure it didn’t unload.

7,000 gathered at Old South Meeting House on December 16^th, 1773, the last day of Dartmouth’s deadline. Royal Governor Hutchinson held his ground, refusing Dartmouth permission to leave. Adams concluded that “This meeting can do nothing further to save the country.”

That night, somewhere between 30 and 130 Sons of Liberty, some dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded the three ships in Boston Harbor. There they threw 342 chests of tea, 90,000 pounds in all, into Boston Harbor. £9,000 worth of tea was destroyed, worth about $1.5 million in today’s dollars.

In the following months, other protesters staged their own “Tea Parties”, destroying imported British tea in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Greenwich, NJ. There was even a second Boston Tea Party on March 7, 1774, when 60 Sons of Liberty, again dressed as Mohawks, boarded the “Fortune”. This time they dumped 3,000 pounds of the stuff into the harbor. That October in Annapolis Maryland, the owner of the Peggy Stewart was compelled to burn his own vessel to the water line. It was better than facing the angry mob.

For decades to come, the December 16 incident in Boston Harbor was blithely referred to as “the destruction of the tea.” The earliest newspaper reference to “tea party” wouldn’t come around until 1826.

John Crane of Braintree is one of the few original tea partiers ever identified, and the only man injured in the event. An original member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and early member of the Sons of Liberty, Crane was struck on the head by a tea crate and thought to be dead. His body was carried away and hidden under a pile of shavings at a Boston cabinet maker’s shop. It must have been some sight to see when John Crane “rose from the dead”, the morning after.

Great Britain responded with the “Intolerable Acts” of 1774, including the occupation of Boston by British troops. Minutemen clashed with “Lobster backs” just a few months later – on April 19, 1775. No one alive today knows who fired that first shot at Lexington Green. History would record that sound as “The shot heard ’round the world”.

December 15, 1256 Last Stronghold of the Assassins

Possessed of all the physical prowess of youth, the individual assassin was well-read and highly intelligent, expertly trained in combat tactics, the art of disguise, the ways of silent infiltration and the skills of the expert horseman.

For the Islamic world, the 11th century was a time of political instability. The Fatimid Caliphate, established in 909 and headquartered in Cairo, found itself in sharp decline by the year 1090.

Within 100 years, the Fatimids would disappear altogether, eclipsed by the Abbasid Caliphate of An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, better known to anyone familiar with the story of Richard Lionheart, as Saladin.

To the east lay the Great Seljuk Empire, the Turko-Persian, Sunni Muslim state established in 1037 and stretching from the former Sassanid domains of modern-day Iran and Iraq, to the Hindu Kush. An “appanage” or “family federation” state, the Seljuk empire was itself in flux after a series of succession contests and destined to disappear in 1194.

Into the gap there arose the “Old Man of the Mountain”, Hassan-i Sabbah, and a fanatically loyal, secret sect of Nizari Ismaili followers, called Assassins.

The name derives from the Arabic “Hashashin”, meaning “those faithful to the foundation”. Marco Polo related a tale that the old man got such fervent loyalty from his young followers by drugging and leading them to a “paradise” of earthly delights, to which only he could bring them back. The story is most likely apocryphal. There is little evidence that hashish was ever used by the sect.

More likely that Sabbah’s followers believed him to be divine, personally selected by Allah. The man didn’t need to drug his “Fida’i” (self-sacrificing agents), he was infallible. His every whim would be obeyed as the literal Word of God.

The mountain fortification of Alamut in northern Persia was all but impervious to defeat by military means, but not to the two-years long campaign of stealth and pretend friendship practiced by Sabbah and his followers. Alamut fell in a virtually bloodless takeover in 1090, becoming the headquarters of the Nizari Ismaili state.

assassin-fortification-at-alamut-northern-iran — Alamut Fortress, Nortwest Iran

Why Sabbah would have founded such an order is unclear, if not in pursuit of his own personal and political goals. By the time of the first Crusade (1095-1099) the Nizari Isma’ili leader found himself pitted against Muslim and Christian rivals, alike.

Western, Arabic, Syriac and Persian sources alike depicted the Assassins as trained killers, equally adept with dagger, arrow and poison alike.

Sabbah would order the elimination of his rivals, often up close. From religious figures to politicians and generals, assassinations were preferably carried out in broad daylight, lest everyone absorb the intended message.

