Disney and the War

Amy over at Old Fashioned Girl, is doing a neat Disney Tag, and she tagged me. Unfortunately, I have three tags already, which are spinning their wheels, waiting for me to get a fire lit under me and do them, and I am already feeling a trifle guilty about them, so I am not actually going to do the Disney Tag, as she set it up. However, it seems rather rotten to let it go by completely unnoticed, so I am going to share a bit of trivia instead.

During WWII, Walt Disney and Company designed military insignia for Allied Troops. They designed over 1200 different insignia, which would end up featuring nearly every one of their cartoon characters. The designs were immensely popular,and were often adapted for 'nose art' on planes and military vehicles. Two of their best known designs were for the Flying Tigers - the American Volunteer Group who fought with the Chinese against Japan: 

picture from usoonpatrol.org

Eagle Squadron - a group of American pilots who flew with the RAF:

picture from usmilitaryforum.com

The designs were quite diverse and humourous. They could be quite clever and sometimes rather whimsical:

Picture from Air Force Historical Research Agency

Picture from NOAA

Picture from Pin Pics

Donald Duck was a particular favourite with the troops:

Picture from USNI News

Picture from The Comic Journal

Picture from @ issue

There is apparently a whole book on the subject, Disney Dons Dogtags, which is, unfortunately, out of print, and rather dear to own. There are a couple websites which tell a bit more about it here and here; and this blog has lots of pictures, so you should look at it too. 

Happy Birthday!

Today would have been the 80th birthday of Richard Dawson. Apparently, he is best known for hosting the original Family Feud show. However, I know him as Corporal Peter Newkirk, who just might very well be my favourite character from Hogan's Heroes. I have no idea what Newkirk did for a living before joining the RAF and landing himself in a prison camp, but I suspect it was rather shady, whatever it was. Newkirk is the go-to guy for safe-cracking, pick-pocketing, conning and forging. He does card tricks, and when the situation demands it, the occasional imitation

Hogan's Heroes is one of my very favourite TV shows. Yes, it is very corny, it has canned laughter, it is wildly implausible. For all that, it had a great cast of characters, all very distinct, who played well off each other. It is genuinely funny, and the comedic timing is brilliant. There is a surprising amount of genuine history in it, and while the main conceit of the show - that POWs were actively working against the Germans - is played for laughs, there is a real-life basis for it. (The Great Escape, anyone?)And it occasionally sobers up enough to remind us that there is a war going on, and that there really are very high stakes invovled here. Furthermore, though it ran for six seasons, and there are a few weak episodes here and there, it is one of the few TV shows that never jumped the shark. It is, in my humble opinion, unjustly underrated.

For your entertainment I present the following clip, in which the boys trick the prison commandant into thinking that the Germans are losing the war: (That's Newkirk there, the fellow pretending to be Hitler.)

D-Day

Today is the anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in history - to whit, the D-Day invasions of Normandy during WWII. Here are some facts about the assault you might not have know:

 - Although months of rigorous planning proceeded the invasion, the actual date of June 6th was selected at the last minute.Logistically, the action needed to take place at the beginning of June, the 5th being the preferred date. However, there were a number of variables that had to be taken into account during the planning. The bombers required a full moon, and a (cloud) ceiling of at least 5000 feet. The sea could not be too rough, otherwise the heavy transport boats would not be able to make the crossing. If the winds exceeded 20 mph, the paratroopers would be unable to land safely. June came in with one of the worst summer storms in twenty years. The decision to attack on June 6th was due to the weather report given by James Martin Scagg, predicting a 24 hour period or relatively decent weather in the midst of the storm.  You can read about it here and here.

 - The Scottish Highlands were used for a lot of training during WWII, including practice for the Normandy invasion. The British Commandos took intensive training courses there.

 - The actor, Richard Todd took part in the invasion. Nearly twenty years later, he appeared in the movie, The Longest Day in the role of Major John Howard, who was his commanding officer. Another actor, in a bit role, plays Richard Todd himself.

 - Tiny submarines, manned by Commandos, were sent to Normandy in advance of the invasion to conduct reconnaissance, and to lead the landing craft safely to the beach. They hid within range of the German guns for five days before the assault took place.

 - Bagpipes were used in the attack. Piper Bill Millin, under orders from his commanding officer, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, piped his men off the boats and up to the beach, while enduring heavy fire from the Germans. You can read his account of the attack here.

Billy Millin

Well, That's Interesting!

One of the most persistent myths about WWII, is that the Catholic Church, somehow, aided and abetted the Nazis. Poor Pope Pius XII, who saved thousands of Jews during the War, is branded as "Hitler's Pope". Contemporary histories tend to accuse the Church of sitting idly by whilst millions of souls went to their deaths. Some particularly bitter folk even suggest that Hitler was disproportionately influenced by his Catholic upbringing, and that his anti-Semitism is a result of a thousand year old Catholic tradition of the same - conveniently overlooking the fact that he has ceased the practice of his Faith long before he reached adulthood. The ironic thing, is that the Jews of that period were unanimous in their praise of the Church's efforts on behalf of their people. Indeed, Albert Einstein goes so far as to say, "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth." High praise indeed, but current opinion still runs vigourously against her. It is, therefore, eminently satisfying to come across something like this, to back you up in your defence of the Catholics. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words:

June 5, 1944

Today is the anniversary of the Liberation of Rome by the Allied Troops. Here is a video of Pope Pius XII addressing the troops:

Incidentally, Rome during the War was an exciting place. All sorts of things were going on under the noses of the Germans. The tomb of St. Peter was discovered, for example. It had to be kept a secret, since the Nazis had a very odd fascination for religious artifacts (the Holy Grail, the spear of St. Longinus, etc) so the Vatican Gardens were completely remodeled, so that the volume of dirt being dug out from underneath St. Peter's Basilica could be disposed of without comment. Pope Pius XII and Monsignor O'Flaherty were hiding Jews everywhere: in the Vatican, in the Catacombs, with various families throughout the city. British soldier, Sam Derry, with the help of the good Monsignor, had created the Rome Escape Line which hid Allied soldiers who had been cut off from the Allied troops during the Italian Campaign, and helped them to return to their units. Someday, I would like to write a neat little history book that focused just on Rome during the war. It would make from some fascinating reading!

Killing Two Birds With One Stone

A while back I mentioned that I intended to start posting some of my own poetry, and possibly, some of my doodles to the blog. I have finally managed to do both: to whit, a poem I worked on last week, and have written up in brown ink with an illustration I made to go along with it:

Before Battle

Laird, th’ warld is unco fair
Sae deep th’ blue, uncloody sky.
Was it on sic a day as this
Ye went oot, sodger-like tae die?

“Piper, mak ready – then by yer mark!”
Up swing th’ pipes tae ma shoudder.
Did birds sing as Ye shoudderit Yer Cross
An’ marchit tae a captain’s order?

Yer Cross I sign upon masel
O! Gie the grace o’ bravery!
Bless th’ war-pipes tae th’ ficht.
(Did poppies bloom on Calvary?)

Bless ma fingers tae the pipin’.
Gie a stout heirt an’ sturdy breath
Tae follaw an’ dae manfully,
Though I pipe in the shadaws o’ death

“Piper, tak them ower th’ top!”
I gae oot wi’ pipes a-blaw.
Was e’re Eard sae heirt-brackin’ sweet,
Or music sae rantin’-braw?

A bit of back-history, for those who are wondering: during WWI, Scottish regiments were frequently led over the top by their pipers, whose tunes (now known collectively as tunes of glory) were particular to the regiment, and to Scottish - as opposed to British -patriotism. Since there is a tradition of prayerful before-action poems, I thought it would be interesting to write one from the viewpoint of a piper, hence the borrowing of Scots words and spellings.

The picture, like most of my art, is not much more than a doodle. I seem to be completely unable to create a picture of any great size. This one is about the size of a postcard, and the idea in the back of my mind was to make something along the lines of the bits of art soldiers of the two world wars, seemed to produce in remarkable quantities. Incidentally, although I have played around with watercolours for years, this is the first time I have actually used a decent sheet of watercolour paper for the exercise… It was absolutely delightful, and made painting so much easier. I do believe that I have permanently spoiled with it.

