Archive for the ‘History’ Category

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Sniper! No sniping!

Thursday, July 14th, 2022

I thought I mentioned this in my NRA Show coverage this year, but apparently not. Mike the Musicologist and I went to a talk by Maj. John L. Plaster, U.S. Army (Ret.), noted sniping expert, on “Sniping in the Ukraine”.

If you were not able to go this year, Maj. Plaster has an article in the new American Rifleman.

Days before the invasion, Bilozerska spoke with Nick Craven of the London Mail newspaper about her feelings on taking enemy lives. “When the enemy crawls toward our position to kill me, does he think if I have a husband, parents or kids? Of course not. And I don’t bother myself with stupid things either. That stuff is for books and movies.”

…

Interestingly, the FSB snipers had British-made Accuracy International AZ rifles chambered in .338 Lapua Mag.

Interesting indeed. From what I’ve read in the two Swift and Bold sniping books, AI keeps very tight control on who their guns go to. Perhaps these went to the FSB back in the good old days?

Individual foreign volunteers, too, have appeared in Donbas, the most notable being a Serbian sniper nicknamed “Deki.” Armed with a quality Russian T-5000 rifle chambered in .338 Lapua Mag., Deki was the focus of a 2018 Russian documentary, “A Sniper’s War.” His sniping ability, however, was questionable, due to his jerking the trigger and carelessly exposing himself at windows.

Posted in Guns, History | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 7, 2022.

Thursday, July 7th, 2022

Bradford Freeman. He was 97.

Mr. Freeman was a private first class assigned to a mortar squad in Easy Company, Second Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He took part in the unit’s jump behind Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, carrying an 18-pound mortar plate strapped to his chest. Landing in a pasture filled with cows, he helped a fellow soldier with a broken leg hide before joining the rest of his squad.
He fought with Easy Company in its battles with the Germans in France, its parachute drops into the German-occupied Netherlands and the Battle of the Bulge, in bitter cold and snow.
He was unscathed in the fighting at the Bulge’s strategic town of Bastogne, Belgium, but he was wounded at nearby Noville in mid-January 1945. “A Screaming Mimi came in howling and it exploded in my leg,” he told the American Veterans Center in an April 2018 interview, referring to the nickname given by G.I.s to the Germans’ devastating multiple rocket launchers. He returned to Easy Company in April 1945 and participated in its occupation of Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s abandoned mountain retreat near the Austrian border, and then in the occupation of Austria.

According to the paper of record, he was the last surviving member of Easy Company.

Ni Kuang. Interesting guy: he wrote a bunch of screenplays for Shaw Brothers movies, and went on to write a lot of Chinese SF and fantasy. He also hated Commies.

His 1983 novel, “Chasing the Dragon,” was widely cited as a prescient description of the political backdrop that prompted pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, followed by a sweeping crackdown.
In the book, Mr. Ni writes about an unnamed metropolis that is reduced to a shell of itself:

There’s no need to destroy the architecture of this big city, no need to kill any of its residents. Even the appearance of the big city could look exactly the same as before. But to destroy and kill this big city, one only needs to make its original merits disappear. And all that would take are stupid words and actions coming from just a few people.

When asked by Mr. Shieh of RTHK what disappearing merits he meant, Mr. Ni said, “Freedom.”
“Freedom of speech is the mother of all freedoms,” he continued. “Without freedom of speech, there is no other freedom at all.”

I saved James Caan for last because I wanted to put in a jump. NYT.

Possible spoilers follow for two of his best movies:

(more…)

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 1, 2022.

Friday, July 1st, 2022

Richard Taruskin, musicologist.

An emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a specialist in Russian music, Mr. Taruskin was the author of a number of groundbreaking musicological studies, including the sweeping six-volume Oxford History of Western Music. He was also a contributor to The New York Times, where his trenchant, witty, and erudite writings represented a bygone era in which clashes over the meaning of classical music held mainstream import.
“He was the most important living writer on classical music, either in academia or in journalism,” said Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, in a recent interview. “He knew everything, his ideas were potent, and he wrote with dashing style.”

