A Memorial Brick for my Dad

There are many bricks in the veterans memorial plaza where I live in Texas each with a different name and a different story. The brick I want to talk about looks a bit different than the rest and I hope to explain why, and why it sits with all the others.

It all started with a trip to Hawaii to celebrate our 40^th anniversary. My wife and I flew to Honolulu a day early so that we could visit the USS Arizona Memorial before we headed off on a seven day islands cruise. We got on the coach to Pearl Harbor early in the morning and were entertained by our driver with multiple tales of the islands and tourists like ourselves. When he asked for questions one of our numbers asked him why so many Japanese visited the Arizona Memorial. I must admit to a moment of apprehension anticipating his answer but when it came it was quite unlike my unworthy expectations. He asked us all to think about how our world was changed by the Pearl Harbor attack and how the world was changed for the Japanese too. As I thought about his question I thought about my father and his circumstances on December 7^th 1941.

In December 1941 my mother and father were not yet engaged, far less married and I was not yet born. In fact I was not even a twinkle since I was not born until 1949. On Pearl Harbor day my father was in a German Army POW camp in Torun, Poland (Camp 17 of Stalag_XX_A as I recall). Absent the attack his prospects of ever returning home to Scotland alive were vanishingly remote. It goes without saying that such a failure to return home would have seen my parents unmarried and me unborn.

The story of how he finished up as a POW is a tragic one, quite embarrassing to Winston Churchill’s reputation and greatly forgotten by military historians of WWII both in the USA and UK. He volunteered for the army in September 1939 the week that war was declared in the UK. He was inducted into the Seaforth Regiment and sent to Fort George, near Inverness in Scotland. After only 3 months training he was issued a Lee Enfield bolt action rifle and 100 rounds of .303 ammunition and shipped out to France in January 1940 in the 4^th Battalion  Seaforths, part of the 51^st Highland Division. The division was eventually stationed at the northern end of the Maginot Line near Metz, quite separate from the rest of the British Army. Those readers who are military historians will realize that the 51^st HD location was a precarious one, although they didn’t know that at the time but soon would.

When the Phony War ended and the real shooting started around May 10^th 1940 the main German armored thrust landed north of the 51^st HD, went through Sedan and onward to the English Channel coast near Calais, cutting the 51^st off from the rest of the British Army. Elements of the 51^st division did take part in supporting French armor assaults northward into the flank of the German penetration but without air support and after the German anti-tank forces worked out how to disable the heavily armored French tanks, these all failed.

The rest of the British Army was famously evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk between May 27^th and June 4^th leaving the 51^st HD the only British division left fighting in France (the 50^th division was in the process of landing at Cherbourg but were soon turned around and sent back to the UK). The 51^st, including my father, fell back along the line of the river Somme arriving near St Valery sur Somme on the English Channel coast by May 28^th. They were soon engaged by strong mechanized and infantry forces. The danger of being outflanked by German armor on the right drove them slowly back toward their bases of supply at Le-Havre and Rouen. When these bases were cut off they fell back to St Valery-en-Caux on the channel coast where they attempted to hold a perimeter while awaiting to be rescued by sea. But rescue became impossible when the beaches came under direct artillery fire. They might have been saved if earlier action had been taken but Churchill had delayed efforts to rescue the 51st and to keep them in the fight as a political bargaining tool with the French to keep them from capitulating; now it was too late.

On June 12^th 1940 the French forces supporting them surrendered and, absent food, fuel, ammunition and medical supplies, and with no embarkation possible the 51^st was surrendered to the famous German general Erwin Rommel. The 10,000 men of the division, mostly Scottish, were marched off as POWs to an uncertain future. At the time of this surrender the 51^st Highland Division was surrounded by the 5^th and 7^th armored divisions, the 2^nd motorized division, the 11^th motorized brigade, the 57^th, 31^st, 12^th, and 32^nd infantry divisions of the German Army. A small force did escape through German lines to Le-Havre and returned to the UK but my father was not one of the fortunate ones.

He and his buddies were stripped of all that was valuable the marched eastward toward Germany. Besides marching they were carried in coal barges, in trucks and finally by train in cattle cars to Torun, Poland which is near Gdansk, or Danzig as it was called in those days. Here they entered into the German camp system, in his case as a private soldier. They were organized by service, rank and nationality. The British were treated better than most, albeit not all that well. They were issued rations of 1/5^th of a loaf of black bread and a bowl of soup per day. Why 1/5^th of a loaf is a mystery that only the Germans knew the answer to. At the beginning the bread was okay and the soup had recognizable vegetables and some protein in it. As time passed the ‘bread’ became sweepings and the soup became warm water.