Also Today...

... is the 67th anniversary of the Great Escape. So after you finish reading a bit of Tolkien, go ahead and watch The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen. Better yet, you might consider reading "The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III" by Tim Carroll.

Jimmy James

Lieutenant Bertram 'Jimmy' James is one of my heroes. He was in the RAF during WWII, and was one of the fellows who took part in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, a supposedly inescapable POW camp in Poland. The soldiers who were sent there were all dedicated escapers. I don't think they could help themselves, and they caused no end of bother to the Germans responsible for guarding them. I first made Jimmy James's acquaintance last year, when I was reading a book about the Great Escape, written by Tim Carroll. Jimmy James does not come into it a great deal, but when he did, he always made an impression. Take, for example, his account of the escape:

"When I got to the exit shaft, I climbed up the ladder and the first thing I saw were the stars. I thought of the RAF motto, 'per ardua ad astra' (through adversity to the stars.) It was hard to imagine a more appropriate context for the motto at that time. There had been much toil for all concerned, I thought, as I climbed the ladder to the stars."

I liked the imagery of a prisoner, climbing a ladder to the stars, and the understated poetry of that paragraph gave me a decided fondness for the man. Unfortunately, Jimmy James was not one of the three lucky men who made good the escape. He was re-captured, but instead of being shot, as the majority of the escapers were, or being sent back to a POW camp, he was shipped to Sachsenhausen, a notorious concentration camp, where, in his own words he "began to contemplate what might remain of my life, and what might lie in the life hereafter, with the sanguine hope that my latter period on earth might shorten my stay in Purgatory." He might have resigned himself to his fate, with laudable Catholic detachment, but he was still a dedicated escaper. He, and another remarkable man, Jack Churchill, (who will no doubt have a post of his own sometime) managed to tunnel out of Sachsenhausen, and remained at large for a couple weeks before being caught again. I am happy to say, however, that he survived the war, living to a ripe old age.

After I finished "The Great Escape", I wanted to find out more about Jimmy James, and was pleased to find out that he had written a book about his experiences. "Moonless Night" is a very good book, indeed, which I would recommend highly. It is well written, and, though the poor man went through some terrible experiences, he is very restrained about them, showing a truly remarkable lack of bitterness. There are bits of genuine humour in it, and Jimmy James's inherent decency shines through in every page. I came away from it feeling very encouraged, and determined to be a better person myself. The only complaint I have about it, is an odd one for a book that is primarily biographical: there is not enough Jimmy James in it! I suppose that is a testimony to his humility.

Book Review

Not too long ago, I came across several quotes by the Catholic British author, Caryll Houselander. I had never heard of her before that, even though my taste in literature runs very much in that direction. The quotes made a big impression on me, and one in particular stuck firmly with me: “Reverence must be paid even to those sinners whose souls seem to be dead, because it is Christ, who is the life of the soul, who is dead in them; they are His tombs, and Christ in the tomb is potentially the risen Christ.” I work in a public library, and, during any given day, will come in contact with a variety of difficult, or downright nasty people, and I have been noticing lately, that I find it difficult to be truly charitable to people. Oh, I am nice enough, of course, and I am polite and helpful. It is not really charity, though. I am simply doing my job. I generally have quite a contemptuous view of mankind in general. However that particular quote inspired me, and since then, I have been trying hard to see Christ (or at least, the potentially risen Christ) in the people whom I work with each day.

It was on the weight, primarily, of that one quote, that I decided to read some more by Caryll Houselander. I had looked her up upon reading those quotes, and was not quite sure what to think of her. She was almost always described as a 'mystic' and that particular word generally sends off warning signals for me, since these days, it is almost always used in context with new-agey spirituality. The little bits and pieces of her writing that I came across, however, seemed very orthodox, so I decided to try one of her books. I elected for one called, "This War is the Passion" which was written in London, during WWII.

