Movies In History: Dunkirk

While I know that its making a huge claim to say so, this may be the best movie about World War Two that has ever been made.  It's a stunning achievement.

The movie, as likely anyone here will know, concerns the 1940 evacuation of large elements of the British Expeditionary Force as France was falling to the German Army.  The actual event took place from May 26, 1940 through June 4, 1940 and involved an hoped for evacuation of 30,000 British soldiers.  In the end, in no small part due to a massive German tactical error combined with a heroic French resistance to German advances, the British managed to evacuate nearly 400,000 men from an every diminishing beachhead, of which nearly 140,000 were French, British and Belgian.  The evacuation stands as one of the most stunning military achievements of the Second World War, turning what was a disaster into a weird species of victory.  While the effort would not stem the German advance, the fourteen day period did show the Germans for the first time to be inept in victory and pluckiness of the British in accomplishing an evacuation through the combined use of every kind of ship imaginable signaled the spirit with which the British would carry forth with in the rest of the war.

The film therefore has a daunting task, that of taking a fourteen day battle and combining in into a three or so hour film. Not that this hasn't been done a lot of times before.  It has, just not so well.

All World War Two battles were combined arms battles of some sort.  That is they all combined at least ground and air elements, and some, like this combined air, land and sea. The conventional approach to this, if a large battle is taken up as the topic of a film, has been to take on the project chronologically, such as the famous and very fine film The Longest Day did.  Indeed, this is nearly always done.

This film, however, takes on a different approach to this and really manages to pull it off, giving us a glimpse of the air, land and sea battle in way that is best compared to reading a book.  At the very start of the film we are introduced to a young British and a young French soldier who are trying to make their way off the beach.  We're introduced to this at first in the form of  the British soldier making his way through the town of Dunkirk itself, then out onto the beach, and then onto the "mole". For those who might know know what a mole means in this context, it means a jetty.  This starts off the story and then the director develops, in a very unusual approach, two separate timelines, one involving one of the "small boats" that lifted soldiers from the area, and another involving a single RAF flight of Spitfires, all of which culminate near the end of the movie.  It's brilliantly done.

The  movie is incredibly tense and is one of the rare action film that never lets up for a single moment.  This is all the more remarkable as its also an intense human drama.

Reviews here, as folks who occasionally stop by, always deal with historical accuracy and material detail, and this film scores high in regards to those as well.  The story of the evacuation at Dunkirk is portrayed accurately, including the loss of life and the desperate and random nature of it.  Some have complained that the film does not portray the French role well, but this is an unfair criticism. It's made plain that the French are holding the line, largely unseen, while the evacuation is taking place. By the same token, except for a single scene, German ground forces are never seen, their presence only deeply felt. 

Some have also complained that the movie is short on character development, but it really is not.  The characters are well developed in the space in which their roles are portrayed.  Moreover, the fast pace and the following of three (or more, really, as there's a Naval officer and a senior British officer who are also followed) gives us a glimpse not only into every aspect of the battle but also the random and confused nature of war.  Characters are at least as well developed as they are in the film The Longest Day, which is regarded as a classic.

In terms of material details the movie is excellent as well, although oddly there's been some complaints in regards to the military ships that are portrayed in the film. This shows the impact of Saving Private Ryan on war films as materiel details are now judged so closely that even minor departures are judged by some as unacceptable.  A destroyer depicted in the film is a real World War Two destroyer, the Maille-Brez, which is a French ship.  Some have been unhappy that  a French ship was used in this role, but there are not a lot of working World War Two destroyers around.  The small boats depicted in the film are actual boats that were used at Dunkirk, piloted by their current owners.  The Spitfires are real Spitfires and the ME109s real ME109s, albeit the ones that were from the Spanish air force, repainted in German colors, that often show up in films when ME109s are needed.  Uniforms and weapons are all correct, including the use of SMLEs rather than the Rifle No. 4 which looks similar but which was coming into service at that time.

The film is a masterpiece.

Movies In History: The Birth of a Nation

No, not the horrible D. W. Griffith one from 1915, but the one that came out in 2016.  Indeed, its sort of the antithesis to that earlier film.

