Catherine Seipp echoes my Veterans' Day sentiments on Ernie Pyle here. She says:
Even when old books do get reissued, there can be something ineffably satifsying about reading them in their original form. Legendary World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle's Brave Men and Here Is Your War finally became available in paperback again a few years ago, but I prefer my old hardback edition of Brave Men, still as moving and immediate as I imagine the original owner, one Winifred Ellsini (her name is inscribed in my copy) found it when she got it for Christmas, 1944.
A bonus is John Steinbeck's hauntingly prophetic description of Pyle — who was killed by a Japanese gunner near Okinawa — on the torn dustjacket: "His dispatches sound as artless as a letter, but other professionals are not deceived. They know that Ernie Pyle is a great reporter... In his unique way, he is almost sure to be a sort of national conscience. If Ernie Pyle should die tomorrow, as well he may, it would still be a long time before Americans forgot Ernie Pyle's war."
I think Pyle deserves more attention than he gets these days. I've never read any "embedded" report from Iraq that could compare to Pyle's — but then he really was up front for years, often digging his own foxholes.
You can find his books at Amazon.com, but it is more fun to pull out a dusty original at your local antique store. My copy of Here is Your War is inscriped Chestina Gates May '44. I paid five dollars for it, and it came with a welcome suprise. Ms. Gates had left original clippings in it, where they had stayed for fifty years. "Enemy Bullet Fells Writer on Ie Island" is pinned together with a publicity photo of him and one of him talking to the GIs. After the war, Ms. Gates added two stories "Pyle Home Preserved" and "Purple Heart, dedication of center in New York will honor Ernie Pyle". Unfortunately, the Pyle home was recently destroyed. I am currently preparing another snippet from his books for your enjoyment (actually, I am not sure that anyone enjoyed the Veterans' Day selection; and my student aide is working on the snippet--a snippet that I will be using for my American Lit. class).
Peace
29 November 2005
28 November 2005
Monday Miscellany: Special Thanksgiving Review Edition
It was an interesting Thanksgiving break. I had terrible allergies all day Wednesday. I brought out the medicine that usually puts me on another astral plane (sneeze-free, but astral). The medicine was of marginal use. I would have about one good hour out of four. Thursday I was well, and we enjoyed two fine Thanksgiving meals. Friday-Sunday I was brought low by some kind of intestinal disorder. I don't know if was the two meals, the shock of going back to real Coke, the popcorn during an early morning Super-Duper Family Movie Fun Morning (see below), or a bug. I am almost better today.
In the past, our school has had a sixteen-day Christmas break. This year it is twelve. I would gripe about it, but I realize that the normal working world is lucky to get off two or three extra days off at this time of year. Few would sympathize with my loss. I am humbled and happy to get my twelve-day break (seven week days and four weekend days).
On Black Friday my wife and my mom went on their annual all-day shopping mission. I was left with painful heartburn and two over tired children (see above). I decided to give the kids the full Jedi experience.
Months ago, we had instituted a new family tradition (Super-Duper Family Movie Fun Night). We pop corn, turn out the lights, get out the blankets and pillows, and try to watch a movie that we have never seen before.
One of the movies was Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Both of the children fell asleep about forty minutes into it. We never finished it. Since then my boy has become enamored of Yoda (I think he saw Star Wars II at his cousins' house). Since they were so exhausted from Thanksgiving, I decided that we should watch Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back on Black Friday. We started at about 7:30am. We popped corn and enjoyed the film. My son was enthralled. My daughter (two years old) was interested for about forty minutes. After lunch we watched Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi.
My son's observations/review:
In the past, our school has had a sixteen-day Christmas break. This year it is twelve. I would gripe about it, but I realize that the normal working world is lucky to get off two or three extra days off at this time of year. Few would sympathize with my loss. I am humbled and happy to get my twelve-day break (seven week days and four weekend days).
On Black Friday my wife and my mom went on their annual all-day shopping mission. I was left with painful heartburn and two over tired children (see above). I decided to give the kids the full Jedi experience.
Months ago, we had instituted a new family tradition (Super-Duper Family Movie Fun Night). We pop corn, turn out the lights, get out the blankets and pillows, and try to watch a movie that we have never seen before.
One of the movies was Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Both of the children fell asleep about forty minutes into it. We never finished it. Since then my boy has become enamored of Yoda (I think he saw Star Wars II at his cousins' house). Since they were so exhausted from Thanksgiving, I decided that we should watch Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back on Black Friday. We started at about 7:30am. We popped corn and enjoyed the film. My son was enthralled. My daughter (two years old) was interested for about forty minutes. After lunch we watched Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi.
My son's observations/review:
- He quickly caught on to the soundtrack. "This is the bad guy music?" He was humming it last night. I am of the firm belief that the soundtrack elavated those movies from hokum to epic.
- At the revelation that Darth is Luke's father, the boy said nothing but his eyes glazed over as his face grew intense. I thought he was going to cry. I remember that I wasn't convinced until the release of Return of the Jedi.
- During Return of Jedi, about Leia's outfit: "Where's her clothes?" He repeated this several times until she finally put some clothes on. He said it as though offended and deeply disappointed. I offered that it was like a swimsuit. "But there is no water to swim in." He'll appreciate it when he's older.
- As Yoda explains the Force to Luke and its presence all around us, generated by all living things, "Where's God?"
- He kept waiting for Yoda to pull out a light saber. I think he was sorely disappointed in Yoda.
- At the end of Jedi, "That was a great movie. Remember when we watched the other movie and we didn't finish it?" "Yes son, you and Evelyn fell asleep." "I didn't fall asleep, I was just laying down with my eyes open." I will save that movie for another day.
