Friday October 31, 1941. Did you have a friend on the Good Reuben James?

On this day in 1941 the USS Reuben James, a destroyer, was sunk by a U-boat while escorting merchant ships.  The destroyer was not flying the US ensign at the time and therefore wouldn't have been completely easy for a U-boat to identify as a US ship.  At the time it was hit, it was dropping depth chargers on another U-boat, although ironically the U-552 was actually aiming for the merchant ship, which was carrying ammunition, at the time it was hit.

100 sailers were killed in the strike, only 44 survived. The ship sank rapidly.

The event resulted in a notable folk song by Woody Guthrie.

While tragic, the event was another example of the United States really crossing the line on what a neutral could do.  The ship wasn't flying the US ensign and it was attempting to sink a U-boat when it was instead sunk itself.  Perhaps realizing that this was of a certain type of nature, the American public didn't rush towards war as a result of the sinking, as it likely would have done in 1917.

Guthrie's song was perhaps a natural for him.  He was a communist and had been, therefore, an "anti fascist" since the Spanish Civil War days. The US entry into the war would lead him to be concerned about being conscripted into the Army, when the war came, and he actively attempted to receive an assignment through the Army to the USO, and effort which not too surprisingly failed.  He then joined the Merchant Marines, which was a role that was actually more dangerous than being a combat infantryman.  He served as a Merchant Marine from June 1943 until 1945, when his status as a communist resulted in the government requiring his discharge from that service.  In July 1945 he was conscripted into the U.S. Army.  

Guthrie's relationship with the Federal Government was an odd one.  During the Depression and even after he was commissioned to write songs for the government, and famously wrote a set of songs associated with damming the Columbia River.  He was a true musical genius of the folk genre, and while he was openly a communist or communistic,it probably only really shows strongly in one of his songs, the much misunderstood This Land Is Your Land.  He died in 1967 at age 55 of Woody Guthrie's Disease.  He was the father, of course, of musical legend Arlo Guthrie.

Final drilling took place on the monuments at Mt. Rushmore. This is regarded as the project's completion.

Mt. Rushmore, October 2011

Nazi Germany imposed a heavy "sin tax" on this date in 1941, which it claimed was to reduce consumption of unhealthful products.  The tax was on tobacco, hard liquor and champagne.

Health measure or not, by this point in the war the German economy had been overheated for a decade and things were getting worse. The Nazis did legitimately oppose tobacco consumption and were aware of its health dangers in a pioneering manner.  Hitler, who had weird dietary views, was a teetotaler but the more likely reason for the tax on hard liquor and champagne was that they needed the money and the production of both resulted in caloric diversions that could have been better invested in other agricultural products.  The Nazis did not attempt to take on beer, however.