Today in History – Page 4 – Historical Easter Eggs

March 28, 1892 The Other Capone

The 20th century personification of a 19th century wild west gunfighter, no one suspected Richard James Hart to be the brother of the infamous gangster, Al Capone.

A boy was born on this day in 1892 in the south of Italy, James Vincenzo, the first son of a barber named Gabriele Capone and his wife, Teresa. A second son named Ralph came along before the small family emigrated to the United States in pursuit, of a better life.

Gabriele and Teresa would have seven more children in time: Frank and Alphonse followed by Ermina who sadly died in infancy, followed by John, Albert, Matthew and Mafalda.

Most of the brothers followed a life of petty crime but not Vincenzo, the first-born who would often take the ferry to Staten Island to escape the overcrowded mayhem, of the city.

Vincenzo got a job there with help from his father. He was cleaning stables and learning how to care for horses. There he learned to ride and preferred the more “American sounding” part of his name, “James”.

James’ newfound love of horses led to a fascination with Buffalo Bill Cody and the “Wild West” shows, popular at this time. At sixteen he joined the circus, and left the city for good. His family had no idea where he had gone until a letter, about a year later. He was in Kansas he wrote, working as a roustabout with a traveling circus.

This was the age of the silent film, William S. Hart one of the great “cowboy” stars of the era. Hart was larger than life, the six-gun toting cow-punching gunslinger from a bygone era.

The roustabout idolized the silent film star and adopted his mannerisms, complete with low-slung six-shooters, red bandanna and ten-gallon hat. He worked hard to lose his Brooklyn accent and explained his swarthy complexion, explaining he was part native American.

James even adopted the silent film star’s name and enlisted in the Army as Richard James Hart claiming to be a farmer, from Indiana. Some stories will tell you that Hart fought in France and rose to the rank of Lieutenant, in the military police. Others will tell you he joined the American Legion after the war only to be thrown out when it was learned, the whole story was fake.

Be that as it may, Vincenzo legally changed his name to Richard James Hart.

Richard Hart stepped off the freight train in 1919, a walking, talking anachronism. The personification of a 19th century Wild West gunfighter, from his cowboy boots to the embroidered vest to that broad-brimmed Stetson hat. This was Homer Nebraska, a small town of about 500, some seventeen miles from Sioux City Iowa.

He claimed to be a hero of the Great War, personally decorated by General John J. Pershing. Intelligent, ambitious and not the least afraid of hard work, Hart took jobs as paper hanger, house painter, whatever it took.

He was short and powerfully built with the look of a man who carried mixed Indian or Mexican blood, regaling veterans at the local American Legion with tales of his exploits, against the Hun.

The man could fight and he knew how to use those guns, amazing onlookers with feats of marksmanship behind the Legion post.

Any doubts concerning the man’s physical courage were put to rest that May when a flash-flood nearly killed the Winch family of neighboring Emerson, Nebraska. Dashing across the raging flood time after time, two-gun Hart brought the family to safety. Nineteen-year-old Kathleen was so taken with her savior she married him that Fall, a marriage which produced four sons.

The small town was enthralled by this new arrival, the town council appointing Hart as Marshall. He was a big fish in a small pond, elected commander of the Legion post and district commissioner for the Boy Scouts of America.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on January 16 of that year, the Volstead Act passed by the United States Congress over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. “Prohibition” was now the law of the land, making it illegal to produce, import, transport or sell intoxicating liquor.

Richard Hart became a prohibition agent in the Summer of 1920 and went immediately to work, destroying stills and arresting area bootleggers.

Hart was loved by temperance types and hated by the “wets”, famous across the state of Nebraska. The Homer Star reported that this hometown hero was “becoming such a menace in the state that his name alone carries terror to the heart of every criminal.”

Officials at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took note and before long, Hart was performing the more difficult (and dangerous) job of liquor suppression on the reservations.

Hart brought his chaps and six-shooters to South Dakota where the Yanktown reservation superintendent reported to his superiors in Washington “I wish to commend Mr. Hart in highest terms for his fearless and untiring efforts to bring these liquor peddlers and moonshiners to justice. …This man Hart is a go-getter.”

Hart became proficient in Lakota and Omaha dialects. Tribal leaders called him “Two Gun”, after the twin revolvers he wore. Some members of the Oglala tribe called him “Soiko”, a name roughly translating as “Big hairy boogey-man”.

By 1927, Two-Guns Hart had achieved such a reputation as to be appointed bodyguard to President Calvin Coolidge, on a trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota.

By 1930, Richard James Hart was so famous a letter addressed only as “Hart” and adorned with a sketch of two pistols, arrived to his attention.