This film toured nationally, of course, and I thought about seeing it while it was here but didn't end up doing so.  It didn't seem to get a lot of press and I wasn't sure what exactly it was about.  I happened to catch it recently on television.

This is a cinematic treatment of the story of Nat Turner's slave rebellion.  I'll confess that I'm not terribly familiar with that event, which is often inaccurately cited to be the most successful example of a slave rebellion in North America (there was actually at least one more successful in every sense during the Colonial Era).  As I'm not hugely familiar with the Turner story, I'm left a bit out to sea in regards to the accuracy of this depiction, but it seems to have done a good job of it from what I can learn.

Turner, as the movie depicts, was a highly religious slave in Virginia.  He had a natural speaking ability and started to operate as a Christian minister within his slave community.  He was sufficiently good at this that he began to be used in that capacity in the area and preached to other slave communities with the license and encouragement of the slave owning class. At some point the exposure to the fate of his fellow slaves began to weigh on him heavily and he began, by his own accounts, to have visions that urged him, he claimed, to lead his fellows in rebellion against their master.  Over time, he organized such a rebellion.

The rebellion was noteworthy in a variety of ways, and not only for its success.  Convinced of the evil nature of the slave owning class, the brief uprising did not spare women and children and taking place mostly over a single night it concentrated, by design, on the use of blunt and edged weapons that would kill but not make much noise.  It was, therefore, sort of uniquely grisly.

It was, of course, also a failure and rapidly put down.  The  number of rebel slaves and whites from the slave owning class who were killed in the uprising, keeping in mind post uprising executions, were freakishly similar,both being about 55-56 in number.  Reprisal murders by local whites however took an additional 120 black lives.  As is often noted, long term the rebellion became and enduring memory in the South and it may have caused the oppressive nature of slavery, already pretty horrific, to become worse, although the extent to which that can really be determined seems questionable to me.  Other factors may have played a role in that other than the rebellion, but no doubt it was an ongoing white memory that formed part of the basis for the slave owning class' view of the world.

All in all, this film seems to do a very good job. It appears correct in material details.  The very strong religious character of Nat Turner himself is correctly portrayed.  The rebellion scenes appear to exaggerate somewhat, but then they'd likely have to in order to make an effective movie portrayal.  All in all, it's well worth seening.

2d Artillery watching the game, July 24, 1917

Note how well dressed the crowd is.

And who had Tuesday off to go watch baseball?

Monday At The Bar: The Lawyer, the Addict A high-powered Silicon Valley attorney dies. His ex-wife investigates, and finds a web of drug abuse in his profession

A New York Times article that may be a bit of a shocker for people outside the profession of law:

The Lawyer, the Addict

A high-powered Silicon Valley attorney dies. His ex-wife
investigates, and finds a web of drug abuse in his profession

Indeed, I ran across this comment in regards to it:

Did anyone else that read this article get freaked out? Not with the drug problem, but how someone can get so lost in their work?

So posts some special snowflake who is a law student.Surprised that somebody can get that lost in their work?  Lost in their work is the lawyers norm.

For most practicing lawyers, no matter what they do, not a day goes by where they don't think about their work.  And for many of them the assumption by people that they knew that they're some sort of alternative species that does nothing but think about the law anyhow, something like Homo Sapiens Lex, is so strong that somebody will bring it up no matter what.  I've been asked legal questions by people I know in locations as diverse as sporting shows and church.  I've been called at every hour of the day and every day of the week.  

Which is why, in part, there's "drug abuse in [the] profession", particularly if we consider alcohol to be a drug, which of course it is.

Alcohol, drug abuse, and addictive and destructive behaviors of all sorts of types, are rampant in the law.  I don't know if they've always been.  I suspect that they have not been to the current extent, but I also suspect that it's always been some sort of problem.  The "drunk lawyer" is a stereotype actually, and shows up in portrayals of lawyers fairly routinely.  The assisting lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder, is an aged alcoholic whom it is implied was brilliant but who fell into the bottle due to his work.  The protagonist in The Verdict is a dedicated alcoholic.  Interestingly, and perhaps saying something about the nature of their profession, alcoholic doctors is also a common theme in legal dramas.

