Some Gave All: A La Memoire Des Enfants De Grivesnes Morts Pour La Patrie

Some Gave All: A La Memoire Des Enfants De Grivesnes Morts Pour L...:

A La Memoire Des Enfants De Grivesnes Morts Pour La Patrie, France.

A memorial in Grivesnes to its World War One dead.  This is an unusual memorial as the figure is painted, which is quite uncommon.

And in the same week

Doris Day.

One of the cleanest voices in American music, she amazingly remained a fresh voice from the 40s through the 50s, a period of immense change in American music.  I always think of her signature song being the World War Two era Sentimental Journey, but perhaps more people now associate her with Que Sera Sera, which recently enjoyed an odd resurgence thanks to an incredibly creepy Samsung television ad.  Defined by her voice and her appearance, her life was somewhat more turbulent, but not the absurd extent that some entertainment personalities tend to be.

While Day's personal life was a bit dramatic, she was married four times, although during that period she was widowed once, she wouldn't compromise her image on the movie screen even thought that hurt her career in the 1960s.  She turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which in retrospect absolutely seems like the right decision.  Indeed, while few will now admit it, The Graduate now seems absurdly dated and even a parody of the values it it is supposed to both represent and lampoon, while Day's earlier films such as the The Man Who Knew Too Much seems more contemporary.

She was 97.

Tim Conway.

Tim Conway was a comic genius who came out of radio.  He rose up to national fame in McHale's Navy and had hit and miss television and movie success after that.  His real genius came through in the Carol Burnett Show in which his performances were often so funny that his colleagues could not restrain themselves from laughing during them.  Various skits from that show have gone on to be individual legends, with my favorite being the reluctant Japanese Kamikaze pilot.

In his personal life Conway was a devout, but acknowledgedly not perfect, Catholic.  Baptized and raised as a Romanian Orthodox Christian (his mother was Romanian Orthodox), he converted to Catholicism when he was introduced to it by a girlfriend.  In his career his religious values, which he held strongly, reflected themselves in that he never made use of foul language or off color humor at any point, while remaining unquestionably hugely funny.

He was 85.

Some Gave All: Hamel-Bouzencourt, A Ses Enfants Morts Pour La France

Some Gave All: Hamel-Bouzencourt, A Ses Enfants Morts Pour La France:

Hamel-Bouzencourt, A Ses Enfants Morts Pour La France

A memorial in the towns of Hamel and Bouzencourt for the French dead of World War One and World War Two.

Hamel was the scene of a famous 1918 Australian effort which was supported by the French and which included American troops.

Some Gave All: Thelus, A ses Enfants Morts pour la France.

Some Gave All: Thelus, A ses Enfants Morts pour la France.:

Thelus, A ses Enfants Morts pour la France.

The Town of Theulus' monument to its war dead from World War One, later amended to include World War Two.

Some Gave All: Heninel, a ses Enfants.

Some Gave All: Heninel, a ses Enfants.:

Heninel, a ses Enfants.

Memorial in Heninel, France to the men of the town who died in World War One.  This monument is placed next to the village church.

Babe Ruth's youngest daughter died today at age 102.

Its remarkable how we're tied back in a short line to things and persons we conceive as being so long ago.

Some Gave All: Pro Patria, French War Memorial

Some Gave All: Pro Patria, French War Memorial:

Pro Patria, French War Memorial

As with many French memorials, this war memorial was originally for the dead of World War One but was later added to so that those of World War Two could be additionally included.

MKTH photo.

Some Gave All: Henri Guillaumet, Pilot from Ligne

Some Gave All: Henri Guillaumet, Pilot from Ligne:

Henri Guillaumet, Pilot from Ligne

A memorial in Ligne, France, to Henri Guillaumet, a pilot who lost his life in World War Two.

The memorial was placed on the 50th anniversary of his death.



MKTH photograph.

Some Gave All: Memorial to the men of Hallay Champagne who lost their lives in World War One.