The assassin could carry out the hit or insert himself and wait for years, for the opportunity to strike. Either way, he fully expected to die in carrying out his charge, a fact which troubled him not at all, knowing that he would awake, in paradise.

assassination_of_the_seljuk_vizier_nizam_al-mulk — Assassination of the Seljuk Vizier Nizam al-Mulk

While the “Fida’in” occupied the lowest rank of the order, great care was devoted to their education and training. Possessed of all the physical prowess of youth, the individual assassin was intelligent and well-read, highly trained in combat tactics, the art of disguise and the skills of the expert horseman. All the necessary traits for anyone who would penetrate enemy territory, insinuate himself into their ranks, and murder the victim who had learned to trust him.

Sometimes, a credible threat of assassination was as effective as murder itself. When the new Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar rebuffed Hashashin diplomatic overtures in 1097, the sultan awoke one morning to find a dagger struck fast in the ground, next to his bed. A messenger arrived sometime later from the old man of the mountain. “Did I not wish the sultan well” he asked, “that the dagger which was struck in the hard ground would have been planted on your soft breast?” The technique worked nicely. For the rest of his days, Sanjar was happy to allow the Hashashin to collect tolls from travelers. The Sultan even provided them with a pension, collected from the inhabitants of the lands they occupied.

The great Saladin himself awoke one morning, to find a note resting on his chest, along with a poisoned cake. The message was clear. Sultan of all Egypt and Syria though he was, Saladin made an alliance with the rebel sect. There were no more attempts on his life.

assassin-fortification-at-masyaf-in-northern-syria — Assassin stronghold at Masyaf, in Northern Syria

Over the course of 200 years, the assassins occupied scores of mountain redoubts, while Alamut remained its principle quarters.

It’s impossible to know how many of the hundreds of political assassinations of this period were attributable to the followers of Hassan-i Sabbah. Without a doubt, their fearsome reputation ascribed more political murder to the sect than it was actually responsible for.

The Fida’in of Hassan-i Sabbah were some of the most feared killers of the middle ages. Scary as they were, there came a time when the order of the assassins tangled with someone far scarier than themselves.

In 1250, the grand master dispatched his killers to Karakorum in order to murder the Great Khan of the “Golden Horde” and great grandson of Genghis Kahn himself, Möngke. That turned out to be a bad idea.

The Nestorian Christian ally of the Mongol Empire Kitbuqa Noyan, was ordered to destroy several Hashashin fortresses in 1253. In 1255. Möngke’s brother Hulagu rode out at the head of the largest Mongol army ever assembled and no fewer than 1,000 Chinese engineer squads. Their orders were to treat those who submitted with kindness, and to utterly destroy those who did not.

That he did. Rukn al-Dīn Khurshāh, fifth and final Imam who ruled at Alamut, submitted after four days of preliminary bombardment. On December 15, 1256, Mongol forces under the command of Hulagu Khan entered the Hashshashin stronghold at Alamut Castle.

Alamut was destroyed, the defeated hashashin leader paraded before subordinate fortresses, each of which was destroyed in its turn.

Some Hashashin continued to exist in small, fractured groups, though their power was at an end. Destroyed by the power of the Mongol horde, 767 years ago today.

December 14, 1862 Angel on the Battlefield

Nobody fired. No one so much as moved as one man stepped over that wall and into the no-man’s land between two watching armies.

It was the greatest clash of the Civil War, and it should have been a sure victory. Overwhelmingly superior federal forces easily taking the lightly defended city of Fredericksburg and marching on, to the Confederate capital of Richmond.

It was never meant to be.

Departing November 15, 120,000 federal troops under Union General Ambrose Burnside hurried the 35-miles from Warrenton to Falmouth Virginia, the first arriving on the north bank of the Rappahannock two days later. Across the river stood the port city of Fredericksburg, defended by a paltry confederate force numbering barely a few hundred.

Back in Washington, bureaucratic wrangling conspired with wretched weather to delay the only means of crossing the Rappahannock. Portable bridge pontoons only now beginning the journey south.

“A TRAIN OF PONTOONS LIKE THOSE USED BY BURNSIDE TO SPAN THE RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER. THE TARDY ARRIVAL OF THE PONTOONS UPSET BURNSIDE’S PLANS FOR AN EASY CROSSING AND ULTIMATELY DOOMED HIS CAMPAIGN TO FAILURE”. Hat tip NPShistory.com

And so they waited, any chance of surprise squandered as Robert E. Lee hurried some 70,000 of own troops to the scene. First to arrive was General James Longstreet’s wing moving east from Culpeper, taking up positions along a prominence known as Marye’s heights. Meanwhile, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s men hurried in from the Shenandoah Valley, forming up a defensive line four miles outside of town.