I've never met an alcoholic doctor.  Physicians are pretty clean living in my observation, but I have seen alcohol and drugs take their toll in the legal world.  I frankly think that it's because a lot of lawyers are overcome by the stress of their work and take to alcohol and drugs.  It's pretty well known within the profession itself, which is why I'm surprised a bit by the comments from those who knew the fellow about that they were surprised by what happened to him and hadn't seen the signs.  If there were no signs, and indeed perhaps they were not, he must have kept them extremely well hidden.

Which brings me back to snowflake.  If you are surprised by this now, you have a real eye opener coming your way when you start working.

So. . . why doesn't the ABA oppose the Uniform Bar Exam?

From the ABA news article email:

The ABA is opposing two federal bills that would require states to allow individuals to carry concealed weapons within their borders if they have permits to carry concealed weapons in another state.

The bills pending in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives mandate national reciprocity for concealed carry permits issued under state law. ABA President Linda A. Klein calls the legislation “a dangerous proposal” that would tie states’ hands in setting concealed-carry standards.

All states allow some form of concealed carry, but standards vary, Klein said. The reciprocity requirement “offends deeply rooted principles of federalism where public safety is traditionally the concern of state and local government,” Klein says in the letters (PDFs) here and here.

If the proposal were to become law, “a state’s ability to consider safety factors—such as age, evidence of dangerousness, live firearm training, or criminal records—would give way to other states’ less stringent requirements,” Klein said. “Unlike some efforts of Congress to create minimum safety standards, this bill could lead to no safety standards as more states enact laws to allow persons to carry concealed firearms without a permit.”
The bills are H.R. 38, “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,” and S.446, “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.” Klein sent the letters to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Subcommitee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations.

It's hard not read something like this and feel that the American Bar Association is just some sort of liberal organization in which being a lawyer is just a prerequisite.   That the ABA has a position on a firearms related topic at all is hard to fathom.  Predictably, when they have one, its on the left side of the political isle.

Now, I'm not really commenting on this bill at all, and I'll note that there are people on the right side of that isle who are opposed to this bill as they view it as trampling on the rights of state's.  And no matter which way you feel about it, there's something to that view, just  as there's something to the view in favor of the bill. But the ABA?

Come on ABA, if you really cared about "a state’s ability to consider safety factors" you'd come out condemning that farce called the Uniform Bar Exam which Wyoming, and a host of other state, have adopted.

Wyoming has lost 25,000 workers over the past few years and quite frankly some of them are lawyers.  Up here in the state we see out of state lawyers, licensed under the UBE, all the time. The UBE is based on the absurd fiction that the law in one state is just like that of another, and we're seeing that up here, with lawyers from big cities in neighboring states who can't see their way around to Wyoming's law in some instances. That's not good for the state and its not good for the residents of the state either.  The ABA, with its expressed concern for Federalism and the rights of states, ought to now condemn the UBE.

I won't hold my breath.

On the topic of concealment, by the way, I've become increasingly surprised  by how many lawyers carry concealed pistols, and indeed I've become surprised by how many people in general do.  I'd have thought it fairly rare, but it isn't.  It's actually quite common, at least around here.  Firearms in general are so common in Wyoming that a common jesting bumper sticker states "Welcome To Wyoming--Consider Everyone Armed", but it isn't really that much of a joke.  Lots of people carry all the time, including a lot of lawyers, I've learned.  The stereotypes about packing heat are, quite frankly, way off the mark.  Professionals carry pretty commonly, I've come to learn.  And quite a few women do.  Quite a few younger people regard this as highly routine.  Indeed, most of the people I've come to learn carry concealed weapons are such a surprise to me that it actually gives me comfort about the arguments in favor of it, as they're such responsible people.

None of which gets to the actual law proposed above, which again you can argue either way.

Which takes me to another thing that surprised me.  Lawyers are generally more left leaning that other people but reading the reactions to this ABA stand by members of the ABA gives me some hope that lawyers themselves are less lock step than the ABA might suppose.

