Goodbye Marvin Dorfler

John Ashton, best known for his appearance as Taggert, the Beverly Hills cop in the movies of the same name, passed yesterday.  He was great in those films but my favorite Ashton role is as dim-witted bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler in Midnight Run.  Terrific and funny movie with many memorable lines, with an incredible cast, Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin as the imperfectly perfectly matched pair, Yaphet Kotto, Dennis Farina, and Joe Pantoliano.  Doing a press tour for the recently released Beverly Hills Cop, Ashton tells as funny story of how he got the role in Midnight Run (starting around 1:45).  And here is a prior THC post on the film.

What's Next?

While many in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and elsewhere around the world celebrate the death of Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, the New York Times mourns his demise, describing the murderous fanatic as a gentle and tolerant religious sage "who maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians".  The Times assures us that as a Shiite, he represented a "historically marginalized group", so he was a Good Guy since he was Oppressed.  It's all about the narrative among those who hate the West. You will never see a non-Progressive coded American treated so reverently in a Times obituary.

What next for Israel, for Hezbollah, for Iran?  Hezbollah had always been Iran's ace in the hole against Israel.  The potential Israeli threat against Iran's nuclear program - a reasonable threat given Iran's policy goals of Death to Israel! and Death to the Jews! - was checked by possible retaliation from Hezbollah's huge rocket arsenal.

In 2000, Israel ended its occupation of south Lebanon without any preconditions, abruptly withdrawing its forces.  Hezbollah filled the vacuum, building its power base in the region, right on Israel's northern border.  In response to Hezbollah attacks, Israel reentered Lebanon in 2006, fighting a tough war in which it won a tactical victory but proved a strategic loss, because it was fought as a conventional war on Hezbollah's terms.  A UN Resolution promised that the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River would be demilitarized but, in reality, it was never enforced with the UN Peacekeeping Force serving as a shield while Hezbollah rebuilt its military capabilities.  After October 7, Hezbollah banked on being able to demonstrate solidarity with Hamas, launching several thousand rockets, forcing the evacuation of almost 100,000 Israelis from their home, believing itself at minimal risk of massive Israeli retaliation.

This time around Israel pursued a different strategy, focused on dismantling key Hezbollah capabilities and taking out the organization's leadership and middle management, as well as creating an atmosphere of mental insecurity for the survivors, rather than taking on its opponents in a ground war.  It's been impressive watching that strategy implemented.  Earlier this summer, the Israelis took out a good percentage of Hezbollah's rocket launching capabilities.  More recently we have the pager and cellphone exploits, and an increased pace of assassination of leadership, culminating in Nasrallah's death. 

What has also become evident is the extent of Israeli intelligence assets in Lebanon, compared to Gaza.  A lot of people in Lebanon, while they may not be pro-Israel, really hate Hezbollah, because that group has reduced the nation and its people to puppets.

In the past couple of days, it has been reported that Israel has turned back flights from Iran to Beirut carrying replacement equipment for Hezbollah, a demonstration of Israeli intent not to allow Hezbollah to rebuild.  The next question is whether Israel will take advantage of Hezbollah's current state to temporarily reoccupy south Lebanon and use the time to systematically destroy Hezbollah's complex infrastructure in the region.  If Hezbollah cannot rebuild, and other forces in Lebanon reassert themselves, it means Iran's shield is gone.

The recent events also highlight the impotence of Biden administration policy and the amateur hour performance of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.(1)  President Biden delusionally believed freeing up tens of billions to fund Iran woud somehow have a positive impact from our perspective, instead of enabling its support of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Putin regime.  Blinken is the quintessential model-UN kid, living in a dream world, with the shallow credentials of expertise so common to those in the foreign policy "establishment".  His negotiations strategy regarding Hamas and Gaza is embarrassing.

Hamas:  We want 100.

Blinken:  We'll give you 95.

Hamas:  No, and now we want 105.

Blinken: We'll give you 100.

Hamas:  No, and now we want 110.

Blinken:  We'll give you 105.

When you sell your house, Blinken is the guy you want negotiating on behalf of the buyer. 

Sullivan appears to think that the Israelis are the bad guys because of Netanyahu.  I don't like Netanyahu and wish he were not in office, but after all these years it should be clear that no matter who headed Israel's government, Hamas and Hezbollah would be pursuing the same course.  Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that Sullivan appointed as National Security Council lead on intelligence matters a guy who headed the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine group at Georgetown.

And, don't forget, this is the team that gave a wink-wink to Putin if he was restrained enough to just "wet his beak" by taking the rest of the Donbas, giving a thumbs-up to Nordstream 2 and the INF treaty to show their good faith, and, when that didn't work, put restraints on Ukraine's response, allowing Putin an asymmetrical advantage in the use of weapons. Don't try to make sense of their policy, since they can't.

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 (1) Sullivan and Blinken also played important roles in the Russia collusion hoax.  In 2016, Sullivan, then with the Clinton campaign, was one of the lead promoters of the Alfa Bank allegation, the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had a secret server connected with Alfa Bank that supposedly allowed the Kremlin to communicate with the campaign.  Like the rest of the allegations it was misinformation.

In 2020, Blinken, working for the Biden campaign, organized the infamous letter by 51 former intelligence officials denouncing the Hunter Biden laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation.  It wasn't, and they knew it.

Sullivan and Blinken's roles in spreading misinformation in an effort to influence presidential elections contributed significantly to the erosion of trust in our institutions, leading to the current instability in our public processes, and posing a danger to the continuation of our democracy.  They have no business being in leadership roles in our country.  They should be outcasts, shamed for their behavior.

Morning Has Broken

 Here in Maine

Stats II

Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani have had seasons for the ages, separating themselves offensively from everyone else in the league, in a year off general offensive decline in baseball.  The only closely competitive overall performance is by the young Kansas City Royal shortstop, Bobby Witt Jr, who combines sterling offense with top-notch defense.

In my stats post on August 24, I reported on Judge's performance over a 94 game stretch, but used some 100 game benchmarks for comparison.  Aaron's best 100 game performance actually ended on August 28.  During those one hundred games he batted .382, with on-base percentage of .517, while slugging .854 with 45 home runs and 105 RBI.

Meanwhile, Ohtani has had a incredible season, but his last eight games have seen as torrid a performance as any over a similar period in the game's history.  Beginning with his 6 for 6 night against the Marlins, he has 24 hits in 34 at bats, along with 6 doubles, 6 home runs, and 7 stolen bases.  He's hitting .706 and slugging 1.412.  Shohei has been successful in his last 34 steal attempts and is 57 of 61 for the season.  While not as prolific on the basepaths as Ohtani, Judge has stolen ten bases this season without being caught.

The Daredevil

Fifty years ago this month.  Evel Knievel's big jump never really took flight but may he always be an inspiration to every 11 year old with a bike.

pic.twitter.com/0ZDPjQ8NGf

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) September 14, 2024

Skin Suit

The other day I saw a lawn sign in our town, "Harris/Walz: Unity Over Division".

The Democratic ticket is campaigning on the themes of "Centrism", "Joy To The World" and "Uniting America".

How can this be for the party that has made the race essentialism of "Diversity Over Unity" as its governing policy since 2020, seconded only by its efforts to attain permanent power by "Unity Over Dissent", defining any policy disagreement as misinformation and/or hate speech deserving of suppression?

The answer was provided by David Burge (Iowahawk) back in 2016.

1.  Target a respected institution.

2.  Kill & clean it.

3.  Wear it as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

It's happened over and over to our institutions, that continue to trade on their prestige from the old days, when they have become merely debased propaganda outlets (see, for instance, the New York Times).

In the case of Harris and Walz, the skin suit they have donned for the campaign consists of the Democratic Party of 1996 and Centrism, a strategy that may work for those who pay more attention to vibes instead of substance and for whom the fear of Trump obliterates any reasoning power.

But what is inside the skin suit is a radical reformation of America, continuing the march of insane academic theories hostile to racial conciliation, to the family, to freedom, and to equality under the law, in which the only solution to the inevitable frictions and disagreements that arise in a nation of more than 300 million with a diversity of political and religious beliefs, and of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, is the suppression of opposition in the name of "preserving democracy", when "democracy" is defined as doing what Democrats want.

It may work, as the Democrats have four advantages.  

First, they are much more effective in aligning their rhetoric with a strategy to achieve their goals than Donald Trump.  The Democrats use their rhetoric to obscure their goals.  It's their skin suit.

With Trump it's the opposite.  His reckless rhetoric undercuts his goals.(1)  Trump can sound authoritarian (and ignorant), yet most of his actions while President were not, and most of his policies were centrist.  The best example of the mismatch is with regards to Russia.  Much of Trump's rhetoric regarding Russia and Putin was irresponsible and terrible, while Biden talked tough about Russia during the 2020 campaign and thereafter.  But what were their actions? 

- In contrast to the Obama administration, Trump authorized the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, weapons which proved critical to that country's defense in the early days of the Russian invasion.  At the time, AP sadly reported that, by doing so, Bad Man Trump had created yet another "sore point" between Washington and Moscow.

-Trump vocally opposed the Nordstream 2 pipeline, which would supply Russian gas to Germany, because, as he argued, it would make Germany economically dependent on Russia.  For this he was mocked for alienating an ally.

- Biden, upon taking office, endorsed Nordstream 2.  In fact, when Senate Republicans tried to introduce a resolution rebuking Biden for that support, Democrats used the "Jim Crow" filibuster to avoid the resolution even coming to a vote, so they would not have to take a public position.

- Trump vocally urged NATO allies to increase their military expenditures, for which he was mocked by our allies and American media outlets.  Doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

- Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, because of the Kremlin's noncompliance with its provisions.

- Upon taking office, Biden said, "where do I sign for the INF extension?".

- Trump imposed sanctions on Russia's ally, Iran.

- Biden lifted the sanctions on Russia's ally, Iran, providing billions of funds which Iran is using to supply armaments to Russia in support of its Ukraine invasion, as well as to Hamas and Hezbollah.

- In 2017, Trump went to Poland, delivering a speech in Warsaw praising that country as an ally, and warning Russia "to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran", adding, "We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East" 

- Biden labeled Poland a "rising totalitarian" regime (because, at the time, its government was not considered progressive), grouping it with a real totalitarian regime, Putin's ally, Belarus.

- Up until the moment of the Russian invasion in February 2022, Biden sent signals to Putin that the U.S. would do nothing if Russia satisfied itself by just seizing the remaining parts of the Donbas Region, something Trump never did. 

- Trump encourage increased oil and natural gas exploration and fracking in the U.S., all of which lowered global prices, hurting the Russian economy.

- Bush hindered such exploration, helping increase oil prices and aiding the Russian economy. [NOTE: The National Intelligence Assessment on Russian interference with the 2016 election, stated as undisputed fact that Russia supported the anti-fracking movement in the U.S.].

The bottom line:

In the Bush administration, Putin invaded Georgia.

In the Obama administration, Putin invaded Crimea, the Donbas region of Ukraine, and intervened in Syria.

In the Biden administration, Putin invaded Ukraine.

In the Trump administration  . . .

Yet the public impression is much different, and part of that is due to Trump's own rhetoric, which allows the Democrats and media create false narratives on this and other issues, and it is a trait he clearly cannot, or has no interest in, modifying. 

The second advantage is the role of the news and social media in creating a bubble in which many voters who don't carefully follow politics exist.  We've seen how quickly most of the news media has switched on a dime from telling us that Joe Biden remained on top of his game mentally, and running stories questioning Harris' ability to step up, to rapturous coverage of Harris and Walz. (2)

But it is the longer term existing bubbles that create the information world in which most of us exist.  An example is the Russia collusion story, which I've covered in exhaustive detail, and is the greatest political scandal in American history, though for a large percentage of the populace that scandal doesn't even exist.

What I've experienced speaking with people who live within that media bubble is complete disbelief with what I've learned from reading the source documents.  Over and over again, I've heard people say "I read the Mueller report", but upon further inquiry it becomes clear that what they read is what the NY Times, the WaPo, the New Yorker, or other such publications or news media said about the Mueller report, which is quite different.  That media bubble is very difficult to penetrate.

The third advantage is that the sheer insanity of what the Democratic party has become inside the skin suit is hard for people to believe, particularly for older, more traditional liberal Democrats.  When you tell them that the Biden administration has repeatedly declared its top domestic priority to be promoting a conspiracy theory that whites and Jews have attained and maintained their positions in society by plotting to promote white supremacy and that is the sole explanation for any group discrepancies in America, and that all federal actions need to be taken applying those analytical lenses, they simply will not believe you because it sounds so bizarre, so un-American, and such a repudiation of traditional liberal values because it denies the legitimacy of free speech, freedom of conscience, due process, equal protection under the law, and a sense of basic fairness to individuals.

The final advantage is they are running against Donald Trump, who has no discipline or self-control when it comes to campaigning.(3)

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(1) "Goals" is probably the wrong word to use, but not sure what that right one is.  Trump cannot articulate meaningful goals in most cases, beyond a very high level statement.  He constantly improvises and sees what works for him and his audience.  It's why, on an issue like Ukraine, Trump's rhetoric has been all over the place.  He really doesn't know what he thinks, other than falling back on the one constant in his public life; he'll negotiate a "great deal".  In that way, he is oddly like Harris, who is stunningly inarticulate.  Her inability to speak coherently on policy is because she's never had to think clearly or deeply about serious issues.  She comes from a one-party state and has, from the start of her career, been in campaign mode, just saying stuff that her partisans like to hear, even if it doesn't make much sense.  It's why she ducks any tough questioning.  We are in such deep trouble as a country with these two people as presidential candidates.

(2) And why does the same news media, now ignore that a clearly incapable Joe Biden remains nominally president? Who is making the big decisions in this administration?

(3) To be fair, Trump's greatest advantage is he is running against Harris.

You Can't Do Something Forever

Came across this 2004 60 Minutes interview with Bob Dylan.  At 1:30 into it Ed Bradley asks the singer about how he wrote his early songs and whether he can still do so.  The 63 year old Dylan replies:

"I don't know how I got to write those songs . . . Well, you can't do something forever and I did it once . . . I can do other things now, but I can't do that".

The lyric he recites is from "It's Alright Mom (I'm Only Bleeding)", written in 1964, and which also contains the line, "But even the president of the United States/ Sometimes must have to stand naked".

It reminded me of something he wrote in his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, my favorite musician autobiography, a non-linear, episodic, probably partly fictionalized account.  The 80s had been a fallow commercial and reputational decade, until he made a comeback in both respects, with the 1989 album Oh Mercy!, containing outstanding songs like Man In The Long Black Coat, Most Of The Time, What Good Am I?, and Ring Them Bells.  In Chronicles, Dylan recounts how producer Daniel Lanois, just off producing the Joshua Tree album for U2, told Dylan he should write some songs like Mr Tambourine Man for the new record.  Dylan writes that he can't do that anymore because he's not that person anymore.  He was right and that was a good thing.  An older guy, trying to recapture that style would devolve into a caricature.

As a teenager in the 60s, I liked Dylan and continued listening into the mid-70s.  After that I lost track of him and, to the extent I thought about it, considered his old songs kinds of lame and passe.  I saw him in concert with Tom Petty in the mid-80s and he was terrible.  In the 90s I didn't listen to any of his new records, or old ones for that matter.  He'd disappeared as far as I was concerned.

But when it came to starting Things Have Changed in 2012, the title and inspiration came from Dylan's song in the 2000 movie Wonder Boys (which I recommend):

People are crazy, times are strange
I'm locked up tight, I'm out of range
I used to care
But things have changed

With that, I started relistening to his old stuff and also exploring the post-1980 work which I'd ignored.  The result is the 36th post with a Dylan tag since THC started.   You can find them all here.

I now appreciate the scope of his achievement.  Bob Dylan is a towering figure; there is no one quite like him.  It's not just the songwriting.  It's how he managed the transition over the years.  That post-80 material contains some wonderful songs, many interpreted brilliantly by other acts, particularly by female artists.  His books, Chronicles and The Philosophy Of Modern Song are top notch, as is his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.  An interesting and reflective man.

Some favorite Dylan covers by women artists:

Sarah Jarosz: Ring Them Bells

Chrissie Hynde: Sweetheart Like You

Bettye Lavette: Seeing The Real You at Last

Jenny Lewis: Standing In The Doorway

Nanci Griffith: Boots Of Spanish Leather

Mavis Staples: Gotta Serve Somebody

Patti Smith: Changing Of The Guards

Adele: Make You Feel My Love 

Susan Tedeschi: Lord Protect My Child

16th Ghost Notes

Enjoy the great Bernard Purdie, who turned 85 this year, explain 16th ghost notes.  The real fun starts about three minutes in when he starts talking about the high hat.  Creator of the Purdie Shuffle, which Wikipedia describes as the "use of triplets against a half-time backbeat".  Sounds right to me!

Of course that gives me an excuse to insert this video of Purdie playing on Home At Last, a Steely Dan track from their 1977 album Aja.

Lochnagar Crater

(Two photos below from Wikipedia) 

At 7:28am on July 1, 1916 a titanic explosion occurred near La Boisselle, a village in the Department of the Somme, throwing debris thousands of feet into the air.  Its cause was sixty tons of explosives placed in a mine dug by British engineers, extending 1200 feet, to the German trenches.  It was, to that date, the largest military mine explosion in history.  The resulting crater, now known as the Lochnagar, was 70 feet deep and 330 feet wide.

The power of visiting the site, which we did on our recent trip, was that it brought down to a comprehensible scale, the otherwise overwhelming scale of the Battle of the Somme, which lasted from July 1 to mid-November of 1916.  The site, privately owned and maintained, was purchased and preserved by a Briton in the 1970s, is set up as a memorial, a "hallowed place dedicated to Peace, Remembrance, and Reconciliation".  As you walk around the crater, you read exhibits telling the stories of the British soldiers who died that day, those who survived, and those of comrades who returned frequently over the years to honor their fallen friends.  A cross marks the spot where the body of a British soldier, subsequently identified, was found as recently as 1998.

The British-French offensive on the Somme was designed to end the Western Front stalemate, breaking the German lines.  It was also intended to take pressure off the French Army, desperately defending Verdun against a German attack that began in February and was to continue until December.  The attack was to take place on a 25 mile front, with 19 mines, Lochnagar being the largest, detonated that morning.

The first day proved a fiasco for the British.  The troops, many seeing their first combat, had been told the week long preliminary bombardment would destroy the first and second German trench lines and were instructed, once they went "over the top", to walk slowly following the rolling artillery barrage.  However, much of the German first line and most of its second line survived the bombardment.  On that first day, the British army suffered almost 60,000 casualties, of which 20,000 were killed; the worst toll of any day in British history, and achieved very little.  The division attacking in and around the Lochnagar Crater incurred 6,000 dead, wounded, and missing, the most of any attacking division.  By the time the battle wound down in November more than a million British, French, and German soldiers were dead, wounded or missing.

What happened that morning at Lochnagar? The German first line trenches were completely destroyed.  The British soldiers followed instructions marching towards the crater.  Most of the British were part of the Pals Battalions.  With the destruction of the relatively small professional British Army in the battles of 1914, and the realization that the war would last longer than anticipated, Britain, which did not have conscription until January 1916, embarked on an ambitious recruitment program to build a large army. 

One of the recruitment tools used was the creation of Pals Battalions, for volunteers who enlisted with their friends, neighbors, or co-workers and were promised they could serve together.  For these volunteers, July 1 was to be their first day of combat.

As the British approached the crater and front trenches they found themselves under intense machine gun fire.  While the German first line was destroyed, the second line, on a ridge several hundred yards beyond, was relatively unscathed.  The Germans had an unobstructed view of the British advance and were well equipped with machine guns and ammunition. 

You can see on the photo below, behind the plaque showing the story of a British soldier who perished that day, the ridgeline where the German gunners were located.  Please read the inscription.

The surviving British never made it past the crater and trenches, with many seeking cover within the crater.  One plaque at the Crater told the story of two brothers.  One made it into the crater, but the other lifting his head for a moment at the crater lip, was hit by a machine gun and killed.  His brother, with the help of a fellow soldier, pulled the body into the crater and buried him at the bottom.

On another part of the field, a Pals regiment of 700 men suffered 235 dead and 350 wounded in the first 20 minutes of the battle.  As news of the dead and wounded came back to Britain, the enormous impact of the loss to Pal communities became evident, and the recruiting of Pals units was halted.

Butte de Vauquois and Lochnagar Crater were the most moving and evocative battlefield sites of our trip.  The Crater was saved from being filled in by the purchase of Richard Dunning MBE and the creation of the Locknagar Crater Foundation.

The Pals were not the only units to suffer heavily.  After Lochnagar, we visited the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Regiment Memorial, located a few miles away.  We observed the remains of the trenches from which the Newfoundland Regiment of the Canadian Army went "over the top" on the morning of July 1, and the remnants of their own barbed wire protective barrier through which they were funneled through breaches, our guide pointing out why the sloping terrain left them so vulnerable to enemy fire.  Of 790 in the regiment, 272 were killed and 438 wounded in a short time that morning.  Only 80 remained alive and uninjured.

Butte De Vauquois

After tours of the Somme and Ypres, the rest of our recent WW1 trip was self-guided.  When planning the trip it proved very difficult to find information in English about touring the entire Western Front.  Information in English focused on the northern end of the front where British and Empire troops fought, while ignoring the French.

At the suggestion of a friend, I tried using ChatGPT for the first time, using inquiries about sites to visit at Verdun, Meuse-Argonne, Belleau Wood, and Chateau Thierry.  It proved very useful in leading me to locations about which I could do more research.  It was through ChatGPT I found the Butte de Vauquois which I'd never heard of.  Thinking it was primarily a hill taken by the Americans at the start of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, we decided to stop there on the way to the American Monument at Montfaucon and the Meuse-Argonne American cemetery.  It proved to be one of the most unique, memorable, and melancholy stops on our trip.

Butte de Vauquois is a small hill, rising more than 300 feet above the surrounding rural landscape.  In 1914 its flat top contained the village of Vauquois, with a few homes, barns, and a church.  From the top it provides a commanding view for miles of the countryside in all directions.  That view sealed its destruction in the Great War.

The German army seized the hill during its initial advance in September 1914 because of its military importance for observation of French movements.  Later that fall, the French began efforts to recapture the small plateau, by March 1915 controlling the south side of the village.  That remained the front line until September 1918.  The entrenchments of the armies, many of which still exist, were at points only 30 feet apart.  Both armies started tunneling into the hill to provide for supplies, barracks, and shafts for mines to be set off under each other's lines.

More than 15 miles of tunnels were built during the course of the war.  We saw a German trench mortar and the deep shaft in which it had been placed.  With trenches were so close, conventional artillery could not be used because of the risk to their own soldiers, so these high arcing mortars were brought in to bombard the French.  Entrance to one of the tunnels:

The two sides also set off more than 500 mines in the course of the war, creating a huge gulley, a rift line, running the full length of the plateau between what became the final German and French lines.  The largest explosion, in May 1916, killed 108 French soldiers and destroyed the western end of the hill.  The village of Vauquois was completely destroyed, only a few foundation stones of the church remaining.

Photo from French side:

 Photo from German side:

According to the sources I found, about 14,000 soldiers were killed on the hill during the war with the bodies of 8,000 never found. Among those killed was Auguste Chaillou, one of the developers of serum therapy to treat diphtheria.  From 1895 to 1914 Chaillou was chief of anti-rabies services at the Pasteur Institute.  Age 49, Chaillou died on the hill on April 23, 1915, while serving as a medical officer.

This was war on an intimate scale, the sides locked closely together for four years.  Even seeing it in person, it is difficult to envision what it must have been like for the soldiers on both sides, living day after day, month after month, year after year, in such proximity to each other.

When visiting today you park about halfway up the hill and then do the short, but steep, climb up the wide path.  We had the hilltop mostly to ourselves the day we were there, as we walked the trenches and gaped at the results of the mining.  We viewed the entrances to the underground tunnel system but could not enter without being accompanied by guides.

The video below provides further views and explanations and this link takes you online article.

  This video takes you through the underground tunnels.

What We Say, And Don't Say

Yesterday, I read a piece by Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal, "Maybe It's Time for Jewish Self-Segregation", prompted by the increase in American anti-semitism, some from elements on the Right and institutionally on the Left, mainstreamed by academic theory as I've described before.

I was startled to see this anecdote which Epstein recounted as occurring when he was five.

My father asked me what I had learned in school one day, and I told him the poem "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe", which I began to recite.  When I came to the n-word - before "tiger" had been substituted as a more appropriate alternative - my father angrily stopped me and told me I was never to use the word again, especially since our people, like the Negroes (as they were called then), had been long persecuted and called all sorts of terrible names.

Epstein was born in 1937 so this occurred in 1942.  What caught my attention is that I had a very similar experience with my father when I was probably six, in 1957, when attending a summer day camp for the first time.  I had already learned the version of Eenie, Meenie with "tiger" but that day a camper told me there was another version, though he did not explain why, and recited it to me. I had no idea what the n-word meant. Either that day or the next I was sitting next to my dad while he drove and I recited the version using the n-word as something new I'd learned.  Like Epstein's father, my dad angrily stopped me, explained why it was a bad word, and told me never to say it again.  I can't remember if he also, like Epstein's dad, referenced the Jewish experience, but he did at other times, telling me of what it was like growing up and encountering prejudice as a member of the only Jewish family in a small Connecticut town in the 1920s and 30s.

I'm 73 now, dad passed a decade ago, and I've not said that word since that day.  It wasn't only what he told me - he lived his life in a way that I could see by how he treated people and who he had as friends that this meant a great deal to him, and so it did to me.

Left Behind

 

Recently returned from the tour of WW1 battlefields I mentioned in a recent post.  Above is a photo I took of my friend looking at three unexploded shells along a small road near Ypres.  The pointing arm is that of our guide pointing out that this was still, more than a century later, live ordnance and that one of them was a gas shell.  He'd told us at the beginning of the tour that about 300 million shells(1), from mortar to heavy artillery, were fired in the 100 square miles of the Ypres battlefield between the fall of 1914 and September 1918, of which 20% did not explode, going on to warn us that it was possible we would encounter shells on our tour and that, under no circumstances, were we to touch them, regaling us with stories of the unpleasant results in recent years for folks who tried to remove the nose cones, which are valuable souvenirs.

Farmers and builders still encounter about 250 tons a year of these shells and put them by the side of the road for collection.  It was one of our fellow tourists who noticed these shells by the wayside and our guide quickly pulled over.