By the time those bridges arrived, heavy snows slowed military operations for at least another week. Longstreet’s and Stonewall Jackson’s men had more than enough time to prepare.

Burnside’s crossing finally began on the morning of December 11, as engineer battalions constructed bridges in the face of determined Confederate fire. Several groups of soldiers had to row across the river, the battle moving through the streets and buildings in the first urban combat of the Civil War.

On the morning of the 13th, Robert E. Lee’s forces occupied a seven mile long curving line, with the five divisions of Longstreet’s Corps on the left along Marye’s Heights, west of town.

The stone wall at Marye’s Heights. Hat tip theamericanwarrior.com

Fighting began on both ends of the Confederate position, more or less simultaneously. The federals had some early successes against Stonewall Jackson’s dug-in positions on the right, but requested reinforcements never arrived. By the end of the day, the old farmer’s expression “slaughter pen”, had taken on a whole new meaning.

In contrast to the swampy approaches on the Confederate right, 5,000 soldiers under James Longstreet looked out from behind the stone wall on Marye’s Heights to an open plain, crossed from left to right by a mill run 5-feet deep and 15-feet wide, filled with 3-feet of freezing water.

Confederate artillery commander Edward Porter Alexander looked out on that ground and remarked “a chicken could not live on that field when we open on it”. He was right. For six hours, the Union army threw one attack after another against the rebels behind the wall. Fourteen assaults in all. As the sun went down on the evening of December 13, the ground before Marye’s Heights was carpeted with the mangled, dead and dying bodies of Union soldiers.

The Army of the Potomac suffered more than 13,000 casualties, approximately two-thirds of them in front of that wall. Lee’s army, by comparison, suffered around 4,500 losses. Watching the great Confederate victory unfold from his hilltop command post, Robert E. Lee said “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”

Union ambulance corps had all they could do to remove their wounded from the plains, but dared not enter within the Confederate’s range of fire. So it is all through the night of December 13-14, the moans of mangled and dying Union soldiers could be heard all along that wall.

Perhaps some Confederate soldiers reveled in all that carnage, but not all. As the moans could be heard throughout that night here was hardly a man among them, who didn’t understand. That could be me out there.

Sergeant Richard Kirkland, Company G, Second South Carolina Infantry, could not sit and listen. Kirkland couldn’t stand to hear “those poor people crying for water”, so he left his position and made his way to General Joseph Kershaw’s headquarters, and asked to be allowed to help.

On the morning of December 14, 1862, Richard Kirkland took as many canteens as he could carry and stepped into the no man’s land between two watching armies. No one fired. No one even moved as one man worked his way alone from one wounded man to the next, straightening out a shattered leg here, there spreading out an overcoat and always with a quiet word of encouragement, and a drink of water.

Kirkland was out there for no less than 1½ hours. Alone in no man’s land, he never returned to the safety of that wall until he had helped every fallen soldier, friend or foe, on that part of the battlefield.

General Kershaw later gave this account: “Unharmed he reached the nearest sufferer. He knelt beside him, tenderly raised the drooping head, rested it gently upon his own noble breast, and poured the precious life-giving fluid down the fever scorched throat. This done, he laid him tenderly down, placed his knapsack under his head, straightened out his broken limb, spread his overcoat over him, replaced his empty canteen with a full one, and turned to another sufferer.”

moment_of_mercy — Moment of Mercy, by Felix de Weldon. 1965, Fredericksburg, VA. Photo credit Claire H. New York

Sergeant Kirkland lost his life the following year, leading an infantry charge at a place called Chickamauga.

How many lives were spared by one man’s courage and compassion this day in 1862, is impossible to know. One man who stepped out onto no man’s land between two watching armies, to give a moment’s comfort to a fallen adversary.

For that, Richard Rowland Kirkland will forever remain, the Angel of Marye’s Heights.

December 13, 1942 Ship’s Cook

Historical Easter Eggs

World War II was cut short on this day in 1942, by as much as a year. Untold lives spared by the actions of two courageous sailors. And a 16-year-old ship’s cook.

Similar to the Base Exchange system serving American military personnel, the British Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) is the UK-government organization operating clubs, bars, shops and supermarkets in service to British armed forces, as well as naval canteen services (NCS) onboard Royal Navy ships.

