In 1941:The America’s first amphibious landing of World War II.

In 1941:The America’s first amphibious landing of World War II.

One of my favorite things about Chris was his humility.  It was never about Chris.  He was the silent warrior in the background with sunglasses and hat on and in the back of almost every picture. 

 Even with his book, American Sniper, he wrote the book only because others were going to write it about him and he wanted to make sure his book was about the heroism of those he served with.  

He shied away from the limelight, but when forced into it, handled it with humility and grace.  Even when stones were thrown at him, he smiled and carried on being the Chris we all know and love. 

It was for all of these reasons, I want to thank Governor Abbott for not hesitating even a heartbeat in allowing all veterans in attendance to stand with me to accept Chris's medal. I couldn't in good conscience st

and to accept an award that wasn't and isn't about me. 

 In my opinion, the brief ceremony was about the men who earned the Medals, Chris and Lieutenant William Edwin Dyess. 

The warriors who stood to accept the medal yesterday were those who went before and stood beside these warriors to carry out whatever their country asked of them.  

I believe Chris would have been humbled to even have been considered for the Texas Medal of Honor and to receive it along with Lt. Col. Dyess would have likely been even more humbling for him.

 I am including Lt. Col. Dyess's accomplishments here for all of you to read. I know you have patriotic hearts and while you know Chris's story, you will likely love and respect Lt. Col. Dyess as well. 

Thank you State Representative John Wray, Senator Brian Birdwell and others in the Texas State Legislature along with Governor Abbott, for taking the time and effort out of your busy schedules and surely overwhelming responsibilities to remember and honor these brave men. 

God Bless You all on this page and God Bless your patriotic hearts.

Micah 6:8L T. COLONEL WILLIAM EDWIN DYESS

One of our country’s greatest, yet least-known World War II heroes, Lt. Col. William Edwin Dyess, is known as the “One-Man Scourge of the Japanese” because of his incomparable individual acts of heroism as a pilot, infantryman.

 Marine, prisoner of war and guerrilla fighter versus Imperial Japanese forces in the Philippines, deserves the Medal of Honor due to a staggering series of heroic exploits during a sustained period of remarkable, selfless service from 1941 through 1943 that is unparalleled in the annals of our nation’s proud military history.

Dyess led the earliest charge against Japanese aggression in aerial combat with the U.S. Army Air Forces over Luzon, Philippine Islands in December 1941.

 America’s first amphibious landing of World War II at Agloloma Bay on Bataan in February 1942 (for which he received the Army’s second-highest medal for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross), an audacious air raid on the heavily-defended Japanese base at Subic Bay in March 1942.

 (Distinguished Flying Cross), and the only successful large-scale Allied POW escape of the Pacific war, called the “Greatest Story of the war in the Pacific” by the U.S. War Department in 1944 (2nd DSC). 

 Dyess could have received the Medal of Honor for each of these heroic actions, but did not.  He achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel at the young age of 27. 

But the extent of Dyess’s heroism cannot be measured exclusively by his battlefield bravery. 

 Despite suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition and disease, Dyess flew countless evacuation, reconnaissance and resupply missions from the time period January-April 1942. 

 Near the end of the Battle for Bataan, when food was scarce, the pilot refused to accept special flight rations – as ordered by his superiors – without first receiving permission from his enlisted personnel.  He refused several opportunities to evacuate Bataan before the surrender and instead ordered others to go in his place.  

As a prisoner of war, Dyess remained conspicuously in command, presenting himself as a target for abuse during the infamous Bataan Death March to deflect attention from his men as well as sick and wounded comrades. 

 In prison camps, he employed his innate leadership skills and charisma, engaged in morale-building activities and endeavored to secure food and medical supplies in order to improve the living conditions of his fellow prisoners, in the process depriving himself of these essential items. 

When Dyess returned to the U.S. following his escape, he was not afforded a hero’s homecoming.  

Instead, while suffering from what had yet to be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he was muzzled by the U.S. Government and threatened with the loss of his career and criminal proceedings, compounding feelings of survivor’s guilt and causing severe emotional distress from his perceived inability to help his comrades in captivity.

 In what would be his last, and perhaps greatest mission, Dyess partnered with the Chicago Tribune in a top secret fight against the government and wartime censorship restrictions to break the news of Japanese atrocities to the world. 

 Dyess never lived to know that his collective efforts changed the course of World War II.  

During a routine flight over Burbank, California On 22 December 1943, Dyess’s P-38 Lightning fighter plane began experiencing engine trouble.  

Rather than bail out and let his aircraft careen into a heavily-crowded residential area or war plant, Dyess attempted an emergency landing on an empty street.  At the last moment, a lone car appeared, forcing Dyess to pull up and abort the landing.  

The choice to save the unknown motorist’s life essentially cost Dyess his.  Though rapidly losing altitude, he miraculously crashed the plane into a vacant lot and was killed instantly.

The Culture of Make Believe.

  The Culture of Make Believe. The central movement of our culture is to “deprive others of their subjectivity”. Kevin Bales writes that slavery began with the beginning of agriculture and settlements.

 

The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest laws, states death to anyone helping a slave escape or harboring one. Rome required a half a million new slaves per year. At its end, Rome had two million slaves in Italy alone. “

Between 1609 and the early 1800s, as many as two-thirds of the white colonists are estimated to have been forced to come over as slaves.” In Britain you could be shipped off as a slave for “destroying shrubbery.” 

Love the bible? Then you will love this: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” 

 Psalms 2:8 No wonder why I hate civilization; it’s built on feeling somehow entitled to control others without their consent while collectively murdering the planet with glaring total lack of respect. “

To deny that those to be exploited have lives that are precious to them, you will …have to live in a state of denial.” “Entitlement is key to nearly all atrocities.”

The Ku Klux Klan was federally prosecuted and driven underground by 1874 which meant no more white robes ($ saved on laundry bills could now be used to court & wed one’s sister or favored farm animal) and terrorism against blacks became chillingly by the hands of one’s neighbors dressed in common fashion. “Neither Jesus, nor the apostles, nor the early church condemned slavery.”

 Ladakh holds answers to what civilization does. Before total contact with the outside world their world was the here and now. Their world was the center of it all; the center was where they were.

But TV and outside influence then destroyed Ladakh. Dene women in Canada told Jerry Mander how after TV showed up, people stopped visiting each other, kids won’t do anything, women didn’t sew, and the woodpiles got low. 

 We should know not only the past history of the indigenous exactly where we live, but should know the history of every massacre that happened in our region.

Not long ago in Britain, orphans became chimney sweeps, if you near starved them, they better fit into the chimney.

 The boys would often get malignant tumors on their scrotum. You were beaten if you didn’t go down a hot chimney. “Forced screaming and sobbing”. 

Ah those Brits sure sound civilized. If you started up the chimney but got cold feet, they would put lit straw under you to send you back up again. Also charming. 

David Ricardo is one of the big three names in classical economics. David thought property rights were “more important than the health and safety of children.”

 All of these terrible stories happen when people value money and property over human beings and nature. “It takes a lot of force to ruin the lives of people who were happy not working for you.” 

Derrick made a list of people throughout time who felt as Daniel Quinn did, that there was a deep problem with cherished civilization:

 The Cynics, Jesus, Diogenes, Spartacus, Ambiorix, Vercingentorix, Boudicea, The Eburones, Usipetes, Tencteri, Morini, Icene, John logan, The San , Sitting Bull, Dani, Lakota, Crazy Horse, Gabriel Prosser, Toussaint L’Overture, Denmark Vesey, Harriet Tubmen, Ned Ludd, Nestor Makhno, Maroons, Thomas Munzer, Rousseau, Thoreau, Whitman, Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, Brecht, Lewis Mumford, Fromm, R.D. Laing, Neil Everden, Zinn, Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, et al. 

If the first rule of the abuser is “Don’t talk about it”, then our first rule being woke should be “tell the truth” says David Edwards.

 Asa Chandler, who bought the Coca Cola recipe for $1,750 and made it famous, wrote, “the most beautiful sight that we see is the child at labor; as early as he may get at labor the more beautiful.”

 When the needle ran completely through a young girl’s finger at the 19th century factory, she would have to bind her finger with cotton and keep working. “Sometimes a finger has to come off.” Predators know to target the most insecure. 

All the Native Americans had to do when the British grounded their ship the Tyger near Roanoke was just leave them alone and they would have died. In other words, to avert extermination later by “the civilized”, the natives should have let the British die.

 Those British didn’t come to the U.S. to meet the natives, or for tourism, or to beat The Beatles with the 1st British Invasion; they came here to “possess”, “to enslave or exterminate the inhabitants”, and “to enslave the land”.

 Custer’s men would shoot every Indian horse; let nothing survive. Imagine the audio sound of many horses dying within earshot of the natives hiding in the bluffs.

 George Washington’s written orders to General John Sullivan are clear: “to lay waste all [Iroquois] settlements around, that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.” 