I've been unhappy with the ABA for some time, which seems to some degree to be attempting to occupy space that would otherwise be taken up by the ACLU, which itself seems to have forgotten its original purpose to me.  And its obsession with "Big Law" is over the top, in my view.  At any rate, ABA members, including ones who don't have any interest in firearms, have been published in reaction to this with some pretty negative comments.  A lot of ABA members feel that the ABA is way out of touch with its purpose.  And I'll note that the UBE connection stated above, while I thought was likely unique to me, isn't.  I saw at least one other comment to the same effect.

A common statement by lawyers, both current and former members of the ABA, is that they've had enough of the ABA and that they have, or are, dropping out. That includes me.  When the ABA goes back to a hard concentration on actual law rather than wasting its time with matters that are social and political policy, I'll reconsider.

Net Loss: 25,000

So reports the Casper Star Tribune.

That's how many net workers departed the state, more accurately.  Interestingly, 88,000 people moved in, but not enough to make up for the loss such that overall, the state lost 25,000 people.

For long term residents, that's not that much of a surprise.  For new ones, it likely is.  It shows both the impact of the boom/bust nature of our economy, and also shows how much of the state's population is transient, even in down times.

The big question is, of course, has it stopped.  Right now, the evidence isn't so good that it has.  Oil prices continue to fluctuate pretty widely and remain very low.  Coal has rebounded some, as earlier reported on here, but isn't what it once was and is unlikely to ever become so.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Presbyterian Church, Rapid City, South Dakota

Churches of the West: First Presbyterian Church, Rapid City, South Dakota

Another snowy scene for a hot July day.

Sometimes a modern architectural feature can really mess up the photographing of an older one, and this church provides such an example.

This is The First Presbyterian Church in Rapid City, South Dakota. The classic Gothic style church is in the downtown region of Rapid City, and unfortunately the area is dominated by some sort of odd communications tower, which makes photographing the entire building difficult.

I don't know the age of this particular church.

Oops, that movie review is still a draft

Which is why I took it down.

It'll be back up when I finish it.

Exist Spicer, stage left (or right, it doesn't really matter).

No matter how it is spun, counter spun, etc., the departure of Sean Spicer from the Trump Administration is probably a good thing for the Trump Administration, a good thing for Spicer, and a sign that there's truly trouble in the Trump Presidency.

Spicer always sounded horrible as the spokesman, and looked it too.  He always sounded blusterty, but not convincing.  He'd become the burnt of jokes.  But somehow, he never looked comfortable in his own skin really.

Spicer holds a commission as a Commander in the Navy Reserve, a quite senior Navy rank, and it would appear to me that he amounts to more than his press role with the Trump Administration might suggest.  As a naval person, it's hard not to make the sinking ship analogy, but things do appear to be a genuine mess in the Administration right now and the early round of early changes signals that Trump has never really managed to get his feet on the ground.  If we had a parliamentary system, about now we'd be seeing a vote of no confidence. It'll be interesting to see  what we see from an obviously disgruntled Spicer going forward.

And it'll be interesting to see if his spat with Dippin Dots ceases.

Sean Spicer ✔ @seanspicer

If Dippin Dots was truly the ice cream of the future they would not have run out of vanilla cc @Nationals

12:32 PM - 7 Sep 2015

Afraid of Democrats? A telling comment

On one of the weekend shows this past weekend a poll was noted in which a sizable percentage of Republican voters were noted as "being afraid" of Democrats.  I did a google search and didn't find any such poll, so it might be a fairly limited one.

Anyhow, in that segment the Democratic reaction was interesting and telling.  Democrats, apparently, didn't poll as being afraid of Republicans, although a google search will turn up piles of things that Democratic voters are worried about in regards to (presently) Republican President Donald Trump.  It's telling, as in their answer they tend to acknowledge that the party now holds some really radical views that people are afraid of and then they rush off to economic issues.

The Democratic Party is the worlds oldest political party and its evolved enormously over the decades.  Andrew Jackson would not recognize the current Democratic Party. That's probably a good thing too.  But a lot of Great Depression voters wouldn't recognize it either.  Shoot, the party that existed when I could first vote is hardly the same party it is today.

But, in spite of that, the Democrats define themselves in terms of the Great Depression.  Put under any stress at all, the party goes right to the idea that it is the party of hard working blue collar Americans, wearing chambray shirts and newsboy caps, working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh in 1933.

The mythical Democratic Voter.