NAAFI personnel serving on such vessels are assigned to duty stations and wear uniforms, while technically remaining civilians.

Tommy Brown was fifteen that day, lying about his age and enlisting in the NAAFI. He was assigned as canteen assistant to the “P-class” destroyer, HMS Petard.

On October 30, 1942, Petard joined three other destroyers and a squadron of Vickers Wellesley light bombers off the coast of Port Said Egypt, in a 16-hour hunt for the German “Unterseeboot”, U–559.

Hours of depth charge attacks were finally rewarded when the crippled U-559 came to the surface, the 4-inch guns of HMS Petard permanently ending the career of the German submarine.

The crew abandoned ship, but not before opening the boat’s seacocks. Water was pouring into the submarine, even as Lieutenant Francis Anthony Blair Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier dived into the water and swam to the stricken sub, with junior canteen assistant Tommy Brown close behind.

With U-559 sinking fast, Fasson and Grazier made their way into the captain’s cabin. Finding a set of keys, Fasson opened a drawer and discovered a number of documents, including two sets of code books.

With one hand on the conning ladder and the other clutching those documents, Brown made three trips up and down through the hatch, to Petard’s whaler.

300px-U-185 — U-185 sinking, after American depth charging

In the final moments, the ship’s cook called for his shipmates to get out of the boat. Brown himself was dragged under, but managed to kick free and come to the surface. Colin Grazier and Francis Fasson went down with the German sub.

The episode brought Tommy Brown to the attention of the authorities, ending his posting aboard Petard when his true age was revealed. Even so he was never discharged from the NAAFI, and later returned to sea on board the light cruiser, HMS Belfast.

In 1945, now-Leading Seaman Tommy Brown was home on shore leave, when fire broke out at the family home in South Shields. He died while trying to rescue his 4-year-old sister Maureen, and was buried with full military honors in Tynemouth cemetery.

Fasson and Grazier were awarded the George Cross, the second-highest award in the United Kingdom system of honors. Since he was a civilian due to his NAAFI employment, Brown was awarded the George Medal.

For German U-boat commanders, the period between the fall of France and the American entry into WW2 was known as “Die Glückliche Zeit” – “The Happy Time” – in the North Sea and North Atlantic. From July through October 1940 alone, 282 Allied ships were sunk on the approaches to Ireland, for a combined loss of 1.5 million tons of merchant shipping.

Tommy Brown’s Mediterranean episode took place in 1942, in the midst of the “Second Happy Time”, a period known among German submarine commanders as the “American shooting season”. U-boats inflicted massive damage during this period, sinking 609 ships totaling 3.1 million tons with the loss of thousands of lives, against a cost of only 22 U-boats.

USMM.org reports that the United States Merchant Marine service suffered a higher percentage of fatalities at 3.9%, than any American service branch in WW2.

Early versions of the German “Enigma” code were broken as early as 1932, thanks to cryptanalysts of the Polish Cipher Bureau, and French spy Hans Thilo Schmidt. French and British military intelligence were read into Polish decryption techniques in 1939, these methods later improved upon by the British code breakers of Bletchley Park.

Vast numbers of messages were intercepted and decoded from Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe sources through the Allied intelligence project “Ultra”, shortening the war by at least a year, and possibly two.

The Kriegsmarine was a different story. Fanatically jealous of security, Admiral Karl Dönitz introduced a third-generation enigma machine (M4) into the submarine service around May 1941, a system so secret that even the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe, were ignorant of its existence.

The system requires identical cipher machines at both ends of the transmission and took a while to put into place, with German subs being spread around the world.

All M4 machines were distributed by early 1942. On February 2, German submarine communications went dark. For code breakers at Bletchley Park, the blackout was sudden and complete. For a period of nine months, Allies had not the slightest idea of what the German submarine service was up to. The result was catastrophic.

U-559 documents were rushed back to England, arriving at Bletchley Park on November 24, allowing cryptanalysts to attack the “Triton” key used within the U-boat service. It would not be long, before the U-boats themselves were under attack.

The M4 code was broken by December 13, when the first of a steady stream of intercepts arrived at the Admiralty Operational Intelligence Office, giving the positions of 12 U-boats.

The UK Guardian newspaper wrote: “The naval historian Ralph Erskine thinks that, without the (M4) breakthrough, the Normandy invasion would have been delayed by at least a year, and that between 500,000 and 750,000 tons of allied shipping were saved in December 1942 and January 1943 alone”.