Hart became livestock inspector after repeal of prohibition, and special agent assigned to the Winnebago and Omaha reservations. He was re-appointed Marshall of his adopted home town but, depression-era Nebraska was tough. The money was minuscule and the Marshall was caught, stealing cans of food.

The relatives of one bootlegging victim from his earlier days tracked him down and beat him so severely with brass knuckles, the prohibition cowboy lost the sight of one eye.

Fellow members of the American Legion had by this time contacted the Army, only to learn that Hart’s World War 1 tales were fake. His namesake Richard Jr. went on to lose his life fighting for the nation in World War 2. but Richard himself was never in the Army.

Turns out that other parts of the lawman’s story were phony, too. A good story but altogether fake. Like the Italian-American actor Espera Oscar de Corti better known character “Iron Eyes Cody”, the “crying Indian”, who possessed not a drop of native American blood.

The lawman had left the slums of Brooklyn to become a Prohibition Cowboy while his little brother Alphonse, pursued a life of crime.

A Trivial Matter

James Vincenzo Capone’s strange double-life came to the public eye for the first time in 1951, when defense attorneys subpoenaed Richard Hart to testify on behalf of his brother Ralph. Hart faded into anonymity following a rash of newspaper stories, and died within a year in the small Nebraska town where he stepped off that freight train, some 33 years earlier.

March 27, 1915 Typhoid Mary

“In time of war, soldiers, however sensible, care a great deal more on some occasions about slaking their thirst than about the danger of enteric fever. Better known as typhoid, the disease is often spread by drinking contaminated water”. – Winston Churchill

In 1841, US President William Henry Harrison died only 32 days into his only term in office. The killer was a common culprit in Harrison’s day, one destined to end the life of Stephen A. Douglas of the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates, William “Willy” Lincoln (right), the 11-year-old son of President Abraham & First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, mother of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Historians blame Typhoid fever for the plague that killed the great statesman Pericles and a third the population of Athens, in 430BC. “America’s first epidemic”, Typhoid killed some 85 percent of the settlers in the English colony at Jamestown between 1607 and 1624. Among native American populations, Typhoid fever was a “virgin soil disease” leading to widespread outbreaks among indigenous populations.

In 1880, German pathologist Karl Joseph Eberth first described the bacillus involved while, throughout the 19th century, Typhoid could be counted on to kill more combatants than any given war in which they had come to fight.

*Salmonella enterica enterica serovar Typhi*

There’s no polite way to say it. Typhoid is spread by fecal contamination between humans. Today, simple acts like flushing a toilet and washing one’s hands are parts of daily routine. In an age before modern plumbing and sewage, we’re talking about a plague sufficient to make the bogey man himself, quake with terror.

Even now, sciencemag.org reports some ten to thirty million cases per year and somewhere around 200,000 deaths worldwide each year. Today, scientists across the African continent and Asia contend with the multi-drug resistant strain H58, but now we’re ahead of the story. In a century beginning with the Napoleonic wars and ending with the gilded age, the “germ theory” of disease we now know so well rose only gradually to the fore, eclipsing the “miasma” theory so familiar to contemporaries of the Black Death.

Like the Chinese Coronavirus of another century, Typhoid symptoms range from excruciating death to nothing whatsoever. Mary Mallon was one of the latter. Born in 1869 in the north of Ireland, Mary was almost certainly infected in utero even as her mother was so tainted, at the time of birth.

Mary emigrated to the United States at age fifteen and lived for a time with an aunt and uncle. She worked as a maid at first but it didn’t take long to realize…Mary Mallon could cook. Soon she was hiring on with wealthy families as a personal chef.

In 1906, New York banker Charles Henry Warren arranged a treat for his family. A summer rental seemed just the thing. Warren rented the summer home of George Thompson and his wife in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Naturally, Warren went looking for a cook. Mary Mallon accepted the job.

That August, one of the Warren daughters fell ill with Typhoid fever. Mrs. Warren was soon to follow and then two maids. In total, six of eleven people in the household came down with the disease. Fearing they wouldn’t be able to rent the place, Thompson hired investigators to find the cause.

That first group found nothing and Thompson hired George Soper, a civil engineer known even then as, the “epidemic fighter”. It was Soper who first hypothesized that Mary herself, might be the cause. At this point, Mallon had left the family three weeks earlier. Soper examined Mallon’s employment history from 1900 to the present, and there it was. There were seven jobs during that time in which 22 people became ill, with Typhoid. One little girl died of the disease shortly after Mary came to work for the family.

The civil engineer turned “private eye“ went looking for Mary herself. He found her in March 1907, working for the family of one Walter Bowen.