…

His words were anything but sterile: Mr. Taruskin courted controversy in nearly everything he wrote. In the late 1980s, he helped ignite the so-called “Shostakovich Wars” by critiquing the veracity of “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov” (1979), which portrayed the composer as a secret dissident. (Mr. Volkov is a journalist, historian and musicologist.) Drawing on a careful debunking by the scholar Laurel Fay, Mr. Taruskin called the book’s positive reception “the greatest critical scandal I have ever witnessed.”

…

Mr. Taruskin’s most consequential flamethrowing was his campaign against the movement for “historically authentic” performances of early music. In a series of essays anthologized in his 1995 book “Text and Act,” he argued that the use of period instruments and techniques was an outgrowth of contemporary tastes. He didn’t want conductors like Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Roger Norrington to stop performing; he just wanted them to drop the pretense of “authenticity.” And many did.
“Being the true voice of one’s time is (as Shaw might have said) roughly 40,000 times as vital and important as being the assumed voice of history,” he wrote in The Times in 1990. “To be the expressive medium of one’s own age is — obviously, no? — a far worthier aim than historical verisimilitude. What is verisimilitude, after all, but correctness? And correctness is the paltriest of virtues. It is something to demand of students, not artists.”

…

“I have always considered it important for musicologists to put their expertise at the service of ‘average consumers’ and alert them to the possibility that they are being hoodwinked, not only by commercial interests but by complaisant academics, biased critics, and pretentious performers,” he wrote in 1994.
Mr. Ross said: “Whether you judged him right or wrong, he made you feel that the art form truly mattered on the wider cultural stage.” Mr. Taruskin’s polemics, he added, “ultimately served a constructive goal of taking classical music out of fantasyland and into the real world.”

Posted in Books, History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Link of the day.

Friday, July 1st, 2022

Apropos of nothing in particular (no, really, I ran across this link before my vacation and have been meaning to post it):

Edward Stratemeyer & the Stratemeyer Syndicate

Whodewhatnow? Edward Stratemeyer was an author who created the Stratemeyer Syndicate, an early book packager. The Stratemeyer Syndicate brought us the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift, among other series.

There’s a lot to mine here. Ever hear of “Ralph of the Railroad“? And I’m kind of wanting to find some “Ted Scott” books as a Christmas present for Someone Who Isn’t Me.

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

Happy holidays!

Friday, July 1st, 2022

Apologies for missing Gavrilo Princip Day on Tuesday. I was distracted by some car issues that turned up on both cars in the house: thankfully, those turned out to be minor.

This is not a holiday I usually celebrate, but to make up for missing the last one: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day!

Yes, I know it is baseball. But it also sort of counts as “epic failure”, which makes it more relevant to this blog. (That’s “epic failure” for the Mets, not for Mr. Bonilla.)

Posted in History, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 29, 2022.

Wednesday, June 29th, 2022

Hershel “Woody” Williams, big damn hero and Medal of Honor recipient. He was 98.

His Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as demolition sergeant serving with the 21st Marines, 3d Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 23 February 1945. Quick to volunteer his services when our tanks were maneuvering vainly to open a lane for the infantry through the network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, buried mines, and black volcanic sands, Cpl. Williams daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machine-gun fire from the unyielding positions. Covered only by four riflemen, he fought desperately for four hours under terrific enemy small-arms fire and repeatedly returned to his own lines to prepare demolition charges and obtain serviced flamethrowers, struggling back, frequently to the rear of hostile emplacements, to wipe out one position after another. On one occasion, he daringly mounted a pillbox to insert the nozzle of his flamethrower through the air vent, killing the occupants, and silencing the gun; on another he grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets and destroyed them with a burst of flame from his weapon. His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strongpoints encountered by his regiment and aided vitally in enabling his company to reach its objective. Cpl. Williams’ aggressive fighting spirit and valiant devotion to duty throughout this fiercely contested action sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

According to the paper of record, he was “the last survivor among the 472 servicemen who were awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary bravery in World War II and the oldest living recipient of the medal”.

(Alternative link.)

Lawrence’s tribute from 2019.

Margaret Keane, the painter of big-eyed children.

