The Last Confederate Widow Tells Nothing

I signed up for the free version of Ancestry.com, well, it will be free if I remember to cancel, but you know how that goes. I started out with known knowns, and have found a bit of new information in just a couple of hours. For instance, I now know the name of the woman holding onto my grandfather's arm in this picture - she is Lydia Lavenia Touchstone, widow of Amos Carson Hilton, late of the Mississippi 19th.

As near as I can tell, this picture was taken in 1942 as the country was gearing up for WWII. On the right side of the photo, in the back row, are my father's side of the family. They gathered at my maternal grandfather's house in Jackson, as people were concerned that life as they knew it was about to be altered drastically. They were correct. My mother's father, in the center of the front row, died in 1944. His mother lived to be 97 - I had no idea that anyone in our family ever lived so long. The things you learn along the way, eh? She outlived her husband and her son. Both of my older brothers got to meet her. What a long, interesting life she had.

Anyway, I met or knew 9 people in that picture, and as far as I know, only my cousin, the young girl in the front row, is still with us, if you consider living in Australia still with us.

I got to stay in that house a couple of times, but after my uncle pissed away his inheritance the house was lost to our family and was picked up and moved to a park in Jackson. The land around it was developed into a housing tract, no doubt with the word "Plantation" in its name. So it goes.

I wish I had met that dog - what a good looking animal.

Did someone say Jackson?

"Why A German Pilot Escorted An American Bomber To Safety During World War II"

Jalopnik:   It was a few days before Christmas in 1943, and the Allied bombing campaign in Germany was going at full tilt. Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown was a freshly minted bomber pilot, and he and his crew were about to embark upon their first mission — to hit an aircraft factory in northern Germany.

Brown’s B-17F Flying Fortress, dubbed Ye Olde Pub, was typical of American heavy bombers of the time. Along with an 8,000-pound bomb capacity, the four-engine plane was armed with 11 machine guns and strategically placed armor plating. B-17s cruised at about 27,000 feet, but weren’t pressurized. At that altitude, the air is thin and cold — 60 degrees below zero. Pilots and crew relied upon an onboard oxygen system and really warm flight suits with heated shoes.

As Ye Old Pub approached Bremen, Germany, German anti-aircraft batteries opened up on the formation. Unfortunately for the pilots and crew of Ye Olde Pub, one of the anti-aircraft rounds exploded right in front of their plane, destroying the number two engine and damaging number four. Missing one engine and with another throttled back due to damage, Ye Olde Pub could no longer keep up with the formation. (read the rest here)

USA Today: Pearl Harbor iconic quotes

In an effort to keep the United States out of war, Roosevelt made the case during a fireside chat on Dec. 29, 1940, that the nation must provide additional support to Great Britain. During his remarks, he coined the famous "arsenal of democracy" phrase.

"We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war."

In that same speech, FDR discussed what had become increasingly clear: appeasing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government in Germany was not a rational policy.

"No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender."

Perhaps no leader in history used oratory more effectively than Churchill during World War II. His decisive and defiant addresses inspired a nation teetering on the brink. In his first speech as the British prime minister before the House of Commons in May 1940, Churchill made clear his commitment to the cause:

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
"You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival."

Big contrast from today's commander in chief...

London Milkman still making deliveries, 1940

Via Reddit

"The Irish eyewitness to the atomic bomb at Nagasaki"

"Dr MacCarthy survived the war and spent the rest of his life in London. He died in 1995. His autobiography A Doctor’s War was published in 1979. He is now the subject of an documentary entitled A Doctor’s Sword. Extract from A Doctor’s War by Dr Aidan MacCarthy:"

On August 9th the day started bright and clear with only occasional clouds to the north. During a 10-minute break in our clearing work, round about 10.45am, some of our men had gone back to the camp which was close by, to get a drink of water or a cigarette.

High above us we saw eight vapour trails showing two separate four engine bombers, heading south. These were B-29 bombers, or B-NEE-JU-KU’s as the Japanese called them. They had been seen going north earlier that morning. Then they suddenly altered course and came back over Nagasaki.
This manoeuvre was enough to send us wildly dashing for the air-raid shelters. To dig our own graves with a view to being shot by the Japanese was one thing, but to be killed by our own allies was far too galling.

In the shelters we prayed that there would not be a direct hit. A couple of POWs did not bother to go into the shelters, staying on the surface and crouching on the ground in the shadow of the barrack huts.

They were gazing at the sky, watching the approaching vapour trails. One of them shouted to us that three small parachutes had dropped.

There then followed a blue flash, accompanied by a very bright magnesium-type flare which blinded them. Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion which was followed by a blast of hot air.