Soper explained who he was and requested samples of Mary’s blood, urine and feces. Mallon responded in a fashion to be expected of a cornered wildcat. With a shriek and a carving fork she came at him, putting the man to flight.

Once again Soper tracked her down and showed up where she lived. This time, he brought help in the person of Dr. Bert Raymond Hoobler. And now there were two of them, fleeing for their lives.

Dr. Sara Josephine Baker was dispatched from the New York city health department but by now, Mallon wasn’t hearing a word of it. Next came Soper with five police officers, and an ambulance. Let the epidemic fighter describe what happened next.

“Now thoroughly convinced of her own persecution, “Mary was on the lookout and peered out, a long kitchen fork in her hand like a rapier. As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared. ‘Disappear’ is too matter-of-fact a word; she had completely vanished”
George Soper

There followed a five-hour cat & mouse before they found her, hiding in a closet. It took several of them to wrestle Mary to the ground. Soper himself sat on her all the way to the hospital. He said it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.

Mary was taken to Willard Parker hospital where stool samples demonstrated the presence of Typhoid. Under questioning she admitted to “almost never” washing her hands, a practice not uncommon at that time. There followed a period of incarceration between 1907 and 1910 on North brother island on the East River, near the Bronx.

The press had a field day with the story. “Typhoid Mary” they called her.

“I never had typhoid in my life, and have always been healthy. Why should I be banished like a leper and compelled to live in solitary confinement with only a dog for a companion?”
Mary Mallon

During that time, 120 of 163 samples tested positive. Mary herself couldn’t understand why she was being treated this way. She had broken no laws. She’d been taken by force and against her will. She had a nervous breakdown. Her own samples smuggled out with the help of a friend, tested negative. She sued for her freedom. And lost. The courts didn’t want anything to do with it. Soper would visit from time to time and sometimes explained the importance of handwashing. She wasn’t buying any of it. Why…Would… They…DO THIS TO ME!? It was all she could think of.

In 1910, Mary was released to the mainland with an agreement t0 “take such hygienic precautions as will protect those with whom she comes in contact, from infection.” She promised not to accept work as a cook. Soon she was working as a laundress, earning $20 a month, without a home of her own, and teetering on the brink of destitution. She used to make $50 a month, as a cook.

It wasn’t long before she broke her word. Now it was “Marie Breshof” or “Mrs. Brown,” cooking for a restaurant on Broadway, or a hotel in Southampton. There was an inn in Huntington. A sanatorium in New Jersey. Her cooking gigs were always short-term and always followed by Typhoid outbreaks.

Then came the job at Sloan Hospital for Women. 20 people fell ill with Typhoid. Two died. Even the other other servants came to call the new cook, “Typhoid Mary”.

This time when they came for her, she didn’t resist. On March 27, 1915, Mary Mallon was returned to quarantine on North Brother Island. She had a stroke there in 1932 and spent the last six years of her life, partly paralyzed. She contracted pneumonia and died there on Armistice Day, November 11, 1938. Nine people attended her funeral.

Over her lifetime, Typhoid Mary is believed to have sickened no fewer than fifty, three of whom died. Some put her death toll as high as fifty. In a nation of laws the civil liberties side of her story stands to this day as an historic, unmitigated, disaster. Mary Mallon spent her last years alone in this small house on North Brother Island in the East River, near the Bronx

The history of Mary Mallon, declared “unclean” like a leper, may give us some moral lessons on how to protect the ill and how we can be protected from illness…By the time she died New York health officials had identified more than 400 other healthy carriers of Salmonella typhi, but no one else was forcibly confined or victimized as an “unwanted ill”.
The Annals of Gastroenterology, 2013

February 22, 1985 Operation Beluga

A few of these creatures are likely out there still. Thanks to the efforts of a few subsistence hunters and those brave enough to set out for this wildest and most unwelcoming of places. A real-life “free Willy” story.

In 1984, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the “doomsday clock” to three minutes before midnight, noting a turn for the worse in cold war tensions. “U.S.-Soviet relations”, they noted, “reach their iciest point in decades.”

Heedless of the world of humans, pods of Beluga Whales converged on the Chukchi Sea in pursuit of great schools of cod.

With a genus name stemming from the Russian word for “white”, Belugas populate the circumpolar region at the top of the world, from Greenland to Alaska.

Specially adapted to life in the far north, the “dolphin of the Arctic” has no dorsal fin, an adaptation helpful for swimming under ice.

Belugas moult, like snakes, scraping themselves along bergs and rocks to shed thick winter skins as water temperatures rise and fall.

Smallest of all cetaceans, the adult male ranges from 18 to 20 feet in length and weighs in around 3,500 pounds. Their lips curled in a perpetual grin, these “canaries of the sea” live in small groups called “pods” but can gather in the thousands in pursuit of food. Such as cod.