As a private soldier my father was obliged to work in either the coal mines or on local farms. He volunteered to be a farm worker because it allowed him access to foodstuffs not available in camp that he could trade for. The POWs were sustained by Red Cross parcels, actually boxes, many supplied from the USA through Switzerland. They were supposed to receive one parcel per week but got far fewer, and sometimes none for months. The parcels contained cans of coffee, cans containing American cigarettes, cans of butter, chocolate, candies and other highly desirable products that were rarely consumed by the POWs but used as trade goods to swap  for potatoes, carrots, eggs and other staples from local farmers. It was these staples that kept them alive through the next five years.

He escaped a few times; well he walked away from the farm he was working on, but with little success. When recaptured, prisoners were yelled at, perhaps hit with a rifle butt a few times, and then they were sentenced to 21 days solitary in the camp prison, the cooler. His most successful escape attempt reached the docks at Gdansk where he and his buddy were caught climbing the dockyard fence next to a Swedish cargo ship. So he was returned to the camp and his 21 day penance before heading out on the next work party to another farm. To my father it was all an adventure to escape the monotony of camp life. His family circumstances before he volunteered was pretty rough so I don’t think POW life was too unsettling for him, early on at least. He sent a postcard home to his sweetheart, my mother to be, consisting of a photograph of his hut and its residents and telling her that he was alive (I still have it). They corresponded by letter throughout his captivity maintaining their romance from afar. There is a family story that towards the end of the war, while he was again in solitary, he was informed by the guards that his older brother was in camp looking for him. Having been captured in Tobruk in North Africa and having had many adventures before pitching up in Poland his older brother, my uncle Jim got back to Scotland the same week as my dad.

In December 1941 my father had been a POW for over a year and a half. Although the Germans had attacked the Soviet Union in June that year the POWs had little hope of an end to the war in circumstances that would see them return home victorious. Then Pearl Harbor happened and when Churchill was informed of the attack wrote that he “…went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful”. I suspect that the POWs had a similar reaction when they found out than America had entered the war on their side.  

Towards the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945 the camps in Poland were emptied and the POWs were rounded up and driven west to escape the advancing Soviet forces. This little known episode is called “The March” by those who took part in it. Over a period of about four months from January to April, they were marched about back and forth across Poland and Germany for more than 500 miles in some of the most brutally cold conditions. There was very little food and those who fell out of line to raid a farmer’s field for some potatoes were often shot. Estimates vary but between 100,000 to 200,000 allied POWs took part with between 2000 and 3000 that died on the way. One morning in late April or early May 1945 my father woke in a field near Hamburg. The guards had gone and soon allied forces arrived – he was free!        

My dad returned home to Scotland and soon persuaded my mother to marry him. They settled down in central Scotland and raised two boys, my elder brother and me. Although he worked pretty much every day of his life my father’s health was affected by his time as a POW. He died young, not quite 55, and a little over a year after my mom died. She was barely in her 50’s when she died having been seriously ill since her early 30’s.  

So what has all this to do with a brick in our Veterans Memorial Garden? Well, I was telling a neighbor this tale a number of years back. He is a Vietnam veteran who was seriously wounded flying helicopters in the 1^st Cavalry. He was interested in my Dad’s story and my experience on the bus heading to the Arizona memorial. It was he who suggested the brick. So that is why the brick is there, not just to memorialize my father but to remind folks of what the others memorialized there have done to rescue freedom, and to place my dad’s name in a country he loved and among those who saved his life and who gave me mine. But for America and Americans, my dad would not have survived and I would not have been born and would never have emigrated to the United States of America and become one of its citizens – and I would never then have placed the brick.

Further reading for the military history buff:

1.          Churchill’s Sacrifice of the Highland Division, by Saul David

2.          The St. Valery Story, by Ernest Reoch

3.          The Highland Division, by Eric Linklater

4.          St Valery, the impossible odds, edited by Bill Innes

5.          Return to St Valery, by Derek Lang

6.          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XX-A

7.          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Cross_parcel

8.          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_(1945)

Bladder Cancer -- Revisted

I should not complain but I will. I'm tired of having bladder cancer. I'm tired of having Cystoscopes and catheters stuck up my wedding tackle. I'm tired of having the inside surface of my bladder scraped to remove malignant growths. I'm tired of having BCG treatments every week that leave me feeling like I have the flu.On the other hand I'm not tired of looking at the grass from the green side.
The hospital and clinic staff could not be kinder, especially considering the grumpy curmudgeon they have to deal with. Sadly, despite their best efforts I have had two recurrences since my initial diagnosis and treatment. Both of these recurrences are described as 'mild', as if that made me feel better. I never used to be driven by my emotions, or at least I tried not to be, but since cancer entered my life I have got more than a bit weepy at times. Fortunately I am married to a rock who supports me even in my most irritable moments. I love her as much as I always have and as much as I am capable, albeit less than she deserves perhaps. 