But it doesn't.

Somehow over the past fifty years the Democrats have gone from a party that discovered Civil Rights (after the GOP had the lead in it) to one that has deeply unnatural views about human beings and which angles towards radical concepts regarding human nature.  Most people, being natural people, don't hold those views and that's why the Democrats have been taking a pounding.

It's interesting how this tends to show up in regards to repeated Democrat recent defeats, when explored on the weekend shows.  Average conversations tend to go like this:

Bob Moderator:  Okay!  Where here today on This Day With The Press to interview Senator Susie Greenwich Village and Representative Bill Manhattan.  How you are you folks today?

Village:  Just great Bob!

Manhattan: Fantastic Bob, and let me give a shout out to the Brooklyn Dodgers!

Moderator:  The Dodgers are in Los Angeles now Bill.

Manhattan:  Oh, well, I believe in a fully inclusive nation and while I represent the great people of my district in New York State, I still love the people of New Mexico.

Moderator:  Los Angeles is in California.

Manhattan:  I love them too.  Particularly their native daughter Linda Ronstadt.

Moderator: She's from New Mexico.

Manhattan:  Oh.

Moderator: Well, Congress folks this past week the Democratic Party took another pounding in a special election in the 875th District of Georgia.  You folks were expected to win but lost by a margin of 172.34%  Our post poll, poll revealed that people down in Thudpucker County aren't too happy with Donald Trump, but that the Democratic Party's recent bill to declare that there's just one gender and declare a national day celebrating that, and their bill to make cheerleader squads and infantry battalions gender neutral, and in fact equivalent to each other, offended folks. What do you intend to do about that?

Village:  Well, Bob, what we have to do is to emphasize our inclusiveness. We're the party for employing everyone, that steel mill worker in Pittsburgh, that worker in the Curtiss biplane factory in New Jersey, that single mother employed as a Liberty Ship builder in Newport News. We're for them folks.

Manhattan:  That's right Bob.

Moderator:  What about these social issues voters?

Village:  Oh, we think they should have jobs too.  Yes, we're for jobs.  Our plan it to have jobs by having jobs.  And good jobs. . . like in steel mills and cigar factories.  .

Yeah.  That's going nowhere.

And frankly, a lot of rank and file voters have good reason to fear the Democrats.

Somehow, the Democrats have gone from a party with a strong ethnic base in the North to one that is very strongly centered on a WASP base and which is deeply radical in regards to opposing a lot which is plainly apparent in human nature.

We know that there are men and women, and that men and women, when they get together, produce children. But the Democratic Party doesn't know that and in fact, in some instances, is deeply and fundamentally opposed to that idea.  The Democrats have radically altered the meaning of marriage, or rather they've adopted the radically altered definition of it.  They're well on their way to so embracing the concept that any sexually driven concept is okay that they've gone from a party that would have simply opposed common discrimination against people with same sex attraction, a view that the majority of Americans have held for a long time, to one that requires people to embrace any such drive.  The point at which this rationally stops is no longer apparent by any means.  They have fully embraced the idea that while its natural for the NFL to be all male, combat, the most physical and dangerous of any human activity, and one which has been all male since day one, must now be gender neutral.  This has gone so far that the Army is now issuing standards for female soldiers encountering "transgendered" men in showers, something that would have caused a criminal sanction in any earlier time.  

And the party continues to embrace a view of life that's deeply hostile to life itself, basically adopting a view that killing at either end of it is okay.  

No wonder, therefore, voters who are rooted in any Faith at all, or who simply are grounded in an actual understanding of nature, fear the Democrats.

And that explains a lot of why we are where we are.  Commentators and politicians keep saying we need to embrace our shared values and come together. But that presumes that we share values.  It isn't at all clear that we do.  Indeed, its become pretty apparent that the Democratic Party has become hostile to traditional values in a major way and no longer will allow a voice for them.  And wouldn't if it were in power.

So, no matter how bad the alternatives are, that means a lot of formerly Democratic voters are going to go elsewhere, and quite a few of them will regard themselves as having no choice but to do so.