- He has been making light sabers, space ships, and blasters out of his Lego bricks ever since.
I am glad he is still a child, and I wonder at the mind of a child. Thankful I am.
Peace
21 November 2005
Monday Miscellany
My son's preferences (he will be five in January):
- Star Wars character: the green guy (Yoda)
- Color: green
- To be when he grows up: a T-Rex then a teacher (not in order of preference; his plan is to be a T-Rex for a while and then become a teacher)
- Video game: Spyro the Dragon
- Activity with daddy: fighting (either Star Wars or Spyro the Dragon)
- Super-hero: Spiderman
- Joke: Knock knock? Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Banana pants.
- Food: chocolate in nearly any form (that's my boy)
- Meat: he prefers no meat, but will eat chicken nuggets (which hardly count)
- Animal: dinosaurs (particularly T-Rexs which were, I am assured, green)
- Book: Richard Scarry's Busy Town
- TV Show: Any cartoon made before about 1975 (Tom and Jerry, Spiderman, Bugs, etc)
On the day that the new Georgia Aquarium has opened, news breaks that Atlanta has ranked seventh in a survey of most dangerous cities. I think this gives us the new Atlanta slogan: "Last in education. Top ten in crime. First in big tubs of fish."
I have given up on diet colas. The sweetener used in most of them seems to have some unpleasant side effects. Good-bye apartame, hello rapid weight gain. That being said, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper were the best in terms of taste. Each has so many other tastes that the apartame taste is well-cloaked. So why not give up all cokes? I'll get back to you on that one
As a treat last week, I showed my 9th grade students the fine cinematic feature "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." My guess is that about 25% of my students found it funny (which is more than I thought--it was actually a student who suggested it). One scene in particular involving a cat caught in a wax head got laughs from most of the class. Comedy has changed a bit over the years. Lou Costello was a brilliant physical actor. Boris Karloff played a fine Dr. Jekyll. Not only did they change a horror novel into a horror/comedy, but a romance was thrown in for good measure.
Peace
18 November 2005
Some Updates
I knew I shouldn't have done it. I have already recieved a hit from someone looking for "wife pictures". He or she came from Malvern, Penn using the Shared Medical Systems servers.
Last night I woke up in cold sweat wondering why someone at the US State Department was searching for "Powder Puff Girls". I suppose the Girls are a fitting symbol for their particular corner of the Federal government.
And yes, I might be re-posting the words "wife pictures" and "Powder Puff Girls" to increase my hitcount. I am stuck at "999".
I haven't heard anything back from Nigeria in a while. I think that is normal. It probably takes a lot of time to process the paperwork to transfer $9.5 million to the United States.
Last night I woke up in cold sweat wondering why someone at the US State Department was searching for "Powder Puff Girls". I suppose the Girls are a fitting symbol for their particular corner of the Federal government.
And yes, I might be re-posting the words "wife pictures" and "Powder Puff Girls" to increase my hitcount. I am stuck at "999".
I haven't heard anything back from Nigeria in a while. I think that is normal. It probably takes a lot of time to process the paperwork to transfer $9.5 million to the United States.
16 November 2005
The Google Bot Cometh
In the early, heady days of Ohoopee Online, the management was concerned with customizing the website as much as possible. A little bit of code was played with here and there. This was just enough modification to realize that a little bit of code should not be played with anywhere by anyone at Ohoopee until further training is acquired.
One of the few successful modifications was the insertion of a hit counter. I used an easy to use (read "free") one from the good people at statcounter. I wanted one not because I thought my blog would become an instant "hit", but because I love stats. Compilations of numbers fascinate me.
I haven't exactly had a lot of stats to look at; there has not been alot to compile. You can see the counter at the bottom of the page as it slowly counts up to 1,000. It provides me with a report of when people visited, where they come from, and what internet service provider they use. Don't worry, it gives me no personal information and is essentially anonymous. The most interesting statistic it gives me is information on search hits. A search hit occurs when a person searches on Google or Yahoo for something like "Incisive commentary on China" and then clicks on your website out of the list of thousands or tens of thousands that come up. That hasn't happened to me yet.
I have gotten the most search hits on searches for "Powder Puff Girls". One searcher came from the State Department in Washington D.C. They came because of my post entitled "Powder Puff Girls Fraud Alert." The second biggest number of search hits I have gotten have been from searches for the "Ohoopee River." This one makes me feel a little guilty. I have used the name of a river for my website and the only information I have about the river is a picture I stole from someone else's website and a sarcastic remark about how lovely it is. The next time I go down I-16, I will take some pictures with my new digital camera and write a full report. That should be sometime in the year 2017.
The "Google Bot" has come twice. The bot crawls through websites to assess, I guess, their content for suitability and rankability in search results. Apparently, the bot did not like what it found as a search for Ohoopee Online results in 554 links and none for this site. "Gay North Chicago" is there but not TOLN. Change the search to "Ohoopee Online" however, and I come up second of sixteen.
My wife's site gets the creepy searches. One search for "sleeping wife pictures" and another twisted one that I cannot remember because it is too disturbing to think about.
I have also gotten searches for "Doctrine of the Sin Nature", "Letter Star EE", "Other Names for Teacher", "Peter Sellers Being There Opening Music", and many others. I have had searchers from the Russian Federation, Thailand, Australia, Atlanta, and elsewhere come to my humble site. Sadly, I don't think anyone found what he or she was looking for.
Now that I have included the terms "Powder Puff Girls", "Gay", "Sin", and "Wife Pictures" in the same post, I fear my hit count may increase for all of the wrong reasons.
Peace
One of the few successful modifications was the insertion of a hit counter. I used an easy to use (read "free") one from the good people at statcounter. I wanted one not because I thought my blog would become an instant "hit", but because I love stats. Compilations of numbers fascinate me.