Which brings us back to 1984. A great pod gathered that December, in pursuit of enormous schools of cod. Meanwhile, on the surface, bitter cold combined with howling winds to drive great mounds of sea ice into packs up to 12 feet thick.

The White Whale will use the fatty protruberance or “melon” on top of his head to break air holes through as much as 4 to 5 inches of sea ice. With top speeds around 17mph, they’re able to hold their breath for 20 minutes, but sooner or later, these creatures need to breathe.

As conditions worsened throughout the Chukchi Sea, the air breathing mammals found themselves trapped with tiny air holes with 17 miles to go to open water.

Hundreds gathered at shrinking air holes while untold hundreds more drowned or starved, unable to make it beyond that interminable ice pack.

Subsistence hunters were at first overjoyed to find such abundance of meat, but no one knows better than they. There is no future in the destruction of a species.

The call went out for help as groups of all sizes did what they could to keep breathing holes from closing. Helicopters arrived from overhead to drop frozen fish.

Normally charged with clearing routes through the Bering Strait, the great ice breaker Moskva was summoned to the scene.

With 15 miles of pack ice and steadily worsening conditions, commanding officer Captain Kovalenko twice considered turning back. Snowmobiles and special spotter planes guiding her in, Moskva lumbered on toward rescue, arriving at last on February 22.

To no avail. Squealing and cowering in terrified circles, the creatures took four days even to acclimate to the presence of that strange and noisy vessel.

At last, the odd procession began to move. Let Captain Kovalenko describe the scene: ”Our tactic is this: We back up, then advance again into the ice, make a passage, and wait. We repeat this several times. The belugas start to ‘understand’ our intentions, and follow the icebreaker. Thus we move kilometer by kilometer.”

Someone recalled that Belugas, like all whales, communicate through sound. Captive animals have even shown themselves responsive to music.

So it was across her loudspeakers that music began to play. Rock & Roll, Russian folk tunes, marshall music, but the whales were especially responsive to classical.

Shostakovich and Rachmaninov blaring across the still arctic air, slowly, the creatures began to follow. The New York Times reports, “In time the whales became fully accustomed to the ship.”

“They began coming up to the ship themselves,” Izvestia wrote. ”They hemmed it about from all sides. They were happy as children, jumping, spreading out all over the ice field.”

This most unusual of all journeys at last came to an end in late February, in open water.

Far away in distant capitals, politicians held the nuclear gun to all of our heads as the cold war dragged on. Meanwhile under some distant and frigid sea, these beautiful animals were free to live on.

With lifespans known to run 35-50 years in the wild, chances are some of these very creatures are out there still.

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

November 15, 1873 Of Love and Loyalty

Perhaps a wolf once approached some some long-dead campfire in hopes of a morsel. Maybe someone took in a sick or injured puppy. Wolf packs could have shadowed human hunting parties, the two groups learning to work together for their mutual advantage. The story is lost to the mists of time, but one thing is certain. The bond that exists between our kind and canis familiaris will be with us, until the end of days.

Is there a creature alive capable of the loyalty and fidelity of a dog? Take, for example, Miguel Guzmán of Cordoba Argentina, who died in 2006. The following day Capitán, the family German Shepherd, vanished. Mrs. Guzmán and the couple’s son searched and searched until the dog arrived at the cemetery, forty-five minutes away.

No one knows how he got there. The family claims they didn’t bring him. Cemetery director Hector Baccega remembers when he first saw the dog: ‘He turned up here one day, all on his own, and started wandering all around the cemetery until he eventually found the tomb of his master”.

434B6A2000000578-0-image-a-116_1502877093313 — Capitan. H/T Guardian, for this image

Capitán was brought home but he was back, the following day. Baccega describes what has since become, routine: “During the day he sometimes has a walk around the cemetery, but always rushes back to the grave. And every day, at six o’clock sharp, he lies down on top of the grave [and] stays there all night”.

Capitán lived to fifteen or sixteen, old for a large breed, and died in February 2018, in the cemetery in which he had lived. He was crippled and mostly blind by that time when he went to join his human “Dad”. Who knows, I certainly don’t. Maybe they really are together again.

“Greyfriar’s Bobby” was a Skye Terrier in 19th-century Edinburgh, who waited 14 years by the grave of his owner, police nightwatchman, John Gray. He died there in 1872 and was buried in the Greyfriars Kirkyard, not far from where his master lay.

Artist William Brodie created a life-sized likeness atop the Greyfriars Bobby Fountain in Edinburgh. Paid for by local aristocrat Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the memorial was dedicated November 15, 1873.