In 1970, on a trip to San Francisco, Ms. Keane told a reporter that her former husband had painted none of the big-eyed waifs, and offered to prove it with a demonstration of their respective painting abilities in Union Square. The media splash drew crowds. Ms. Keane arrived with paints and easel. But Mr. Keane did not show up, and he continued to play the part of the successful artist.
In 1986, Ms. Keane raised another dramatic “paint-off” challenge — this time in a Honolulu court, where she had brought a defamation suit against Mr. Keane for falsely claiming that he had painted her work. Her lawyers argued that a painting demonstration was the only way to settle the case. A judge agreed.
In less than an hour, Ms. Keane executed a big-eyed urchin. Mr. Keane, who represented himself in the case, said he had a sore shoulder and could not lift his arm to paint.

Posted in Art, Heroism, History, Obits | 2 Comments »

Historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Friday, June 17th, 2022

I am still on the road, reuniting with one of my tribes and having more fun than I am legally allowed to have.

But I didn’t want to let today’s anniversary pass, even if I don’t have time to do a full detailed post.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break in.

Alfred Baldwin, on “spotter” duty at the Howard Johnson’s hotel across the street, was distracted watching the film Attack of the Puppet People on TV and failed to observe the arrival of the police car in front of the Watergate building.

Lawrence, we should add that to the list.

As a shiftless and lazy blogger who is on the road, I’m going to point to this Reason essay by Glenn Garvin, which I rather liked. Garvin’s one of the better crop of their current writers.

Posted in History, Nixon | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 9, 2022.

Thursday, June 9th, 2022

Two interesting obits from the NYT for somewhat obscure people:

Jim Murphy. He specialized in history books for kids.

“I really love doing research,” he said. “I look at it as a kind of detective work. I would prefer to research forever and ever. The hard part is doing the writing.”

I’m a little old to be his target audience, but the books on yellow fever and the “blue baby” operation sound right up my alley.

Oris Buckner. He was a homicide detective with the New Orleans Police Department in the 1980s – the only black homicide detective at the time.

Then things went to hell. Briefly (the obit goes into more details) other homicide detectives beat witnesses to the killing of a police officer until they implicated two men, then killed both men, along with the girlfriend of one.

Mr. Buckner testified against the other officers. The local grand jury refused to indict them, but seven officers were eventually charged with federal civil rights violations. Three were convicted and sentenced to five years.

Mr. Buckner suffered for his decision to come forward. He was ostracized by his colleagues. He received death threats. He was demoted from homicide detective to traffic cop. Though he was finally promoted to sergeant in 1995, his career was effectively over.

Posted in Books, Cops, History, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

A little late…

Tuesday, May 31st, 2022

…for Memorial Day, and I don’t know how old this story is. (It just came across Hacker News, for what that’s worth.)

From Hodinkee, a story about a Rolex watch. The serial number dates it to 1947.

But there’s more to the story than it being an old watch. It spent 52 years buried in an unmarked grave…because it belonged to a CIA pilot that was killed in action.

The method for recovering the agent in question was not only difficult, but it was also dangerous. This was one of the first implementations of the so-called “All American Pick Up.” It was a technique that Downey and Fecteau had only recently trained for, and this was their first time trying it in the field. The agent on the ground would retrieve some dropped equipment: a harness, a pair of poles, and a length of line. He would then set up the poles, string the line between them, and attach the harness. The C-47 would then come in low and slow, trailing a grappling hook. The hook would snag the line, lifting the harnessed operative off the ground and into the air behind the airplane, where he’d be winched on board.

(Previously.)

Posted in Geek, History, Planes | 4 Comments »

Angelo J. Liteky.

Monday, May 30th, 2022

Those who have been following my entries for Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day may have figured out there’s a theme going on here.

I went back and forth on whether I wanted to include this entry or not. In the end, I felt like: a person who receives the Medal of Honor, no matter what they do with their life later on, deserves praise and credit for heroism.

I can’t find a lot of information about Mr. Liteky’s early life, his ordination, or his joining the military online. But he did join the Army and served as a chaplain (with the rank of captain) with the 199th Infantry Brigade of the 12th Infantry Regiment.

He was out with the troops on December 6, 1967 when they came under fire from what’s described as a “numerically superior enemy force”. From his Medal of Honor citation:

Chaplain Liteky distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving with Company A, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was participating in a search and destroy operation when Company A came under intense fire from a battalion size enemy force. Momentarily stunned from the immediate encounter that ensued, the men hugged the ground for cover. Observing 2 wounded men, Chaplain Liteky moved to within 15 meters of an enemy machine gun position to reach them, placing himself between the enemy and the wounded men. When there was a brief respite in the fighting, he managed to drag them to the relative safety of the landing zone. Inspired by his courageous actions, the company rallied and began placing a heavy volume of fire upon the enemy’s positions. In a magnificent display of courage and leadership, Chaplain Liteky began moving upright through the enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and evacuating the wounded. Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid. Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along. pausing for breath momentarily, he returned to the action and came upon a man entangled in the dense, thorny underbrush. Once more intense enemy fire was directed at him, but Chaplain Liteky stood his ground and calmly broke the vines and carried the man to the landing zone for evacuation. On several occasions when the landing zone was under small arms and rocket fire, Chaplain Liteky stood up in the face of hostile fire and personally directed the medivac helicopters into and out of the area. With the wounded safely evacuated, Chaplain Liteky returned to the perimeter, constantly encouraging and inspiring the men. Upon the unit’s relief on the morning of 7 December 1967, it was discovered that despite painful wounds in the neck and foot, Chaplain Liteky had personally carried over 20 men to the landing zone for evacuation during the savage fighting. Through his indomitable inspiration and heroic actions, Chaplain Liteky saved the lives of a number of his comrades and enabled the company to repulse the enemy. Chaplain Liteky’s actions reflect great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.

At some point, he changed his name to Charles James Liteky. In 1975, he left the priesthood. In 1983, he married: his wife was a former nun.

He went on to become a peace activist (out of respect for his views, I am not using his military rank), and, on July 29, 1986, he renounced his Medal of Honor. According to his Wikipedia entry, he placed “it in an envelope addressed to then-President Ronald Reagan near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.” He is the only recipient of the Medal of Honor who renounced the award. He went on to participate in protests against US intervention in Central America and the invasion of Iraq.

He died on January 20, 2017, at the age of 85.

There is a website devoted to Charles Liteky which discusses his life (and quotes from his Medal of Honor citation). Mr. Liteky also wrote a book, Renunciation: My Pilgrimage from Catholic Military Chaplain, Vietnam Hawk, and Medal of Honor Recipient to Civilian Warrior for Peace.

Posted in Heroism, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2022.

Tuesday, May 17th, 2022

Maggie Peterson, also known as Maggie Mancuso.

She doesn’t have that many credits in IMDB, but they are interesting. She appeared several times on “The Andy Griffith Show” (and in “Mayberry R.F.D.” as well as “Return to Mayberry”) and did guest shots on “Green Acres”, “The Odd Couple”, and several appearances on “The Bill Dana Show”.

And she was “Rose Ellen Wilkerson”, the long-suffering and slightly dim girlfriend of Don Knotts’s character in “The Love God?”, which both Lawrence and I have written about.

The print edition of “People”, though this does not seem to be official yet. Noted:

Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.

Katsumoto Saotome, Japanese writer. His major project was six volumes of stories from survivors of the Tokyo firebombing.

Mr. Saotome traced his efforts to document the Tokyo firebombing to his attendance at a lecture given by a well-known history professor in 1970. He recalled asking the professor why the attack air was never mentioned in the same textbooks that described the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The professor told him that there was little documented evidence about the experiences of those who had lived through the firebombing.
Mr. Saotome decided he would seek out fellow survivors and ask them to share their stories of that terrible night. “I was not a popular writer,” he recalled, “so I had a lot of spare time.”

He also established, using private funds, a memorial museum.

He reserved some of his most potent anger for the Japanese government, which he said should have taken more responsibility for starting the war and compensated survivors of the firebombing. A group of them sued the government in 2007, but Japan’s Supreme Court rejected their claim.
Mr. Saotome said he never forgave his government for awarding Curtis LeMay, the United States Air Force general who had been the architect of the Tokyo air raid, its highest decoration for a foreigner, for helping to establish Japan’s modern air force after the war.

Jürgen Blin, boxer. He was best known for fighting Ali in 1971 (after Ali’s loss to Joe Frazier). Mr. Blin was knocked out in the seventh round.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 14, 2022.

Saturday, May 14th, 2022

Sergeant Major John Canley (USMC – ret.)

