The United Nations defense ‘line’ in Korea was more like a rubber band. It gave with Red punches, then snapped back. But last week the strain on the elastic was terrific… Neat shifting by the out-numbered defenders met and tossed back each of the blows – first along the southern coast toward Pusan…
Throughout much of World War I, the German-American war correspondent Karl Von Wiegand (1874 – 1961) reported on the goings-on within the Kaiser’s Army for an American new syndicate. As luck would have it, he happened to be in a front line German trench when the British Army launched their enormous attack on July 1, 1916. Here is one of his earlier dispatches from the German side:
We stood awe-stricken. Mankind, like Frankenstein, was being devoured by the monster it had created.
Father Francis P. Duffy (1874 – 1932) was the well-loved regimental chaplain for the illustrious, old New York infantry regiment known as the Fighting 69th.
Next time you find yourself walking near Times Square in New York City, you’ll see a statue erected in his memory situated behind a statue of the popular songster who composed Over There – George M. Cohan (1878 – 1942). These memorials will be found at Broadway and 7th Avenue (between 46th & 47th streets). Both men knew the neighborhood well – to Cohan it was known as the Theater District while Duffy knew it as Hell’s Kitchen, and it was his parish.
The Bookman reviewed Duffy’s memoir
You can can read more about Father Duffy’s war here…
Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.
Five thumbnail portraits of the most consistently victorious generals of the American Civil War; three Union and two Confederate:
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Phillip Kearny
• George B. Thomas
• Thomas J. Jackson
• Robert E. Lee
Some ninety-eight years ago, as it is also true this day, many people living outside the borders of the United States had a laugh, from time-to-time, concerning America’s commonly held belief that they are an idealistic people whose motives are not always driven by self-interest; this is a broad topic and sound arguments can be made on both sides as to whether it is true or not. The British thinker Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) had some thoughts on the matter and in an address made to a number of assembled Americans he submitted that, in his view, Prohibition was not a ‘noble experiment’ which sought to inspire all Americans to lead a righteous life, but rather a gross perversion of Christian doctrine.
…There were crowds in Piccadilly Circus and Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Quite a few people got rid of their waste paper by throwing it out the windows, a sign that the need for saving such things for the war effort was just about over.
Click here to rrad about VE-Day in London.
Hundreds of GIs were gathered at the Rainbow Corner Red Cross Club in Piccadilly when bundles of Stars and Stripes extras were tossed out free. The paper bore a huge banner headline, ‘Germany Quits!’ and contained the official Ministry of Information announcement which all England had just heard on the air.
News of the Reich’s final and complete surrender found Piccadilly, Marble Arch and other popular intersections jammed with people. At first incredulous, the cautious British worked up to a pitch of demonstrative joy…
Click here to read about VJ-Day in London.
Herschel Grynszpan (1921 – ?) was a Polish-Jewish refugee born in Germany who, on his own volition, shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris in 1938. This murder prompted the Nazis to terrorize the Jewish population throughout Germany and Austria the very next day (November 8) in an event that was called Kristallnacht. This article covers the murder and the senseless horror that followed; attention was also paid to the reactions from various capital cities.
In Vienna, Storm Troopers fired 18 synagogues, shot a Polish Jew in his bed, invaded homes and threw the furniture out the windows. Ten thousand Jews were arrested, at least 60 attempted suicide. Restaurants and grocery stores refused to sell to Jewas.
Walking into Hiroshima in broad daylight, wearing an American uniform and knowing that you were one of the first Americans the people in that utterly ruined city had laid eyes on since the bombing, was not a comfortable feeling.
After the war it was discovered that one quarter of the Hiroshima dead were Koreans who were there as slave laborers.
The October 3, 1946 issue of the Atlanta Constitution ran a front page headline declaring that Imperial Japan had successfully tested their own Atom Bomb during the summer of ’45. Click here to read more on this topic.
Click here to read General Marshal’s opinions regarding the Atomic Bomb.
Statistically, Anderson is the the 12th most common surname in the United States and there are 894,704 Americans who bare this last name. The name stems from two sources: Scottish and Scandinavian. Both are derived from the Greek word Andreas, which means strong, manly or courageous.
In America today there are many Andersons high in achievement, some of them still spelling their name Andersen, who were born in Sweden, Norway or Denmark. This article broadly outlines the great and famous Andersons, the ones who have walked the halls of Congress, thrived in business, written the books, preached from the pulpits and fought the wars.
Oddly, very little column space is devoted to the infamous Andersons (ie. Confederate thug Bloody Bill Anderson).
The most common last name in the English speaking world (except Canada) is Smith – read about it…
No doubt about it: for the fashionable, young Deutchen Soldaten on the go, the preferred choice in pillboxes is the portable variety! And you’d best believe that when those slide-rule jockeys back in Berlin lent their lobes to what the trendy book-burning crowed in Italy and Russia were saying, they jumped to it and created this dandy, 6,955 pound mobile pillbox that was capable of being planted almost anywhere. Better living through modern design!
In this brief report on the National Conference of Christian and Jews, a break-down of the various cultural groups is presented along with a list of the assorted religious denominations found in America at that time. We suppose that Hispanics and Asians were excluded because their numbers were so terribly small at that time.
The long-awaited climax of the great Allied air offensive against Germany came like a thunderclap last week. It was the opening of the Battle of Berlin… According to the [British Ministry of Economic Warfare], the Germans have evacuated nonessential civilians (children, invalids and the aged) just as the British had from London three years before. But all evidence indicated that government officials and essential workers still remained in the German capital.
Berlin police counted 5,680 dead.
More on the bombing of Germany can be read here…
Four pictures and few well-chosen words concerning a German command and reconnaissance car as well as two Nazi half-tracks (one capable of carrying ten men, the other twelve).
Click here to read about the American Army half-tracks.
Here is the skinny on the Ford Motor Company’s M8 Greyhound Armored Car as it was presented to the olive-clad readers of YANK MAGAZINE in the summer of 1944:
Armored Car, M8, 6×6: the Army’s latest combat vehicle, is a six-wheeled, eight-ton armored job that can hit high speeds over practically any type of terrain. It mounts a 37-mm cannon and a .30-caliber machine gun in a hand-operated traversable turret…
All global tensions aside, the U.S. Army could not find any faults at all with the motorcycles that BMW was making for Adolf Hitler during World War II. After having spent much time testing and re-testing the thing, they reluctantly concluded, This is as good as any motorcycle in the world (it was probably a bit better…).
Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.
This posting remarks about a number of concerns: assorted factoids about the German PZKW II tank and it’s 1944 down-graded status as an offensive weapon to a reconnaissance car; tips for GIs as to how to drive German vehicles and, finally, the German interest in salvaging tank parts from captured enemy armor:
Attached is the reminiscence of a movie-goer named Homer Dunne who recalled his feelings upon first attending a moving photograph show during the closing days of the Nineteenth Century. He described well the appearance of the rented shop-front, the swanky ticket-taker, the unimpressed audience and has a laugh on himself for failing to understand the significance of the medium.