Eccentricities: Examining Agrarianism and Distributism, Part I

Agrarianism and Distributism are both categories on this blog, and have been for a long time.  As of the time of this post (assuming its timely made, a increasingly rare event around here) there are presently 78 posts on Agrarianism and 81 on Distributism.

Given that, it's not surprising that there's been some discussion on both Agrarianism and Distributism here, although Distributism has been more clearly explained.  Be that as it may, this version of this blog has been less clearly Distributist than prior versions of it. 

Part of the reason for that has to do with publishing cowardice.  While people like to claim that they're "free thinkers" and urge everyone to "think for themselves" few people actually do.  It's simply a human trait.  For that reason, most people tend to fall into groups of broad thought and when an idea is outside of the broad mainstream they tend to avoid it, or perhaps criticize it.

Now, this certainly isn't uniformly the case by any means and there are many eras when things can change, even suddenly, but even it times of change its interesting how often people who were opposed to a change, and even a change of opinion, will suddenly alter their opinion.  For an example based on a famous person, President Obama went with the mainstream when most Americans opposed homosexual marriage. When the Supreme Court by a one person majority changed the law in that area by judicial fiat, he was suddenly in the other camp, and virtually overnight, or at least virtually overnight in terms of public statements.

Now, that's not the best example, but I note that as it provides a reason why folks who hold Distributist economic views likely don't tend to express them much except in certain circles. It's odd, as Distributism isn't really that radical actually.  I'd argue that its a form of capitalism, and frankly it pretty clearly is.  It's just somewhat different from what we're used to seeing.

Agrarianism frankly is a related set of ideas, although in expressed form, it's older.  Like Distributism its highly misunderstood.  It's also in that area where a person who holds Agrarian views tends to keep them to themselves as a rule as its easy for them to be really misunderstood, nearly completely so.

Well, we're going to take a closer look at both here.  Both actually have, accidentally, strong American roots that are underappreciated..  Both have radical fanatic adherents, like any set of philosophical set of ideas, which if fully applied would tend to make them unworkable.  But both are worth looking at.

Blog Mirrors. Conscription, 1917 and 1948: Today In Wyoming's History: July 20

Today In Wyoming's History: July 20:

1917 The U.S. World War I draft lottery began.

As can be seen, the papers published the name of the men selected right on the front page.

In some counties, however, the draft proved unnecessary as the counties had already filled their quotas, which were apparently on a county by county basis, through volunteers.

1948 President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. My father is one of those to register under the 1948 law.

Chesterton on the Irish

And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions -- the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Military preparedness and World War One. Training the boys. Scenes from July 16, 1917

 Bayonet Drill.

At one time the concept of boys and girls "going to camp" was so common that it was kind of a running joke.  

Kids still go to camp, of course, but its increasingly rare and more and more specialized.  The old concept of kids attending Camp Winnemucca, or whatever, that was the brunt of so many jokes, songs, bad movies, and even annual Peanuts threads is increasingly uncommon. Not that they don't exist, of course, they do.   I know of a lot of kids and teenagers going to camps this year, but most of them are athletic camps.  One is going to the big Boy Scout Jamboree.  Some went to out of state language camps.

 Drill and Ceremony.  It hasn't changed much.

One of the types of camps that boys attended back in the day, and of course still do, are those associated with Scouting.  The Boy Scouts was practically brand new at the time of World War One, having had its U.S. expression started in 1910.  It's interesting to see those old photos of Boy Scouts at this time a they very much reflect the military scouting origin of the organization formed by Lord Baden Powell, whose Boer War experience had lead him to worry that British youth were getting soft.  Formed during the "Muscular Christianity" era, Scouting rose very rapidly and had very widespread membership, emphasizing woods craft and manly virtues.

But these boys aren't in the Boy Scouts.  No, they're receiving military training at a summer military training camp for boys at Peekskill, New York. The camp was organized by the New York State Military Training Commission, an organization established by the New York legislature in 1916 in order to "more thoroughly and comprehensively" boys "the duties and obligations of citizenship."  Part of its mission was to establish state military camps of instruction for annual summer field training for the boys.

 This is something that wasn't unique.

 Nope, not much at all.