I haven't exactly had a lot of stats to look at; there has not been alot to compile. You can see the counter at the bottom of the page as it slowly counts up to 1,000. It provides me with a report of when people visited, where they come from, and what internet service provider they use. Don't worry, it gives me no personal information and is essentially anonymous. The most interesting statistic it gives me is information on search hits. A search hit occurs when a person searches on Google or Yahoo for something like "Incisive commentary on China" and then clicks on your website out of the list of thousands or tens of thousands that come up. That hasn't happened to me yet.
I have gotten the most search hits on searches for "Powder Puff Girls". One searcher came from the State Department in Washington D.C. They came because of my post entitled "Powder Puff Girls Fraud Alert." The second biggest number of search hits I have gotten have been from searches for the "Ohoopee River." This one makes me feel a little guilty. I have used the name of a river for my website and the only information I have about the river is a picture I stole from someone else's website and a sarcastic remark about how lovely it is. The next time I go down I-16, I will take some pictures with my new digital camera and write a full report. That should be sometime in the year 2017.
The "Google Bot" has come twice. The bot crawls through websites to assess, I guess, their content for suitability and rankability in search results. Apparently, the bot did not like what it found as a search for Ohoopee Online results in 554 links and none for this site. "Gay North Chicago" is there but not TOLN. Change the search to "Ohoopee Online" however, and I come up second of sixteen.
My wife's site gets the creepy searches. One search for "sleeping wife pictures" and another twisted one that I cannot remember because it is too disturbing to think about.
I have also gotten searches for "Doctrine of the Sin Nature", "Letter Star EE", "Other Names for Teacher", "Peter Sellers Being There Opening Music", and many others. I have had searchers from the Russian Federation, Thailand, Australia, Atlanta, and elsewhere come to my humble site. Sadly, I don't think anyone found what he or she was looking for.
Now that I have included the terms "Powder Puff Girls", "Gay", "Sin", and "Wife Pictures" in the same post, I fear my hit count may increase for all of the wrong reasons.
Peace
14 November 2005
Monday Miscellany: Monday Millionaire UPDATED
I have waited for this moment for ten years. I finally received notification that a distant relative of mine (James Whitehurst) working for an oil company in Nigeria has died and left $9.5 million in an account in Lagos. A lawyer named David Thomas has contacted me and assured me that it is a simple and legal procedure to transfer the money into my account: "All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through and I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law." I can't believe that he has been looking for me for so long. This is too good to be true!
I have to work fast because according to the e-mail I received, "The said Bank has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account confiscated within the next (60) thirty official working days". I am guessing the problem with the number of days relates to a translation problem. I have wired him my bank account information, and in a few days I will be looking pretty good you losers!!! That's right. I'm going to be a millionaire and will have no need for any of you jerks now. I have already burned my bridges at work and turned in my resignation! Let's just say that I have no chance of slaving away in Christian education ever again! You will hear my laughing all the way to the Nigerian bank!
No, I will not loan or give any of you money. Don't even think about asking for my help.
Jerks
UPDATE
Okay. The funds in my account are not enough to free up the Nigerian funds. David Thomas has assured me that only a few thousand dollars more stand between me and millions. I will be willing to share some of the windfall to anyone who wants to front me the money. I was just kidding about the "losers" and "jerks" thing. Let me know if you want to help out, and I will let you know where to send your financial information. E-mail David Thomas at nigerianbankscam@gullybullgreedeeamericans.com. I love you guys. Does anyone have an leads on jobs?
I have to work fast because according to the e-mail I received, "The said Bank has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account confiscated within the next (60) thirty official working days". I am guessing the problem with the number of days relates to a translation problem. I have wired him my bank account information, and in a few days I will be looking pretty good you losers!!! That's right. I'm going to be a millionaire and will have no need for any of you jerks now. I have already burned my bridges at work and turned in my resignation! Let's just say that I have no chance of slaving away in Christian education ever again! You will hear my laughing all the way to the Nigerian bank!
No, I will not loan or give any of you money. Don't even think about asking for my help.
Jerks
UPDATE
Okay. The funds in my account are not enough to free up the Nigerian funds. David Thomas has assured me that only a few thousand dollars more stand between me and millions. I will be willing to share some of the windfall to anyone who wants to front me the money. I was just kidding about the "losers" and "jerks" thing. Let me know if you want to help out, and I will let you know where to send your financial information. E-mail David Thomas at nigerianbankscam@gullybullgreedeeamericans.com. I love you guys. Does anyone have an leads on jobs?
11 November 2005
On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of the year 1918...
...the guns of World War I went silent. Today is Veterans' Day. As a history teacher this has always been one of the most important days of the school year, a day where I put aside the curriculum and talk about the reality of history. I am no longer a history teacher, and I struggle this morning with that fact. How can I fold this day into World Literature? Two of my classes are going to the library this morning for research, and three of them will be reviewing for a Tuesday test. How shall I stop and remember?
At the least I shall leave you with this selection from chapter 18 from Ernie Pyle's Here is Your War. The book is finally back in print. Buy it and laugh and cry and, most of all, remember. You can also go here to read some of his columns online. The chapter that follows is the last in that book and concerns the wrap up of the North African campaign, the first major campaign involving Americans in the European theater. The last two paragraphs are the most moving paragraphs of war writing that I have ever read, skip to them if you don't have time to read the entire post.
It is hard for you at home to realize what an immense, complicated, sprawling institution a theater of war actually is. As it appears to you in the newspapers, war is a clear-cut matter of landing so many men overseas, moving them from the port to the battlefield, advancing them against the enemy with guns firing, and they win or lose.