Some of this could be felt even by us as it came through the shelter openings, which were very rarely closed owing to the poor ventilation. The explosions we heard seemed to be two in number and this puzzled experts when later we were being debriefed.

One possible explanation is that the second sound was a giant echo from the surrounding hills. All this was followed by eerie silence. Then an Australian POW stuck his head out of the shelter opening, looked around and ducked back in, his face expressing incredulity. This brought the rest of us scrambling to our feet and a panic rush to the exits. The sight that greeted us halted us in our tracks.

As we slowly surveyed the scene around us, we became aware that the camp had to all intents and purposes disappeared. Mostly of wooden construction, the wood had carbonized and turned to ashes.

Bodies lay everywhere, some horribly mutilated by falling walls, girders and flying glass. There were outbreaks of fire in all directions, with loud explosions recurring as the flapping, live electric cables fused and flared.

The gas mains had also exploded, and those people still on their feet ran round in circles, hands pressed to their blinded eyes or holding the flesh that hung in tatters from their faces or arms.

The brick built guardroom had collapsed, and the dead guards lay almost naked. We could suddenly see right up the length of the valley, where previously the factories and buildings had formed a screen. Left behind was a crazy forest of discoloured corrugated sheets clinging to twisted girders.

Burst waterpipes shot fountains of water high in the air. The steel girders stood like stark sentinels, leaning over a series of concrete ‘tennis courts’ that had once been the floors of factories.

But most frightening of all was the lack of sunlight in contrast to the bright August sunshine that we had left a few minutes earlier, there was now a kind of twilight. We all genuinely thought, for some time, that this was the end of the world.

As I dashed through the shelter opening and scrambled onto the surface, my predominant thought was to get away as far and as fast as possible. I turned and ran. Others followed. The sea seemed to offer the most immediate prospect of safety, but as we ran towards it, we encountered another mob running towards us.

Everyone seemed to be looking for an intact bridge across the Urakami river. We were on the south side and to make our way to the sea and hills we needed to cross to the north bank. Unfortunately no bridge seemed to be available so I jumped into the cloudy waters and swam. Unwillingly the rest of the group joined me in the water.

On the opposite bank we stuck in the black glue-like mud and discovered that struggling only made matters worse. Eventually, muddy, smelly and exhausted, we got clear of the river and headed for the foothills to the north of the valley.

En route we were physically sickened by an endless stream of burnt, bleeding, flesh-torn, stumbling people, many unable to rise from where they had fallen. Others were still trapped under fallen debris. Occasionally someone had gone beserk.

The whole atmosphere was permeated with blind terror, and the macabre twilight was illuminated by numerous fires, the crackle of which mixed with the screams of the dying and injured. These sounded even more horrific because of the eerie overall ‘silence’.

Thousands of people scrambled, pushed, shoved and crawled across the shattered landscape in a crazed attempt to seek safety. At last we reached the foothills and the locals seemed quite pleased to see us, particularly when they discovered I was a doctor.

Immediately I set to work. Burns were the main problem and these were of two types – fire burns and flash burns. The locals used some native fern-like leaves to ease the pain-and this seemed to work. I was able to help by splinting and tying up broken bones.

Later that day the authorities began to set up first aid posts in caves which had been dug in the hillsides as air-raid shelters. Word soon spread amongst the wounded and injured and many were carried off on makeshift stretchers to these ‘hospital’ caves. Meanwhile, it began to rain. This helped to quell some of the fires.

The rain was black – which frightened everybody, including the Japanese. Not knowing until later anything at all about the effects of an atomic explosion, I seriously wondered whether we had finally arrived at Judgement Day.

An angry God was devastating the Japanese for their sins – and mistakenly including us in the holocaust.

Dataviz, Fallen of WWII

60 years later, video surfaces of WWII B-29 rescue

Originally reported by Denver 9News Nov. 11, 2010.

Harrowing. Hole blown in wing, lost two engines, bomb bay doors blown off. Plane ditched.

The plane was shot down under heavy flak seventy miles from the coast of Japan miraculously near to an American submarine. The entire crew was rescued. An officer aboard the sub captured the whole thing on film in color.

Two years previous to the Denver 9News report a copy of the film showed up at Denver resident Richard Vanden Huevel's front door. Apparently a son found it in the father's closet.The video clearly shows Vanden Huevel being rescued 60 years earlier when he was twenty years of age.

Strapping lad too.

I see a young kid who doesn't see fear," Vanden Huevel said.

We see that too. [The video share code from 9News is a mile long. It displays here but without an opening image. I do not trust it.]