Hachikō, an Akita known to Japanese children as chūken Hachikō (“faithful dog Hachikō”), liked to tag along with his owner Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor of agriculture at Tokyo University. Ueno would commute to work, and every evening, Hachikō would wait at the Shibuya Station for the professor’s return.

In May 1925, a cerebral hemorrhage took him away while delivering a lecture. Hidesaburō Ueno was never coming home. Every day for the next nine years, nine months and fifteen days, the golden colored Akita appeared at Shibuya Station, precisely on time for that evening train.

Ruswarp was a fourteen-year old Border Collie who went hiking with Graham Nuttall on January 20, 1990 in the Welsh Mountains near Llandrindod. On April 7, a hiker discovered Nuttall’s body near a mountain stream. For eleven weeks the dog had been standing guard.

Ruswarp was so weak that he had to be carried off the mountain and died shortly thereafter. Today there’s a small monument in his memory on a platform near the Garsdale railway station.

In the early morning hours of August 6, 2011, 30 American military service members including 22 US Navy SEALs were killed along with eight Afghans, SEAL Team 6 handler John “Jet Li” Douangdara and his Military Working Dog (MWD) “Bart”. The Chinook helicopter in which they were riding was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Kunar Province, of Afghanistan.

To anyone around at that time, the images of “Hawkeye”, together for the last time with slain Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson, are hard to forget.

In 1936, a sheep handler whose name is lost to history tended his flock in the fields near Fort Benton, Montana. With him always was his four-legged partner and sheepdog, “Shep”.

The man fell ill and was taken to a local hospital. For over a week, Shep waited at the hospital for his master to return. On the 11th day, the man died, his casket taken to the local train station and placed in the cargo hold to be returned home for burial.

Shep was there throughout and watched the train chug away. He’d return to that hospital door where a kindly nun would feed him a scrap, but every time he heard that train whistle, there was a sheepdog waiting at the station.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_AvQYSHHz9w%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent

In those days, there were four trains a day. For nearly six years, Shep returned to the station, every time he heard that whistle. He even dug a den for himself, near the track.

Passengers took the Havre to Great Falls rail line just to see the dog. Shep received so much fan mail, the Great Northern Railroad assigned a secretary to write responses.

In time, the dog wasn’t quite so fast as he used to be, his hearing not so good. On January 12, 1942, “Forever Faithful” Shep was struck and killed on the tracks, waiting for a man who could never return.

There are enough stories like this to fill a book. I keep a sign at my home to remind me. It’s on the wall in the kitchen. “Lord, make me half the man my dog thinks I am“.

November 23, 1944 Thanksgiving on the Front

The military went out of its way during World War 2 to provide the traditional Thanksgiving meal for soldiers and Marines at home, as well as overseas. Thousands of turkeys with all the trimmings fanned out in a worldwide effort to make sure every uniformed member of the armed services had a holiday meal.

In the English tradition, days of Thanksgiving first came about during the Reformation, in the time of King Henry VIII.

Historian Michael Gannon writes about the “real first Thanksgiving” in America taking place in 1565, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed in modern-day Florida. Avilés “had the Indians fed and then dined himself,” likely on a diet of salt-pork stew and garbanzo beans. Yumm.

According to the Library of Congress, the English colony of Popham in present-day Maine held a “harvest feast and prayer meeting” with the Abenaki people in 1607, nearly two decades before the “first Thanksgiving” we all learned about in 5th grade.

In 1619, thirty eight settlers departed Bristol, England on board the ship Margaret bound for Virginia, under the leadership of Captain John Woodliffe. London Company proprietors instructed these settlers that “the day of our ships arrival . . . shall be yearly and perpetually kept as a day of Thanksgiving.” So it was the December 4 landing at Berkeley Hundred became a day of prayer and Thanksgiving, nearly a year before the “pilgrims” landed on the outer reaches of Cape Cod.

Surprisingly little comes down to us from that “first Thanksgiving”, of 1621. Governor William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation and Mourt’s Relations by Edward Winslow provide only hints of a harvest feast, sometime between September and November of 1621.

“Waterfowl” were surely on the menu and, the Wampanoag being a coastal peoplE. Shellfish were likely included along with dried fish and maybe a seal, or a boiled eagle.

The 1^st Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving in 1777, a time of national thanksgiving and celebration following the Patriot victory, at Saratoga.

“…It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE:…”
November 1, 1777

George Washington proclaimed the first National day of Thanksgiving on November 26, 1783, “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness“.

Echoing President Washington’s 1789 declaration, Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared a “day of fasting, humiliation and prayer” to be observed on November 15, 1861. Major General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson ordered drills suspended for the day. While it must have seemed a welcome break to the soldier in the field it wasn’t a day of fasting Abraham Lincoln had in mind, two years later.