To look at war that way is like seeing a trailer of a movie, and saying you’ve seen the whole picture. I actually don’t know what percentage of our troops in Africa were in the battle lines, but I believe it safe to say that only comparatively few ever saw the enemy, ever shot at him, or were shot at by him. All the rest of those hundreds of thousands of men were churning the highways for two thousand miles behind the lines with their endless supply trucks, they were unloading the ships, cooking the meals, pounding the typewriters, fixing the roads, making the maps, repairing the engines, decoding the messages, training the reserves, pondering the plans.
...
What I have seen in North Africa has altered my own feelings in one respect. There were days when I say in my tent alone and gloomed with the desperate belief that it was actually possible for us to lose this war. I don’t feel that way any more. Despite our strikes and bickering and confusion back home, America is producing and no one can deny that. Even here at the far end of just one line trickle has grown into an impressive stream. We are producing at home and we are hardening overseas. Apparently it takes a county like America about two years to become wholly at war. We had to go through that transition period of letting loose of life as it was, and then live the new war life so long that it finally became the normal life to us. It was a form of growth, and we couldn’t press it. Only time can produce that change. We have survived that long passage of time, and if I am at all correct we have about changed our character and become a war nation. I can’t yet see when we shall win, or over what route geographically, or by which of the many means of warfare. But no longer do I have any doubts at all that we shall win.
The men over here have changed too. They are too close to themselves to sense the change too. They are too close to themselves to sense the change, perhaps. And I am too close to them to grasp it fully. But since I am older and a little apart, I have been able to notice it more.
For a year, everywhere I went, soldiers inevitably asked me two questions: “When do you think we’ll get to go home?” and “When will the war be over?” The home-going desire was once so dominant that I believe our soldiers over here would have voted-if the question had been out-to go home immediately, even if it meant peace on terms of something less than unconditional surrender by the enemy.
That isn’t true now. Sure, they all still want to go home. So do I. But there is something deeper than that, which didn’t exist six months ago. I can’t quite put it into words-it isn’t any theatrical proclamation that the enemy must be destroyed in the name of freedom; it’s just a vague but growing individual acceptance of the bitter fact that we must win the war or else, and that it can’t be worn by running excursion boats back and forth across the Atlantic carrying homesick vacationers.
A year is a long time to be away from home, especially if a person has never been away before, as was true the bulk of our troops. At first homesickness can almost kill a man. But time takes care of that. It isn’t normal to moon in the past forever. Home gradually grows less vivid; the separation from it less agonizing. There finally comes a day-not suddenly, but gradually. As a sunset-touched cloud changes in color-when a man is living almost wholly wherever he is. His life has caught up with his body, and his days become full way days, instead of American days simply transplanted to Africa.
...
Our men can’t make this change from normal civilians into warriors and remain the same people. Even if they were away from you this long under normal circumstances, the mere process of maturing would change them, and they would not come home just as you knew them. Add to that the abnormal world they have been plunged into, the new philosophies they have had to assume or perish inwardly, the horrors and delights and strange wonderful things they have experienced, and they are bound to be different people from those you sent away.
They are rougher than when you knew them. Killing is a rough business. Their basic language has changed from mere profanity to obscenity. More than anything else, they miss women. Their expressed longings, their conversation, their whole conduct show their need for female companionship, and the gentling effect of femininity upon a man is conspicuous here where it has been so long absent. Our men have less regard for property than you raised them to have. Money value means nothing to them, either personally or in the aggregate; they are fundamentally generous, with strangers and with each other. They give or throw away their own money, and it is natural that they are even less thoughtful of bulk property than of their own hard-earned possession. It is often necessary to abandon equipment they can’t take with them; the urgency of war prohibits normal caution in the handling of vehicles and supplies. One of the most striking things to me about war is the appalling waste that is necessary. At the front there just isn’t time to be economical. Also, in war areas where things are scarce and red tape still rears it delaying head, a man learns to get what he needs simply by “requisitioning.” It isn’t stealing, it’s the only way to acquire certain things. The stress of war puts old virtues in a changed light. We shall have to relearn a simple fundamental or two when things get back to normal. But what’s wrong with a small case of “requisitioning” when murder is the classic goal?
Our men, still thinking of home, are impatient with the strange peoples and customs of the countries they now inhabit. They say that if they ever get home they never want to see another foreign country. But I know how it will be. The day will come when they’ll look back and brag about how they learned a little Arabic, and how swell the girls were in England, and how pretty the hills of Germany were. Every day their scope is broadening despite themselves, and once they all get back with their global yarns and their foreign-tinged views, I cannot conceive of our nation ever being isolationist again. The men don’t feel very international right now, but the influences are at work and the time will come.
...
Your men have been well cared for in the war. I suppose no soldiers in any other war in history have has such excellent attention as our men overseas. The food is good. Of course we’re always yapping about how wonderful a steak would taste on Broadway, but when a soldier is pinned right down he’ll admit ungrudgingly that it’s Broadway he’s thinking about more than steak, and that he really can’t kick on the food. Furthermore, cooking is good in this war. Last time good food was spoiled by lousy cooking, but that is the exception this time. Of course, there were times in battle when the men lived days on nothing but those deadly cold C rations our of tin cans, and even went without food for a day or two, but those were the crises, the exceptions. On the whole, we figure by the letters from home that we’re probably eating better than you are.
A good diet and excellent medical care have made our army a healthy one. Statistics show the men in the mass healthier today then they were in civil life back home. Our men are will provided with clothing, transportation, mail, and army newspapers. Back of the lines that had Post Exchanges where they could buy cigarettes, candy, toilet articles, and all such things. If they were in the combat zone, all those things were issued to them free.