Nothing is more honorable than having your old neighbors evicted at gunpoint in order to become the richest man in America, which George of course becomes.

 Liberal idol, Thomas Jefferson at one point suggests invading Canada. You sure can tell how much the European Enlightenment really rubbed off on these guys. 

OK, maybe the British and colonists did some terrible stuff but the Spanish were cool, right? Well, deceitful warfare was brought to indigenous cultures in the Americas from abroad. 

We we’ve all been taught The History Channel’s slanted view of fearing Montezuma and the Aztec Empire with their many bloody human sacrifices while ignoring “civilized” Cortes. Since nowhere will the History Channel explain to you what Cortes and his men actually did, read on:

  Montezuma listened to Cortes profess friendship finally lets him and his men come in for a feast. Bernardino de Sahagun, 16th century historian then recounts how those profoundly Christian men of Cortes behaved towards Native Americans.  The natives sang and danced in friendship and on cue, the Spanish first attacked the musicians. 

They chopped off their hands and heads, “then all the other Spaniards began to cutoff heads, arms, and legs, and to disembowel the Indians”. All found alive were killed. “Others dragged their entrails along until they collapsed.” 

To have anticipated this, would have been unthinkable by Montezuma. To the Aztecs, sacred warfare made it sacrilegious to use treachery in warfare. 

Candygrams from civilization to the non-civilized: “we don’t respect anyone else’s rules”, “might makes right”, “if we shake hands, I’m taking your home and your future, and erasing your past” and the perennial favorite, “may your family enjoy 20 generations of PTSD and alcoholism if you break free”. 

Know the story of Gnadenhutten, where a continental militia was lucky enough to come across a town of Indian pacifists harvesting corn. The soldiers assured the natives they just needed some food, and all was cool. 

The Indians just had to turn over any weapons. Once defenseless, in the name of freedom and liberty, the Indians were all bound and charged with false crimes and murdered. Pleas in excellent English did nothing to stop the slaughter. 

Last time I checked bullies don’t kill. What’s the name for a bully who not only taunts but kills/scalps defenseless children and women? An American patriot? 

Someone Trump would pardon? When the Dani fought, they used unfletched arrows to make them inaccurate, and never shot volleys at one person. 

People might get hurt or wounded. Taunts and insults were often exchanged and both sides might laugh if “a particularly witty line hit home.”

 During WWII the US demonized Japan far more than Germany. German and Italian nationals were treated fine during WWII, but if you were Japanese you were interred. 

Richard Drinnon says New England had to make laws against “fraternization with Indians” because so many colonists were willing to run into the woods. That’s the problem with civilization. 

Why do we today punish some kinds of violence, while rewarding others? Why bother to try to eliminate crime, with zero interest in lessening what causes crime? 

 “Nine out of ten chemicals in pesticides haven’t been thoroughly tested for toxicity.” Per year, the U.S. has 1,400 toxic chemical accidents per year.

 The Pacific Northwest Indians were forced to leave their homeland because of the Lake Superior to Puget Sound railway. Northern Pacific was granted 40,000,000 acres of native land. 

American patriot General Philip Sheridan explained the need to build a fort on land stolen from the native population, “by holding an interior point in the heart of the Indian country we could threaten the villages and stock of the Indians.” Carlo Gambino and Carmine “the Snake” Persico could not have said it any better. 

An editorial in the San Francisco Argonaut explained it well, “We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines.

 The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately they are infested by Filipinos. There are many millions there and it is to be feared that their extinction will be slow.” 

Even when the U.S. clearly has the upper hand, note the FEAR that THEIR extinction will be slow. American men are bunch of goddamn pussies. 

Is there ever a time in U.S. history they weren’t afraid? Afraid the victims of their crimes might take too long to die or might complain while sputtering blood, or maybe will resist having their lands and lives stolen?

 Chinese who came to America before Columbus came home with stories of a land with no taxes, where there was no war and weaponry, no walls to protect, and women could choose their suitors. On one night in 1871 in Los Angeles, twenty innocent Chinese men were killed by knife, gun or burned alive. 

The Montanian’s editor in 1873 wrote about killing Chinese, “we don’t mind hearing of a Chinaman being killed now and then, but it’s been getting thick of late. Don’t kill them unless they deserve it, but when they do, kill ‘em lots.” 

Aristotle liked slavery and for him slaves where likely Slavs (Slavic people); slaves were basically indigenous people who lived in Northern Greece and beyond. Thievery = Civilization?

 Quelle surprise! Those harping on property rights never discuss the original theft of property by the first “legal” owners. 

History of Civilization:  If you can get rid of all the good examples of how to live around the world, you can make remaining crappy examples like yours look like a good example. Ask for our pamphlet: “

Genocide, is it for you?” Civilization removed/removes cultures that esteem those who are peaceful and generous. WWI was fought because “by 1917 the Allies owed American bankers $1.5 billion dollars.”

 To bail out Morgan’s unfortunate loans the war was fought, with the idea that if Morgan went under the US economy might go under. 

One woman went to prison for 10 years for saying about WWI, the following comment: “I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers.”

 Americans were imprisoned by testimony of their house guests if they even casually spoke during dinner against the war. 

The woman who said “the women of the United States were nothing more than brood sows, to raise children to get into the army and be made into fertilizer” got five years in prison. 

Study the lynching cases of Private William Little, George Holden, Lloyd Clay, and Berry Washington. 

The sound of white children shouting, “mother, get me a piece of the nigger’s finger.” One black man sang “Nearer my God to Thee” as he was being burned by whites.

 I’m sorry, but this book should be required reading by every American along with Howard Zinn’s People’s History, and they should be tested on both if they are to vote or to have a child.

 In Oak Ridge there was regular safety testing at the nuclear testing plants. One day a few men placed their badges on “a smoking chunk of uranium” and then sent it in for testing.

 No response. Then one guy placed “a small chunk of uranium” in his urine sample and sent it in. Again, no response. 

Supervisors told them to falsify records, etc… How many people bought their way out of fighting the Civil War? 73,500 Males including Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, John D.

 Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Andrew Mellon. Are you surprised? Thomas Mellon wrote his son explaining the concept of Civil War evasion, “There are plenty of other lives less valuable.”

 Army contractors during the Civil War kept half the cash, according to historian Fred A. Shannon’s work.

 Did you know that Warren G. Harding was sworn in as a member of the Ku Klux Klan with a bible in the White House? 

Funny how the most interesting tidbits of U.S. History are the least flattering. My Christian friends will never post on Facebook that “by 1924, thirty thousand ministers were enrolled in the Klan.”

 Then most Christians today buy a new bible, how long do they have before they have to rip out of it all references to the poor and to non-violence? Answer: 

If you never open your bible (but just use it to jam it down other people’s throats), it doesn’t matter. There’s a “vein in our culture” that wants to explode – it’s called rage – it brought us the KKK.

The U.S. hates fascism so much that “General Motors supplied the trucks for Hitler’s war machine (as did Ford), and Standard Oil (now Exxon) supplied gas and rubber” (see book, Nazi Nexus for IBM w/ Nazi death camps). 

Teddy Roosevelt wrote these civilized words which because so inspirational for Hitler, “Of course our whole national history has been one of expansion.”

 Note the many time the U.S. has violated Article 58 - which is destruction of facilities essential to human life - complete war crimes like bombing the dykes in Korea or Vietnam. 

Our sanctions made Vietnam ranked economically lower than Mozambique. Every generation of Americans has experienced war. 

Our foreign policy is depriving “governments and peoples of the independence that comes from self-sufficiency in the production of food.”

 The Ford assembly line and McDonald’s made their names by removing the creative element from business. 

Lower class words today in English betray Anglo-Saxon roots. Anglo-Saxons were conquered by Normans in 1066 and even now, Latinate words (defecated, urinated, intercourse) are still considered civilized and while the Anglo-Saxon words (shit, piss, fuck) are considered vulgar. 

Japan killed 35 million Chinese during WWII; do you ever hear about that? 27.5 million Russians were killed in WWII, do you ever hear about that? The Holocaust has a capital H in front of it to suggest its uniqueness. 

But if you study the human price tag of Civilization since the birth of agriculture, you see many genocides forced to be kept written with lower cases suggesting no uniqueness.

 Butt such large-scale violence is unique only to Civilization. Hitler’s solution was that of Cortes and Custer, only writ large.

  German companies improved the mobile Nazi killing vans by helping with better drainage and making them easier to clean.

 One German company gave its recipe for soap: “12 pounds of human fat, 10 quarts of water, and 8 ounces of caustic soda… all boiled two to three hours and then cooled.”

 Why would any Nazi who truly believed all Jews are somehow “dirty”, entertain for a second the idea of cleaning himself with a bar made only from them? Even Alanis would think that’s ironic.

On page 23, Derrick lamented that there is no database of excessive force by the police; this is no longer true. 

Since first reading this book in 2005, I have been funding the Henry A Wallace Police Crime Database through Wallace Action Fund and it is now the largest US Police Crime database in the world.