Presidential Election 2016 -- a dilema absent a logical decision

A whole bunch of millenials woke up on the morning of November 9th 2016 in a new reality for them. A similarly large bunch of middle Americans also woke up to a new reality for them. The first group became snowflakes and dedicated their lives to protesting the American election process that had previously produced Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. The second group sighed in relief for the American election system that didn't produce president HRC (Her Royal Clintoness). Instead we got Trump.
      To call the election 'Hobson's Choice' is unfortunately incorrect since such a choice is between a unpleasant outcome or nothing; a bad horse or no horse at all. Hmmm!! Perhaps that's not such a bad description after all. However, more correctly it was a dilemma, a choice between two bad outcomes. I chose neither preferring instead to take the Hobson route and make no choice for president at all. The cowards way out? Perhaps, but I could not vote for Stalin in a pantsuit or for Mussolini with hair.
     We now have Mussolini with hair as our president and half the nation in the process of rioting, burning buildings, blocking traffic, throwing rocks and petrol bombs at the police and generally behaving like members of the Democrat party who were thwarted. The other half of the country didn't riot when Obama was elected but are now behaving in a smug way as they expect a border wall to be built, taxes to be reduced, Congress to obey the laws of the rest of us, uncontrolled immigration to become controlled, the budget to be balanced, foreign jobs to be repatriated, and the military to be strengthened.
       I suppose my greatest disappointment is how much these folks invest of themselves in their chosen politicians. It seems almost unAmerican to me to expect so much from government and so little of yourself. I don't think it was always that way, but I've not been here all that long.     
   

Bladder Cancer -- the unfashionable disease

Firstly a disclosure -- I have Bladder Cancer. I found out I had bladder cancer in a strange way; every few days I would have dark pee. It wasn't red pee, it didn't look like borsch, it was just a bit reddish brown. Since I'm an old white guy (or just an old guy), I ignored it. What I didn't ignore was when the bits started to come out. These bits looked like bits of hamburger. They were bits of my insides on the outside where they didn't belong. My wife MADE me go to the doctors. He asked what was going on. I explained about the hamburger and he referred me the urology department.
     I couldn't get the main guy for a few weeks so I made an appointment with the physicians assistant who it turned out was a young lady. The following week I met with her. She was very impressive and very competent. She asked me what was going on and I told her my hamburger story. By this time I had looked on the internet so I was getting suspicious about the source of my hamburger. My PA scheduled a CT scan in 3 days and a Cytoscope with the main man the following week.
    The CT scan is a modern X-ray where they pass you through a hula hoop and inject you with contrast agent. Some noxious chemical that makes the pictures pretty. A few days later I reported for my Cytoscope. I met the main man, the urologist who told me that the CT scan revealed an 8mm thick tumor on the inner wall of my bladder. The Cytoscope was only confirmatory since he pretty much knew that it was a malignant bladder cancer tumor. Oh, shit! The Cytoscope consists of poking a camera into the bladder to see what's going on. The un-fun part is how they get in in there. Suffice it to say that it hurts, not as much as riding a bicycle without a seat, but it hurts. It also feels really weird. At this point I have to acknowledge that the female of our species are a lot tougher and resilient than the males. Anyway, I got to visit with my tumor. It looked like red cauliflower.
    A week later they went in again with the Cytoscope, this time with a hot wire loop to capture and remove the tumors. I was under anesthetic for this part of the story. Two weeks later they did it again, this time taking biopsies to be sure they got all of the bad hamburger. Two weeks later I started on a weekly course of BCG infusions into my bladder -- yes, using the same way in as before and equally appealing. For those unfamiliar with it BCG is tuberculosis vaccine. They fill your bladder with it and demand that you not pee for the next two hours. When you do pee you have to do it into a bucket of bleach to kill the live agent. It's kind of like chemotherapy except its bio-therapy.
     A month after finishing up my six weeks of BCG treatments I had another Cytoscope. This revealed that all the tumor was gone but that I was growing calcium stones on the bladder wall where the tumor had been. These stones break up into smaller or larger bits that I have to pee out. The smaller bits are uncomfortable, the larger rocks are very exciting. Yeuch!
      In the coming weeks I will be having another three BCG treatment sessions as part of a long term preventative regime to stop the cancer coming back. In the meantime I am now drinking a minimum of half a gallon (2 quarts or 2 liters) of water per day. I turns out that smoking is the primary cause of bladder cancer so in deference to all those who have been working hard to keep me alive, I finally gave up the evil weed.
      In summary, if you catch bladder cancer early (within 6 months) while it is superficial and before it invades the bladder muscle wall, the treatment is manageable and quite successful. This is especially true if you get the kind of dedicated and capable medical team who treat me. Most important of all, quit smoking and start drinking lots of water. If you notice dark pee, get a urine test looking for blood as soon as possible.  
    

