disoriented

The Few, The American "Knights of the Air" Who Risked Everything To Fight In The Battle of Britain, Alex Kershaw

The dis-oriented author has been reading a lot of World War II books. I knew that there were Americans in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, but I didn't know anything about them. Alex Kershaw's The Few, is the story of the American pilots who joined the Royal Air Force in the simmer of 1940.

They were among those whom Winston Churchill described as the few in his famous speech. Churchill said of the RAF pilots:

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. . . .

Kershaw tells the story of the Americans among those few.

It has been said that for most people, history begins the day they were born. While I cannot confirm the veracity of that statement, I know that for most Americans, the Second World War began on December 7th, 1941.

In reality, the anschluss in Austria took place in early 1938, and in 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland. In May of 1940, Hitler invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and finally France. Two weeks later the British Expeditionary Force was backed up against the channel and faced certain annihilation or surrender — until the miracle of Dunkirk took place.

Finally, beginning in mid- July and ending in September, three months before Pearl Harbor— The Battle of Britain was waged. The Luftwaffe began a campaign of systematic bombing of British mainland targets that started with British airfields and moved on to the terror bombing of London known as the Blitz. In those dark days, Britain and the (Royal Air Force) RAF stood alone against Hitler. The stakes were incredibly high, losing the air battle would certainly mean the invasion of Britain. HThe war would have been over before the United States even joined.

In 1936-39 the United States passed the Neutrality Acts which made it a crime for a US Citizen to join the armed forces of any belligerent nation. In the summer of 1940 eight Americans violated the Neutrality Acts, risked arrest and forfeiture of their citizenship to fight the Germans. Some originally went to fight with the French but they arrived in France as the government was about to fall. They made it to Britain and were eventually allowed to join the RAF.

These young men were a varied lot. They included an Olympic Gold Medalist with ties to British aristocracy, a corporate pilot from MGM, a white Russian from the East coast and a youngster from Minnesota. Their reasons for going to war were as different as their backgrounds. Some understood the threat of Nazism and saw this fight as a fight to save civilization. Others thought it would be an adventure, a chance to fly the amazing Spitfire fighter. All agreed after spending time in Britain and getting to know the people, that it was a fight they had to be in.

Many more Americans joined the RAF after that summer and early fall. Eventually of course, the US joined the war as a nation. Of those eight young men who wore RAF blue and took on the Luftwaffe in the skies over Britain that late summer, seven paid with their lives.

This is an excellent book on a very small piece of history, I could not put it down.

The Few gets 5 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

Purchase The Few  from Amazon.com.

Amnesty Will Not Die

The dis-oriented author is a first-generation American. I still oppose amnesty for illegal aliens. My father was a British subject who later became a Jamaican citizen and spent over 50 years in the US as a permanent resident alien. My mother is from Guam, she is a US Citizen by the Organic Act. The act, passed by congress in 1950, made the people  of Guam, citizens of the United States.

Earlier this year, Congress defeated the Bush Amnesty bill. The president and Congress seemed surprised by groundswell of opposition to this bill. Amnesty just will not die. This week, there are three amnesty related amendments that supporters are trying to attach to the Defense Re-Authorization Act. By sneaking these amendments into the Defense Bill, the hope is that even conservatives cannot vote against defense.

If these amendments survive, our conservative congressman need to kill the defense bill.

The worst of these proposals is the so-called Dream Act. The Dream Act, S.A. 2237 calls for granting legal resident status to illegals who came to the country before their 16th birthday and either graduated from a US high school or spent two years in a US college or the military.

The fact that illegals have access to our high schools, colleges and the military is a symbol of what is wrong with out immigration laws. How is it that illegals are even allowed to attend high school or college or even enlist in the military. This program rewards those who have come here in defiance of our laws. By so doing, we prove once again that we are not serious about immigration. This also encourages others to enter the country illegally, because they are likely to benefit from some future amnesty program.

I was at a Republican political convention last year and I talked to some amnesty supporters. They asked me whether I thought it was OK to deny illegals access to service, to keep them out of public schools and not pay them minimum wage. In essence they asked whether I thought that illegals should be a permanent underclass.

Well, my short answer is no. I do not want illegals to be a permanent underclass. Rather, I would like to see them become a temporary underclass. I would like to take away all of the incentives to stay or even enter the United States.

Call your senators, they need to defeat this amendment.

Paul Revere's Ride, David Hackett Fischer

The dis-oriented author is a history buff. I of course knew many of the lines from Henry Wordswoth Longfellow's famous poem. David Hacket Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride transformed my image for Paul Revere from a 2-dimensional caricature to a 3-dimensional figure who played an important role in the founding of our nation.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Like most Americans my knowledge of Paul Revere comes mostly from the famous Longfellow poem:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
    Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
    Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
. . .

I know that the Longfellow poem paints an overly romanticized view of Paul Revere and the events of that day. The poem was written in 1860 to stir up patriotism in a country on the verge of civil war. The poem pictures Revere as a lone rider awakening the countryside and single handedly bringing the militia to the field at Lexington and Concord. Longfellow gives  Revere both too much and too little credit.

Fischer's book describes Paul Revere and the world in which he lived. As everyone knows Revere was a  silversmith, he was not an educated man of letters. He was however, well connected with the various societies and guilds in British Boston.

Revere's midnight ride was not the first time he carried a revolutionary message. He had made several rides to carry messages to the various Committees of Correspondence in the other colonies.

While Revere was not one of the philosophers of the Revolution, he was one of the actors. There was a midnight ride. Revere was one of the riders. And while he did not do it alone, he was instrumental in setting up the network that brought out the militias to the battles at Lexington and Concord.

The British governor, General Gage was a whig and concerned with the rule of law. He refused to arrest the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Boston. Fischer notes that among those he considered leaders of the nascent revolutionary movement were Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.

This book covers the battles of Lexington and Concord in great detail. Fisher describes the British retreat to Boston. The book continues through the British withdrawal from Boston after Henry Knox's expedition to capture the guns of Fort Ticonderoga.

This is an important book for any student of American history.

Paul Revere's Ride gets 5 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

Purchase Paul Revere's Ride  from Amazon.com.

Fallen Founder — The Life of Aaron Burr, Nancy Isenberg

The dis-oriented author is a history buff. I have been slowly working my way through the pantheon of the Founding Fathers. I have read biographies of George Washington, Jon Adams, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. Aaron Burr shows up in most of as a character in most of them Therefore, when my local library got a copy of Nancy Isenberg's  Fallen Founder, I had to check it out.

In most of my reading, Aaron Burr has been portrayed as a scoundrel. An opportunist best known for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Isenberg's book is an attempt to make a place for Burr among the Founding Fathers.

Anytime an historian she has a unique insight into a subject that contradicts what the vast majority of historians believe, I am skeptical.

Not too long ago, I read Ron Chernow's excellent Alexander Hamilton. As a Hamilton biographer, Chernow's book painted a very unflattering picture of Burr. If you believe Chernow, Burr was ambitious, unscrupulous, and utterly without honor. Isenberg says that Chernow is wrong. In fact in her last chapter, she calls out Chernow (and several other authors) by name.

Isenberg, paints a picture of Burr as a man of his times. A scholar who rejected the religious heritage of his famous grandfather, Jonathan Edwards — the preacher of the Great Awakening.

Burr served with some distinction in the Revolutionary War. He was certainly influential in New York Republican politics and rose to national prominence as Jefferson's first vice president.

He was also a man of the enlightenment, a land speculator, an adventurer and a sexual libertine. Isenberg does an admirable job painting Burr as a man of his times, that is suggesting that his behavior was not much different than that of his contemporaries.

Burr did not participate in the Continental Congress that approved the Constitution. He was initially not even a supporter. As vice president, he was not in a position to shape policy. His later adventures brought him into conflict with Jefferson but failed in their efforts to expand American influence in Spanish territory.

Aaron Burr was a gifted man with tremendous potential — for whatever reason, he never lived up to it.

Fallen Founder gets 4 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

Purchase Fallen Founder  from Amazon.com.

The Larry Craig Memorial Men's Room

The dis-oriented author is a business traveler. I fly between 75,000 and 100,000 miles a year and because I live in the upper midwest most of those miles are on Northwest Airlines. As it turns out most of those flights connect in Minneapolis.

This week when I flew through MSP, I took a photo of the Larry Craig Memorial Men's Room.

I couldn't resist.

Senator Larry Craig & Gay Marriage

The dis-oriented author is not a homophobe. I prefer to think of my self as anti-gay. The juxtaposition of Senator Larry Craig's arrest in a Minneapolis airport restroom and a judge throwing out Iowa's law banning gay marriage was to much to resist. Several other bloggers have suggested that if gay marriage were legal that Senator Craig would not have been cruising for sex in the men's room.

Somehow I fail to see the connection.

I guess the logic goes like this. If gay marriage were legal, Craig could settle down into a happy monogamous  gay relationship and enjoy gay sex with his partner in the privacy of their own bedroom.

Somehow I do not see it. If this were true, there should be no cruising culture in San Francisco. In San Francisco, and many other large cities, there is little or no stigma attached to being gay. There are, so we are told, many committed long-term gay relationships. Yet San Francisco remains a hotbed of anonymous gay sex.

Likewise if cruising is the result of a lack of legal recognition for gay unions — why is lesbian cruising not as prevalent as gay male cruising? In fact, I am certain that if heterosexual men could go cruising to have anonymous sex with women they would — every chance they could.

It seems to me that cruising is a simply the  result of males seeking anonymous sex with no emotional attachment. To suggest that allowing gay marriage would eliminate cruising is like suggesting that  heterosexual eliminates prostitution and strip clubs.

In short men, even gay men are pigs.

Music at the Iowa State Fair

The dis-oriented author loves the Iowa State Fair.  I try to take my family every year. I am fortunate to have found the love of my life at an early age. One of the gifts my wife has given me and my children is music.

My oldest son is a singer and won a piano scholarship to college. My second son played in a high school Jazz band that won a state championship. My oldest daughter and next son participated in show choirs in high school and a variety of ensembles. My next daughter is a competitive pianist and a singer and the three youngest are very musical as well.

For me, this year's fair was all about the music.

We decided to start our visit to the fair with the old-fashioned hymn sing in the morning. We now attend a church that sings a variety of musical styles. We have a band, we sing choruses and we still do hymns with piano and organ. While we enjoy much of the music in our church, my wife and I love the old hymns. Our oldest children grew up with them. So on our drive to Des Moines we ended up singing all the hymns we could remember. On some of them we even knew our parts and could harmonize.

My oldest son is an excellent accompanist and we have spent many an evening around the piano with our hymnals out. When we got there it was not as hot as it had been all week. The temperature would still hit 90 degrees but not until later in the day. The hymn sing was in the newly built church on the fairgrounds. The church was built with old-fashioned tools and techniques and the design was based on one of the earliest churches in the Iowa territory.

We got there early and crowded in with people joining out the front walk and through the side windows. One of the area churches provided a pianist and some mini hymnals. We must have spent 45 minutes singing mostly old gospel hymns. Many people could sing their parts (I sing bass) and it sounded absolutely wonderful. Even my kids said that we should do it again next year!

Later in the day I sat with the little kids at a playground while the bigger ones went over to hear Vocal Trash. Vocal Trash is a combination of Stomp and A'capella that you really have to hear to believe. They were very good and the kids loved the energy.

We ended up staying longer than we had planned. At the end of the day there was a concert by Don McLean. His haunting ballad Vincent (Starry, starry night) about Vincent Van Gogh has always been one of my favorites. Of course his biggest hit is the anthem American Pie.

At 62, McLean can still belt it out. We all enjoyed the concert even though most of the songs were older than my kids. By the time he closed with American Pie, almost 90 minutes later, everyone was up dancing clapping and singing along.

I agree with my wife, it was the most fun we have ever had at the fair.

 

Halsey's Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and an Untold Rescue, Robert Drury and Tom Clavin

The dis-oriented author has been through a Pacific Typhoon. Of course I weathered the typhoon in a building made of concrete block with metal shutters. So I was naturally curious when I saw Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's  Halsey's Typhoon, in the bookstore.

The story takes place after the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I had recently read James D Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. In which Halsey is notable for abandoning Task Force 3 made up of smaller escort ships while he chased after the Japanese carriers to the north.  In the end it was a Japanese ruse and the men of Task Force  3 faced the battlewagons and heavy cruisers of the  Japanese fleet. They acquitted themselves well that day in what has become known as the Navy's Alamo.

After that humiliation Halsey was not about to let a typhoon prevent him from being on station to cover MacArthur.

Halsey's Typhoon is about a Typhoon Cobra, the first named storm in the Pacific. Cobra hit Halsey's fleet as they were getting ready to meet with their oilers and refuel. At the time there was very little weather information available to the fleet or headquarters back in Pearl harbor. The science of meteorology  was in its infancy and to further complicate things most ship and shore stations maintained strict radio silence.

When the storm cleared almost 800 lives were lost. Three destroyers, USS Hull, USS Spence, and USS Monaghan, capsized and sank outright. Several other ships were severely damaged and aircraft blew off carier decks or skidded across hangers starting fires and explosions.

The book looks at the events of those days as well as the inquiry into Halsey's actions as commander  regarding the safety of his fleet. The book also has stories of heroism including that of the USS Tabberer whose captain and crew picked up most of the survivors.

We were at war with Japan but for a short time we were also at war with the sea.

Halsey's Typhoon gets 4 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

Purchase Halsey's Typhoon  from Amazon.com.