History – Page 5 – Historical Easter Eggs

May 12, 2008 Angel of Warsaw

All told, Irena Sendler saved about 2,400 Jewish children and infants and about 100 teenagers, who went into the forests to join partisan bands fighting the Nazis. The far better known Oskar Schindler is credited with saving less than half that number.

Dr-Stanislaw-Krzyzanowski-Janina-Grzybowska — Dr. Stanisław & Janina Krzyżanowski

Dr. Stanislaw Krzyżanowski was a physician treating mostly the poorer Jewish families in the central Polish town of Otwock, 14 miles southeast of Warsaw. He had once said to his only daughter Irena: “If you see someone drowning, you must save them.” “But, what if I can’t swim?” she asked. “Nevertheless, you must try”.

Overwhelmed by the typhus epidemic of 1917, Dr. Krzyżanowski contracted the disease himself and died that February, but his example guided his daughter for the rest of her life. Jewish community leaders showed their gratitude by offering to pay for Irena’s education, but her mother declined.

Irena (Krzyżanowski) Sendler was a nurse living outside Warsaw, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The Nazis gathered up every Jew they could find in 1940, penning 400,000 or more up in the city. Soon, the Warsaw ghetto became the scene of suffering, disease and starvation. Knowing the Nazis feared nothing so much as Typhus, Sendler took advantage of their fears and obtained permission to begin work in the ghetto.

Sendler Truck — “Irena in a social welfare department truck in May 1948” H/T U.K. Daily Mail

She would travel there daily, and soon started to smuggle Jewish babies out in the bottom of a medical bag. She’d place soiled bandages around and over sedated babies, to keep guards from looking too closely. She carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck. Sometimes she’d use that or even a coffin to smuggle larger children and even teenagers out of the ghetto, other times leading them out through cellars or sewers.

Sendler traveled with a small a dog she had trained to bark at Nazi soldiers letting her in and out of the gates. They wanted nothing to do with her small, yappy dog, and the barking would cover any sounds that the babies might make.

She would make as many as three runs a day, taking out as many as 6 children. Most of them were already orphans by this time, their parents murdered by the Nazi regime. Many times, parents gave up their children in order to save them.

Irena coded the names of these children onto two slips of paper, including false and real names. These she buried in glass jars under a tree in the yard of a friend. She obtained false papers for each of the kids, passing them along to nunneries, monasteries and to foster parents.

Sendler, youth — ‘Angel of the Warsaw Ghetto”, Irena Sendler

Elzbieta Ficowska was smuggled out in a carpenter’s toolbox at the age of six months. ‘When I was 17″, she said, “a friend said she’d heard I was Jewish. At that point, my Polish mum told me the truth, giving me a silver spoon engraved with my name and birth date, which my blood family had placed in the box with me. Elzbieta later learned that her family wept on hearing she was to be baptized, but later signaled their understanding by sending a christening gown and tiny gold cross. “I consider both my Polish mum and Irena to be a little pathological. It is a kind of insanity to overcome such fear. They were so alike, my mum and Irena – fantastic, strong women”.

Anna Mieszkowska, the author of Sendler’s Polish biography, tells a story. ‘Irena told me not to put this story in the book. She was asked to save two children, a boy and a girl. The parents wanted them to go but the grandparents did not. Irena arrived at their address and found the whole family had committed suicide – grandparents, parents, children. She had nightmares about this for many years.’

Sendler was caught by the Gestapo in 1943, betrayed by a colleague under torture, and by a nosy landlady. Nazi interrogators beat her savagely, but she never gave up any of those names.

Irena lasted 100 days in Pawiak prison, a place where average inmate survival was less than a month. Finally she was returned to the Gestapo and stood against a wall for execution, too broken to care. An SS guard said “not you” and shoved her out into the street. He’d been bribed by her friends, and was himself later caught and executed. For now she was “officially” dead, which made it easier to escape detection for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Irena tried to reunite parents or surviving family members with the children she’d rescued. She was rarely successful.

Today, Elzbieta Ficowska tries to keep her Jewish roots, but they seem foreign to her. ‘When I enter a Catholic church, everything is mine. Sometimes I look in the mirror for traces of my real parents. I sent letters all around the world to try to find out about them.’ She has never seen so much as a photograph.

The Polish Government honored Irena Sendler with the Order of the White Eagle, its highest award. The Yad Vashem Remembrance Center in Jerusalem honored her as a “Righteous Gentile” in 1965. She received honorary citizenship in Israel in 1985, and the Polish and Israeli Governments nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded on October 12 in Oslo, Norway, to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

Irena Sendler passed away on May 12, 2008 at the age of 98. This choice of 2007 Nobel prize recipients has been controversial, since Nobel by-laws prohibit posthumous award of the prize. Many felt that Sendler had more than earned it. Some have claimed that Nobel committee rules require qualifying work to have taken place within the two years immediately preceding nomination, but I think they’re making it up. I’ve read the Nobel statutes. You can do so yourself, HERE, if you’re so inclined I find no such requirement. Let me know if I missed it, the whole thing seems political, to me.

Irena Sendler always said that she wasn’t a hero, she only did what any normal person would do. I find in the story of this petite Polish nurse, some of the most magnificent courage of which our species is capable. If that does not make her a hero, I don’t know what would.