On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln declared a general day of Thanksgiving to be observed on the last Thursday of November. The following year, the Union League Club of New York determined to provide a feast for every federal soldier and sailor in the Union military. Private funds were raised for the occasion resulting in an estimated 373,586-pounds of poultry, “an enormous quantity of cakes, doughnuts, gingerbread, pickles, preserved fruits, apples, vegetables, and all the other things which go to make up a Northern Thanksgiving Dinner.”

Thanksgiving 2023 marks 160 such celebrations, since that time. Many times since that day in 1863, military service members have celebrated the day in foreign lands.

The Spanish American War of 1898 was America’s first foreign war. Even then, the widespread and timely distribution of perishable items made a broad-based celebration of Thanksgiving overseas, impractical.

The US was a late arrival to World War 1 with the congressional declaration of war in April 1917, following the sinking of six American vessels and the “Zimmermann note“, a diplomatic communication offering US territories in exchange for a Mexican declaration of war, against the United States.

Two million American service members were deployed “over there” before it was over with another two million training ‘stateside’, preparing to go.

While bland by modern standards the ‘doughboys’ of the Great War enjoyed greater dietary variety and more fresh foods than in previous conflicts. Commissaries at home and overseas pulled out the stops to provide a traditional Thanksgiving day meal in 1917, patterned nearly entirely on the traditional New England feast.

**Thanksgiving Menu for Company A, 134th Infantry Training at Camp Cody, New Mexico, 1917**

Mess sergeants the world over sought to upgrade the standard ration in 1917 with the Army standard issue, pumpkin pie.

ARMY PUMPKIN PIE FILLING FOR 12-15 PIES

• 25 pounds pumpkin
• 6 pounds sugar
• 20 eggs
• 1 nutmeg
• 1/8 ounce cloves
• 1/8 ounce ginger
• 1 ounce salt
• 2 cans evaporated milk.

Troops enjoying Thanksgiving following the end of World War I, November 1918. Hat tip http://www.worldwar1centennial.org, for this image

Meanwhile on the home front, American civilians pitched in to help the war effort with home grown vegetables, and sugarless ice cream.

“USMC Lieutenant Colonel W. W. Stickney preparing to cut a Thanksgiving holiday cake with a captured Japanese sword, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. 26 November 1942”. – H/T warhistoryonline

Already accustomed to a better class of rations, US Navy sailors enjoyed a sumptuous repast in 1943 as seen by this menu from the escort carrier, Wake Island.

Thanksgiving in Italy, 1944. H/T National World War 2 Museum, for these photos

By November 1944, Romania and Italy had switched sides. Despite mixed success the Soviet Red Army was inexorably driving, from the east.

Half a world away in the jungles of New Guinea, Chaplain Russell C. Stroup of the 6th U.S. Infantry, Pacific Theater, wrote home:

“The big moment was the noon meal. The government got a plentiful supply of frozen turkeys to us – whole birds, just as they would be at home. Each company of about 150 to 200 men had about 200 pounds of turkey. Since the turkeys had to be cooked on just two field ranges in each company, cooking began the night before and continued through the morning. There was fruit cocktail from cans, mashed potatoes, dressing, peas, pickles, cranberry sauce, fresh rolls, pumpkin pie, and coffee. Plenty of everything filled every nook and cranny of the men. They left the groaning boards as stuffed as the turkeys had been, to lay around for a sunlit afternoon. By supper, we were back to bully beef, but no one cared since no one was hungry yet”.
Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1944

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed from the US Capital:

“…Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of the Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday the twenty-third day of November 1944 a day of national thanksgiving; and I call upon the people of the United States to observe it by bending every effort to hasten the day of final victory and by offering to God our devout gratitude for His goodness to us and to our fellow men”.
Proclamation 2629—Thanksgiving Day, 1944

Some 10 hours by modern road to the northwest of Italy lay Luxembourg, at roughly the center of the allied lines. Late Autumn was quiet in the Luxembourg sector, protected as it was by the “impenetrable” Ardennes, and Our River. Newly recaptured following four years under the Nazi bootheel, Luxembourgers welcomed American troops as liberators, units depleted by near constant fighting following D-Day now recuperating as the American war machine rebuilt, and re-supplied.

So quiet were parts of the tiny nation GIs took to calling this, the “Ghost Front”. Sporadic machine gun fire from occasional German combat patrols was so desultory as to be dismissed, as “social calls”. Young boys sneaked into frontline movie theaters to watch wild west movies, even if they didn’t understand a word of it. Countless young Luxembourgers learned their first words of English: “gum”, and “chocolate”.