Tommy Brown never knew what was in those documents. The entire enterprise remained top secret, until decades after his death.

Winston Churchill later described the actions of the crew of HMS Petard as “crucial to the outcome of the war”. Untold numbers of lives that could have been lost. But for the actions of two courageous sailors. And a sixteen-year-old ship’s cook.

thomas-brown-sharon-carley-462946894 — “**Tommy’s grand niece Sharon Carley stands next to commemorative stained glass window of late war hero**“. Hat Tip mirror.co.uk

December 12, 1937 The Road to War

“We had no reason to believe the Japanese would attack us,” Executive Officer Lieutenant Arthur Anders later explained. “The United States was a neutral nation.”

USS Panay was a flat bottomed river craft built in Shanghai, part of the Asiatic fleet and charged with protecting American lives and property on the Yangtze River near Nanking.

Japanese forces invaded China in the summer of 1937, advancing on Nanking as American citizens evacuated the city. The last of them boarded Panay on December 11: five officers, 54 enlisted men, four US embassy staff, and 10 civilians.

Japanese air forces received word the morning of December 12, 1937, that Chinese forces were about 12 miles north of the city, evacuating on several large steamers and a number of junks.

Anchored a short way upstream along with several Chinese oil tankers, Panay came under bombing and strafing attack that morning, sinking mid-river with three men killed. 43 sailors and five civilians were wounded. Two newsreel cameramen were on board at the time of the attack, and were able to film part of it.

“View of *Panay* with her main deck awash, as she sinks into the Yangtze River between Nanking and Wuhu, China, after being bombed by Japanese planes on 12 December 1937. Note tangled wreckage of foremast and seaman on deck, to left (NH 50807)”. – Hat Tip history.navy.mil

The American ambassador to Japan at the time was Joseph C. Grew, a man who was more than old enough to remember how the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor brought the US into war with Spain in 1898. While Japanese authorities were less than helpful, Ambassador Grew hoped to avoid a similar outcome following the Panay sinking.

The Japanese government continued to insist that the attack had been accidental, even as US cryptographers uncovered information indicating that aircraft were operating under orders.

The matter was officially settled four months later, with an official apology and an indemnity of $2,214,007.36 paid to the US government. The “accidental attack” narrative seems to have been a safe story both sides pretended to believe, but the story strains credulity. HMS Ladybird was fired on that same morning by Japanese shore batteries, the attack followed a month later by the “Allison incident”, in which the American consul in Nanking, John M. Allison, was struck in the face by a Japanese soldier.

Adding in the fact that American property had been looted by Japanese forces, it seems clear that relations between the two governments had become toxic.

Interestingly, though the Japanese government held considerable animosity for that of the United States, the people of Japan seemed a different story. Ambassador Grew was flooded with expressions of sympathy from Japanese citizens, apologizing for their government and expressing affection for the United States.

Letters came from citizens of all ages and walks of life, from doctors and professors to school children. The wives of high ranking Japanese officials apologized to Ambassador Grew’s wife without their own husbands’ knowledge, while ten Japanese men describing themselves as retired US Navy sailors living in Yokohama, sent a check for $87.19.

One typical letter read: “Dear Friend! This is a short letter, but we want to tell you how sorry we are for the mistake our airplane made. We want you to forgive us I am little and do not understand very well, but I know they did not mean it. I feel so sorry for those who were hurt and killed. I am studying here at St. Margarets school which was built by many American friends. I am studying English. But I am only thirteen and cannot write very well. All my school-mates are sorry like myself and wish you to forgive our country. To-morrow is X-Mas, May it be merry, I hope the time will come when everybody can be friends. I wish you a Happy New Year. Good-bye.”

The two governments never did patch things up. The US placed an embargo in September 1940 prohibiting exports of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan, in retaliation for the Japanese occupation of northern French Indochina: modern day Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Japan occupied southern Indochina by the summer of 1941 as the US, Great Britain and the Netherlands retaliated by freezing Japanese assets.

Throughout that summer and fall, Japan tried to negotiate a settlement to lift the embargo on terms which would allow them to keep newly captured territory, while at the same time preparing for war. Future Prime Minister and General Hideki Tojo secretly set November 29 as the last day on which Japan would accept a peaceful settlement.

Air and naval forces of the Imperial Japanese government attacked the US naval anchorage at Pearl Harbor one week later.

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Sharing Today in History:

Sharing Today in History:

Sharing Today in History:

Sharing Today in History: