My adopted grandfather, Mr. Tom (USN 1938-1957), remembers D-Day:
I was assigned to the Meredith*, an American destroyer out of Plymouth England. She was new – so new parts were still wet with paint. As at Pearl, my duty was the engine room. The Meredith wasn’t transport, she was a destroyer; we shelled the shore to soften it up for the landing. We stayed there in the [English] Channel for the entire day and the next, that’d make it June 7 when we were ordered to change position. I don’t recall where we were going; regardless, we struck a mine. That brand-new ship struck a mine and threatened to break in half. We ended up abandoning ship and I spent the night in the English Channel tied to my buddies so we wouldn’t drift. There was fuel all over, some of it ignited. One of my buddies [name redacted] was burned so badly he knew he was dying. He gave me some effects to pass on to his girl and some of the others started accusing me of robbing the dead. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? Well, we were picked up in the morning and I was shipped on to Scotland for recovery before being sent back to the States for a spell. I really can’t describe it. D-day was the worst day of my life. Worse than Pearl. Worse than the day my wife died. It was the absolute worst day of my life.
USS Meredith – navalwarfare.blogspot.com
USS Meredith – navsource.org
USS Meredith – wikimapia.org
*You can read the official Commander’s Narrative here.
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I thought the summer break would give me more time to write.
I was wrong.
And yet, I was right.
I’ve written – or, more accurately, typed – quite a bit over the last ten days:
Four class supply lists
Three class outlines
Eleven class projects
Lesson plans for half of American History 1
Today I’m working on re-writing World History so the class is approximately 60% book/lecture and 40% project.
Sometime next week, the new Chemistry curriculum will arrive, meaning I’ll have to go through and check my current lesson plans against any changes in the new edition. Joy. I might just start over from scratch on that one.
I’ve also been cleaning the house.
Spring Cleaning didn’t happen this year; so now’s the perfect time to do it. Well, maybe not perfect, but there certainly won’t be a better time.
But writing for the blog? Not so much.
The only things I’ve published were mostly finished posts waiting in the drafts folder.
Yesterday, I even missed Sunday Snapshots.
However, that’s due mainly to the fact I didn’t take many photos this last week; I’ve been in my office working on the list you just read.
However, I’ve begun to think differently about Memorial Day.
Yes, men gave their lives.
Yes, we should be grateful for their sacrifice.
But I’ve also begun to ask: what – exactly – did they sacrifice their lives for?
I don’t think those who gave their lives would want us to perpetually mourn.
After all, I sincerely doubt they held Rat’s opinion:
From Unsportsmanlike Conduct (p. 37) A Pearls Before Swine Collection by Stephan Pastis
 Yes, remember their sacrifice. But they died so we could live normal lives. So that we could hold barbecues on the beach while listening to our preferred sport on the radio with our families. Or whatever your tradition is this weekend.
You know what? I have no problem with the President enjoying an ice cream.
What I do have a problem with was this being the very first Memorial Day post from the Democratic Party.
Things didn’t get much better with their second and third Memorial Day posts:
They finally got around to thanking the fallen two days after posting that first image:
Again, this is just my opinion and I understand that this Twitter feed belongs to the Democratic Party and not President Obama, but since one of the President’s roles is Commander in Chief, it only makes sense that the first Memorial Day posts would thank the troops. Maybe that just me.
All this to say: enjoy your Memorial Day how you see fit, but take a moment of silence to remember those who gave their lives for normalcy.
How can I resist sharing a poem on Memorial Day?
This year I’ve selected
For the Fallen
Robert Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Don’t forget to follow me on:
Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.
Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?
Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.
Surprisingly, the year yielded no fodder for the funny folder.
Oh well, there’s always next year.
After grading a seemingly endless pile of papers, I needed a break.
I braved the unseasonable heat and took a few pictures at my in-laws’ house:
I also worked on my flame technique by lighting matches in the bathroom:
The last day of school was a grab bag of sorts.
I took pictures of the school “mascot” sculpture and the last pot of coffee
Coincidentally, it was the last of the office coffee, too.
I enjoyed coffee and donuts:
It was also a day for several student gifts, like this gift card to Staples, with which I purchased a pencil sharpener for my black pencils – the ones with which I’m writing The Book. I also received a $15 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, but I neglected to take a picture before writing this post.
Then, it was time for Graduation:
The weekend began a month-long line of graduation parties.
In the South, that means barbecue and cheerwine.
It also meant I didn’t have to wear dress slacks and shirts.
The week started with one of the earliest tropical storms on record: Tropical Storm Ana.
For reference, the ditch in the second picture is approximately 5 foot deep.
The photograph was taken approximately 6:00 AM on Monday morning.
Things did not improve until early Tuesday.
Personally, I like how the downspout turned out.
On Tuesday, we held a surprise Spring Recital for F_____’s wife. Normally she puts this on herself; with everything that’s happened, she cancelled it this year. My cousin, one of her students, organized and put on the recital for her. One of my jobs was to make this chocolate piano keyboard.
I didn’t get the right dark bars – I got the “mini” kind instead of the “fun size” ones – but still think it turned out okay. Actually, there were two of them, and only one white bar remained at the end of the evening.
Things were both normal and hectic on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; you know, typical end-of-term stuff. My principal surprised me with not one but two kinds of sushi: eel (my favorite!) and yellowfin (which I hadn’t tried before but found to have just the right amount of spice and kick to it).
Saturday I cleaned the house (laundry and dishes) and cut the grass. Go me! Now I can treat those annoying anthills . .
Now, I’m not a copyright lawyer, but I imagine that at some point contracts were signed.
One cannot simply get out of a contract because they find the recipient distasteful. Were that the case, the real estate, automotive, and student loan companies would immediately collapse.
In this case, Cordula Schacht – the copyright holder – is of no relation to Mr. Goebbels; in fact, her own father was acquitted at Nuremberg. Therefore, one cannot make the claim that royalties would benefit a convicted war criminal.
Peter Longerich, the biographer involved in the matter, has argued that a private person should not be given control of important historical documents. To which I ask: who gets to decide what is important?
Were I the judge in this case, I’d rule against Herr Longerich. Others disagree with me; some selections from Twitter:
All royalties should be paid to the Holocaust Museum / Memorials! He shouldn’t even be allowed an estate!
Any money paid by the publishers to any estate connected to the Nazis would be blood money.
No one should profit from this unless it’s as a donation to those affected by the Holocaust or a memorial/museum. Disgusting!
The Spawn of Satan should have no royalty rights under the law.
They ought to be ashamed that he is a family member. But people are greedy and will take $ from whatever source.
And now, a word from our sponsor:
It might not be the original (because let’s face it, Gene Wilder is beyond compare), but John Barrowman redeems the production. Pun intended.
Second, yet another former Nazi is on trial seventy years after the war ended, this time the so-called “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz“. Now, before you get offended or hot and bothered about my tone of type, please hear me out. I am not an apologist for Nazism by any stretch of the imagination, neither do I think war crimes have a statute of limitations. However, I find the overall treatment of former Nazis incongruous.
Case in point: Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were welcomed back sixty years after the fact. In fact, it seems they were forgiven some time ago, as evidenced by this article from the New York Times. I wonder why the world holds such special hatred for the Nazis when other dictators and regimes have been responsible for death on a much larger scale (like the Soviets and – by some estimates – the Chinese).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’ve nothing against prosecuting Nazis guilty of crimes for which they’ve never been punished, but I don’t understand why we’ve forgiven some and not others.
Another part of me wonders what will happen in ten years’ time (give or take) when the final Nazi is dead. Who will then become the bogeymen of the world?
I suppose it’s also fitting that I’m watching/listening to a Twilight Zone marathon while I work on this. Rod Serling dished out devious damnations to nefarious Nazis in “Judgment Night”, “Deaths-Head Revisited”, and “He’s Alive”. There may be more, but those are the three that come immediately to mind.
In fact, Serling’s closing narration to “Deaths-Head Revisited” has become a staple in my classroom when discussing World War II and how we come to terms with what happened:
All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens,
the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain
standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some
men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they
shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but
worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the
moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become
the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only
in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.
I was assigned to the Meredith*, an American destroyer out of Plymouth England. She was new – so new parts were still wet with paint. As at Pearl, my duty was the engine room. The Meredith wasn’t transport, she was a destroyer; we shelled the shore to soften it up for the landing. We stayed there in the [English] Channel for the entire day and the next, that’d make it June 7 when we were ordered to change position. I don’t recall where we were going; regardless, we struck a mine. That brand-new ship struck a mine and threatened to break in half. We ended up abandoning ship and I spent the night in the English Channel tied to my buddies so we wouldn’t drift. There was fuel all over, some of it ignited. One of my buddies [name redacted] was burned so badly he knew he was dying. He gave me some effects to pass on to his girl and some of the others started accusing me of robbing the dead. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? Well, we were picked up in the morning and I was shipped on to Scotland for recovery before being sent back to the States for a spell. I really can’t describe it. D-day was the worst day of my life. Worse than Pearl. Worse than the day my wife died. It was the absolute worst day of my life.
Running In My Head 