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Veteran’s Day: May the Stories of Those Who Served Live On

Omnipotent Poobah — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:12:18 +0000

USS Holland (AS-3) Off San Diego With Submarines Alongside (circa 1935)

As I write this two American flags hang on my wall. Both are folded into militarily tight triangles and protected by flag boxes. One contains a Purple Heart, the other the WWII Service Medal and Pacific Service Medal. One day my own flag with a Cold War Service Medal will join them.

WWI Poison Gas Victims

My grandfather received the Purple Heart after being shot and mustard-gassed in contested Alsace-Lorraine. He knew his location only by the strange melange of French and German the locals spoke.

His injuries were severe. Gruesome battlefield triage located him near the bottom of the list based on the likelihood his wounds were fatal. They laid him on a blanket spread across war-churned mud to die. He received only a daily ration of bread and some water. After a week, he beat the odds and finally received some medical attention, eventually going home.

The Mail Had to Go Through
He tried to reenlist at the beginning of WWII, but was barred because he held a critical wartime job – clerk on a railway post office shuttling through a dozen or more Montana and North Dakota ‘burgs. His car is on display at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento, proof the world is very small.

His daughter went to work at Boeing as a draftsman working on the B-29. My mother worked as a crane operator at a former toy factory in Toledo converted to manufacturing tank barrels. They were Rosie the Riveters and every bit as important and deserving of praise as the men they supported.

YP-73 in for Repairs, Kodiak, AK (4/10/41)

My father joined the Naval Reserve midway through his senior year in high school, only months before Dec. 7. He became a radioman and immediately shipped out to Alaska. There, he served aboard the YP-73, a converted salmon fishing boat tasked with patrolling the Aleutians.

Like many men of the era he was taciturn about his service. A few years before he died he told me a new story he’d never mentioned before. I’m still not sure why he did.

On Dec. 8, 1941 – less than 24 hours after the war began – his small boat forced a Dutch ship carrying a cargo of Japanese silk to stop off Dutch Harbor. His boarding party found a Japanese officer escorting the cargo and took him prisoner. Surely one of the first prisoners of the war.

Aboard the Gar One Last Time

USS Gar (SS-206) at Mare Island, CA (circa 1941)

Later he became a submariner, serving two war patrols aboard the USS Gar. After the patrols, he transferred to the personal staff of the Commander of Submarine Forces (Pacific), Adm. Charles Lockwood, aboard the submarine tender USS Holland.

Growing up, I heard many tales about the Pacific islands and countries he visited. They were unstintingly light-hearted, “There was one time we went to a beer garden and…,” they usually began. I assumed his war patrols had been relatively combat-free and that service on the Admiral’s staff wasn’t exactly tough duty.

It turned out my assumption was wrong.

My Dad died at 86. He suffered a stroke a few months before pneumonia finally got him. The stroke left him semi-conscious for the better part of a week and every few hours he’d verbalize his delusions.

He talked to my long-dead mother. He took up his old vocation by controlling aircraft in his sleep. He described a sinister organization called, The Group that imprisoned him in a school. Oddly, The Group’s commandant was one of his least favorite people, Pat Robertson.

One afternoon he started mumbling and his voice grew steadily louder. He shouted the names of his Gar shipmates. He cried out for help and wept as if holding a shipmate during his last moments. It was clear from his fevered talk that he was back 65 years aboard a submarine under attack.

I suppose he could’ve been dreaming about a fantasy like The Group, but his voice betrayed an emotion and reality his Group rants never had. I listened to his cries for help, stung that I could to nothing to ease his pain. On that sunny afternoon I became his crewmate holding him as he held his shipmate. That pain taught me something about the man I’d known my entire life.

I saw him in a different light and was boundlessly proud of him.