...
And then finally the Tunisian campaign was over, spectacularly collapsed after the bitterest fighting we had known in our theater. It was only in those last days that I came to know how any of the men who went through the thick of that hill-by-hill butchery could ever be the same again. The end of the Tunisian war brought an exhilaration, then a letdown, and later a restlessness from anticlimax that I can see multiplied a thousand times when the last surrender comes. The transition back to normal days will be as difficult for many as was the change into war, and some will never be able to accomplish it.
Now we are in a lull and many of us are having a short rest period. I tried the city and couldn’t stand it. Two days drove me back to the country, where everything seemed cleaner and more decent. I am in my tent, sitting on a newly acquired cot, writing on a German folding table we picked up the day of the big surrender. The days here are so peaceful and perfect they almost give us a sense of infidelity to those we left behind beneath the Tunisian crosses, those whose final awareness was a bedlam of fire and noise and uproar.
...
It may be that the war has changed me, along with the rest. It is hard for anyone to analyze himself. I know that I find more and more that I wish to be alone, and yet contradictorily I believe I have a new patience with humanity that I’ve never had before. When you’ve lived with the unnatural mass cruelty that mankind is capable of inflicting upon itself, you find yourself dispossessed of the faculty for blaming one poor man for the triviality of his faults. I don’t see how any survivor of war can ever be cruel to anything, ever again.
Yes, I want the war to be over, just as keenly as any soldier in North Africa wants it. This little interlude of passive contentment here on the Mediterranean shore is a mean temptation. It is a beckoning into somnolence. This is the kind of day I think I want my life to be composed of, endlessly. But pretty soon we shall strike our tents and traipse again after the clanking tanks, sleep again to the incessant lullaby of the big rolling guns. It has to be that way, and wishing doesn’t change it.
It may be I have unconsciously made war seem more awful than it really is. It would be wrong to say that war is grim; if it were, the human spirit could not survive two and three and four years of it. There is a good deal of gaiety in wartime. Some of us, even over here, are having the time of our lives. Humor and exuberance still exist. As some soldiers once said, the army is good for one ridiculous laugh per minute. Our soldiers are still just as roughly good-humored as they always were, and they laugh easily, although there isn’t as much to laugh about as there used to be.
And I don’t attempt to deny that war is vastly exhilarating. The whole tempo of life steps up, both at home and on the front. There is an intoxication about battle, and ordinary men can sometimes soar clear out of themselves on the wine of danger-emotion. And yet it is false. When we leave here to go on into the next battleground, I know that I for one shall go with the greatest reluctance.
On the day of final peace, the last stroke of what we call the “Big Picture” will be drawn. I haven’t written anything about the “Big Picture,” because I don’t know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worm’s-eye view, and our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of show lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.
That is our war, and we will carry it with us as we go on from one battleground to another until it is all over, leaving some of us behind on every beach, in every field. We are just beginning with the ones who lie back of us here in Tunisia. I don’t know whether it was their good fortune or their misfortune to get out of it so early in the game. I guess it doesn’t make any difference , once a man has gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them any more. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so. They died and thereby the rest of us can go on and on. When we leave here for the next shore, there is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses, except perhaps to pause and murmur, “Thanks, pal.”
After reporting in Europe for several years, Pyle was exhausted by the war and came home, hoping to never return to the front. But he couldn't stay away. He went to the Pacific and reported from there. He was killed by Japanese machine gunners on the island of Ie Shima, just off of Okinawa in the last major battle of the Pacific campaign.
Thanks, pal.
Peace
At the least I shall leave you with this selection from chapter 18 from Ernie Pyle's Here is Your War. The book is finally back in print. Buy it and laugh and cry and, most of all, remember. You can also go here to read some of his columns online. The chapter that follows is the last in that book and concerns the wrap up of the North African campaign, the first major campaign involving Americans in the European theater. The last two paragraphs are the most moving paragraphs of war writing that I have ever read, skip to them if you don't have time to read the entire post.
It is hard for you at home to realize what an immense, complicated, sprawling institution a theater of war actually is. As it appears to you in the newspapers, war is a clear-cut matter of landing so many men overseas, moving them from the port to the battlefield, advancing them against the enemy with guns firing, and they win or lose.
To look at war that way is like seeing a trailer of a movie, and saying you’ve seen the whole picture. I actually don’t know what percentage of our troops in Africa were in the battle lines, but I believe it safe to say that only comparatively few ever saw the enemy, ever shot at him, or were shot at by him. All the rest of those hundreds of thousands of men were churning the highways for two thousand miles behind the lines with their endless supply trucks, they were unloading the ships, cooking the meals, pounding the typewriters, fixing the roads, making the maps, repairing the engines, decoding the messages, training the reserves, pondering the plans.
...
What I have seen in North Africa has altered my own feelings in one respect. There were days when I say in my tent alone and gloomed with the desperate belief that it was actually possible for us to lose this war. I don’t feel that way any more. Despite our strikes and bickering and confusion back home, America is producing and no one can deny that. Even here at the far end of just one line trickle has grown into an impressive stream. We are producing at home and we are hardening overseas. Apparently it takes a county like America about two years to become wholly at war. We had to go through that transition period of letting loose of life as it was, and then live the new war life so long that it finally became the normal life to us. It was a form of growth, and we couldn’t press it. Only time can produce that change. We have survived that long passage of time, and if I am at all correct we have about changed our character and become a war nation. I can’t yet see when we shall win, or over what route geographically, or by which of the many means of warfare. But no longer do I have any doubts at all that we shall win.
The men over here have changed too. They are too close to themselves to sense the change too. They are too close to themselves to sense the change, perhaps. And I am too close to them to grasp it fully. But since I am older and a little apart, I have been able to notice it more.
For a year, everywhere I went, soldiers inevitably asked me two questions: “When do you think we’ll get to go home?” and “When will the war be over?” The home-going desire was once so dominant that I believe our soldiers over here would have voted-if the question had been out-to go home immediately, even if it meant peace on terms of something less than unconditional surrender by the enemy.
That isn’t true now. Sure, they all still want to go home. So do I. But there is something deeper than that, which didn’t exist six months ago. I can’t quite put it into words-it isn’t any theatrical proclamation that the enemy must be destroyed in the name of freedom; it’s just a vague but growing individual acceptance of the bitter fact that we must win the war or else, and that it can’t be worn by running excursion boats back and forth across the Atlantic carrying homesick vacationers.
A year is a long time to be away from home, especially if a person has never been away before, as was true the bulk of our troops. At first homesickness can almost kill a man. But time takes care of that. It isn’t normal to moon in the past forever. Home gradually grows less vivid; the separation from it less agonizing. There finally comes a day-not suddenly, but gradually. As a sunset-touched cloud changes in color-when a man is living almost wholly wherever he is. His life has caught up with his body, and his days become full way days, instead of American days simply transplanted to Africa.
...
Our men can’t make this change from normal civilians into warriors and remain the same people. Even if they were away from you this long under normal circumstances, the mere process of maturing would change them, and they would not come home just as you knew them. Add to that the abnormal world they have been plunged into, the new philosophies they have had to assume or perish inwardly, the horrors and delights and strange wonderful things they have experienced, and they are bound to be different people from those you sent away.
They are rougher than when you knew them. Killing is a rough business. Their basic language has changed from mere profanity to obscenity. More than anything else, they miss women. Their expressed longings, their conversation, their whole conduct show their need for female companionship, and the gentling effect of femininity upon a man is conspicuous here where it has been so long absent. Our men have less regard for property than you raised them to have. Money value means nothing to them, either personally or in the aggregate; they are fundamentally generous, with strangers and with each other. They give or throw away their own money, and it is natural that they are even less thoughtful of bulk property than of their own hard-earned possession. It is often necessary to abandon equipment they can’t take with them; the urgency of war prohibits normal caution in the handling of vehicles and supplies. One of the most striking things to me about war is the appalling waste that is necessary. At the front there just isn’t time to be economical. Also, in war areas where things are scarce and red tape still rears it delaying head, a man learns to get what he needs simply by “requisitioning.” It isn’t stealing, it’s the only way to acquire certain things. The stress of war puts old virtues in a changed light. We shall have to relearn a simple fundamental or two when things get back to normal. But what’s wrong with a small case of “requisitioning” when murder is the classic goal?
Our men, still thinking of home, are impatient with the strange peoples and customs of the countries they now inhabit. They say that if they ever get home they never want to see another foreign country. But I know how it will be. The day will come when they’ll look back and brag about how they learned a little Arabic, and how swell the girls were in England, and how pretty the hills of Germany were. Every day their scope is broadening despite themselves, and once they all get back with their global yarns and their foreign-tinged views, I cannot conceive of our nation ever being isolationist again. The men don’t feel very international right now, but the influences are at work and the time will come.
...
Your men have been well cared for in the war. I suppose no soldiers in any other war in history have has such excellent attention as our men overseas. The food is good. Of course we’re always yapping about how wonderful a steak would taste on Broadway, but when a soldier is pinned right down he’ll admit ungrudgingly that it’s Broadway he’s thinking about more than steak, and that he really can’t kick on the food. Furthermore, cooking is good in this war. Last time good food was spoiled by lousy cooking, but that is the exception this time. Of course, there were times in battle when the men lived days on nothing but those deadly cold C rations our of tin cans, and even went without food for a day or two, but those were the crises, the exceptions. On the whole, we figure by the letters from home that we’re probably eating better than you are.
A good diet and excellent medical care have made our army a healthy one. Statistics show the men in the mass healthier today then they were in civil life back home. Our men are will provided with clothing, transportation, mail, and army newspapers. Back of the lines that had Post Exchanges where they could buy cigarettes, candy, toilet articles, and all such things. If they were in the combat zone, all those things were issued to them free.
...
And then finally the Tunisian campaign was over, spectacularly collapsed after the bitterest fighting we had known in our theater. It was only in those last days that I came to know how any of the men who went through the thick of that hill-by-hill butchery could ever be the same again. The end of the Tunisian war brought an exhilaration, then a letdown, and later a restlessness from anticlimax that I can see multiplied a thousand times when the last surrender comes. The transition back to normal days will be as difficult for many as was the change into war, and some will never be able to accomplish it.
Now we are in a lull and many of us are having a short rest period. I tried the city and couldn’t stand it. Two days drove me back to the country, where everything seemed cleaner and more decent. I am in my tent, sitting on a newly acquired cot, writing on a German folding table we picked up the day of the big surrender. The days here are so peaceful and perfect they almost give us a sense of infidelity to those we left behind beneath the Tunisian crosses, those whose final awareness was a bedlam of fire and noise and uproar.
...
It may be that the war has changed me, along with the rest. It is hard for anyone to analyze himself. I know that I find more and more that I wish to be alone, and yet contradictorily I believe I have a new patience with humanity that I’ve never had before. When you’ve lived with the unnatural mass cruelty that mankind is capable of inflicting upon itself, you find yourself dispossessed of the faculty for blaming one poor man for the triviality of his faults. I don’t see how any survivor of war can ever be cruel to anything, ever again.