Some Gave All: Memorial to the men of Hallay Champagne who lost t...:

Memorial to the men of Hallay Champagne who lost their lives in World War One.

A town memorial to the dead of World War One in the Champagne region.

Some Gave All: French War Memorial, Reconnaissante France.

Some Gave All: French War Memorial, Reconnaissante France.:

Saturday, January 26, 2019

French War Memorial, Reconnaissante France.

French war memorial in  Reconnaissante France.  Like many of these memorials, this one had the names of the World War Two war dead added following the Second World War.

MKTH photographs.

Some Gave All: Blog Mirror: A Wyoming ranch hand went missing am...

Some Gave All: Blog Mirror: A Wyoming ranch hand went missing am...:

Blog Mirror: A Wyoming ranch hand went missing amid one of the great disasters of U.S. Army history igniting a decades long effort to find him.

A remarkable story from the Casper Star Tribune:

A Wyoming ranch hand went missing amid one of the great disasters of U.S. Army history igniting a decades long effort to find him.

Some Gave All: Memorial to French War Dead. Gandelu France

Some Gave All: Memorial to French War Dead. Gandelu France:

Memorial to French War Dead. Gandelu France

This memorial in Gandelu, France has been kept current following its original dedication to World War One's lost soldiers.  Those lost in World War Two, the French Indo-China War, and the Algerian War were later added.

MKTH Photographs.

Some Gave All: War Memorial, Coulombs, France. The war memorial in Coulombs, France, dedicated to the men of the town who lost their lives in World War One and World War Two. The flags are those of France and the European Community.

Some Gave All: War Memorial, Coulombs, France.:

War Memorial, Coulombs, France.

The war memorial in Coulombs, France, dedicated to the men of the town who lost their lives in World War One and World War Two.

The flags are those of France and the European Community.

The End of a Strenuous Life. Theodore Roosevelt dies, January 6, 1919.

A great President, and by some measures one of the greatest Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, the youngest man to ever become President, and a titanic personality sometimes compared to a force of nature, died at age 60.

An aged Theodore Roosevelt in 1918.

As he was a force in American politics and life at such an early age, and in such an adult fashion, it's difficult to appreciate that he was not what we'd normally consider an old man at the time of his death.  Having said that, the hard charging nature of his life combined with a childhood condition of asthma, malaria contracted on an expedition in Brazil, and the lingering affects of a gunshot wound during his unsuccessful Presidential run against Taft combined to dramatically age him in the last ten years of his life.  The man who died in on this day in 1919 looked old and by all accounts was feeling old and worn out at the time of his death.  The last straw in this process seems to have been the death of his son Quentin during World War One, after which he declined markedly.

A controversial figure even today, Roosevelt is nearly sui generis and therefore claimed by nearly ever aspect of American public and political life.  He combined favoring an aggressive American foreign policy with an increasingly liberal, even radical, approach to American domestic problems.  Conservatives today look upon him as one of the great Republican Presidents while American liberals look towards his domestic policies as inspiration.  One of the local incumbent politicians called upon his photographed visage in the recent 2018 election to attempt to draw parallels to himself, even though there were very few apparent ones. To many Americans he defines Americanism, and perhaps more accurately than any other President we have had in modern times.  He therefore remains both in the past and surprisingly present.

While McKinley was the first President of the 20th Century, it was really Roosevelt who as the first modern President and created the office that we've had ever since.  He was unparalleled in that role; a role that he thrived in and defined in no small part because of his huge intellect and extremely physical nature.  The nation has not seen anyone like him since in high office, and its unlikely to.

Some Gave All: Memorial to the Dead of the Country, World War One and World War Two. France

Some Gave All: Memorial to the Dead of the Country, World War One...:

Memorial to the Dead of the Country, World War One and World War Two. France.

A French villages memorial to its dead of World War One, with names added for World War Two.

Photos by MKTH.

Some Gave All: Joffre Memorial, Paris France

Some Gave All: Joffre Memorial, Paris France:

Joffre Memorial, Paris France

This is the memorial to Joseph Joffre, who was commander of the French forces in World War One from the start of the war into 1916.  While he was basically promoted up out of that position in 1916, his early leadership in the war was responsible for the French being able to stop the tide of the German advance.

Some Gave All: Monument to Charles Peguy, Villaroy, Île-de-France, France

Monument to Charles Peguy, Villaroy, Île-de-France, France.

We've already mentioned Charles Peguy in a prior post on Le Grande Tombe de Villaroy.  Here's a nearby monument to Peguy himself.



Peguy is a celebrated French poet who, as already noted, lost his life in the battle noted.  He's an interesting character having gone from being an atheist to deeply believing, but quixotically non observant Catholic.  This monument is in his honor.

They Shall Not Grow Old

You still have time to see this.  It will run again in the United States on December 27.

If you are student of history, or of film, this is a must see.

New Zealander Peter Jackson, famous for his Lord of the Ring films (which I have not seen) was asked by the British Imperial War Museum to take their original movie footage and do something, in terms of a film, with it.  Four years later, this is the spectacular result.

Jackson and his crew took over 100 hours of original IWM film footage, restored it, colorized much of it and then selected six hours of that, and then a little less than two, to produce this movie length tribute to the British fighting man of World War One.  Experts in reading lips were hired to determine what soldiers were saying in the film footage where they can be seen speaking and then matched with actors from appropriate regions of the UK to produce film that sounds like original talking film footage.  Background noises for the sounds of war were added as well (the artillery shocked me in the film as its one of the very, very few instances of artillery sounding actually correct, both in the firing and in the impact. . . it turns out that new recordings of the New Zealand Army's artillery were taken for that effort).

For the voice over, or narration, as to what is being depicted, Jackson relied up on the BBC's series of interviews of British veterans of World War One that were done in the 1960s and 1970s.  These were recently run as a BBC podcast as well, so some individuals may be familiar with this set.  Using it for the film produced an excellent first person result.

There's nothing really like this to compare it to.  It was a huge effort and that produced a very worthwhile result.  Highly recommended.

As an aside, the title comes from Laurence Binyon's 1914 poem, For the Fallen.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, 

England mourns for her dead across the sea. 

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, 

There is music in the midst of desolation 

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, 

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. 

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; 

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; 

They sit no more at familiar tables of home; 

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; 

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, 

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known 

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; 

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, 

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Two Casualties of Belleau Wood, Taking a Closer Look. Part Two. Weeden E. Osborne

Lieutenant, junior grade, Weeden E. Osborne.

Weeden E. Osborne was the first commissioned offer in the history of the U.S. Navy to be killed in ground combat overseas. He was also the first officer of the Navy's Dental Corps to be killed in action.  He was the only Navy Medical Corps officer to die in combat in World War One.

He isn't the exception to the rule in regard to just that.

Weeden is actually fairly difficult to obtain accurate information on, at least if you are trying to do it via the net.  Still, we can learn a little.

He was born on November 13, 1892 in Chicago.  Lake Villa, where he seems to have grown up, as we'll see, is a suburb of Chicago today.

He went to primary school, however, at Allendale Farms.  Allendale School was a school for orphans.  As we'll see, other evidence also suggests that Osborne had lost his parents at an early age.  At any rate, he graduated from that facility and, after completing school he went to work and worked his way through Northwestern in Chicago, graduating dental school in 1915.  That would have made him a dentist at the young age, at least for today, of 23.  And that's a pretty impressive record for somebody who had an apparent rough start in life.

What exactly he did thereafter is a little unclear, but at least a paper with connections to Allendale Farm (but which focused on dogs) claims that he relocated to St. Joseph Missouri, where he started his dental practice.  If he did, it seems that by 1917 he had relocated to Denver, Colorado, where he was instructing in the Dental School at Denver University, which was noted about him by the National Dental Association, of which he must have been a member.*  The ADA's journal spoke highly of him but noted that his disposition was "nervous", and also energetic.  It might well have been, given that he had gone from being a resident of a school for orphans to a dentist at rocket speed.  That may well have been while he moved on to being a dental professor in Denver, or perhaps his young age made it difficult for him to gather a practice.

He wasn't at that long before the Great War arrived.

He seems to have entered the service from Denver but gave a Chicago residence as his permanent residence upon entering the service, for which there could be a lot of reasons.  He listed his sister as his nearest relative, and she was also living in Chicago, in some sort of association with Wheaten College, but he didn't give her address on Racine as his.**

He was carried on the Navy's roles as a Dental Surgeon, with an appointment date of May 8, 1917.  He served in Boston and Alabama in that role until March 1918 when he was assigned by the Navy to the Marine Corps.  The Marines are a branch of the Navy, and this was even more true at the time than it is now, and the Marine Corps was provided with all of its medical personnel from the Navy.

He had only been at the front with the Marines for a few days when the Marine unit he was attached to went into action at Belleau Wood.  While there, he exposed himself to German fire again and again as he went into the field to help bring in wounded Marines.  He was helping to carry wounded Cpt. Donald F. Duncan when shell fire killed both Osborne and Duncan.

The Recruit Dental Station at the Navy's Great Lakes training facility, which is in his native home of Chicago, is named after him.  And the Marine Corps has remembered him and another dental corps member in the name of an award that they give to members of that branch annually.

So here too, was this a sad story?  It's certainly not a typical one.  Weeden seems to have been a Chicago orphan who overcame his circumstances to become a dentist at a very young age, while keeping in touch with a sister in Chicago.  He was killed at age 25, just starting out, but seems to have applied the heroism that characterized his life to what he saw on the field of battle.

Marker for Lt. J.G. Weeden E. Osborne at the Belleau Wood Cemetery in France.

*This era saw the real rise of professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, and the American Bar Association.  All of these organizations were working to improve the professionalism of their professions, and they all had very wide membership.  The percentages of practitioners who are members of these organizations has declined greatly since then.

**I don't know Chicago at all, but Racine is depicted as the street of residence of the Irish policeman who is killed by the mob in the film The Untouchables.

The passing of George H. W. Bush

George H. W. Bush during his single term in office.

This isn't going to be a lengthy post nor is it going to be a hagiography.

All too often when a former President dies, the recollections of the man turn towards just that.  People who thought the President the most vile of men are suddenly his greatest admirers, and he had no faults, political or personal.  This post isn't like that.  I don't think that George Bush was a great President, which isn't to say that I thought he was a bad one either.

Having said that, when I pondered the passing of the first President Bush, it first struck me that George H. W. Bush was the last American President I actually respected.  I pointed that out to Long Suffering Spouse and she in turn said "Not President Clinton?".

I pondered that for a moment, and frankly I have to revise my comment.  I did respect President Clinton as President, although his personal conduct was reprehensible, which is something that relates to this post.*  And I didn't disrespect  his son George W. Bush.  So clearly I have to modify my statement to fit what I really was feeling.

So I'll modify my comment.  George H. W. Bush was the last Republican President that I respected.  President Clinton is the last Democratic President that I respected, and I respect him pretty much solely as an effective President, not as a human being.  George Bush was a really admirable human being, it not a really great President.  Beyond that, frankly, he was a really admirable man.

I can't claim that he was a really effective President.  Clinton was probably better in that regard. But Bush really stands out for two reasons; 1) he entered his country's service as a teenager in a really dangerous role when he didn't really have to and, 2) he was married to his wife Barbara for 73 years.

In those ways, he stands out as a really exemplary person.

So point one.

George Bush entered the U.S. Navy and became the youngest pilot in American service World War Two.**

Navy trainer flown by Cadet George H. W. Bush.

He didn't have to do that.

He would have had to serve in the military, no doubt, during World War Two.  But he didn't have to join the Navy and seek to be a combat pilot, which lead to his being shot down during the war.  

The submarine rescue of George H. W. Bush.

But that is reflective of his generation (and no, I don't think they were the "Greatest Generation").  They did things like that.

Now, in fairness, one U.S. President since George H. W. Bush was also a military pilot, that being his son George W. Bush.  He never saw combat, but he did volunteer for Vietnam but wasn't sent.  I think that speaks well of him.

But, while it will engender controversy or even rage with my conservative friends, others of the post World War Two generation who have floated up to high office don't compare as well as a rule, although some do.  Al Gore did go to Vietnam, but he was in the military press corps. Still he went.  John Kerry served in the Navy as a SEAL and that's really admirable, but then he came back and became a war protester and I'm not really very impressed with that.  

There are other examples of men and women in high office (particularly now that they're entering politics as veterans from recent wars) so my view here may be over broad, but I am speaking of those who have made very high office.  Dick Cheney, who is a conservative hero to some and particularly in my state, where its often mistakenly assumed that he's a native (he's not, he's from Nebraska actually) received draft deferments five times.  Donald Trump didn't go to Vietnam either.  President Obama, whom I credit as being a very intelligent and personally decent man, was obviously post Vietnam War in age, but it isn't as if "community service", whatever that is, amounts to the same thing in any sense.***

Secondly, he was married to Barbara Bush for 73 years.

Barbara Bush, Boris Yeltsin, and the Bush dogs, on the White House lawn.  Somehow this reflects all of three of them in a way that we aren't surprised by, but which would surprise us about any post Bush President (except perhaps George W. Bush) and any post Yeltsin leader of Russia.

That may seem like an odd thing to note, but its a sign of his decency.  Devotion to a single person, as a spouse, is something that's very significant and which has become sadly lacking in the decades following the 1950s.  Barbara Bush herself noted that for a time she suffered severely from depression and her husband George stuck by her side.  Now, that sort of things is pretty rare.  It shouldn't be.

So, there you have it.  as an example, he's a really good decent personal one.  And that's why he seems to be to have been the last really admirable man to have served in the oval office.  He might not have been the most effective, and I don't agree with all of his political decisions by any means. But in terms of life's tests, he passed them better than most.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*My strongly Republican friends, of whom I have many, will be absolutely horrified by that comment, but frankly President Clinton was a very effective President.  He had the personal morals of an alley cat, but then so did the excessively beloved and not nearly effective President John F. Kennedy, whom everyone on both sides of the political tent, save for me personally claim to love and admire.

Clinton not only had a balanced budget on occasion, he ran a surplus at least once.  He also fought an air war in the Balkans nearly without controversy and without drawing in ground troops, a really dangerous situation that turned out well.  It's the only example of that being done in history.  But personally, he's not very admirable at all, nor his is, in my view, his spouse.  He's a good example of a politician being a potentially really good office holder while not necessarily being a really good person.  Jimmy Carter was an example of the opposite.

**I'm not suggesting that a person needs to have experience in the military in order to be President. Rather, I'm suggesting that people who have risen to the call of some sort of service are better people in an intrinsic sense than those who don't.  I'm  not including myself, I'll note, in some sort of special admirable status, even though I do have peacetime military service.  But that's different.

Part of that is that some rational call to service has to exist in order for it to be meaningful.  I'd give as an example of this Herbert Hoover's post World War One service to the country and to Europe which was of a humanitarian service nature.  Highly effective, it also came to him at great personal cost.

FWIW, Bush will be, as has been noted, the last veteran of World War Two to have been President.  That there were several is hardly surprising given the size of the conflict.

***President Obama, whom again I'll credit with being very intelligent and personally very decent, both of which are true of his wife Michele as well, shared Woodrow Wilson's belief that speech was action, which it isn't, and turned out to be extremely flexible on certain issues that show a certain lack of a backbone.  He strikes me as a person who was a naturally great professor, but not President.