May 10, 1941 Prisoner #7

The last of the other inmates had left by 1966, leaving #7 the prison’s only occupant. Warden Bird wrote a book in 1974, titled “The Loneliest Man in the World”, about his relationship with Hess during his 30 years’ confinement.

At the end of WWI, Rudolf Walter Richard Hess enrolled in the University of Munich. He’d been wounded several times in the Great War, serving in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment. As a student, Hess studied geopolitics under Karl Haushofer, an early proponent of “Lebensraum” (“living space”), the philosophy which later became a central plank in the Nazi Party political platform.

Hess was an early and ardent proponent of Nazi ideology. A True Believer. He was at Hitler’s side during the failed revolution of 1923, the “Beer Hall Putsch”. He served time with Hitler in prison, and helped him write his political opus “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle). Hess was appointed to Hitler’s cabinet when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party seized power in 1933, becoming Deputy Führer, #3 after Hermann Göring and Hitler himself. Hess signed many statutes into law, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, depriving the Jews of Germany of their rights and property.

Obsessed as he was with race theory, Hitler believed that, as fellow Anglo Saxons, the British people were meant to be natural allies to Germany. If only they could get rid of Churchill, he believed, the two nations might be able to work things out. Churchill and Hitler deeply hated one another, but there were many in Great Britain, including much of the landowning aristocracy, London financiers and media moguls, who regarded the Soviet Union as the greater threat.

Rudolf Hess flew into Scotland on May 10, 1941, parachuting to earth as his Messerschmidt two-seat aircraft ran out of gas. It’s unclear whether the scheme was Hess’ own idea or if it had official sanction. It was a cockamamie scheme, in which he intended to arrange peace talks with Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton, believing him to be a prominent opponent of the British government. The Deputy Führer was immediately arrested, remaining in British custody until the end of the war, when he was returned to Germany for the 1946 Nuremberg Trials.

Hess mental state seems to have declined while under British custody and questions were raised about his sanity and fitness to stand trial. Judges decided that he understood the charges against him and was capable of defending himself. Hess did himself no good at trial, declaring his late Führer to be “the greatest son my Volk has brought forth in its thousand-year history”. He testified that he wouldn’t change a thing about having worked for the man, saying “I regret nothing.”

Nine months later, the court acquitted Hess of war crimes and crimes against humanity, apparently deciding that his earlier persecution of Jews to be insufficiently connected to their later annihilation. Hess was convicted of conspiracy to wage aggressive war and of crimes against peace and sentenced to life in prison, transferred to Spandau Prison in West Berlin, and placed under the authority of the four major allied powers. Spandau had once housed as many as 600 prisoners. There he was stripped of his name and given a number, #7, one of 8 former Nazi officials imprisoned there. After July 18, 1947, those eight became the only inmates to occupy the facility.

Hess’ fellow convicts were gradually released from the prison, as their terms expired or on compassionate grounds. His main companion at this time was his jailer, warden Eugene K. Bird, with whom Hess became close friends. The last of the other inmates had left by 1966, leaving #7 the prison’s only occupant. Warden Bird wrote a book in 1974, titled “The Loneliest Man in the World”, about his relationship with Hess during his 30 years’ confinement.

Attempts by family members and prominent politicians to get him released were blocked by Soviet authorities, who believed him to be a principle architect of Barbarossa, the Nazi sneak attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. On August 17, 1987, #7 tied a lamp cord to a window latch and hanged himself with it. He was 93.

Spandau prison was demolished following the death of its final remaining prisoner, the rubble dumped into the North Sea to prevent the place from becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine,

May 9, 1914 The History of Mother’s Day

Following her mother’s death in 1905, Anna Jarvis conceived of Mother’s Day as a way to honor her legacy, and to pay respect for the sacrifices that all mothers make on behalf of their children.

The earliest discernible Mother’s day comes from 1200-700BC, descending from the Phrygian rituals of modern day Turkey and Armenia. “Cybele” was the great Phrygian goddess of nature, mother of the Gods, of humanity, and of all the beasts of the natural world, her cult spreading throughout Eastern Greece with colonists from Asia Minor.

Much of ancient Greece looked to the Minoan Goddess Rhea, daughter of the Earth Goddess Gaia and the Sky God Uranus, mother of the Gods of Olympus. Over time the two became closely associated with the Roman Magna Mater, each developing her own cult following and worshipped through the period of the Roman Empire.

In ancient Rome, women partook of a festival, strictly forbidden to Roman men. So strict was this line of demarcation that only women were permitted even to know the name of the deity. For everyone else she was simply the “Good Goddess”. The Bona Dea.

In the sixteenth century, it became popular for Protestants and Catholics alike to return to their “mother church” whether that be the church in which they were baptized, the local parish church, or the nearest cathedral. Anyone who did so was said to have gone “a-mothering”. Domestic servants were given the day off and this “Mothering Sunday”, the 4th Sunday in Lent, was often the only time when whole families could get together. Children would gather wild flowers along the way, to give to their own mothers or to leave in the church. Over time the day became more secular, but the tradition of gift giving continued.

Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis was a social activist in mid-19th century western Virginia. Pregnant with her sixth child in 1858, she and other women formed “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs”, to combat the health and sanitary conditions which were leading at that time to catastrophic levels of infant mortality. Jarvis herself gave birth between eleven and thirteen times in a seventeen year period. Only four would live to adulthood.

Jarvis had no patience for the sectional differences that led the nation to Civil War, or which led her own locality to secede and form the state of West Virginia in order to rejoin the Union. Jarvis refused to support a measure to divide the Methodist church into northern and southern branches. She would help Union and Confederate soldier alike if she could. It was she alone who offered a prayer when others refused, for Thornsbury Bailey Brown, the first Union soldier killed in the vicinity.

Following Jarvis’ death in 1905, her daughter Anna conceived of Mother’s Day as a way to honor her legacy and to pay respect for the sacrifices that all mothers make on behalf of their children.

Obtaining financial backing from Philadelphia department store owner John Wanamaker, Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. That same day, thousands attended the first Mother’s Day event at Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia.

Anna Jarvis resolved that Mother’s Day be added to the national calendar, and a massive letter writing campaign ensued. On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure declaring the second Sunday of May, to be Mother’s Day.

Anna Jarvis believed Mother’s Day to be a time of personal celebration, a time when families would gather to love and honor their mother.

In the early days she had worked with the floral industry to help raise the profile of Mother’s Day. By 1920 she had come to resent what she saw as the commercialization of the day. Greeting cards seemed a pale substitute for the hand written personal notes she envisioned. Jarvis protested a Philadelphia candy maker’s convention in 1923, deriding confectioners, florists and even charities as “profiteers”. Carnations had by this time become symbolic of Mother’s Day, and Jarvis resented that they were being sold at fundraisers. She protested at a meeting of the American War Mothers in 1925 where women were selling carnations, and got herself arrested for disturbing the peace.

Soon she was launching an endless series of lawsuits against those she felt had used the “Mother’s Day” name in vain.

During the last years of her life, Anna Jarvis lobbied the government to take her creation off of the calendar, gathering signatures door-to-door to get the holiday rescinded. The effort was obviously unsuccessful. The mother of mother’s day died childless in a sanitarium in 1948, her personal fortune squandered on legal fees.

Today, some variation of Mother’s Day is observed from the Arab world to the United Kingdom. In the United States, Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful days of the year for flower and greeting card sales, and the biggest day of the year for long-distance telephone calls. Church attendance is the third highest of the year, behind only Christmas and Easter. Many churchgoers celebrate the day with carnations: colored if the mother is still living and white if she has passed on.

Happy Mother’s Day.

May 8, 1877 Westminster Dog Show

1,200 dogs arrived for that first show, in an event so popular that the originally planned three days morphed into four.

The world’s most famous dog show was first held on May 8, 1877, and called the “First Annual NY Bench Show.” The venue was Gilmore’s Garden at the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, a hall which would later be known as Madison Square Garden. Interestingly, another popular Gilmore Garden event of the era was boxing. Competitive boxing was illegal in New York in those days, so events were billed as “exhibitions” or “illustrated lectures.” I love that last one.

It was originally a show for hunting dogs, mostly Setters and Pointers with a few Terriers. A group of hunters used to meet at the Westminster Hotel at Irving Place & 16^th Street, in Manhattan. The Westminster Kennel Club was formed by this group when they first decided to hold a dog show. When you think of the 2nd amendment purgatory that is Warren Wilhelm (Bill) DiBlasio’s New York, it’s amusing to think that original prizes included pearl handled revolvers.

1,200 dogs arrived for that first show, in an event so popular that the originally planned three days morphed into four. The Westminster Kennel Club donated all proceeds from the fourth day to the ASPCA, for the creation of a home for stray and disabled dogs. The organization remains supportive of animal charities, to this day.

The Westminster dog show is the longest continuously held sporting event in the United States, with the sole exception of the Kentucky Derby, which began only two years earlier.

Not even two World Wars could stop Westminster. A tugboat strike cut two days down to one in 1946. Even so, “Best in Show” was awarded fifteen minutes earlier than it had been, the year before. I wonder how many puppies were named “Tug” that year. The Westminster dog show was first televised in 1948, three years before the first nationally televised college football game.

When the American Kennel Club was founded in 1884, Westminster was the first club to be admitted. Breed parent clubs such as the German Shepherd Dog Club of America develop breed standards, extensive written descriptions of what the perfect specimen looks like for any given breed. Some of the traits which distinguished the original working dogs of 1877 are still apparent, while other elements are seemingly arbitrary, such as tail carriage, eye shape and color.

Dogs are judged first against others of their own breed, and then the best of each goes forward into one of seven groups: Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Non-Sporting, and Herding. In the final round, the winners from each of these seven groups compete for “Best in Show”, of which there can be only one.

Mixed breeds have been permitted since 2014, to compete in an agility event.

A Smooth Fox Terrier named Ch.(Championship) Warren Remedy won the top award in 1907, 1908 and 1909, the only dog to ever win three Best in Shows at Westminster. Seven dogs have twice taken the top award, and five owners have won Best in Show with more than one dog. A Sussex Spaniel named Stump became the oldest winner in dog show history in 2009, at the age of 10. Judge Sari Tietjen said she had no idea the winning dog was a senior citizen. “He showed his heart out,” she said. “I didn’t know who he was or how old … I just couldn’t say no to him”.

Today, the Westminster dog show runs two days and nights in February. Entry is limited to 2,800 dogs and fills up on the first day of registration. Breed judging takes place during the day at Piers 92 and 94. Group and Best in Show competition takes place in the evening at Madison Square Garden. Since 1992, Westminster has invited the top five dogs from each breed to pre-enter, based on dog show performances of the preceding year.

Madison Square Garden generally sells out for the event, the WKC issuing up to 700 press credentials for media attending from no fewer than 20 countries. Each year the Westminster website www.westminsterkennelclub.org receives 20 million page views from 170 countries.

Since the late 60s, the Westminster Best in Show winner has celebrated at Sardi’s, a popular mid-town eatery in the theater district and birthplace of the Tony award. And then the Nanny State descended, pronouncing that 2012 would be their last. There shalt be no dogs dining any restaurants, not while Mayor Bloomberg is around.

The Algonquin, the historic hotel at the corners of 59^th St. W. & 44^th, took in a stray cat sometime back in the 1930s. A succession of felines have had the run of the place ever since. The males have all been “Hamlet”, and the females called “Matilda”.

Mayor Yourslurpeeistoobig Bloomberg’s Board of Health descended on the Algonquin in 2011, requiring that the cat be kept on a leash. There ensued a tempest in a cat box, until a compromise was reached later that year. An electronic pet fence would be installed, confining the cat to non-food areas of the hotel.

Not wanting another such drama, Nanny Bloomberg pulled his health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, aside. By the end of the week, the health department had found a loophole to defuse the standoff: Dr. Farley would issue a waiver. Since then, the winner at Westminster is free to enjoy the traditional celebratory luncheon of diced chicken and rice off a silver platter. Provided that it’s eaten in the back room.

May 6, 1937 Hindenburg

The famous film shows ground crew running for their lives, and then turning and running back to the flames. It’s natural enough to have run, but there’s something the film doesn’t show.

Hindenburg left Frankfurt airfield on its last flight at 7:16pm, May 3, 1937, carrying 97 passengers and crew. Crossing over Cologne, Beachy Head and Newfoundland, the airship arrived over Boston at noon on the 6th. By 3:00pm it was over the skyscrapers of Manhattan, arriving at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, NJ at 4:15.

Foul weather had caused a half-day’s delay, but the landing was eventually cleared. The final S turn approach executed at 7:21pm. The ship was at the mooring mast, 180′ from the ground with forward landing ropes deployed, when flames first erupted near the top tail fin.

Eyewitness accounts differ as to the origin of the fire. The leading theory is that, with the metal framework grounded through the landing line, the ship’s fabric covering became charged in the electrically charged atmosphere, sending a spark to the air frame and igniting a hydrogen leak. Seven million cubic feet of hydrogen ignited almost simultaneously. It was over in less than 40 seconds.

The largest dirigible ever built, an airship the size of Titanic, burst into flames as the hull collapsed and plummeted to the ground. Passengers and crew jumped for their lives and scrambled to safety, along with ground crews who had moments earlier been positioned to receive the ship.

The famous film shows ground crew running for their lives, and then turning and running back to the flames. It’s natural enough to have run, but there’s something the film doesn’t show. That was Chief Petty Officer Frederick “Bull” Tobin, the airship veteran in charge of the landing party, bellowing at his sailors above the roar of the flames. “Navy men, Stand fast! We’ve got to get those people out of there!” Tobin had survived the crash of the USS Shenandoah on September 4, 1923. He wasn’t about to abandon his post, even if it cost him his life. Tobin’s Navy men obeyed. That’s what you see when they turn and run back to the flames.

The Hindenburg disaster is sometimes compared with that of the Titanic, but there’s a common misconception that the former disaster was the more deadly of the two. In fact, 64% of the passengers and crew aboard the airship survived the fiery crash, despite having only seconds to react. In contrast, officers on board the Titanic had 2½ hours to evacuate, yet most of the lifeboats were launched from level decks with empty seats. Only 32% of Titanic passengers and crew survived the sinking. It’s estimated that an additional 500 lives could have been saved, had there been a more orderly, competent, evacuation of the ship.

As it was, 35 passengers and crew lost their lives on this day in 1937, and one civilian ground crew. Without doubt the number would have been higher, if not for the actions of Bull Tobin and is Navy men.

Where a person was inside the airship, had a lot to do with their chances of survival. Mr and Mrs Hermann Doehner and their three children (Irene, 16, Walter, 10, and Werner, 8) were in the dining room, watching the landing. Mr. Doehner left before the fire broke out. Mrs. Doehner and the two boys were able to jump out, but Irene went looking for her father. Both died in the crash.

For all the film of the Hindenburg disaster, there is no footage showing the moment of ignition. Investigators theorized a loose cable creating a spark or static charge from the electrically charged atmosphere. Some believed the wreck to be the result of sabotage, but that theory is largely debunked.

Four score years after the disaster, the reigning hypothesis begins with the static electricity theory, the fire fed and magnified by the incendiary iron oxide/aluminum impregnated cellulose “dope” with which the highly flammable hydrogen envelope was painted.

The 35 year era of the dirigible was filled with accidents before Hindenburg, but none had dampened public enthusiasm for lighter-than-air travel. The British R-101 accident killed 48, the crash of the USS Akron 73. The LZ-4, LZ-5, Deutschland, Deutschland II, Italia, Schwaben, R-38, R-101, Shenandoah, Macon, and there were others. All had crashed, disappeared into the darkness, or over the ocean. Hindenburg alone was caught on film, the fiery crash recorded for all to see. The age of the dirigible, had come to an end.

May 5, 1945 Fire Balloon

In a forest near Bly, Oregon, a monument bears these words, cast in bronze: The “only place on the American continent where death resulted from enemy action in World War II”

Following the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, weather watchers described an eastbound, upper atmospheric air current described as the “equatorial smoke stream”. In the 1920s, Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi tracked these upper level winds from a site near Mount Fuji, using pilot balloons. Oishi doomed his work to international obscurity when he published his findings in Esperanto. Inside Japan, there were those who took note, filing away this new-found knowledge of what we now call the “Jet Stream”.

In the latter half of WWII, Imperial Japanese military thinkers conceived the fūsen bakudan or “fire balloon”, a hydrogen filled balloon device designed to ride the jet stream, using sand ballast and a valve system to navigate the weapon system onto the North American continent.

With sandbags, explosives, and the device which made the thing work, the total payload was about a thousand pounds on liftoff. The first such device was released on November 3, 1944, beginning the crossing to the west coast of North America. 9,300 such balloons were released with military payloads, between late 1944 and April, 1945.

Such a long-range attack would not be duplicated until the 1982 Falklands War, and was near unimaginable at the time. In 1945, intercontinental weapons were more in the realm of science fiction. As these devices began to appear, American authorities theorized that they originated with submarine-based beach assaults, German POW camps, even the internment camps into which the Roosevelt administration herded Japanese Americans.

Japanese_fire_balloon_shotdown_gun — Fighters shot down fewer than 20

These “washi” paper balloons flew at high altitude and surprisingly quickly, completing the Pacific crossing in three days. Balloons landed from Alaska to Northern Mexico, and as far east as Detroit.

A P-38 Lightning fighter shot one down near Santa Rosa, California, while Yerington, Nevada cowboys cut one up to make hay tarps. Pieces of balloon were found in the streets of Los Angeles. A prospector near Elko Nevada delivered one to local authorities, on the back of a donkey.

Among US units assigned to fight fire balloons was the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, which suffered one fatality and 22 injuries fighting fires.

One of the last balloons came down on March 10 near Hanford Washington, shorting out power lines supplying electricity for Manhattan Project nuclear reactor cooling pumps. The war in the Pacific could have ended very differently, had not backup safety devices restored power, almost immediately.

Colonel Sigmund Poole, head of the U.S. Geological Survey military geology unit, asked, “Where’d the damned sand come from?” Microscopic analysis of sand ballast identified diatoms and other microscopic sea life. This and the mineral content of the sand itself proved to be definitive. This stuff could only have come from the home islands of Japan, more specifically, one or two beaches on the island of Honshu.

American authorities were alarmed. Anti-personnel and incendiary bombs were relatively low grade threats. Not so the biological weapons Japanese military authorities were known to be developing at the infamous Unit 731, in northern China.

284 of these weapons are known to have completed the Pacific crossing to the United States, Mexico and Canada. Experts estimate as many as 1,000 may have made it. Sightings were reported in seventeen US states. Pilots were ordered to shoot them down on sight, but many devices escaped detection, altogether.

In an effort to deny valuable intelligence to their Japanese adversary, US military and government authorities did everything they could to keep these “Fire Bombs” out of the media. Even though such secrecy put Americans at risk.

Japanese Authorities reported that the bombs were hitting key targets, thousands were dead or injured, and American morale was low.

On the morning of May 5, 1945, Pastor Archie Mitchell and his wife Elsie took their Sunday school class of five on a picnic to a forest area near Bly, Oregon. Elsie and the kids came upon a large balloon with a strange looking device attached to it, as Pastor Mitchell parked the car. There was no way they could have known, what they had found was a Japanese weapon of war. The device exploded, killing all six, instantly.

Several such devices exploded, igniting wildfires in the forests of California, Oregon and Washington, but the site near Bly is the only one known to have resulted in American casualties.

Today there is a small picnic area located in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, in Lake County, Oregon. It’s maintained by the US Forest Service, memorialized as the Mitchell Recreation Area and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A small stone marker points the way to a shrapnel scarred tree.

A second monument bears these words, cast in bronze: The “only place on the American continent where death resulted from enemy action during World War II”. There are six names above those words, those of five children and their teacher, who was pregnant at the time. Elsie Mitchell, age 26. Edward Engen, age 13. Jay Gifford, age 13. Joan Patzke, age 13. Dick Patzke, age 14. Sherman Shoemaker, age 11.

May 4, 1945 The Strangest Battle of WWII

72 years ago today, Wehrmacht infantry fought side by side with American soldiers and French civilians, against Nazi SS.

Itter Castle appeared in the land records of the Austrian Tyrol as early as 1240. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Schloss Itter was first leased and later requisitioned outright by the German government, for unspecified “Official use”.

Fun Fact: Most WWII-era Nazis didn’t merely abstain from tobacco use. Nazis were rabid anti-smokers. Adolf Hitler himself once smoked two packs a day. By the start of WWII he had a standing offer of a gold watch to anyone among his inner circle who quit the habit. In 1942, Castle Itter became home to the “German Association for Combating the Dangers of Tobacco”.