Flying in and out of Brussels, we saw, in order, the Somme, Ypres, Verdun, the Meuse Argonne - site of the great American offensive at the end of the war, and ended up at Waterloo, along with visiting the Museum of the Great War in Meaux, near Paris, the closest the Germans came to the city in September 1914, before being repulsed in the First Battle of the Marne.

At the Somme and Ypres we did all day tours with a guide.  At the Somme we were with four Australians, one whose grandfather was shot in the face during the 1918 battle, but survived to return home.  Although I knew Australians fought on the Western Front, I was unaware of the scale of their participation, with 46,000 dying along those lines.  At Ypres we spent the morning with four other Australians and two Brits, the Australians leaving us at lunch.  

The rest of the trip we served as our own guides, visiting museums and the battlefields on our own.  And the military cemeteries.  The endless cemeteries.  There are 410 military cemeteries at the Somme, and more than 250 at Ypres; the Meuse Argonne contains the largest American military cemetery in Europe, the final resting place for more than 14,000 soldiers.  We saw many as we passed by and visited British and Empire, French, German, and American cemeteries.

The scale of all this death and destruction occurring within a relatively contained geographical area is overwhelming.  During the entire American Civil War there were about 200,000 battlefield deaths while about 300,000 American died at on the battlefield or shortly thereafter during WW2.  During the 4 1/2 months of the Somme, 300,000 soldiers perished; during the ten month Battle of Verdun the same year, another 300,000 died.  In four years at Ypres the toll was another 400,000.  Including wounded there were between 2.5 and 3 million casualties at these three locations.

At the British cemeteries you will see many gravestones simply reading A Soldier of the Great War.  The German cemetery at Ypres contains a mass grave with the bones of 25,000 unidentified soldiers.  For many other tens of thousands not enough was ever found to bury.  On a wall at the Australian National Monument at the Somme are the names of 11,000 soldiers never found.  The British monument at the Somme is in memory of more than 70,000 who disappeared in the mud, the rain, and the repeated shelling (60-70% of Western Front casualties were from artillery).  The Menin gate at Ypres lists more than 50,000 soldiers of the British Empire who disappeared defending the city.

The bond between the people of Ypres and Britain remains strong a century later.  The Germans never took the city but it was completely destroyed by the deluge of German shells.  After the war, Ypres was rebuilt as it existed before 1914.  The city is filled with British, Australian and Canadians visitors and they receive a warm welcome.  Our hotel contained a small museum of artifacts recovered from the battlefield.  At 8pm every night since 1929 (except during WW2), a bugle band consisting of local volunteers plays at a ceremony at the Menin Gate.

Below are photos of the Tyne Cot British Cemetery at Passchendaele (Passendale) five miles from the center of Ypres.  From its low ridge, the towers of the Ypres Cathedral could be seen.  In 1917, the British, Australians, and Canadians launched an attack to capture the ridge.  It took 100 days and 75,000 lives to advance less than five miles, with the German suffering similar losses.  The cemetery is placed on top of the ridge at the limit of their advance.  On the photo at bottom, the wind turbines in the distance mark the approximate starting line for the British attack.

 

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(1)  Doing some further research, while I've seen the 300 million figure as well as 1.5 billion for the number of shells fired on the entire Western Front from 1914 to 1918, I have my doubts whether this is accurate.  I've found some smaller figures, as well as amounts of shells produced individually by Britain, France, and Germany.  There is no doubt that staggering amounts of shells were fired, for instance, one million by the Germans on the first day at Verdun on February 21, 1916 and 1.7 million by the British and French on July 1, 1916 at the Somme, but if 300 million were fired at Ypres, that works out to about 210,000 a day, which seems high given weather and campaigning variation, as well as that until mid-1915 all the armies had shortages of shells.  My sense is the number is less but still impressive.

A further note, at Verdun and the Somme, the first day artillery barrage was intended to destroy the enemy lines and allow large advances by the infantry.  In both cases, though much death and destruction was inflicted, the expected advances did not occur, as enough enemy survived to maintain resistance.