Hopes ran high in November 1944 that the war would soon be over. In larger locales USO shows entertained the troops. Marlene Dietrich was expected to make an appearance that December. Villagers could hardly believe their eyes when trucks pulled up with tons of frozen turkeys and some, very much alive. As with that traditional first Thanksgiving, GIs shared with the locals, despite language differences.

Locals had never experienced such a thing as that American style thanksgiving, 1944. After the war, the holiday took hold. This November 23 families all over Luxembourg will enjoy an American style thanksgiving, albeit followed up with a holiday game on the pitch, replacing the gridiron.

“U.S. Ambassador James “Rand” Evens celebrates Thanksgiving in Luxembourg in 2019”. H/T Sofrep

As it turned out, the peace of Thanksgiving 1944 was never meant to last. The largest German offensive in years burst from the frozen Ardennes forest on December 16, 1944, that sleepy Saturday morning the ghost front roared to terrifying life from the barrels of 8,000 artillery weapons. The Battle of the bulge had begun.

November 12, 1912 To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield

There are places in this world no human was meant to go. Places so inhospitable, so savage, the visitor is lucky to get out alive. Where returning with the body of one not so lucky, is not possible. The frozen side of Everest is such a place where no fewer than 300 climbers have perished in the last six decades. A third of those will spend eternity on the frozen slopes where they perished.

As long as he could remember, Roald Amundsen wanted to be an explorer. As a boy in Norway, he would read about the doomed Franklin Expedition to the Arctic, in 1848. As a sixteen-year-old, Amundsen was captivated by Fridtjof Nansen’s epic crossing of Greenland, in 1888.

The period would come to be known as the “Heroic Age” of polar exploration. Roald Amundsen was born to take part.

Not so, Robert Falcon Scott. A career officer with the British Royal Navy, Scott would take a different path to this story.

Clements Markham, President of the British Royal Geographical Society (RGS), was known to “collect” promising young naval officers with an eye toward future polar exploration. The two first met on March 1, 1887, when the eighteen-year old midshipman’s cutter won a sailing race, across St. Kitt’s Bay.

In 1894, Scott’s father John made a disastrous mistake, selling the family brewery and investing the proceeds, badly. The elder Scott’s death of heart disease three years later brought on fresh family crisis, leaving John’s widow Hannah and her two unmarried daughters, dependent on Robert and his younger brother, Archie.

Now more than ever, Scott was eager to distinguish himself with an eye toward promotion, and the increase in income to be expected, with it.

In the Royal Navy, limited opportunities for career advancement were aggressively sought after, by any number of ambitious officers. Home on leave in 1899, Scott chanced once again to meet the now-knighted “Sir” Clements Markham, and learned of an impending RGS expedition to the Antarctic, aboard the barque-rigged auxiliary steamship, RRS Discovery.

What passed between the two went unrecorded but, a few days later, Scott showed up at the Markham residence and volunteered to lead the expedition.

The Discovery expedition of 1901-’04 was one of science as well as exploration. Despite a combined polar experience of near-zero, the fifty officers and men under Robert Falcon Scott made a number of important biological, zoological and geological findings, proving the world’s southernmost continent was at one time, forested. Though later criticized as clumsy and amateurish, a journey south in the direction of the pole discovered the polar plateau, establishing the southernmost record for this time at 82° 17′ S. Only 530 miles short of the pole.

Discovery returned in September 1904, the expedition hailed by one writer as “one of the great polar journeys”, of its time. Once an obscure naval officer, Scott now entered Edwardian society, moving among the higher social and economic circles, of the day.

A brief but stormy relationship ensued with Kathleen Bruce, a sculptress who studied under Auguste Rodin and counted among her personal friends, the likes of Pablo Picasso, Aleister Crowley and Isadora Duncan. The couple was married on September 2, 1908 and the marriage produced one child. Peter Markham Scott would grow up to found the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

a0a85691e405edb91673335150d4f571--robert-falcon-scott-robert-scott — Kathleen Bruce Scott

The elder Scott would never live to see it.

The “Great Southern Journey” of Scott’s Discovery officer Ernest Shackleton, arrived 112 miles short of the pole on January 9, 1909, providing Scott with the impetus for a second attempt, the following year. Scott was still fundraising for the expedition when the old converted whaler Terra Nova departed Cardiff, in South Wales. Scott joined the ship in South Africa and arrived in Melbourne Australia in October, 1910.

Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to Scott, Roald Amundsen was preparing for his own drive on the south pole, aboard the sailing vessel, “Fram” (Forward).

Scott was in Melbourne when he received the telegram: “Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen“. Robert Falcon Scott now faced a race to the pole.

Unlike Amundsen who adopted the lighter fur-skins of the Inuit, the Scott expedition wore heavy wool clothing, depending on motorized and horse-drawn transport and man-hauling sledges for the final drive across the polar plateau. Dog teams were expected to meet them only on the way out, on March 1.

Ponies, poorly acclimatized and weakened by the wretched conditions of Antarctica, slowed the depot-laying part of the Scott expedition. Four horses died of cold or had to be shot, because they slowed the team.

Expedition member Lawrence “Titus” Oates warned Scott against the decision to locate “One-Ton Depot” at 80°, 35-miles short of the planned location. “Sir, I’m afraid you’ll come to regret not taking my advice.” Titus’ words would prove prophetic.

Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, in the world. Robert Falcon Scott took this photograph in 1911

Unlike the earlier attempt, Robert Falcon Scott made it to the pole this time. Amundsen’s Norwegian team had beat him. By a mere five weeks. A century later you can still feel the man’s anguish, by the words in his diary: “The worst has happened…All the day dreams must go…Great God! This is an awful place”.

Utterly Defeated, the five-man Scott party turned to begin the 800-mile, frozen slog back from the Pole on January 19, 1912. By the 23rd, the condition of Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans, began to deteriorate . On February 4, a bad fall on Beardmore Glacier left the man concussed, “dull and incapable”. A second fall two weeks later left the man dead at the foot of the glacier.

article-2087811-001f786700000258-615_964x687 (1) — Defeated by only weeks, the Scott party spends a moment at the south pole, before turning for the frozen, 800-mile slog, back.

The appointed time came and went in early March and the dog teams, failed to materialize. Severely frostbitten, Lawrence Oates struggled on. Soldier, explorer, he was “No Surrender Oates”, a moniker earned years before when he refused to surrender before a superior force in the Boer Wars. In the end, it was impossible to go on.

*A Very Gallant Gentleman, 1913, by John Charles Dollman (1851–1934), 70in by 40in, The Cavalry and Guards Club, London*

Lawrence Oates knew he was holding up the team. There was but one option and leaving that tent, was a deliberate act. Final. Suicidal.

Let Robert Falcon Scott’s diary tells us the story, in his own words:

March 16, 1912 “He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning – yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.”

His body was never found.

The last three made final camp on March 19, with 11 miles to go before the next food and supply cache. A howling blizzard descended on the tents and lasted for days as Scott, Henry “Birdie” Bowers and Dr. Edward Wilson wrote good-bye letters to mothers, wives, and others.

March 22, 1912 “Blizzard bad as ever. Wilson and Bowers unable to start. Tomorrow last chance. No fuel and only one or two of food left — must be near the end. Have decided it shall be natural. We shall march for the depot with or without our effects and die in our tracks.”

Starving, frostbitten, Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his diary during the final hours of his life.

March 29, 1912 “We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

R. SCOTT.

The frozen corpses of Robert Falcon Scott and his comrades were found on November 12, 1912. You can almost feel his frozen, dying fingers writing final words on that final page:

“Last entry. For God’s sake look after our people”.

Meteorological conditions for those last days in the Scott camp went unrecorded, and must only be imagined. The lowest ground level temperature ever recorded was measured in 1983, at the Soviet Vostok Antarctic Station: −128.6° Fahrenheit.

The final camp of the Scott expedition is such a place. A high cairn of snow was erected over it all, that final camp becoming the three men’s tomb. Ship’s carpenters built a wooden cross, inscribing on it the names of those lost: Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. A line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses, was carved into the cross:

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

If only they had made it that next eleven miles.

Amundsen said on hearing the fate of his rival, “I would gladly forgo any honor or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death”.

A continental glacier or “ice sheet” covers a minimum of 50,000 square kilometers (19,000 square miles). Today there are two, Greenland and Antarctica , comprising some 99% of the planet’s fresh water supply. (Hat tip National Geographic).

An ice sheet is anything but the stable mass it first appears. Annual snowfall and cycles of freezing and partial thaw converts surface snow into a dense, grainy snow called “firn”, as the weight of new snowfall compresses that of earlier years, into the glacier. Firn layers compress ever downward with each fall of snow, forming a solid ice mass at a depth of 50 meters.

Taken as a whole, the ice sheet behaves as a fluid. Driven by its own weight, the mass spreads ever outward, in places moving as fast as .7 miles in a year.

So it is that, more than a century later, the last camp of the southern party now lies deep within the heart of the glacier. Pressed ever downward, their corpses are now some 75 deep in the Ross Ice Shelf and inching their way outward, toward the sea.

One day in a distant future none alive today will ever see, the Scott party will break off and float away at the heart of some nameless iceberg

A Trivial Matter

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“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

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