Nazi anti-smoking Propaganda — Nazi anti-tobacco propaganda

By April 1943, Itter had become a prison for individuals of value to the Reich. Among them were tennis player Jean Borotra and former French Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud. Former commanders-in-chief Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin were interned there, as was Marie-Agnès Cailliau, the older sister of Charles de Gaulle. A number of Eastern Europeans were also interned at Itter, mostly employed in maintenance and other menial work around the castle.

In the early weeks of 1945, the 23rd Tank Battalion of the American 12th Armored Division fought its way across France, through Germany and into the Austrian Tyrol. 27 year-old 1st Lt. John “Jack” Lee Jr. was leading the three tank “Company B’, spearheading the drive into Kufstein and on to Munich. The unit had just fought a pitched battle at a German roadblock before clearing the town. With lead elements of the 36th Infantry moving in to take possession on May 4, Lee’s unit could finally take a rest.

By this time, Wehrmacht Major Josef Gangel and a few of his soldiers had changed sides, joining the Austrian resistance in Wörgl against roving bands of SS then in possession of the town.

Back at Itter, the last commander of the Dachau concentration camp, Eduard Weiter, had fled his command and made his way to the safety of Itter Castle. He was murdered by an unnamed SS officer on May 2, for insufficient devotion to the cause. Fearing for his own life, Itter commanding officer Sebastian Wimmer fled the Castle on May 4, followed by his guards. The now-former prisoners of Schloss Itter were alone for now, but the presence of SS units in the area made it imperative – they had to do something. While breaking into the weapons room and arming themselves with pistols, rifles, and submachine guns, Zoonimir Cuckovic, AKA “André”, purloined a bicycle and went looking for help.

SchlossItter1979c_SJMorgan — Schloss Itter (Itter Castle) in July 1979. Photo by S.J. Morgan.

André’s mad bicycle ride resulted in the one of the strangest rescues in military history. Lt. Lee tapped eight volunteers and two tanks, his own “Besotten Jenny” and Lt. Wallace Holbrook’s “Boche Buster.” Riding atop the two Shermans were six members of the all–black Company D, 17th Armored Infantry Battalion, a couple of crews from the 142nd Infantry Regiment, and the Wehrmacht’s own Josef Gangel with a Kübelwagen full of German soldiers bringing up the rear.

It was late afternoon as the convoy left for Castle Itter. Leaving Boche Buster and a few Infantry to guard the largest bridge into town. What remained of the convoy fought its way through its last SS roadblock in the early evening, roaring across the last bridge and lurching to a stop in front of Itter’s gate as night began to fall. Itter’s prisoners looked on in dismay. They had expected a column of American tanks and a heavily armed infantry force. What they had here, was a single tank with seven Americans, and a truckload of armed Germans.

The castle’s defenders came under attack almost at once, by harrying forces sent to assess their strength and to probe the fortress for weakness. Lee ordered French prisoners to hide inside, but they refused, remaining outside and fighting alongside American and German soldiers. Frantic calls for reinforcements resulted in two more German soldiers and a teenage Austrian resistance member arriving overnight, but that would be all.

The Totenkopf, or “Death’s head” units was the SS organization responsible for concentration camp administration for the Third Reich and some of the most fanatical soldiers of WWII. Even at this late date SS units were putting up fierce resistance across northern Austria. 100-150 of them attacked on the morning of May 5. Fighting was furious around Castle Itter, the one Sherman providing machine-gun fire support until it was destroyed by a German 88mm gun. By early afternoon Lee was able to get a desperate plea for reinforcements through to the 142^nd Infantry, before being cut off. Aware that he’d been unable to give complete information on the enemy’s troop strength and disposition, Lee accepted Jean Borotra’s gallant offer of assistance.

Literally vaulting over the castle wall, the tennis star ran through a gauntlet of SS strongpoints and ambushes to deliver his message, before donning an American uniform to help fight through to the castle’s defenders. The relief force arrived at around 4pm, as defenders were firing their last ammunition.

100 SS were captured. Lee later received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions. Josef Gangel was killed by a sniper while trying to move Prime Minister Reynaud out of harm’s way. Today, there is a street in Wörgl which bears his name. Germany signed the unconditional surrender two days later. So ended the first and only battle in which Americans and Germans fought side by side.

Paul Reynaud didn’t like Jack Lee, remembering the American Lieutenant as “crude in both looks and manners”. “If Lee is a reflection of America’s policies”, he sniffed, “Europe is in for a hard time”. How very French of him. All that, before he got to learn the lyrics of the Horst Wessel song.

May 3, 1915 The Red Poppy

No free citizen of a self-governing Republic, should ever forget where we come from. Or the prices paid by our forebears, to get us here.

John McCrae was a physician and amateur poet from Guelph, Ontario. Following the outbreak of WWI, McCrae enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the age of 41. He had the option of joining the medical corps based on his training and his age, but volunteered instead to join a fighting unit as gunner and medical officer. McCrae had previously served in the Boer War, this would be his second tour of duty in the Canadian military.

McCrae fought in one of the most horrendous battles of WWI, the second battle of Ypres, in the Flanders region of Belgium. Imperial Germany launched one of the first chemical attacks in history, attacking the Canadian position with chlorine gas on April 22, 1915. The Canadian line was broken but quickly reformed, in near-constant fighting that lasted for over two weeks.

Dr. McCrae later wrote to his mother, describing the nightmare. “For seventeen days and seventeen nights”, he wrote, “none of us have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds … and behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way”.

On May 3, Dr. McCrae presided over the funeral of his friend and fellow soldier Alexis Helmer, who had died in the battle. He performed the burial service himself, when he noted how quickly the red poppies grew on the graves of the fallen. He composed this poem the next day, while sitting in the back of an ambulance.

Moina Michael was browsing through the Ladies Home Journal when she came across McCrae’s poem. It was Saturday morning, November 9, 1918, two days before the armistice. She was so moved that she made a personal pledge to “keep the faith”, vowing always to wear a red poppy as a sign of remembrance of the dead. She scribbled down a response on the back of a used envelope, calling her poem “We Shall Keep the Faith“.

The vivid red flower blooming on the battlefields of Belgium, France and Gallipoli came to symbolize the staggering loss of life in that war. Since then, the red poppy has become an internationally recognized symbol of remembrance of the lives lost in all wars. I keep a red poppy pinned to my briefcase and another on the visor of my car. A reminder that no free citizen of a self-governing Republic, should ever forget where we come from. Or the prices paid by our forebears, to get us here.

May 2, 1939 Lucky Man

The Yankees were in Detroit on May 2 when Gehrig told manager Joe McCarthy “I’m benching myself, Joe”. It’s “for the good of the team”. The Iron Horse’s streak of 2,130 consecutive games, had come to an end.

The Lane Tech high school baseball team was at home on June 26, 1920. 10,000 spectators had assembled to watch the game at Cubs Park, now Wrigley Field. New York’s Commerce High was ahead 8–6 in the top of the 9th, when a left handed batter hit a grand slam out of the park. No 17 year-old had ever hit a baseball out of a major league park before, and I don’t believe it’s happened, since. It was the first time the country heard the name Lou Gehrig.

Gehrig was pitching for Columbia University against Williams College on April 18, 1923, the day that Babe Ruth hit the first home run out of the brand new Yankee Stadium. Though Columbia would lose the game, Gehrig struck out seventeen batters to set a team record.

The loss didn’t matter to Paul Krichell, the Yankee scout who’d been following Gehrig. Krichell didn’t care about the arm either, as much as he did that powerful left-handed bat. He had seen Gehrig hit some of the longest home runs ever seen on several eastern campuses, including a 450′ home run at Columbia’s South Field that cleared the stands and landed at 116th Street and Broadway.

NY Giants manager John McGraw persuaded a young Gehrig to play pro ball under a false name, Henry Lewis, despite the fact that it could jeopardize his collegiate sports eligibility. Gehrig played only a dozen games for the Hartford Senators before being found out, and suspended for a time from college ball. This period, and a couple of brief stints in the minor leagues in the ’23 and ’24 seasons, were the only times Gehrig didn’t play for a New York team.

Gehrig started as a pinch hitter with the NY Yankees on June 15, 1923. He came into his own in the ‘26 season. In 1927 he batted fourth on “Murderers’ Row”, the first six hitters in the Yankee’s batting order: Earle Combs, Mark Koenig, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and Tony Lazzeri.

He had one of the greatest seasons of any batter in history that year, hitting .373, with 218 hits: 52 doubles, 18 triples, 47 home runs, a then-record 175 RBIs, and a .765 slugging percentage. Gehrig’s bat helped the 1927 Yankees to a 110–44 record, the American League pennant, and a four game World Series sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He was the “Iron Horse”, playing in more consecutive games than any player in history. It was an “unbreakable” record, standing for 56 years, until surpassed in 1995 by Cal Ripken, Jr. Gehrig hit his 23rd and last major league grand slam in August 1938, a record that would stand until fellow Yankee Alex Rodriquez tied it in 2012.

Lou Gehrig collapsed in 1939 spring training, going into an abrupt decline early in the season. The Yankees were in Detroit on May 2 when Gehrig told manager Joe McCarthy “I’m benching myself, Joe”. It’s “for the good of the team”. McCarthy put Babe Dahlgren in at first and the Yankees won 22-2, but that was it. The Iron Horse’s streak of 2,130 consecutive games, had come to an end.

Sports reporter James Kahn wrote: “I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don’t know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing”.

Gehrig left the team in June, arriving at the Mayo Clinic on the 13th. The diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) was confirmed six days later, on June 19. It was his 36th birthday. It was a cruel prognosis: rapidly increasing paralysis, difficulty in swallowing and speaking, and a life expectancy of fewer than three years.

Gehrig briefly rejoined the Yankees in Washington, D.C. He was greeted by a group of Boy Scouts at Union Station, happily waving and wishing him luck. Gehrig waved back, but he leaned forward to a reporter. “They’re wishing me luck”, he said, “and I’m dying.”

Gehrig appeared at Yankee Stadium on “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day”, July 4, 1939. He was awarded trophies and other tokens of affection by the New York sports media, fellow players and groundskeepers. He would place each one on the ground, already too weak to hold them. Addressing his fans, Gehrig described himself as “The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth”.

Henry Louis Gehrig died on June 2, 1941, at the age 37.

I drove by Yankee Stadium back in 2013, the week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The sign out front said “United we Stand”. With it was a giant Red Sox logo. That night, thousands of Yankees fans interrupted a game with the Arizona Diamondbacks, to belt out Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” a staple of Red Sox home games since 1997.

I thought about Lou Gehrig. I’ve always been a Boston guy myself, I think I’m required by Massachusetts state law to hate the Yankees. But seriously. What a Class Act.

May 1, 1863 Flags of the Confederacy

I find it infinitely preferable that we learn from our history, rather than hide from it.

Last week, New Orleans authorities took to the dead of night, to remove monuments to the history of their own city. The recent fuss about the “Confederate Flag” has faded away, sort of, not so the political atmosphere that gave it birth. For all that, it seems worth pointing out: the “Stars and Bars” with which we’ve all become so familiar, never was the flag of the Confederate States of America. It wasn’t even the real Stars & Bars.

Battle_of_Sullivans_Island — Battle of Sullivan’s Island, 1776

On June 28, 1776, British General Sir Henry Clinton ordered the ship Thunder to attack the Continental fortification on Sullivan’s Island, in Charleston Harbor. The fighting was furious and lasted 16 hours and more. At one point, a British shell tore the flagstaff away. In full view and under constant fire, Sergeant William Jasper of the 2nd South Carolina retrieved the fallen flag of his regiment and fixed it to an artilleryman’s sponge pole. There he stood on the parapet, holding the flag under fire until a new pole could be installed.

Jasper’s heroism had rallied his forces to fight on. Governor John Rutledge gave him his personal sword, in recognition of his bravery. The battle was a humiliating defeat for a British fleet that hadn’t been beaten in 100 years. It was four years before they’d take another run at Charleston.

The Liberty Flag or Moultrie flag became a standard for South Carolina militia. A palmetto was added in 1861, a reference to the palm trunks laid over the sand walls of Fort Moultrie, which had helped withstand that British bombardment of 85 years earlier. A variant of this flag appeared at South Carolina’s secession conventions, as did militia and state flags in all the state secession conventions.

When Mississippi seceded in January 1861, a blue flag with a single white star was flown from the capitol dome. This, the first and unofficial flag of the Confederacy, came to be called the “Bonnie Blue Flag”, closely patterned after the flag flown over the short-lived Republic of West Florida in 1810, and adopted by the Congress of the Republic of Texas on December 10, 1836.

The first national flag of the Confederate States of America, the real Stars and Bars, was similar in design to the United States flag. A blue field containing seven, nine, eleven and finally thirteen stars, depending on the period, appeared in the “canton”, or upper left corner. Three stripes of equal height ran from hoist to fly end, alternating red to white and back to red.

Regiments of the era carried flags to help commanders observe and assess the progress of battle. At a distance, the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes were hard to tell apart, particularly in still conditions, or when smoke clouded the view.

The similarity between the two national flags led to confusion at the first battle of Manassas, also known as the first battle of Bull Run. After the battle, Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard wrote that he was “resolved then to have [our flag] changed if possible, or to adopt for my command a ‘Battle flag’, which would be entirely different from any State or Federal flag”.

The star studded diagonal stripes of the St. Andrew’s Cross is what resulted, becoming Beauregard’s battle flag, as well as that of the Army of Tennessee, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the ensign of the Confederate Navy.

Most submissions for the second national flag incorporated the battle flag into the design. The winning design adopted on May 1, 1863, was called the “Stainless Banner”, placing the Saint Andrews Cross in the canton, the rest of the flag pure white. Visibility remained an issue with this design as with the first; as it was often misinterpreted as a flag of surrender.

stainless-banner-david-andrews — Stainless Banner

The third national flag, also known as the “Blood Stained Banner”, was adopted March 4, 1865. This last design retained the white background with the same canton as before, but now there was a vertical red stripe on the fly end.

The Confederate battle flag enjoyed renewed popularity during the first half of the 20th century. Several WWII military units with Southern nicknames, made the flag their unofficial emblem. The USS Columbia flew a Confederate Navy Ensign throughout combat in the South Pacific. A Confederate battle flag was raised over Shuri Castle after the Battle of Okinawa, by a Marine from Company A of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; the self-styled “Rebel Company”. It was visible for miles and was taken down after three days on the orders of General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., son of Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner. “Americans from all over are involved in this battle”, said Buckner, replacing it with the US flag.

According to Civil War historian and native Southerner Shelby Foote, the flag traditionally represented the South’s resistance to Northern political dominance.

The symbol became highly controversial during the Civil Rights era, and disagreement continues over its symbolism. Supporters of the flag view it as a symbol of southern heritage and the independence of the distinct cultural tradition of the American South. Civil rights groups associate it with a history of racial discrimination and the institution of slavery.

Now, we have the current government in New Orleans, taking to the dark of night, to remove Confederate memorials from the streets of that city.

In writing these history essays, I hope to learn something new about a subject which interests me. I enjoy the responses of those who feel the same way. There’s plenty of time for politics and I don’t intend that this blog be the place for it. Except to say: I find it infinitely preferable that we learn from our history, rather than hiding from it.

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