The Great War sparked a huge national movement towards preparedness, and not just in the Boy Scout motto "Always Be Prepared" vein.  Republican elements urged the US to enter the war early on and when the US did not, those who backed entry into the war sponsored military training camps for young men.  Men in their 20s and 30s, that is.  These camps were staffed by Regular Officers of the U.S. Army and sought to train men to serve as Army officers should the need arise, which it was suspected that it might.  The most famous of these was at Plattsburg, New York, but it wasn't the only one by any means.  And they weren't limited to men.  Prior to the country's entry into the war there were also camps for women, teaching them field craft and some military skills, such as the use of semaphore flags, skills that would prove to be more militaristic than they'd actually need for service in the Great War given the roles they were given.

 

 Playing the dread, and stupid, mumbly peg knife game.  Note the hat cords on their M1911 Campaign hats.  I wish this was in color so we could get the branch designation.

And by 1916, the Preparedness Movement, having seen the war in Europe spread to Asia and having seen a semi war break out along the border with Mexico, spread to teenage boys.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps was established in 1916 under the National Defense Act of 1916.  With two expressions, ROTC and JrROTC it covered young men in their high school and college ages.  ROTC, the college aged version, sought to train college men to serve as officers should the need arise.  JrROTC, in contrast, sought to teach high school aged boys basic military skills that would give them a jump in serving as enlisted men in the Army, should that need arise.

 July.  Its hot.

The story of JrROTC has remained a confused one, and somewhat under addressed, for years.  One thing about it is that the 1916 start of it in some ways picked up what was already going on.  In some schools, including the one I graduated from in 1981, an organization like JrROTC was already in place.  You can find, for example, photographs of Natrona County High School boys drilling in uniform in 1915, a year prior to the creation of JrROTC, and the school now boast the oldest surviving JrROTC unit in the United States.  I note that here as I don't think the kids in these photographs are in JrROTC (some might have been, or would soon be), but rather a military organization run by the State of New York that was really darned close to it.  Indeed New York's Military Commission was given broad authority to organize the military instruction of youth during its brief existence (it ceased to exist in 1921).  It basically ran what was JrROTC in New York, which was so extensive that its authority extended to young men who were employed outside of schools, ie., who had dropped out.  In Wyoming JrROTC took off so fast that in 1916 there were state drill competitions between different JrROTC unis across the state.  It was a big deal.

Semaphore signals remained a necessary military skill at the time.

In our kinder and gentler age, JrROTC has undergone quite a century long evolution and so have events like this. When I was in high school JrROTC did have a summer encampment at the National Guard's Camp Guernsey.  Now, I was never in JrROTC and when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s "Rotcey" didn't have a lot of general student body respect.  The program had gone from being a mandatory one for boys, dating back to at least 1915, to an elective one in around 1976, and even those who had some concept of serving in the military were a bit leery about it.  It was classified as a physical education class, perhaps justifiably, but that meant it was filled with an odd combination of boys who knew that they were entering the service with certainty and those seeking to avoid PE.  Anyhow, the only time I ran across them in their summer camp was when I was a National Guardsmen working at the Armory who went to Guernsey about this time of year, after we'd already done our Annual Training.  We tended not to be impressed if, for no other reason, the uniform liberties they were given meant that they were sporting a lot of late Vietnam War type uniforms and berets and the like, prior to any of that being uniform gear in the Army itself.

Anyhow, over its century of existance JrROTC has undergone quite a transformation.  I guess all organizations for boys have.  In 1917, such as during the same period when these July 16, 1917 photographs were taken, it was real military training with real gear.  The boys doing bayonet drills up above aren't using weapons at all, but still, they're learning to kill in a pretty up close and personal way.  In the 1930s and 1940s I know that the local school drilled with M1917 Enfields and the rifle team, which was excellent, competed across state lines using M1903 Springfields.  In the 1970s it became an elective here but I can still recall their having a few M14 rifles for demonstration purposes and a collection of M1 Garands for the drill team.  Girls came in at some point (I'm not sure when) and now I'm told that the rifle team uses air rifles. When I was in high school the rifle team used .22 target rifles, which are at least a real rifle.  Not that air rifles don't have their virtues, they do.

Anyhow, this group of boys was spending part of their summer at a military camp at Peekskill, New York.  While I know that a person isn't supposed to think such things, I suspect it was fun.  A lot more fun that serving in the Great War itself, which definitely wasn't fun.