 When I learned congress wouldn’t provide funding in this book I thought then I should start funding it.

 Now, we must all ask ourselves: “Who would I be and how would I live if I were not part of this system?”

 In this amazing book, Derrick explores the deep roots of our culture’s destructiveness. In the end, COMB is easily in my Top Ten Favorite Books I’ve ever read, a list which includes: 

The Phantom Tollbooth, Lord of the Rings, Noam Chomsky, and James C. Scott’s Against the Grain.

Scarlett, The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

Scarlett is an American actress. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

 Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. 

Johansson's films have grossed over $14.3 billion worldwide, making her the highest-grossing box office star of all time.

She first appeared on stage in an off-Broadway play as a child actor. Johansson made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994) and gained early recognition for her roles in Manny & Lo (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and Ghost World (2001). 

Her shift to adult roles came in 2003 with Lost in Translation, and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for this performance. 

She continued to gain praise for playing a 17th-century servant in Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), a troubled teenager in A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) and a seductress in Match Point (2005).

 The latter marked her first collaboration with Woody Allen, who later directed her in Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

 Other works of this period include The Prestige (2006) and the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200.

In 2010, Johansson debuted on Broadway in a revival of A View from the Bridge, which won her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, and began portraying Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 2. 

She reprised the role in eight films, leading up to her solo feature Black Widow (2021), gaining global stardom. During this period, Johansson starred in the science fiction films Her (2013), 

Under the Skin (2013) and Lucy (2014). She received two simultaneous Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective roles of an actress going through a divorce in the drama Marriage Story (2019) and a single mother in Nazi Germany in the satire Jojo Rabbit (2019), becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat.

Labeled a sex symbol, Johansson has been referred to as one of the world's most attractive women by various media outlets. She is a prominent brand endorser and supports several charitable causes. 

Divorced from actor Ryan Reynolds and businessman Romain Dauriac, Johansson has been married to comedian Colin Jost since 2020. She has two children, one with Dauriac and another with Jost.

While attending the Professional Children's School, Johansson dated classmate Jack Antonoff from 2001 to 2002. She dated her Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett for about two years until the end of 2006. 

According to Hartnett, they broke up because their busy schedules kept them apart. Johansson began dating Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds in 2007.

 They became engaged in May 2008, married in September 2008 on Vancouver Island, separated in December 2010 and divorced in July 2011.

In November 2012, Johansson began dating Frenchman Romain Dauriac, the owner of an advertising agency. 

They became engaged the following September. The pair divided their time between New York City and Paris. She gave birth to their daughter in 2014.

 Johansson and Dauriac married that October in Philipsburg, Montana. They separated in mid-2016 and divorced in September 2017.

Johansson began dating Saturday Night Live co-head writer and Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost in May 2017. In May 2019, the two were engaged. 

They married in October 2020, at their New York home. She gave birth to their son in August 2021. Johansson resides in New York and Los Angeles.

In September 2011, nude photographs of Johansson hacked from her cell phone were leaked online. She said the pictures had been sent to her then-husband, Ryan Reynolds, three years prior to the incident. 

Following an FBI investigation, the hacker was arrested, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In 2014, Johansson won a lawsuit against French publisher JC Lattès over libelous statements about her relationships in the novel The First Thing We Look At by Grégoire Delacourt. She was awarded $3,400; she had sued for $68,000.

Johansson has criticized the media for promoting an image that causes unhealthy diets and eating disorders among women.

 In an essay she wrote for The Huffington Post, she encouraged people to maintain a healthy body.

 She posed nude for the March 2006 cover of Vanity Fair alongside actress Keira Knightley and fully clothed fashion designer Tom Ford. 

The photograph sparked controversy as some believed it demonstrated that women are forced to flaunt their sexuality more often than men.

Philanthropy

Johansson has supported various charitable organizations including Aid Still Required, Cancer Research UK, Stand Up To Cancer, Too Many Women (which works against breast cancer), and USA Harvest, which provides food for people in need. 

In 2005, Johansson became a global ambassador for the aid and development agency Oxfam. In 2007, she took part in the anti-poverty campaign ONE, which was organized by U2's lead singer Bono. 

In March 2008, a UK-based bidder paid £20,000 on an eBay auction to benefit Oxfam, winning a hair and makeup treatment, a pair of tickets, and a chauffeured trip to accompany her on a 20-minute date to the world premiere of He's Just Not That into You.

In January 2014, Johansson resigned from her Oxfam position after criticism of her promotion of SodaStream, whose main factory was based in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank; Oxfam opposes all trade with such Israeli settlements.

 Oxfam stated that it was thankful for her contributions in raising funds to fight poverty. Together with her Avengers costars, Johansson raised $500,000 for the victims of Hurricane Maria.

In 2018, she collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination.

 Johansson took part in the Women's March in Los Angeles in January 2018, where she spoke on topics such as abuses of power, sharing her own experience. 

She received backlash for calling out fellow actor James Franco on allegations of sexual misconduct as in the past she had defended working with Woody Allen amid an accusation by his daughter Dylan Farrow.

Johansson has given support to 

Operation Warrior Wellness, a division of the David Lynch Foundation that helps veterans learn Transcendental Meditation. 

Her grand-uncle, Phillip Schlamberg, was the last American pilot to have been killed during WWII. 

He had gone on a bombing mission with Jerry Yellin, who went on to become co-founder of Operation Warrior Wellness.

In 1920: April 20, Lieutenant Colonel Ronald, the fearless United States Army officer.

 HE WAS FEARLESS - HAPPY HEAVENLY BIRTHDAY!

In 1920: April 20, Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Charles Speirs  was a United States Army officer who served in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II. 

He was initially assigned as a platoon leader in B Company of the 1st Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. 

Speirs was reassigned to D Company of the 2nd Battalion prior to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 and later assigned as commander of E Company during an assault on Foy, Belgium after the siege of Bastogne was broken during the Battle of the Bulge. He finished the war in the European Theater as a captain.

 Speirs served in Korea, as a major commanding a rifle company and as a staff officer. He later became the American governor for Spandau Prison in Berlin. He retired as a lieutenant colonel.

In the award-winning television miniseries Band of Brothers, he was portrayed by Matthew Settle. 

In Band of Brothers, Lieutenant Ronald Speirs is a subject of many rumors and stories - but did he really run straight through the German line at Foy? 

In Band of Brothers, Lieutenant Ronald Speirs (Matthew Settle) is a man whose reputation precedes him - though the other soldiers of Easy Company are never quite sure which stories are true and which are not. 

After Speirs is called upon to lead Easy in an assault on German troops in the Belgian town of Foy in episode 7, "The Breaking Point," Carwood Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) witnesses a new legend being born as Speirs sprints across the town through the midst of enemy soldiers - not once, but twice - in order to communicate with a US company attacking from the other flank. So, did this actually happen in real life?

Speirs' sprint through Foy is lifted straight from Stephen A. Ambrose's non-fiction book Band of Brothers, upon which the HBO miniseries was based.

 Beginning in 1990, Ambrose compiled stories from the surviving veterans of Easy Company about their experiences in the war and put together a cohesive version of events based on these different accounts. 

While some of the stories about Speirs might be exaggerated or glamorized, the depiction of his fearless run across Foy is true.

In 1944: The imprisonment of John Everard MacLean.

 In 1944: The imprisonment of John Everard MacLean.

Everard MacLean imprisoned as a P.O.W. at Stalag IV-B  Miramichier, John Everard MacLean was a World War II prisoner of war for approximately nine months. Corporal MacLean was captured in France by German troops during the first week of August 1944. 

He was imprisoned in Stalag IV-B located in Muhlberg, Germany, some 35 miles northwest of Dresden near the Elbe river [Lat. 51.26 N Long: 014.07E]. He was held as a P.O.W. at Stalag IV-B from circa December 1944 until his release on or about April 26, 1945.

John Everard MacLean was born July 17, 1917 in Black River Bridge, the son of John Everard MacLean and Catherine Stewart Watling. He would later marry Bertie Isabelle MacKnight, the daughter of Addison MacKnight and Violet Agnes Dick.

Corporal MacLean joined the North Shore (N.B.) Regiment during World War II and went overseas to Aldershot, England with the regiment in 1941. 

He was transferred from the North Shore (N.B.) Regiment to a holding unit and then on to the Lincoln and Welland Regiment.

The Lincoln and Welland Regiment was ordered to France in July of 1944. It was while serving with the Lincoln and Welland Regiment that Corporal MacLean was captured by the German army.

“Before the light of day on August 4, 1944, a patrol from another company had gone some distance into enemy territory and returned without contact. Later that same morning before daylight our patrol was sent into the same area.

 Evidently the previous patrol had been spotted by the Germans. The Germans followed the patrol and moved in and set up machine gun positions. 

When our patrol came along, the Germans allowed the lead section to pass them unharmed before opening fire. At the same time the lead section had passed the German guns, we had received orders to return to out lines.

“I attempted to crawl to the position of the lead section and advise them of the order, when a real hail of fire started, accompanied by mortar fire and flares.

 When daylight started to clear, I was within 50 feet of my platoon officer Lt. Phair, who wasmortally wounded. 

A German machine gunner was between us. I had pulled the pin from a grenade, before realizing what the situation was. It was not a pleasant meeting. 

I realized we were in a hopeless position and could do nothing but try to assist our wounded and that our capture by the Germans was inevitable.

“To the best of my memory, there was only myself and five other members of my platoon still mobile. We were busy helping the wounded. 

I just don’t know how many died that day. “Once the Germans captured us we tried to take the wounded out of the area along with us. 

My comrades were in various stages of condition[;] that is some had broken bounds [,] others has worse wounds. Many of my comrades died from their wounds.

“Lt. Phair my commanding officer was badly wounded. We tried our best to do something for him but our captors were not too impressed with our efforts and forced us away from the area. To my knowledge Lt. Phair’s body was never found.

“The Germans walked us for some distance, and when they had gathered sufficient P.O.W.’s to fill a truck load, we were loaded aboard vehicles and taken deeper behind enemy lines. The Germans did everything in their power to get us to a railway as fast as they could.

“Somewhere around the second week of August 1944, I was herded into a 40 foot by 8 foot box car originally built to transport 40 men or 8 horses.

“German guards gave us French ration bread that had a date from the 1930’s stamped on it. I took a load of this bread and wrapped both of my arms around the load and could hardly break it apart.

 But under these circumstances anything is good when you’re hungry, even this bread was palatable. You did not eat it by choice, but you ate it. 

We were never given any water while travelling in the box car. We were given a 5 gallon bucket for a toilet and it had to serve everyone in the box car.

“There was just enough room so that each [part of account missing from paper here] car. Our only gear was what we were wearing.

“The badly wounded were separated from us. Only those fit for travel were boarded on the train. We were aboard the box car for around three days. 

One night some of my fellow P.O.W.’s, while the train was still moving, escaped. They crawled out of a small window at the top of the railway car.

“We had many delays on the rail line mostly because the train was under attack by Allied fighter planes. 

At one point we were taken off the train because we were so badly shot up by friendly fire. Our engine was totally destroyed.

 Unfortunately for us, our railway box cars were not marked on top indicating we P.O.W.’s were aboard. 

The guys shooting up the train did not know that we were aboard but they sure shot up our train. The Germans left the damaged train right there where it was hit and marched us off to a handy little town.

“To the best of my memory this French village wasn’t very far from the German border. 

We were held over in that area for quite some time – somewhere between three to four weeks. We were put on another train and transported at night across the border into Germany.

“I remember we were in a small town that had been attacked by Allied bombers. It wasn’t a very pleasant place to be after the bombing. 

Our German guards instructed us to look after the bodies of German casualties killed in the bombing. As a result we were placed in a very uncomfortable, inhumane and hostile situation.

 We were being confronted by German civilians in the town who did not any Allied troops touching the bodies of their fallen countrymen.

 You couldn’t blame them.

“While at the morgue, we were instructed to bury the bodies of the German dead. We got to the morgue, but the outraged local town’s people [sic] stopped us from doing the burials.

“The Germans moved us on to another town neat a railway junction or intersection at which they said they were transporting refugees or enemies of the state. 

In fact they were transporting Jews on their way to death camps.

“I shall never forget this horrible scene and pitiful situation. 

The German S.S. troops were herding the Jews into a marshalling yard. One could tell by the looks on the faces of many of the Jews, that they were terrified and in absolute desperation.

“I cannot help but think they knew what was in store for them when they reached their destination. The Jews were waiting for a train to pick them up.

 Men, women and children were being herded like animals and treated with great indignity. The memory of this incident shall be with me until my dying day. 

Whenever I see television programs about the Holocaust and the killing of six million Jews, my mind returns to that October day. A terrible example of man’s inhumanity to man!

“Between October an December 1944, I was moved from prison camp to prison camp. 

Just before Christmas 1944, I was imprisoned in Stalag IV-B in Muhlberg, Germany not far from the Elbe river.

“Stalag IV-B at Muhlberg, I believe, was not far from Torgau on the Elbe river.

 Torgau is about 28 miles north of Leipzig where the American and Russian armies met each other on April 26, 1945. I was imprisoned in Stalag IV-B from December 1944 until around 26 April 1945.

“Stalag IV-B had about 1,600 Allied P.O.W.’s. There were army and air force prisoners including a low of English and Australian fellows.

“While it is true that I can not say we were mistreated, you sure knew that you were not living high at the Ritz Hotel. The only thing we had enough of was water.

 We didn’t have much by of facilities.

“You never really got a meal at Stalag IV-B. Every 17 men got rations twice a week.

 Our ration was two loafs [sic] of bread and a block of meat that you could hold in the palm of your hand. Every day we could walk around in the daylight for exercise.

“A week after I was released, I weighed 130 pounds, down from my 170 pounds prior to being captured. 

Our own officers were told that we were on a starvation diet. Some fellows could cope with the situation while others could not.

 Thankfully my health was good. My worst problem I had health wise was a tooth ache. A French doctor came and pulled my tooth for me.

“My P.O.W. experience made me think more. I guess spiritually one of the highlights for me was the Christmas service. 

The atmosphere at the service was overwhelming. There were people there from all the four corners of the earth.

 The German camp commander seemed to have realized that the end was near. He was a retired officer and in the end we P.O.W.’s saved him from capture by the Red Army.

“We watched the Russian army go by in full battle fashion with everything from trucks to old horses. Some of our boys went with the Red Army to meet the Americans. 

When the column of Russians had passed by, we spewed out of the gates like ants. We had no luggage, not even a tooth brush. I was liberated on or near April 26, 1945,” said MacLean.

News of the most disastrous military defeat that the city has suffered in its 500 year history.

News of the most disastrous military defeat that the city has suffered in its 500 year history. 

The battle has taken place in Apulia, in southeast Italy, about 300 miles south of Rome, just outside a town called Cannae. The initial report is that there are no survivors - later that report will prove to be false. Check comment for more details.....

The victorious Carthaginian general Hannibal now offers, from afar, to ransom 8,000 prisoners on the condition that the Romans agree to peace terms.

To increase the pressure on the Roman Senate - which will decide this proposal - Hannibal sends 10 highly distinguished Roman prisoners to make a personal appeal.

The crisis for the Senate is whether to make peace with the enemy and save the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Romans, or whether to hold firm. It is the most important decision the Roman Senate has ever had to make.

No one at this point knows the identity of the dead, but there is hardly a family that does not have a member who fought at Cannae who might, therefore, be a prisoner.

 Outside the Senate House, thousands of Romans are gathered, knowing that if someone they love is being held in Hannibal’s prison camp, their fate is about to be determined.

All of Rome holds its breath.

The Romans hate Hannibal; he is their worst nightmare. The Roman historian Livy charges Hannibal with a formidable list of crimes, including “inhuman cruelty, perfidy worse than that of an ordinary Carthaginian, disregard for truth and sanctity, lack of fear for the gods, contempt for the sanctity of an oath, and the absence of any religious scruples.” Even so, Livy by no means lacks in admiration for Hannibal. 

He describes him as energetic, able to withstand extremes of temperature, and moderate in his consumption of food and drink. 

Hannibal is also said to be a leader who endures the same privations his men are subjected to.

Hannibal is one of the most remarkable military leaders of all time. He is a lateral thinker with a natural aptitude to think outside the box, as his application of unconventional military tactics reveals time and again.

 He is also a keen student of human nature who consistently seeks to familiarize himself with the personalities of his opponents and then exploit their weaknesses to bring about their ruin.

Cannae is the moment he has waited for all his life - ever since his father, Hamilcar Barca, made him take a solemn oath that “I, Hannibal, will never be a friend of the Romans.” Those words have come down to us from Nepos, Hannibal’s Roman biographer.

 Hamilcar allegedly made his son take the oath at the age of nine before he took him on a military campaign to Spain. Hannibal would never know anything else but army life until his later years.

We don’t have any testimony from the Carthaginian side because the Carthaginians haven’t left us any writings. 

But it’s not improbable that Hannibal disseminated frightening reports of himself to create an image that would strike fear in the hearts of Romans.

At the time of this story, the Carthaginians and the Romans have been enemies for half a century, with the First Punic War breaking out in 264 BC and lasting until 241 BC. 

Rome was ultimately victorious and destroyed Carthaginian sea power, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of the man who was to lead their army in the near future.

Hannibal took control of a Carthaginian colony in Spain as a young man, after his father passed.

 Alarmed and threatened by the expansion and growth of Carthage’s power in the region, the Romans offered an ultimatum to Hannibal in 219 BC, but he refused to back down. 

With Rome’s provocation, Hannibal got the men and support he needed from the government in Carthage to set out for revenge and war with Rome once and for all.

Sometime between late April and mid-June of 218 BC, Hannibal departs from Carthago Nova in Spain, modern-day Cartagena - which is the main Carthaginian city in Spain.