Sergeant Major Canley received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Battle of Hue City. His citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy while serving as Company Gunnery Sergeant, Company A, First Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division from 31 January to 6 February 1968, in the Republic of Vietnam. Company A fought off multiple vicious attacks as it rapidly moved along the highway toward Hue City to relieve friendly forces that were surrounded by enemy forces. Despite being wounded in these engagements, Gunnery Sergeant Canley repeatedly rushed across fire-swept terrain to carry his wounded Marines to safety. After his commanding officer was severely wounded, Gunnery Sergeant Canley took command and led the company into Hue City. At Hue City, caught in deadly crossfire from enemy machine gun positions, he set up a base of fire and maneuvered with a platoon in a flanking attack that eliminated several enemy positions. Retaining command of the company for three days, he led attacks against multiple enemy fortified positions while routinely braving enemy fire to carry wounded Marines to safety. On 4 February, he led a group of Marines into an enemy-occupied building in Hue City. He moved into the open to draw fire, located the enemy, eliminated the threat, and expanded the company’s hold on the building room by room. Gunnery Sergeant Canley then gained position above the enemy strongpoint and dropped in a large satchel charge that forced the enemy to withdraw. On 6 February, during a fierce firefight at a hospital compound, Gunnery Sergeant Canley twice scaled a wall in full view of the enemy to carry wounded Marines to safety. By his undaunted courage, selfless sacrifice, and unwavering devotion to duty, Gunnery Sergeant Canley reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

…

One common thread woven throughout Canley’s award citation, and in anecdotes shared by those who fought alongside him, was that he was, above all else, a Marine who put other Marines before himself, regardless of the risk.

Sergeant Major Canley originally received the Navy Cross, but that was upgraded in 2018 to the Medal of Honor.

Robert C. McFarlane, former national security advisor for Ronald Reagan.

Mr. McFarlane pleaded guilty in 1988 to charges of withholding information from Congress in its investigation of the affair, in which the Reagan administration sold arms covertly to Iran beginning in 1985 in exchange for the freedom of Western hostages in Lebanon. Profits from the arms sales were then secretly funneled to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, who were trying to overthrow the country’s Marxist regime, known as the Sandinistas.

…

And its fallout left Mr. McFarlane so ridden with guilt that he attempted suicide in his home in February 1987. While his wife, Jonda, a high school English teacher, was upstairs grading papers, he took an overdose of Valium and got into bed alongside her. When he couldn’t be roused in the morning, he was taken to a hospital and revived. He subsequently underwent many weeks of psychiatric therapy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
It was a stunning act in official Washington. Many considered it an unconcealed howl of pain by someone from whom they would have least expected it — one of the capital’s most self-contained of public and powerful men.
Killing himself, Mr. McFarlane believed at the time, was “the honorable thing to do,” he said in an interview for this obituary in January 2016 at his home in the Watergate complex in Washington.
“I so let down the country,” he said.
He earlier had tried to explain his actions by citing the ancient Japanese tradition of the honorable suicide. But he came to realize, he said in the interview, that those ways had no resonance in modern American culture and that most people could not understand such behavior.

Henry Scott Stokes, journalist and biographer of Yukio Mishima.

NYT obit for Randy Weaver.

Val Broeksmit. No, you haven’t heard of him, but this is one of the oddest obits I’ve read recently.

Mr. Broeksmit was an “itinerant musician”. His stepfather worked for Deutsche Bank, but committed suicide. After his stepfather’s death, Mr. Broeksmit somehow obtained his passwords and supposedly used them to download a bunch of “whistleblower” documents revealing misconduct by Deutsche Bank.

For nearly five years, the younger Mr. Broeksmit teased the F.B.I., congressional investigators and journalists into a hunt for the incriminating needles in a haystack of documents claiming to implicate Deutsche Bank in a run of malfeasance: laundering Russian rubles through stock transactions, manipulating interest rates at which banks lend to each other, and supposedly funneling money from Russian banks to lend to the Trump Organization.

…

Just how much the confidential bank documents Mr. Broeksmit acquired helped investigators is debatable.

He also somehow got involved in the Sony hack. Mr. Broeksmit was 46.

Custodial employees reporting for work shortly before 7 a.m. on Monday, April 25, found his body in the courtyard of Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in northeast Los Angeles. The police said they found no sign of trauma or foul play. The medical examiner said the cause remained undetermined.

Posted in Heroism, History, Leadership, Obits | 1 Comment »

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