I am glad I did, for it is a very good book indeed. Caryll uses the War as a sort of backdrop to the spiritual life, and though this occasionally makes the book feel a bit dated, in general, it works brilliantly as a way of casting Christian spirituality into the realm of daily life. She begins by pointing out that suffering is actually a blessing in disguise. Suffering (at least to some degree) is unavoidable, but to Christians, and particularly to Catholics, who are trying to live a truly spiritual life, suffering is not wasted. We are all bound together by the life of Christ within us, so that the sufferings of each one of us is of merit, not only to ourselves, but to the whole of the Church - and by extension, the World. She points out that all men are made in the image and likeness of God, and reminds us of Christ's words, that whatever we do to the least of our fellow men, we do to Him... and she does it in such a way that you realise, all at once that the ordinary, daily encounters with other people (which you will have to make anyway) are actually opportunities to put that teaching into practice. She has an uncanny ability to take a concept that we are all familiar with - that Christ was true Man as well as true God, for example - and by the freshness of her writing, suddenly make it suddenly seem something staggeringly new and fantastic. She does not sugar-coat anything. She is able to make us see the ineffable sweetness of God's love for us, and the value He places on our love for Him - all out of proportion to its worth. But she also makes it very clear that so great a love will mean great sacrifices - on both parts.

"This War is the Passion" is not a very long, and could be read in a single evening. It is very full of ideas, though, and is well worth taking the time to read slowly, and, indeed, to re-read. Caryll's writing is clear and deceptively simple. She goes naturally from point to point, building each chapter off the one proceeding. She has a knack for being able to use the perfect word, or phrase, or metaphor, but, like all good writers, knows to use this talent sparingly, and so, to good effect. It is a practical book, but full of poetry. It is inspirational, but not sweet, or sentimental, and for all the focus on suffering and sacrifice, it is ultimately a tremendously encouraging book. I recommend it highly.

A Little Bit of Trivia

I have been reading a lot of WWII history lately, or rather, to be very specific, I have been reading a good deal of history that takes place upon the peripheral of the War Proper. This means I am acquiring a basic knowledge of such odd things as how magician aided the war effort by concocting elaborates ruses: Jasper Maskelyne hiding the Suez Canal with mirrors and lights, for example. Or how much lead a fighter pilot needs to allow in order to hit another plane - at least 80 feet, in case anyone is interested. Or how gun-running operations to Norway were carried out by fishing boats, based in Orkney. Or how British and American spies smuggled various escape aids into German prison camps by hiding them in Monopoly games, and decks of cards, and fountain pens. It is the POWs especially that got me started on WWII.

POWs were a remarkably handy lot. They could make just about anything from next to nothing, whether it be skeleton keys or illegal (and very nasty-sounding) moonshine. A lot of them had a perfect mania for escaping, and a good deal of that inventiveness went into making things that would be useful in an escape. Civilian clothing would be create out of blankets, or there were professional little compasses of magnetised bits of scrap metal, housed in cases of melted-down records. Practically every camp had a hidden radio, and that radio was generally cobbled together from whatever was at hand, with a few parts scrounged off the Germans, if necessary. Most were fairly simple sets, and apparently, during the war, everybody knew how to make them, because none of the books, or websites I have read so far, contained any information about how, exactly, one improvises a radio. One is merely informed, quite casually, that the radio was made and then considerable amount of time is given to the fascinating battle of the prisoners to keep it hidden from the Germans, who would tear whole barracks apart in an effort to find it.

I am one of those rather pathetic individuals for whom technology, even at its most rudimentary, is a great mystery. I cannot honestly see myself being able to create a radio of any sort, even a very basic one, without the help of someone who has done it before. Still, whether it was practical for me or not, I did a bit of poking around for instructions, and found a few sites that explained the matter - very interesting, and much too complicated for me. I nodded, and thought, "quite" and didn't bother about it any more. Then, when I was looking for something else entirely, I found this website, with instructions for various improvised radios. It is still sounds a little too complicated, but I was delighted by the WWII tie-in and the POW tie-in. And the rest of the site is very cool too, with instructions for everything from invisible inks, to making telescopes, all with things that you likely have on hand.