But I bet they were glad to get back home.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapid City South Dakota.

Churches of the West: Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapid City South Dakota.:

A snowy scene for this hot July morning.

This striking small Episcopal Church, built in the Gothic style, is located in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. The church was built in 1888.

Poster Saturday. Doing her part

Best Post of the Week of July 9, 2017

Some comments about Justice Robert's comments

July 13, 1917. Columbus in the News Again, Conscription, and something going on at Fatima

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

Gen. G. O. Squier. Signal Corpsman and inventor of Muzak

Who is this finely mustachioed U.S. Army officer?

Well, none other than General George Owen Squier, whose portrait was published by the Bain News Service, on this day in 1917.

He was the recently appointed head of the Signal Corps, a promotion after having been in charge of U.S. Army aviation, then part of the Signal Corps.  He served in the Army until 1923, and in the year prior to his leaving the Army created a commercial service to pipe music by wire to subscribers.  A service that he renamed in 1934, the year of his death at age 69, to . . . Muzak

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

July 13, 1917. Columbus in the News Again, Conscription, and something going on at Fatima

I quit doing daily newspaper updates some time ago, but given the interesting news here, and as I've done on occasion, I'm posting a "100 Years Ago Today" type entry here regarding July 13, 1917.

As noted yesterday, in one of the largest criminal acts of its type, industrial vigilantism of a type that we no longer see (thankfully) broke out in Bisbee Arizona.  Mining interest operated to illegally arrest and "deport" IWW members from Bisbee to New Mexico, entraining the victims and shipping them off to hapless southern New Mexico.

The IWW, to be sure, was one of the most radical unions going, in an era in which unions were pretty radical.  This was an era in which, for a combination of reasons, radical Socialism, of the type stirring up all sorts of foment in collapsing Russia, was on the rise everywhere and indeed had its presence in American unions.  The IWW, with its concept of "one big union", was one of the most radical of the bunch.

From the June 30, 1917 issue of Solidarity, the Industrial Workers of the World magazine.  One Big Union.

Frankly, in my view, the IWW was really darned goofy, and the concept of "one big union" totally unworkable.  Its no surprise that the IWW, which still exists, never succeeded it reaching its goals.  But the teens and the twenties were its era in the sun, and in Bisbee Arizona it had its moment.

Bibee in 1916.

The reason was simple enough.  Conditions at the Phelps Dodge mine there were bad and the union that had the membership there, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) wasn't doing much.  Some 800 or so workers turned to the IWW.

And the mining interest reacted, gathering up the IWW members and shipping them out of Bisbee.

Where they ended up in poor Columbus.

A humanitarian disaster was in the works, the US had to intervene and did.  Ultimately, while the Federal government determined the act was criminal, what with its scale, and what with all that was going on, nobody was prosecuted for this shocking act.

Amongst the shocks the nations was receiving, we'd note, it became clearer and clearer every day that the draft was going to be big. Really big.  Early registration had somewhat mixed results but was mostly successful.  The Guard was going into  official Federal service, conscripted actually due to an odd view of the US Attorney General that Federalized Guardsmen could not serve overseas, in August.  The big draw of average male citizens was hitting the news.  Even with the big numbers being claimed in the Press at the time, the actual numbers would be much larger.

There's be a lot more than two.  July 12, 1917 cover of Leslie's

Regarding fighting, the second of a series of mysterious events, which had not yet hit the international news but which would start to, occurred on this day.  Three Portuguese peasant children claimed to receive a visit from a mysterious otherworldly lady who then, they claimed, gave them a momentary but vivid glimpse of Hell.  Following that, she gave them a message, which included, but was not limited to, requests for penitential prayers and a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but if penance was not performed, Russia would fall into grave error, spread those errors around the world, nations would be destroyed, and a second war greater than the first would occur in the reign of a Pope who was named but who was not at that time the sitting Pope.  While nobody, including Catholics, are obligated to believe in a private revelation, this series of events, which would end, as the visitor claimed, in October 1917 with a final spectacular event, is hard to discount given that the contents of the messages proved to be true.  And so went the second, July 13, 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.