 The Second Punic War has begun. He is heading toward modem-day Italy, determined to take the fight to the enemy.

Hannibal heads a motley band of Africans, Spanish, Ligurians, Celts, Phoenicians, Italians, and Greeks. A later inscription states that Hannibal’s army consists of 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry. 

That is undoubtedly exaggerated, but probably not wildly. Regardless, it is the largest and most experienced army in the Mediterranean.

 His plan is to destroy Rome, not by razing it to the ground but by isolating it from its allies in the Italian Peninsula - on whom Rome is dependent because the allies contribute soldiers for the capital’s war effort. 

Hannibal crosses the Pyrenees, which separate modern-day Spain from France, in July or August of 218 BC. He now has only 50,000 infantry and 9,000 cavalry left. The rest, many of them mercenaries, have abandoned him. The worst is yet to come, however.

Hannibal makes rapid progress along the French coast, facing little opposition from the local tribes. He crosses the River Rhone in September and reaches the foothills of the Alps probably in late October. 

Finally, he is about to undertake the most amazing part of his journey - not least, of course, because he is crossing the Alps with 37 elephants. 

But first his army is attacked by a hostile people called the Allobroges, who left Hannibal’s army in such wretched plight that one of his lieutenants recommended cannibalism, which he rejects. 

The descent of the Alps is as difficult as the ascent. At one point, a landslide wipes out hundreds of men.

 Hannibal’s army is now reduced further to 12,000 African infantry, 8,000 Iberian infantry, and 6,000 cavalry - less than half the number he’d had after crossing the Pyrenees.

Despite his losses, Hannibal still has a highly effective fighting force. He proceeds to defeat the Romans at the River Ticinus in late November and at the River Trebbia in late December - both in northern Italy. 

Then, on June 21, 217 BC, he ambushes a Roman army at Lake Trasimene and defeats it crushingly.

After this latest debacle, the Roman Senate appoints Quintus Fabius Maximus as dictator. Fabius makes it his policy to avoid a head-on confrontation - hence the term “Fabian tactics.” 

This is an effective strategy, but public outcry of the supposed cowardly act of dodging the enemy dooms the plan. 

Fabius’s term of office as dictator lapses in December of 217 BC, and the military command of the Roman army is given to two consuls with equal authority: 

Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. The two consuls join forces at the end of July 216 BC and pursue the Carthaginian general south, intent on forcing a final showdown.

Hannibal is actually luring the Romans to Cannae, located on the south bank of the Aufidius River, modern-day Ofanto. Cannae is of considerable significance to the Romans. 

The Aufidius is the only major river in central Italy. The town controls access to the rich grain fields in the south, so it’s an important supply base for the Romans.

 It also happens to be situated in flat, open country, so it provides an excellent opportunity for Hannibal’s calvary to perform at best advantage.

Hannibal’s forces are outnumbered by more than two to one. Over the past six months, Rome has been making a supreme effort to increase its fighting strength. In fact, it has doubled the size of its army - from 20,000 to 40,000.

 And the total number of Rome’s army is twice that. An equal number of soldiers have been conscripted from other cities on the Italian Peninsula that are allied to Rome and required to furnish troops.

 But Hannibal knows that half of these troops are completely untested in battle and capable of only limited military maneuvers. 

He strongly suspects that the Romans expect to rely on sheer weight to crush him. In turn, Hannibal intends to win through superior tactics. 

He also carefully studies the temperaments of the two enemy Roman consuls - Varro and Paullus - who, according to traditional military procedure, command the joint army on alternate days when two consular armies join forces. 

Varro is much more eager to engage the invading enemy than Paullus is, and he is likely to be more reckless.

 For this reason, Hannibal decides to lure the Romans into battle on a day when Varro is in command.

On August 2, Varro accepts the challenge and leads his men out of camp with the intention of offering battle.

 The Romans draw their infantry up in a conventional parallel formation with their heavy calvary on the wings. 

They group their companies especially close together for this battle - the infantry narrow and deep - to form a battering ram aimed at Hannibal’s front lines with plans of breaking through the center. 

It may be Varro’s only option with many inexperienced men, and he plans to have this near impenetrable line smash and break its way through Carthaginian forces.

As the troops meet, Appian tells us it was “a great slaughter and a great struggle, each side contending valiantly.”

 Then the superior Carthaginian calvary attacks with such ferocity they force many Roman horsemen to dismount and fight on foot; the ones who can escape flee from the battlefield. 

Now the Carthaginian light calvary is able to run around the rear of the Roman army until they reach their comrades on the other wing.

 It is a stunning display of coordination and command. The Roman calvary now completely breaks and scatters. The infantry is all alone in the battle.

While the calvary clashed, the Roman legions were advancing, pushing the Carthaginian front back. 

The Carthaginians retreated carefully, changing their line from curving outwards to curving inwards. 

Hannibal’s entire battle plan depends on his lines bending without breaking, and to ensure morale he has himself among the most vulnerable in the middle of the fighting.

 In his presence, the infantry valiantly holds on - taking massive casualties - as his calvary neutralize the Roman horsemen. At this point, he springs his elite calvary wings that had been waiting and resting.

The Romans are now in trouble: their initially successful first assault on the retreating Carthaginians had distracted them from seeing that they were becoming encircled. 

They are now forced to abandon their advance and face waves of attacks from behind. The Carthaginians form a wall and begin the butchery of the entrapped Romans. This continues until it‘s too dark to continue the slaughter.

Livy’s description of the battle is lurid and, indeed, moving. He reports that some injured Romans bury their heads in the ground in a pathetic effort to choke themselves to death. 50,000 to 70,000 Romans are dead, and nearly 20,000 men are taken prisoner. Only 14,500 escape death or captivity.

 The moment is all the more delicious for Hannibal because it represents payback for his father, for himself, and for Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War.

The Roman consul Aemilius Paullus - who a day before argued with his consular colleague Varro against confronting Hannibal in battle - is among the fallen. 

Hannibal gives him an honorable burial, while leaving the rest of the enemy dead on the field to rot.

Hannibal has won an outstanding victory - one of the greatest of all time - and it will be an inspiration for military strategists up to the present day. 

Despite the victory against great odds, Cannae comes at considerable cost to the winner. Hannibal’s losses amount to 6,000 men - 15 percent of his forces - of whom 2,000 followed him all the way from Spain. 

The rest are recruits acquired along the way, most of them Gauls who attached themselves to Hannibal’s banner in the hope of acquiring rich rewards.

Immediately after the battle, the surviving consul Varro dispatches a messenger on horseback to Rome. Traveling at breakneck speed, he reaches the capital in less than 12 hours. 

An emergency meeting of the Senate is called. The city is in turmoil. There is a sense of overwhelming despair.

Ten prisoners are sent by Hannibal and arrive under the command of Carthaginian cavalry officer named Carthalo. They bring the offer to ransom 8,000 captives and negotiate peace terms. 

As soon as the Senate learns that Carthalo is outside Rome, it orders him to depart. But it allows the Roman prisoners to deliver Hannibal’s message.

The decision regarding whether to ransom the 8,000 Romans must be made quickly. 

The Carthaginian army will undoubtedly arrive in a few days. On the advice of a senator named Titus Manlius Torquatus, the senators vote not to ransom a single Roman prisoner.

 Instead, the 10 prisoners who came with Hannibal’s offer are sent back to Hannibal - and to possible death. 

This is a truly momentous and courageous decision, because, as Livy says, “most of the senators had relatives among the captives.”

With every minute that passes, the Roman senators hold their breath, expecting to see Hannibal on the horizon and fearing the worst. The consul Varro soon returns to Rome to make his own report to the Senate. 

Livy tells us that a large crowd greets him and congratulates him “for not having despaired of the Republic” - for having the courage to accept the unpleasant results rather than go into voluntary exile.

Hannibal impatiently awaits the response of the Romans, who in turn are holding their breath, fearfully awaiting his next move. This is, undoubtedly, Hannibal’s finest hour. 

Rome is on the ropes, and thanks to his great victory, Carthage will soon reclaim its rightful position as master of the Mediterranean - or so Hannibal believes.

 When Carthalo returns to the Carthaginian camp with the news that the Romans aren’t prepared to negotiate, Hannibal is taken by surprise. 

He wastes no time in executing a number of prisoners, presumably the most eminent, and sells the rest into slavery. 

Although he does not know it, Hannibal’s finest hour is quickly receding, notwithstanding the fact that his victory will make Carthage - for a few brief years - the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Some in Hannibal’s army must urge him to take Rome. Hannibal declines.

Still, Rome holds its breath.

The question as to why Hannibal fails to consolidate the victory at Cannae - by launching an immediate attack on Rome - has exercised military pundits as well as armchair historians ever since.

 There are a number of reasons why he might have decided that it wasn’t a particularly brilliant idea. One is that he lacks the forces to conduct a protracted siege.

 Siege warfare in the ancient world is long and painstaking, sometimes taking years. There is the likelihood, too, that his army will become restive.

 Most of his men have joined up for easy profits and aren’t the least bit interested in Rome’s fate. They’d rather pillage the countryside than besiege a city.

Learning from Hannibal’s military genius was the young Roman soldier Publius Cornelius Scipio.

 He was among the survivors of Cannae, and would eventually defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC - using the great Carthaginian’s own tactics against him to win the Second Punic War for Rome.

 Roman military skill - that rocketed them to a dominant global empire - can be traced directly back to their adaptations of Hannibal’s strategies at Cannae.

The Romans, due to their decision not to come to terms with Hannibal, will later proclaim themselves to be a people who never give in. It’s hard to argue with results. 

Elderly drug mule admits deeds.

 Elderly drug mule admits deeds.

An 89-year-old Indiana man faces time in a federal prison after pleading guilty to transporting more than 1,400 pounds of cocaine.

Leo Sharp of Michigan City, Ind., is one of the oldest criminal defendants to ever appear in Detroit's federal court. He told the judge Tuesday that he had never before committed a crime and that he worked for drug dealers because he needed money.

Sharp was 87 in 2011 when a Michigan state trooper stopped his pickup truck on Interstate 94, west of Detroit, and subsequently arrested him on drug charges.

That delivery of more than 200 pounds of cocaine wasn't Sharp's first go-around, however. He admitted that in recent years he was responsible for transporting more than 1,400 pounds of drugs that originated in Arizona. 

U.S. Assistant Attorney Christopher Graveline has asked that Sharp, who is hard of hearing, be sentenced to five years in a Minnesota prison with medical facilities because of his age and World War II service. That's a significant break because sentencing guidelines, which aren't mandatory, call for a minimum of 14 years.

Sharp, who earned a Bronze Star while in the Army, also must forfeit $500,000 in property owned in Florida in the deal.

Defense attorney Darryl Goldberg said he will ask for less than five years when Sharp returns to court for sentencing on Feb. 11.

The two most interesting personalities of WWII, Józef Czapski and General Władysław Anders.

 The two most interesting personalities of WWII, Józef Czapski and General Władysław Anders.

Yes, there was Churchill, and Eisenhower, and Roosevelt, And Stalin and so on. But we are talking about interesting, not conventionally powerful. 

They were as different as friends could be. Anders was a career officer, brave and disciplined as expected in his family and culture.  

Czapski was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, an intellectual, an artist, and a pacifist, but a pacifist who distinguished between an aggression and a defence of one’s homeland and people. 

Both men were taken prisoner by the Soviets. Anders, given his reputation, was taken to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow. What did they expect? To break him? 

And Czapski was one of the thousands taken to Starobielsk but also one of about 400 who were transferred to Gryazovetz. It was a terrible place but for some reason this group was not taken to Katyn to be murdered.  

After the Orwellian amnesty in 1941 the survivors struggled to get to Buzuluk where they joined up with other Polish prisoners who were forming an army under General Anders, himself just released from Lubyanka. 

There, Anders and Czapski met, quite possibly for the first time. The two personalities were so different, and yet so complimentary, and each recognized the other’s strengths and talents.

Anders made a fighting force out starving brutalized men in conditions purposely created to make him fail.

 Inadequate rations, lack of medicines, and indeed supplies of any sort. But he restored their dignity. 

As women and children found their way to the army, Anders and his men shared their meagre rations with them.

Czapski recognized another need, a spiritual and psychological need. While in the Soviet prison, he had given lectures to his fellow prisoners on Proust, in French, and noted their attention, that somehow this intellectual nourishment made up for their privation. He believed the same thing was needed again.

Czapski’s assignment from Anders was to organize classes for the young people whose educations had abruptly come to an end when the war started.

 Czapski took this on readily and also suggested that lectures be organized on various topics for the adults. 

And so began his important work in education, which was continued when the army got to the Middle East and later to Italy.

 In Palestine Czapski added cultural events to the program, his first one was open to the public and advertised in Polish, English and Arabic. 

After the war, when all was lost, Czapski continued his commitment to his country, using his considerable social contacts in Paris to help publish KULTURA, despite the strong opposition of the French Communist Party. He wrote for the magazine and enabled his countrymen to maintain a voice in exile.

Although Anders realized that his country had been betrayed by the allies, he inspired his men to carry on loyally, knowing that thousands of demoralized men left without a goal would only lead to further demoralization. 

They had nothing left but their honour and dignity and without that they would have no future.

It should be added that Anders also saved over 40 thousand women and children, taking them all to the Middle East with the army when it was evacuated from Russia.

 One pf the most impressive wartime documents is the transcript of his meetings with Stalin, insisting that he must take those children with him. Stalin sneered, “And what use are they to an army?” Anders replied, “They are what we are fighting for.” 

It is quite likely that he is the only man who ever argued with Stalin. That transcript teaches how important it is that la country’s leaders must never meet in secret, that a record must be kept, and that each country must have a translator so that their transcripts stand up to scrutiny. 

Anders spoke perfect Russian, but the translators were witnesses to the conversation.

After sweeping across western Europe with incredible ease in 1940. Germany had suffered 1 million casualties.

 After sweeping across western Europe with incredible ease in 1940. Germany had suffered 1 million casualties.

 By the turn of the year - the winter of 1941-1942 - Germany had suffered about 1 million casualties. Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 with the strength of over 3 million men and 3,000 tanks.

 But by early spring 1942, the Nazi regime was feeling the strain of trying to find able-bodied soldiers.

 It was also down to a total of 140 operational tanks to cover over 1,000 miles of front line.

This was the situation because, contrary to Hitler’s expectations, the Soviet Union had not collapsed quickly. Instead, it fought on stubbornly. 

To make matters worse, Germany’s unsuccessful air campaign earlier in the war - at the Battle of Britain in summer and fall 1940 - had failed to compel Britain to surrender.

Furthermore, the United States - with all the manpower and material recourses that opened up to the Allies - was now in the war against Germany thanks to Hitler’s rash decision to declare war against them.

 Things were starting to turn, and Germany needed a decisive victory.

One short-term priority for Hitler in spring 1942 was oil. 

By far the biggest source was at Baku on the Caspian Sea.

That was how Stalingrad ended up becoming a decisive battle of World War II. Stalingrad, a regional industrial center in the southeastern section of European Russia, was important because it stood in the way of Hitler’s drive to seize Russian oil fields.

And if they were to move oil from Baku to Germany, they had to be in control of Stalingrad.

As spring 1942 rolled on, Hitler assembled the troops he needed and built up an armored strike force at the southern end of the Russian front, ready to push southeast to Baku and the Caspian Sea.

The Soviets made Hitler’s job easier with an ill-advised offensive of their own.

 In May 1942, the Soviets tried to retake the major industrial city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine.

 They were eventually encircled, cut off, and eliminated. The Soviets lost a quarter of a million men in this campaign.

The Soviets also fell victim to a German deception.

 Stalin expected that the main German effort in spring 1942 would be in the north against Moscow, finishing off what Hitler had almost accomplished in December 1941.

 The Germans sent enough deceptive signals that they’d be attacking Moscow that Stalin held his reserves in the north, making the German southern offensive easier.

The Germans, after defeating that initial Soviet offensive, now launched their own.

 At the end of June, Hitler’s forces pushed east from the Donets River, clearing the space between the Donets and the Don River.

 While the Germans moved quickly, taking only a month to push forward, they found that the Soviet army was getting better - it was retreating.

During the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa - the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union - Stalin’s men had generally not retreated when they were danger of being surrounded.

 Instead, they’d held in place, and ended up being encircled and destroyed. But Stalin had learned and had listened to his generals. 

So the German offensive in June 1942 was grabbing territory, but territory wasn’t what Hitler needed. He needed to get to the oil or wipe out Soviet soldiers. He wasn’t able to do either one.

By late July, the problem of Russia’s vast distances was becoming quite serious. German troops had more than 1,000 miles to go to get to Baku to the southeast. East of them, on the Volga River, were numerous Soviet forces. 

If German soldiers kept on going to Baku, they would have Soviet soldiers sitting on their left flank to stop them.

 The Germans had no choice but to do what military theorists and theories say not to do: divide their efforts.

Hitler used two army groups to do two different things. Army Group A was in charge of pushing southeast to the Caucasus and oil.

 Army Group B would push east to the Volga River to protect the flank of that long German drive to grab Soviet oil fields. 

Sitting on the west bank of the Volga - just where the Germans needed to set up a defense for their long push to the Caucasus - was the city of Stalingrad.

Today known as the city of Volgograd, Stalingrad was not the primary German objective, but geography meant that the Germans needed to do something about it. 

The Germans could not let Stalingrad remain in Soviet hands. It was much too big a threat to the flank of their push to grab Baku.

In late August 1942, Hitler ordered the German Sixth Army under General Friedrich Paulus to take Stalingrad as part of the broader campaign to reach the oil fields of Baku. 

The Germans began with savage bombing, followed up with a ground assault to take the city. The bombing began August 23 and leveled much of city.

 The stories of the suffering civilians caught in the mix are heartbreaking. Ironically, this bombing created rubble and debris that would make the Germans’ task much more difficult.

 At the same time, Paulus’s troops moved almost fast enough to take the city before the Soviets could set up their defenses. Still, Stalin’s men managed to get established just in time to save it from immediate loss.

 Meanwhile, by the middle of September, German spearheads had reached the Volga River north and south of Stalingrad, isolating it on the west bank.

The Soviet commander Vasili Chuikov was given the task of holding the city with his 62nd Army, no matter the cost in lives. 

The only way for the Soviets to get in or out of Stalingrad was by ferry across the Volga, under constant fire.

 This meant supplies and food would be scarce for the city’s residents stuck inside. It’s estimated that starvation, disease, and exposure led to the death of over 40,000 civilians during the siege.

All the Germans had to do was to oust the Soviet force from the city itself, pushing them into the Volga River, but that turned out to be much harder than expected. 

Once the Soviets were defending inside the city of Stalingrad with their backs to the river, there was no open ground for the Germans to use to maneuver. 

The Germans couldn’t get around the Soviets to attack from the flank or from the rear. All they could do was slog forward through city streets that quickly turned into rubble. 

That meant the Germans would be trading soldier for soldier, which they could not afford to do for very long.

Furthermore, the Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad turned out to be excellent urban fighters.

 While the Germans actively used tanks in urban warfare, the Soviets became experts at channeling the armored vehicles into kill zones with anti-tank guns, mines, and Molotov cocktails to disable them. Every able bodied man and women fought, often hiding and sniping at German soldiers when they passed.

 Everyone else helped dig trenches if they were capable. Additionally, Soviet industry was also starting to kick in with supplies needed to wage war.

Because of the Soviets’ tenacious defense, the German advance made very slow progress. By late September, the Germans had captured the center section of Stalingrad, and they then turned to taking the factory district in the northern part of the city. All that fighting chewed up the elite German formations that General Paulus needed for fighting in cities. 

By the beginning of November, Hitler was channeling combat engineer battalions from throughout the Wehrmacht into Stalingrad, thereby spending the lives of highly trained soldiers - who were very difficult to replace - in an ongoing effort to seize the city.

Still, the Germans were getting close. By the middle of November 1942, the Soviet Army had been pushed back into a few tiny pockets on the bank of the Volga, and the Germans controlled all but about 10 percent of the city. Chuikov’s troops could not hold out much longer, but things were about to change dramatically.

As the Germans became bogged down in Stalingrad, the Soviets began to see the potential for a counteroffensive that might do the invaders some serious damage.

 The Germans simply didn’t have the manpower to hold the lines on the flanks of their thousand-mile offensive toward Baku. 

As a result, while the Germans were losing elite troops in the effort to clear Stalingrad, they also had to turn to their allies and satellites to hold their lines north and south of the city.

In particular, the Germans relied heavily on Romanians to hold quiet sectors of the front: the Third Romanian Army northwest of Stalingrad and the Fourth Romanian Army south of Stalingrad. 

The Romanians, however, were poorly equipped, and many Romanian soldiers had trouble seeing why their interests were at stake. Furthermore, those quiet sectors outside would not stay quiet much longer.

The months that Chuikov’s troops had stood and fought in the ruins of Stalingrad bought valuable time.

 Aleksandr Vasilevsky, the Soviet army’s chief of staff, used the time to build up enormous reserves of men and tanks and assemble them in secrecy north and south of Stalingrad. 

On November 19, 1942, the Soviets rolled across the snow and smashed the poorly equipped Romanians around Stalingrad. Four days later, Soviet pinchers trapped the German Sixth Army and 300,000 troops inside the city.

Germany’s General Paulus knew the situation was bad, and he asked Hitler’s permission to break out of the city to escape west to German lines.

 It would have meant the loss of a lot of military equipment, but it would have kept his troops together as a fighting force. 

Hitler refused. He couldn’t accept the blow to his prestige. Instead, he tried two things. The first was to support the Stalingrad pocket by air.

 Second, while he was not willing to let Paulus and the Sixth Army break out from inside Stalingrad, he was willing to let his other troops break in from outside Stalingrad.

Hitler now had 300,000 men inside Stalingrad who needed food, fuel, and ammunition. The Sixth Army required a bare minimum of 300 tons of supplies a day. Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, promised that supplies would be no problem.

 That was a lie, and Göring had to have known it. The Germans simply didn’t have enough of their Junkers Ju 52 cargo aircraft available.

 And the Soviets used everything they could against that airlift: fighters, anti-aircraft guns, bombs, and artillery strikes. 

The Germans also steadily lost aircraft to accidents from flying in bad weather. On a good day, the Germans would be lucky to get 100 tons into the Stalingrad pocket. It simply wasn’t enough.

The other option was breaking in. On December 12, Hitler sent two panzer divisions under Hermann Hoth - one of his better tank commanders - to push through to Stalingrad. 

They quickly stalled. Hoth wanted Paulus to meet him halfway with any soldiers who could get away, but Hitler vetoed this. Hoth had to retreat.

By the end of 1942, Hitler had no choice but to accept defeat. The Soviets were pushing west past Stalingrad. As they neared the Don River and the Black Sea, the German forces heading south to Baku were in danger of being cut off and destroyed like the Sixth Army. Hitler gave the order to pull back at the very end of 1942.

 German troops raced north to escape before the Soviets slammed the gate shut. That meant no Soviet oil and no chance of waging a global war on to victory.

Meanwhile, the Soviets waged an operation to squeeze that German pocket in Stalingrad tighter and tighter.

 The German Sixth Army, trapped there, couldn’t pull back. The German troops slowly starved and froze as the Soviets methodically pounded them with artillery. 

When Stalin’s men took the last airfield in the German Stalingrad pocket, the trap was complete. No more Germans could get out.

Hitler promoted General Paulus to field marshal, hoping he would take the hint that no field marshal had ever surrendered. It didn’t work.

 In February 1943, Paulus surrendered. Some 91,000 German troops - the remnant of the Sixth Army - marched into captivity. Of these men, only about 5,000 ever returned to their homes. 

The rest died slow, miserable deaths - marching to Russian prison and labor camps or during their long captivity in frozen, isolated Siberian gulags. What remained of them were not released until 1955.

Given the resources lined up against Nazi Germany, victory was going to be tough under any circumstances. 

But prevailing at Stalingrad - which might have enabled the Germans to make it to Baku - could have made the difference for them. Failure at Stalingrad meant failure to get the oil Germany needed for victory

After Stalingrad, Germany was never again able to carry out an offensive on the scale equal to its campaign of spring 1942. It did launch more major offensives, but those were aimed at more limited objectives. 

Because of German losses of manpower at Stalingrad and the army’s failure to secure the necessary resources, it’s hard to see how Germany could have won the war after this.

For the Allies, Stalingrad also meant a great deal. The years 1939, 1940, and 1941 had been bad ones for the coalition against Hitler, punctuated by humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat. 

Even the Allied successes had been matters of survival, not really victory. By the second half of 1942, however, things clearly started to change.

The Axis powers, to take a term from the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, had gone beyond their culminating point of attack - that is, they pushed beyond what they could sustain. 

The further they went, the more soldiers they lost, the longer their supply lines got, and the more ammunition and fuel they expended.

 By mid-1942, they had culminated. Now, the human and material resources of the Grand Alliance finally began to kick in.

Stalingrad mattered particularly for the people of the Soviet Union. We have a view in the West that the Red Army consisted of mere cannon fodder and men thrown into the battle against their will. But Stalingrad, while a brutal example of civilian suffering, showed the fighting spirit of the country.

Also, the initial German attack had put about a third of the Soviet population under German rule. 

While Stalin had certainly given a large segment of the population zero reasons to love him or communism, many soon found German-occupation to be far worse.

 After Stalingrad, though, it was clear that Stalin and Soviet rule were coming back. And everyone knew that the communists would be interested to learn how people acted under German rule. 

This caused explosions of revolts in Nazi-occupied Soviet territory. German soldiers on Red soil would have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of the war.

It’s Memorial Day: The story of a soldier who should be remembered this day: John Dunne.

It’s Memorial Day: The story of a soldier who should be remembered this day: John Dunne.

My great-great grandfather John Dunne had at least eight children in Ireland, including my great grandfather Tim Dunne and his older brother, Larry Dunne.

 They came to America as young boys, lost the “e” on the end of their surnames, and each had families of six children. 

Some of their children fought in Europe during WWII, including my grandfather Frank Dunn and his first cousin Tim Dunn, who was Larry’s son. 

Tim Dunn was born in 1916 and lived on 61st Street in Woodside, NY when he was a young man.

 The details of his early life are vague, probably lost to the ages. What I do know is that by the end of 1943, he was in the US Army headed to England as the Allies began to prepare for the D-Day invasion in June 1944.

 A partial company photo taken just before D-Day is shown here, with a close-up of Pvt Dunn as well. 

He was a member of C Company, 37th Tank Battalion in the 4th Armored Division. This became General Patton’s division of the Army and Pvt. Dunn learned to drive a Sherman Tank.

The 37th Tank Battalion came into France about a month after D-Day to reinforce soldiers who were already in the fight.

 They fought their way through France, town to town, found their way to the front, liberated French towns along the way, and pushed the German army back. They had 87 straight days of combat before they were relieved.

 By then Pvt Dunn had been promoted to Sergeant and commanded a tank. A photo is below of Sgt Dunn, his tank and his crew at Arracourt in France in September 1944. 

A combat report of the smaller, lighter and faster Sherman tanks outfighting the Wehrmacht’s Panzers and Panthers from September 1944 quotes Sgt Dunn as follows:

“All five tanks opened up and knocked out three of the Germans; the fourth panzer retreated behind the wreck of an American bomber.

The second platoon put high explosive on the plane and set it on fire. The tank was not observed to escape…. A fifth German tank was hit when observed coming out of Ley and destroyed.

  The fighting around Arracourt was fierce and Sgt Dunn became a tank commander and took over his platoon. 

The battalion lost 9 tanks to the Germans 38 tanks lost during that stage of the fighting. 

They instituted night fighting, which was unusual for tanks. He patrolled fields with a crew and a bazooka when not moving forward in his tank.  

When the Germans counterattacked the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, Dunn’s 37th Battalion moved into Belgium to relieve and reinforce the 101st Airborne paratroopers that had become totally cut off from their supply lines.

 Sgt Dunn’s Battalion had to fight against German paratroopers deceptively wearing American uniforms, and the fighting was fierce as the Germans made a continuing push against the Americans holed up in Bastogne. 

After sleeping outdoors during the coldest European winter in 100 years, they were again pushing the Germans back by February 1945 and were in Germany by March. 

In March 1945, Tim Dunn, now a staff sergeant, and the rest of the 37th Tank Battalion C Company was taken out of the regular line of combat and deployed for a special assignment - a raid to rescue American POW’s who were in a camp 60 miles behind enemy lines in Germany.

 General Patton called up C Company to be a part of Task Force Baum in what became known as the Hammelburg Raid. 

merican forces for this rescue mission were 307 men and 57 vehicles, tasked with the job of rescuing 1500 POW’s, including Gen. Patton’s son-in-law, Lt Col John Knight Waters.

 They opened a hole in the enemy lines and fought their way into the German prison camp near Hammelburg, known as Oflag XIII-B, only to find 6500 prisoners, who they liberated. 

The objective was reached but the triumph was fleeting, because they could not transport all of the prisoners since there were many more than expected. 

The Germans counterattacked heavily, thinking that this small group of raiders was leading in the entire Army 4th Division, and the Americans had to break up and separate to escape.

 The US soldiers fought heroically and it remains the US Army’s deepest raid into an enemy territory to this day.

26 American soldiers were killed in that action. Staff Sergeant Timothy J. Dunn was among them. He died while fighting Germans and rescuing American prisoners of war on April 1, 1945. 

Tim Dunn’s death came only a month before the end of the war in Europe. Germans were on the run and the losses in that raid were quickly eclipsed by V-E Day - victory in Europe. 

His death was certainly agonizing for his mother (his father had passed by then) and his siblings, and my grandfather was said to have been furious about it. I don’t believe he had a wife or children.

 He is buried at the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale with 355,112 other Americans who gave their life for their country and veterans who fought for us. A photo of his gravestone is below. 

He was a non-commissioned officer who did his duty. He fought and died for his country. He gave all he had - no happy ending of the war, no greatest generation, no opportunity to go home and raise his family, but a young life lost in the defense of freedom and decency.

 He, and those who did what he did, saved the entire world. He is remembered.

120 years ago today in 1903: 10 things you do not know about Eric Arthur Blair.

  10 things you do not know about Eric Arthur Blair, 120 years ago today, 1903, 25th June, George Orwell is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm, and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier, documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War, are also widely acclaimed.

Below are some of the lesser known facts about the man behind "Big Brother", "Thought Police", and "Newspeak"

1. Prep school was an experience he hated, and inspired an essay that couldn't be published during his lifetime.

Eric Blair spent five years at the St. Cyprian School for boys in Eastbourne, England, which inspired his melodramatic essay Such, Such Were the Joys. 

In the essay, he called the school’s proprietors “terrible, all-powerful monsters” and labelled the institution itself "an expensive and snobbish school which was in process of becoming more snobbish, and, I imagine, more expensive." Deemed too libellous to print at the time. It was finally published in 1968 after his death.

2. He moved from job to job, for rent, and research.

Orwell worked as a police officer for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (present-day Myanmar), a high school teacher, a bookstore clerk, a propagandist for the BBC during World War II, a literary editor, and a war correspondent. 

He also had stints as a dishwasher in Paris and as a hop-picker (for breweries) in Kent, England. Apart from paying the rent, these jobs were also for research purposes. 

Orwell also spent some time “living as a tramp” and wrote his first book about these experiences, Down and Out in Paris and London.

3. Orwell deliberately got himself arrested to experience some time behind bars.

In 1931, while investigating poverty for his aforementioned memoir, Orwell intentionally got himself arrested for being “drunk and incapable.

This was done “in order to get a taste of prison and to bring himself closer to the tramps and small-time villains with whom he mingled,” biographer Gordon Bowker told The Guardian.

 At the time, he had been using the pseudonym Edward Burton and posing as a poor fish porter.

 After drinking several pints and almost a whole bottle of whisky, Orwell was arrested. He was released after spending 48 hours in custody.

4. His knuckles were tattooed.While working as a police officer in Burma, Orwell got his knuckles tattooed.

 Adrian Fierz, who knew Orwell, told biographer Gordon Bowker that the tattoos were small blue spots, “the shape of small grapefruits,” and Orwell had one on each knuckle.

 Orwell noted that some Burmese tribes believed tattoos would protect them from bullets. 

He may have gotten inked for similarly superstitious reasons, Bowker suggested, but it's more likely that he wanted to set himself apart from the British establishment in Burma.

5. He volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Like fellow writer Ernest Hemingway and others with leftist leanings, Orwell took part in the Spanish Civil War. 

Orwell (then aged 33) arrived in Spain, shortly after fighting had broken out in 1936, hoping to write some newspaper articles. 

Instead, he ended up joining the Republican militia to “fight fascism” because “it seemed the only conceivable thing to do.

” The following year, he was shot in the neck by a sniper, but survived. He wrote about his war experiences in the book Homage to Catalonia.

6. A Doodlebug nearly destroyed his early draught of "Animal Farm".

Near the end of WWII, Orwell’s home at 10 Mortimer Crescent in London was struck by a German V-1 flying bomb.

 Orwell, his wife Eileen, and their son Richard Horatio were away at the time, but their home was demolished.

 During his lunch break at the British newspaper Tribune, Orwell would return to the foundation where his home once stood and sift through the rubble in search of his books and papers, most importantly, the manuscript for Animal Farm.

 Fortunately, he found it, Orwell then piled everything into a wheelbarrow and carted it back to his office.

7. He was the owner of a goat named Muriel. He and his wife Eileen tended to several farm animals at their home in Wallington, England, including Muriel the goat. A goat by the same name in Orwell’s book Animal Farm is described as being one of the few intelligent and morally sound animals on the farm, making her one of the more likable characters in this dark work of dystopian fiction.

8. The "Cold War." was first described by Orwell.

The first recorded usage of the phrase “cold war” in reference to relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union can be traced back to Orwell’s 1945 essay You and the Atom Bomb, which was written two months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

In the essay, he described “a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbours.

9. Charlie Chaplin, John Steinbeck, George Bernard Shaw were reported as Communist sympathisers by Orwell.

In 1949, Orwell compiled a list of artists he suspected of having communist leanings and passed it along to his friend, Celia Paget, who worked for the UK’s Information Research Department.

 After the war ended, the branch was tasked with distributing anti-communist propaganda throughout Europe

 Orwell's list included Charlie Chaplin and a few dozen other actors, writers, academics, and politicians. 

Other notable names that were written down in his notebook but weren’t turned over to the IRD included Katharine Hepburn, John Steinbeck, George Bernard Shaw, Orson Welles, and Cecil Day-Lewis.

10. While writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell almost drowned.

One day in 1947 while taking a break from writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell took his son, niece, and nephew on a boating trip across the Gulf of Corryvreckan in western Scotland, which happens to be the site of the world's third-largest whirlpool. 

Unsurprisingly, their dinghy capsized when it was sucked into the whirlpool, hurling them all overboard. 

 Fortunately, all four survived, and the book that later came to be called Nineteen Eighty-Four (originally named The Last Man in Europe) was finally published in 1949, just seven months before Orwell's death from tuberculosis.

This is my colourised version of a black, and white photograph taken in 1944.