So there, now you know!

National Donut Day

... Was on Friday. I had never heard of it before I stumbled across a tiny little article about it on Friday - the first Friday of June, to be exact, on which day it is celebrated each year, and on which day, if you are lucky enough to live near a Dunkin Donuts, or a Krispy Kreme, you can go in and get a free donut. Normally, the fact that there even was such a thing as National Donut Day would merely cause me to cock my head a bit, and say, "Well, did you ever?" and promptly forget about it. However, contrary to what the name might suggest, it is not a day of free advertising for the donut business. There is actually a bit of history associated with it, and history always peaks my interest.

Oddly enough, National Donut Day has its origins during WWI. Young women from the Salvation Army, who were wanting to do something for the soldiers in France, came up withe brilliant idea of serving freshly made donuts and coffee to the men at the front. They did other thing too: making hot meals, doing mending, providing entertainment, etc, but it was primarily for the donuts that they are remembered. (There is a nice little site with pictures here that is worth a glance at.) Odder still, giving out donuts became something of a war tradition. During WWII, the Red Cross and the USO got involved too, and subsequent wars through Vietnam had their 'donut dollies'.

The idea of girls handing out donuts to war-weary soldiers is just unlikely enough to capture my fancy. Of course, the work they were doing was highly commendable. They were performing acts of charity (giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, comforting the sorrowful) and in extreme conditions too. Still, it would be rather hard to say with a straight face, that you helped out with the war effort by cooking donuts. It sounds rather like you spent all your time helping out bake sales.

Joyce Kilmer

Memorial Day

"Dulce et decorum est"

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.
The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.
Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath the sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.
In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.

At the time of his death in France during WWI, Joyce Kilmer was one of America's up and coming young talents. He wasn't exactly a household name, but his poems were well known, and well loved. Since then, his reputation has been largely overshadowed by the rest of the war poets, and he is largely - and I think, unjustly - neglected in modern collection of poetry, especially war poetry. If he is remembered at all, it is generally for his poem, Trees, which is rather unfortunate.

"Trees" is a very nice little poem. It has some lovely rhyming sequences, evocative imagery, and the typical Kilmer twist at the end, that praises God in creation, and expresses the poet's own humility. For all that, is not a very remarkable work, nor it is particularly expressive of the type of man Joyce Kilmer was. He was not a sentimentalist, except in the modern misunderstanding of the word, which confuses sentiment with idealism. He was a true poet, with a healthy touch of genuine Romanticism. He saw beauty everywhere he looked, and mystery and adventure. He expected life to be a challenge, and he met difficulties head-on, and with characteristic gusto. If his poems, particularly is earliest ones, are full of a child-like wonder and simplicity, it is not because he had not face life in all its grim reality, but because he could see beyond that reality in to the realm of Absolutes and Eternity.

Joyce Kilmer was one of those rare individuals who are truly good, but make goodness seem, not only intensely attractive, but also as the only way for a man of any worth to be. He lived enthusiastically. He loved words. He was employed to work on the Funk and Wagnalls dictionary, where his job "was to define ordinary words assigned to him at five cents for each word defined. This was a job at which one would ordinarily earn ten to twelve dollars a week, but Kilmer attacked the task with such vigor and speed that it was soon thought wisest to put him on a regular salary" He loved food, and used to claim that eating a hearty meal was compensation for lack of sleep. He seems to have been utterly imperturbable. Once, when he was in a hurry, he was knocked down by a train, and dragged for a little distance. He survived with only a few cracked ribs to show for it, and seemed to regard the whole thing as a rather comic experience, that would teach him to be more careful in the future. He was much in demand as a public speaker, but seldom prepared notes for his speeches. Sometimes, he would only decide on the topic of his speech over lunch, half an hour before he was scheduled to appear. For all that, he was a remarkably good public speaker, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Perhaps the single greatest moment in his life was when he and his wife, Aline, were received into the Catholic Church. Their daughter, Rose, had been stricken with infantile paralysis shortly after her birth, and in their distress, they turned to God. In a letter to his good friend, Fr. James Daly, he wrote, "I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental - in fact I wanted Faith.... When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet know beautiful paths." From that time on, Kilmer lived the Faith to the fullest. He took the Catholicism as naturally as breathing. He developed great devotion to the saints: St. Nicholas, on whose feast day he was born, the Irish saints, Patrick and Bridgit, no doubt because of his affinity will all things Irish, the warrior saint, Michael, and Joan of Arc, because his spiritual out look was very much that of a soldier. His over-riding desire was to live in such a way as to be worthy of that gift of Faith, that he had prayed so hard for, and to give glory to God in the best way he knew: by his writing.

He was a prolific writer, regularly turning out criticism, plays, essays, and short stories. His wartime story Holy Ireland is one of the finest things he ever wrote. But it is for his poems that he is best remembered. His early poems were very pleasant reading, it not particularly earth shattering. They all show, however, Kilmer's distinctive ability to find inspiration in almost everything, from a commuter train to an abandoned house. His best poems were written after his conversion, and the best of all were the ones he wrote as a soldier in France

He volunteered for service as soon as the United States declared war. He liked to boast that he was "half Irish" so it was the predominantly Irish "Fighting 69th" that he joined. He rose to the rank of Sargent, and could have got a commission, but refused to, because he would rather have been a Sargent of the 69th than an officer in any other regiment. He wrote to Aline that he intended to write a book about the experience, which he decided to call, "Here and There With the Fighting Sixty-Ninth". He had great ambitions for the book, declaring that it would be "a most charming book... the sort of book I'd greatly like to read.... no glib tale, no newspaper man's work - but with God's help, a work of art." He never did get to write that book, but he wrote several extremely fine poems, for which he ought to have been remembered: The Rouge Bouquet, The Peacemaker, and The Prayer of a Soldier in France. They are the work of an accomplished poet, as well as a deeply spiritually patriot.

Joyce Kilmer was killed in action on July 30, 1918, by a sniper's bullet, while on a reconnaissance mission in No Man's Land. He is buried in France, and was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Republic.

Peace to each manly soul that sleepeth;
Rest to each faithful eye that weepeth..

.~Thomas Moore

Requiem æternam dona eis, DomineRequiem æternam dona eis, Domine

Happy Memorial Day to all of you.

Soldier's Rosary

At the beginning of "The Lord of the Rings" Tolkien mentions that hobbits' homes tend to get cluttered up with mathoms - a lovely word he took from the Old English, meaning something precious, a treasure. This tendency of the hobbits is one of a goodly number of things about them that reminds me very much of myself. I am much given to the acquiring and collecting of things. Some of my things are very ordinary things. Books, of course. I do not have a bedroom so much as a library in disguise; music as well, and a shocking amount of bric-a-brack acquired, hobbit-like over the years, from friends and family, and of which I am very fond. Some of my things might seem rather odd at first glance: cap badges, for example, or metal soldiers. But I have everything neatly arranged so that I mostly manage to avoid clutter, while still being able to enjoy my possessions.

My most recently acquired mathom is this. It is a soldier's rosary from WWII.

I came across across a picture of one on the Internet about a month or so ago, when I was looking for something else entirely, and was terribly intrigued by it. So I did a bit of research, and discovered that it is hard to find out very much about them at all. They were made during the First and Second World Wars, and are generally referred to as 'standard issue'. They are made of brass pull chain, and while the crucifixes can vary considerably, the overwhelming majority of them have identical center medals, stamped with an image of the Sorrowful Mother on the front, and Our Lord carrying His cross on the back. (Mine has that medal, though you can't really see it in the picture.) Sometimes, they would have been plated in silver, but most were plain, and looked just like this one. I decided that I would dearly like to have one for my very own.

Much to my surprise, I discovered several of them on ebay. To my further surprise, and breathless delight, I actually managed to place a winning bid on one, within the budget I prudently set for myself. It came in the mail a few days later, and I have been saying my daily prayers on it ever since.