Yes, I want the war to be over, just as keenly as any soldier in North Africa wants it. This little interlude of passive contentment here on the Mediterranean shore is a mean temptation. It is a beckoning into somnolence. This is the kind of day I think I want my life to be composed of, endlessly. But pretty soon we shall strike our tents and traipse again after the clanking tanks, sleep again to the incessant lullaby of the big rolling guns. It has to be that way, and wishing doesn’t change it.
It may be I have unconsciously made war seem more awful than it really is. It would be wrong to say that war is grim; if it were, the human spirit could not survive two and three and four years of it. There is a good deal of gaiety in wartime. Some of us, even over here, are having the time of our lives. Humor and exuberance still exist. As some soldiers once said, the army is good for one ridiculous laugh per minute. Our soldiers are still just as roughly good-humored as they always were, and they laugh easily, although there isn’t as much to laugh about as there used to be.
And I don’t attempt to deny that war is vastly exhilarating. The whole tempo of life steps up, both at home and on the front. There is an intoxication about battle, and ordinary men can sometimes soar clear out of themselves on the wine of danger-emotion. And yet it is false. When we leave here to go on into the next battleground, I know that I for one shall go with the greatest reluctance.
On the day of final peace, the last stroke of what we call the “Big Picture” will be drawn. I haven’t written anything about the “Big Picture,” because I don’t know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worm’s-eye view, and our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of show lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.
That is our war, and we will carry it with us as we go on from one battleground to another until it is all over, leaving some of us behind on every beach, in every field. We are just beginning with the ones who lie back of us here in Tunisia. I don’t know whether it was their good fortune or their misfortune to get out of it so early in the game. I guess it doesn’t make any difference , once a man has gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them any more. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so. They died and thereby the rest of us can go on and on. When we leave here for the next shore, there is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses, except perhaps to pause and murmur, “Thanks, pal.”
After reporting in Europe for several years, Pyle was exhausted by the war and came home, hoping to never return to the front. But he couldn't stay away. He went to the Pacific and reported from there. He was killed by Japanese machine gunners on the island of Ie Shima, just off of Okinawa in the last major battle of the Pacific campaign.
Thanks, pal.
Peace
09 November 2005
Night of the Bug
9:02pm Sit down to watch new episode of one of three favorite TV shows.
9:03pm Wife announces the presence of a large, palmetto-bug type insect in our room; assistance requested.
9:04pm Bug hunt begins.
9:14pm Quarry spotted by hunters; bug escapes under bed.
9:15pm Flashlight hunt begins.
9:19pm Working flashlight found; bug hunt resumes.
9:34pm Lecture on housecleaning met with icy stares.
9:40pm Marriage near divorce.
9:41pm Lead hunter abandons chase and returns to show to save marriage.
10:20pm Wife discovered gingerly sorting laundry in bedroom. Outfit includes shorts and over the calf boots.
10:30pm Go to bed. Wife goes downstairs, turns on every light and plays Rachet and Clank.
10:31pm-2:03am Fitful sleeping in bed with lamp and TV on. Wife not present.
2:04am Spider-senses tingling, sit up to go to bathroom; something shoots across the floor.
2:05am Solo bughunt begins again.
2:07am Door opened on bare foot.
2:08am Massive release of clove-scented pesticides.
2:10am Pesticides having failed, bug captured under bowl.
2:11am Funeral "at sea" for bug. Twenty-one flush salute.
2:12am Wife informed of successful conclusion of bug hunt. Marriage saved.
2:15am Benadryl administered to combat allergic reaction to clove-scented pesticide.
2:20am Return to bed. Wife still not present.
5:40am Alarm sounds. Night of the bug over.
Peace at Last
9:03pm Wife announces the presence of a large, palmetto-bug type insect in our room; assistance requested.
9:04pm Bug hunt begins.
9:14pm Quarry spotted by hunters; bug escapes under bed.
9:15pm Flashlight hunt begins.
9:19pm Working flashlight found; bug hunt resumes.
9:34pm Lecture on housecleaning met with icy stares.
9:40pm Marriage near divorce.
9:41pm Lead hunter abandons chase and returns to show to save marriage.
10:20pm Wife discovered gingerly sorting laundry in bedroom. Outfit includes shorts and over the calf boots.
10:30pm Go to bed. Wife goes downstairs, turns on every light and plays Rachet and Clank.
10:31pm-2:03am Fitful sleeping in bed with lamp and TV on. Wife not present.
2:04am Spider-senses tingling, sit up to go to bathroom; something shoots across the floor.
2:05am Solo bughunt begins again.
2:07am Door opened on bare foot.
2:08am Massive release of clove-scented pesticides.
2:10am Pesticides having failed, bug captured under bowl.
2:11am Funeral "at sea" for bug. Twenty-one flush salute.
2:12am Wife informed of successful conclusion of bug hunt. Marriage saved.
2:15am Benadryl administered to combat allergic reaction to clove-scented pesticide.
2:20am Return to bed. Wife still not present.
5:40am Alarm sounds. Night of the bug over.
Peace at Last
07 November 2005
Monday Miscellany
We keep getting ads in our mailbox declaring that "Life is too short to clean your own home." We have taken their advice and stopped cleaning our home.
Today our school co-hosted a teaching conference with another school. I had the pleasure of serving as parking lot attendant. The number of teachers that I had to assist to the correct campus was disappointingly high. Teachers can make for terrible students.
The catered lunch provided for the attendees included a chocolate chunk cookie advertised as "A 1/4 pound cookie". It was the highlight of my day.
I took Friday off. I took the day off to grade papers. Something is deeply wrong with that.
The Simpsons was back last night with a hilarious dig at MLB. It was a good episode. The good episodes are not coming as often as they used to. Tonight, Arrested Development. Tomorrow, House. If only I felt like I didn't have to wash my mouth out with soap after watching TV.
The last daylilly of the summer (taken last week):
Peace
Today our school co-hosted a teaching conference with another school. I had the pleasure of serving as parking lot attendant. The number of teachers that I had to assist to the correct campus was disappointingly high. Teachers can make for terrible students.
The catered lunch provided for the attendees included a chocolate chunk cookie advertised as "A 1/4 pound cookie". It was the highlight of my day.
I took Friday off. I took the day off to grade papers. Something is deeply wrong with that.
The Simpsons was back last night with a hilarious dig at MLB. It was a good episode. The good episodes are not coming as often as they used to. Tonight, Arrested Development. Tomorrow, House. If only I felt like I didn't have to wash my mouth out with soap after watching TV.
The last daylilly of the summer (taken last week):
Peace
05 November 2005
Scantron Shame
At the end of last year our school acquired its first ever Scantron machine. Okay, we might be a little slow in the adoption of "new" technologies, but even we can see the writing on the SmartBoard. I would like to brag that we are the only private school in the area that provides each of its students with a laptop, but I don't think square sheets of slate and fist sized hunks of chalk count. I exaggerate--back to the Scantron.
For those of you unaware, a Scantron machine is an automatic test grader. Students fill in answer bubbles on pre-printed answer sheets with #2 pencils, and the teacher feeds the sheets through the machine. The results shoot out the other end. Now you probably know what I am talking about.
Anyway, we finally have one. It didn't come in time for many of us to make use of it last year. This year it has been adopted by several teachers for nearly every one of their tests and quizzes. Last week I finally got around to using it.
Traditionally, I have a pre-test ritual. I tell my students to clear their desks of everything except for a blue or black pen only. One of them will respond in befuddlement, "Is a pencil okay?" or "Can I use green?" The rest of the students will respond in exasperation, "He just said blue or black pen." By the middle of the first semester this has become the test day joke. On this day, I had them take out a number two pencil for a grammar test. I should have taken the general befuddlement of the class as a bad omen, but I was under the influence of Benadryl.
As soon as the test was done, I gathered up my answer sheets and headed to the teacher workroom. I began to feed answer sheets into the open maw of the Scantron. As each sheet goes through, a tiny dot matrix printer with red ink marks every wrong answer and tabulates the number wrong for each student on his or her answer sheet.
I soon discovered that the more noise that it makes, the worse a student has done. It is a fairly noisy process and takes place in a public place (the teacher workroom). A long silence followed by a single "tsat!" indicates a 100, but a long series of "tsats!", similar in sound to a printout of the Pentateuch, indicates a serious problem. After the first two grammar tests went through, I grew concerned. I looked around at the other teachers in the workroom and chuckled nervously. Maybe it's my key. I checked my key. It was fine; I continued to feed the sheets into the Scantron. "Tsat-tsat-tsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!Tsat!" Oh dear. "Tsat! Tsaaaaaaat! Tsat! Tsaaaaaaaaaaaat! Tsat!" Not doing so well. No one would look me in the eye as I tried to explain that it was a grammar test, but I trailed off in a mumble.
It continued this way through over fifty tests. Only two 100's and alot of lesser grades resulted. Bowing my head in shame, I left the teacher workroom, the eyes of the other teachers boring into my back as they shook their heads.
I have petitioned the administration of the school to have the Scantron machine moved into a sound proof closet to better protect student privacy rights. Until then, I am grading my own tests. Let my failures be my own.
Peace
For those of you unaware, a Scantron machine is an automatic test grader. Students fill in answer bubbles on pre-printed answer sheets with #2 pencils, and the teacher feeds the sheets through the machine. The results shoot out the other end. Now you probably know what I am talking about.
Anyway, we finally have one. It didn't come in time for many of us to make use of it last year. This year it has been adopted by several teachers for nearly every one of their tests and quizzes. Last week I finally got around to using it.
Traditionally, I have a pre-test ritual. I tell my students to clear their desks of everything except for a blue or black pen only. One of them will respond in befuddlement, "Is a pencil okay?" or "Can I use green?" The rest of the students will respond in exasperation, "He just said blue or black pen." By the middle of the first semester this has become the test day joke. On this day, I had them take out a number two pencil for a grammar test. I should have taken the general befuddlement of the class as a bad omen, but I was under the influence of Benadryl.
As soon as the test was done, I gathered up my answer sheets and headed to the teacher workroom. I began to feed answer sheets into the open maw of the Scantron. As each sheet goes through, a tiny dot matrix printer with red ink marks every wrong answer and tabulates the number wrong for each student on his or her answer sheet.
I soon discovered that the more noise that it makes, the worse a student has done. It is a fairly noisy process and takes place in a public place (the teacher workroom). A long silence followed by a single "tsat!" indicates a 100, but a long series of "tsats!", similar in sound to a printout of the Pentateuch, indicates a serious problem. After the first two grammar tests went through, I grew concerned. I looked around at the other teachers in the workroom and chuckled nervously. Maybe it's my key. I checked my key. It was fine; I continued to feed the sheets into the Scantron. "Tsat-tsat-tsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!Tsat!" Oh dear. "Tsat! Tsaaaaaaat! Tsat! Tsaaaaaaaaaaaat! Tsat!" Not doing so well. No one would look me in the eye as I tried to explain that it was a grammar test, but I trailed off in a mumble.
It continued this way through over fifty tests. Only two 100's and alot of lesser grades resulted. Bowing my head in shame, I left the teacher workroom, the eyes of the other teachers boring into my back as they shook their heads.
I have petitioned the administration of the school to have the Scantron machine moved into a sound proof closet to better protect student privacy rights. Until then, I am grading my own tests. Let my failures be my own.
Peace
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