BREXIT

BREXIT -- Britain's Exit from the European Union (EU)
So what does this all mean and why did it happen. While there will be dozens of pundit explanations in my opinion the vote for exit was the result of disillusionment. The idea of the EU was of sovereign nation states forming a mutually beneficial union to eliminate trade barriers and to collectively tackle political issues in a unified way. The result was a centralized political oligarchy and bureaucracy with little perceptible accountability to the citizens of Europe. The EU was an opportunity to unite Europe to the benefit of its citizens. The actuality was the centralization of power to the benefit of the bureaucrats and ruling elites. In their pursuit of wealth and power they screwed up the vision into their own and now they will have to deal with the consequences including the exit of the UK and the likely exit of other smaller European nations.
There is also a subtext to BREXIT and the possible exit of other nations. The EU is dominated by Germany and to a lesser extent by France. It is their vision for the EU that get implemented. By some peoples these are the nations are recognized as those who condemned Europe to spill a great deal of blood during the first half of the twentieth century and their ascendancy to power over Europe is not welcomed nor are they trusted not to repeat their past behaviors.
Americans who visit Europe as tourists are generally oblivious of the underlying tensions and hatreds that pertain there. Since there seems to be little black/white racism, Americans in general assume there is none. This is not the case and misses the ancient hatreds between peoples and also misses the significant tensions between religions. In American we are mistaken to view Europe as more civilized and cultured. After all, it's not that long ago that the most civilized and cultured of peoples within a few years were incinerating people by the millions without much guilt about it. Civilization and culture are a thin patina maintained in place by political honesty and individual freedom. We would be foolish to believe that we here are too civilized and cultured today to lose that civilization tomorrow. We must remain ever vigilant to keep our politicians honest. As a citizen it is our singular most important duty.
   

The Lost "War on Drugs" -- admit defeat and move on

The war on drugs has been lost. It's time to declare defeat and move on. One upon a time opium, heroin, cocaine, marijuana etc. were freely available. Their purchase and consumption was not illegal. When they were made illegal we started on a path away from a drug misuse problem to the crime problem we have today. Demand will create supply and it seems that the worldwide demand for illegal drugs is limitless. Additionally the demand for misused prescription drugs is rapidly outpacing the demand for illegal drugs. This could be described as a drug problem. What should not be described as a drug problem but more correctly described as a crime problem is the lawlessness, corruption, murder and mayhem associated with the production, importation, distribution and sale of illegal drugs. The volume of money changing hands is staggering. Worse, that money is used to corrupt law enforcement, judiciary and politicians high and low. Our society is corrupted to its core by the money flowing from the trade in illegal drugs and we must stop this rot before we too become a narco-economy.
If we legalize we shall not eliminate the drug problem. We will eliminate the crime problem and the societal corruption that flows from it. Legal production, distribution and sale will guarantee purity, offer a tax target, and decriminalize drug taking behavior. Decriminalization will allow drug abusers to seek treatment without fear.
Most importantly, we lost the War On Drugs a long time since. We cannot win, we can only pour money down a rat hole with no prospect of an end.

Just Do It!

Benghazi et al

On September 11th 2012 an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi was attacked and set on fire. Two Americans were killed including the American ambassador to Libya. Some hours later a CIA annex was also attacked killing two of the security team. Ten were injured in these attacks.
The Obama administration sent their spokespeople out to make the claim that these attacks were a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video,  Innocence of Muslims. The creator of this video was subsequently arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for matters relating to the video.
The story promulgated by the Obama administration that placed the cause of the attacks on a video has been proven to be mistaken at best, a deliberate lie at worst. What is more intriguing is who decided to promulgate this cover story and what purpose were they seeking to achieve by it. After all, American diplomats were killed, American embassy personnel were killed, and Americans in the foreign service of their country were injured to a greater or lesser degree. The questions arise; who's butt was being covered, who came up with the cover story, who decided to promulgate it, and why did our press sup up and repeat this lie when it was obvious at the time that it was a lie? Another question occurs; where was President Obama when all this was going down? Given the opportunity to ask this question, I would also like to know where the president was on the night that Bin Laden was killed before he arrived late into the situation room wearing his golfing attire?
The GOP will try to hold Benghazi hearings while the DEMS will try to derail them. None of these dog and pony show theatrics will bring to justice those responsible for the Benghazi killings. Nor will they determine who it was who set out to deceive the American people about the causation of the attack. It will however fill our airwaves with more breathless reportage. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses.