Saturday, February 17, 1945. Rum and Coca Cola. Cold Comfort. Scientist leave Peenemünde. Iwo Jima.

The Andrew Sisters song Rum and Coca Cola hit the No. 1 position on the Billboard charts.  It was a song I recall as my Quebecois mother liked it.

This song was in the nature of cute at the time, but frankly it's about as accidentally imperialist as possible.

When I was 19 years old, which was the drinking age at the time, this was the first mixed drink I ever ordered in a bar, for the reason it was the only one I'd ever heard of.  I was out on the town with a group of my high school friends.  

In my view, it's awful.  I can't stand rum. Frankly, I wish I was like one of my close friends and never developed a taste for alcohol at all.  I do like beer.

The SAS launched Operation Cold Comfort in Italy.

German scientists evacuated the Peenemünde Army Research Center.

One of my (Canadian) cousins lives on Peenemünde today.  He's a scientist. Much of the Western world outside of the United States is still keen on science, including our recent allies, and or enemies.  Now that J.D. Vance has indicated that we intend to crawl in a hole and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, science stands a chance again. 

Scopes monkey trials anyone? American being second rate hick nation anyone?

Speaking of Canadians, who entered World War Two in 1939 when the US was still pretending that it could live on a seperate planet, Canadian troops reached the Rhine along a ten mile front.

They were all volunteers.

If I seem bitter, well yes I'm bitter that a Baby Boomer who is morally reprehensible and a South African whose sorry ass should be kicked back to Johannesburg are wrecking the nation, well yes I am.

And, if he's so nifty, why isn't that South African (who, I'll note, emigrated to Canada and incidnetally didn't have to serve in the, mostly black, South African Army as a result) making piles of cash, and producing piles of children, there?

" Infantrymen are working with engineers in road repair near Bullingen, Belgium, to keep supplies moving to the front. Rubble from houses supplies ballast fill. 17 February, 1945. Company C, 395th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division."

US troops, who were not all volunteers, launched attacks from Luxembourg and near Saarbrucken.

"Mines and snipers in Hanweiler, Germany, forces this battalion anti-tank unit to seek another route as they move up to support their regiment which jumped off on a pre-dawn attack. They have just made the initial crossing from Sarrguemines, France, into Hanweiler, and over the Saar River. 17 February, 1945. 3rd Battalion, 253rd Infantry Regiment, 63rd Infantry Division."  Men who fought for values now betrayed by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance.  If you doubt it, look a the values of post war voters.  It's okay, we'll express those values again, but it'll be blood due to our ignorance, again.

Dutch resistance fighter Gabrielle Widner died in Königsberg/Neumark concentration camp from starvation.  Unusually, she was a Seventh Day Adventist.

The Italian battleship Conte di Cavour and the unfinished Impero were sunk in Trieste harbor by the RAF.

The British landed at Ru-Ya sought of Myebon, Burma.

The U.S. Navy's Task Force 58 hit Tokyo and Yokohama.  That the Japanese home island are fatally exposed is now evident.

Pre invasion bombardments continued at Iwo Jima.  Counter battery fire damaged several US ships, including the USS Tennessee.

Last edition:

Friday, February 16, 1945. Corregidor.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Airborne, boats and ships, Eastern Front, Iwo Jima, Japan, Red Army, U.S. Navy

Friday, December 15, 1944. Glenn Miller Lost.

The airplane carrying definitive band leader of the 1940s, Glen Miller, disappeared over a fog bound English Channel.  Miller, age 40, was serving as the leader of the US Army Air Forces Orchestra.

Miller's influence on US military music would be profound.

The U.S. Seventh Army captured Riedseltz, Salmbach and Lauterbourg in France.

The RAF made a largescale daylight raid on the submarine pens at Ijmuiden.

The Sixth Army landed on Mindoro and faced very little ground resistance, but heavy air resistance.  The US forces included a regiment of paratroopers.

Admiral William D. Leahy was promoted to five star rank, the first officer to be so promoted and the senior most officer in the Armed Forces.

The Chinese Army captured Bhamo, Burma.

Hollywood Canteen including the Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Dorsey and Roy Rogers was released.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 14, 1944. The tragedy of Lupe Vélez.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, actors and actresses, Mexico, Military, Netherlands, Palawan Massacre, Philippines, Prisoners of War, U.S. Navy, War Crimes, World War Two

Friday, October 29, 1943. Fatal joke.

German actor and comedian Robert Stampa (stage name Dorsay) age 39, was executed for  "ongoing activity hostile to the Reich and serious undermining of the German defense effort".  

Stampa had never been comfortable with the Nazis but had, like many Germans, tried to accommodate himself to them, even joining hte Nazi Party.  He was expelled from the party in 1933 for failure to pay dues and didn't rejoin.  He started losing film roles in 1939 due to his failure to cooperate with the party.  He was drafted in 1943 and was a serviceman on lease at the time of his telling the fatal joke.

He had been overheard joking about the government and had described, in a private letter, the ongoing German war effort as "idiotic", which in fact, it was.  More accurately, his letter stated, "When will this idiocy finally end?"

His execution demonstrated that by this point in the war, which had seen the increased repression of the Jews, repression was now turning in on the German people as well.  To be executed for a joke was fairly phenomenal.

As part of that idiotic effort, the U-282 was sunk by the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic.

Gotthard Heinrici

The Red Army attacked the German 4th Army between Orsha and Vitebsk, but in doing so encountered forces commanded by Gen. Gotthard Heinrici, a master defensive tactician, and they failed to break through.

Heinrici was the eccentric son of a Lutheran minister.  Indeed, a devout Lutheran as well, he was informed during the war that his best interest lay in discontinuing going to services, which he ignored. He refused to join the Nazi Party. His uniform was notably shabby, and he continued to wear a coat that he had acquired during World War One.

His wife was half Jewish.

Not a very personal man, he remains somewhat of a mystery.  He ignored scorched early orders, but atrocities were committed, as with almost all Germany command, in his ares of operations.  He died in 1971 and was buried with full military honors.

The British 13th Corps captured Cantalupo.

A couple of interesting things from Sarah Sundin:

Today in World War II History—October 29, 1943: Maj. Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force band records “St. Louis Blues March.” US War Production Board somewhat relaxes prohibition on use of aluminum.

Glenn Miller had a big impact on American military music, second only, in fact, to John Philip Sousa. 

The St. Louis Blues was penned by legendary bluesman W. C. Handy.  It's actually a very sad song, like many blues pieces, but with a very flowing nature which made it suitable for adaptation to other styles.  Its lyrics are:

I hate to see that evening sun go down

I hate to see that evening sun go down

Cause my baby, he's gone left this town

Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today

If I'm feelin' tomorrow like I feel today

I'll pack my truck and make my give-a-way

St. Louis woman with her diamond ring

Pulls that man around by her, if it wasn't for her and her

That man I love would have gone nowhere, nowhere

I got the St. Louis blues, blues as I can be

That man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea

Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me

I love my baby like a school boy loves his pie

Like a Kentucky colonel loves his mint 'n rye

I love my man till the day I die

The tune was first published in 1914, and then made famous by the Bessie Smith edition released in 1925.  Handy was inspired to write the song after meeting a distraught woman on the street in St. Louis, who said to him, regarding her husband's absence; "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea" which became a line in the song.

Handy in 1941.

Handy outlived Miller, dying in 1958 at age 84, and was still an active musician during this time frame. He was so influential that he was sometimes called "the father of the blues", although nobody can really properly have that title, the blues having its roots in polyrhythmic African music.