The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks about memoirs (omnipotentpoobah.com)
A time for remembering (swwashingtonredcross.wordpress.com)
New York Woman Buys Fallen WWII Soldier’s Medal At Antique Shop, Returns It To Family (huffingtonpost.com)
L.I. Man Says Thieves Stole His Grandfather’s Purple Heart, Dog Tags (newyork.cbslocal.com)
A Hero to Remember (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
Submariners unsung heroes of Cold War (cnn.com)
Veteran’s Day: Why the Odds Were Against My Existence (danceswithchaos.wordpress.com)
It’s Veterans Day, so… you’re welcome (hotair.com)
The WWII ShoeBox Project (thedenveregotist.com)
Burlington WWII veteran awarded POW medal for capture in Europe (nj.com)

Labor: The Pit and the Pendulum

Omnipotent Poobah — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:40:02 +0000

There’s a holiday coming up. It’s…it’s…30% Off at Penny’s Day? Um, how about Toyota Salebration Marathon Day? No, that’s not right. Small Business Entrepreneur Day? Damn! That’s what happens in July. It’s that holiday about working folk. CEO Bonus Week? Unemployment Office Stand-in-Line Day? Nah, ooo, ooo, it’s right on the tip of my tongue…Labor Day!

As with most things in this country we’re divided over how we should treat American workers. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker‘s opinion is that union members are loathsome tax suckers personally bent on ruining the Beer and Cheese State. Maine Gov. and art critic Paul LePage would agree. I mean how cheeky can those labor people be to have painted a mural praising labor on the wall of the Labor Department?

Labor on the other hand claims a sort of worker sainthood. They got you 5-day X 40-hour weeks, child labor laws, safe working conditions, benefits, and a day’s wages worth a day’s pay. Of course, they’ve also tolerated corruption (can you say Jimmy “The Home Plate” Hoffa?) featherbedding, and defending workers who showed up for work drunker than hootie owls.

Mother Teresa Was a Union Member
Like most relationships, there are two stories – both only partially right. It’s that imbalance that creates a pendulum swing not unlike our government’s.

At the turn of the 20th century, unions rose to power on the backs of workers with legitimate gripes. They were fed up with robber barons who considered them low-cost machines with extremely lucrative depreciation.

It didn’t matter that coal miners died young in a pool of lung tissue and blood. Sixteen hour workdays were good for people. It made them tough. After all, openings by death or illness were easy to fill with unemployed men eager to trade their lives for food and a roof – even if the company charged exorbitant rent for a company house and forced workers to buy groceries at the over-priced company store. Paying in scrip is handy like that.

When union power peaked in the 1950s, companies found themselves under the boot of unions. Unions demanded unsustainable wages and work rules so nit-picky that factories would shut down if they were followed to the letter. Those demands were extremely damaging to companies and only accelerated layoffs and further pay concessions.

The Pit and the Pendulum
However, the pendulum may be swinging back toward unions as many core, hard-fought benefits erode.

Wage cuts are popular these days and work-rule concessions, perks, and higher benefit costs only result in jobs flying off to the wage-slave country du jour. After years of Japanese dominance, Indonesia and India are popular these days. However, wages are already getting high enough in India to drive the work to some other low-cost leader country. And let’s not forget sky-high “performance” pay for the suits whether the company goes up, sideways, or down into a smoking pit.

America is in a bad place. We got here from corporate malfeasance, government collusion, and unions making unreasonable demands. The solution is neither small government nor big government, over-regulation nor under-regulation, over-taxation nor under-taxation. It’s our ability to see the sharp-bladed pendulum sweep past all our throats, already peeling the first layer of our national skin.

Watch out! Here it comes again!

The Poobah on the Economy (omnipotentpoobah.com)
Labor Day (greetingcarduniverse.com)
David Coates: Defending Trade Unions as Labor Day Approaches (huffingtonpost.com)
Race to the Bottom (proletariat.wordpress.com)
Can Company A “aid or support” a Union Trying to Organize Company B? (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
Michele Nash-Hoff: Will You Follow the Herd or Be a Leader? (huffingtonpost.com)
Labor Board Rulings Likely to Rile Business (online.wsj.com)
Ken Blackwell: Obama’s War On The Secret Ballot | CNSnews.com (wdednh.wordpress.com)
Labor Day is always on what day (wiki.answers.com)
This Labor Day We Need Protest Marches Rather than Parades (talkingunion.wordpress.com)
Abbott says Fair Work laws unbalanced (news.theage.com.au)

Christian College Bans National Anthem

Omnipotent Poobah — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:27:59 +0000

LONG MAY SHE WAVE - Waving the flag is exactly what the freedom to not wave it is all about.

In a bit of a twist, a Christian school has banned the National Anthem. “As a result of a thoughtful, thorough, prayerful period of listening, learning and discerning,” the Goshen College Board of Directors said, “it is the board’s judgment that continuing to play the national anthem compromises our ability to advance the vision (of Goshen College) together.”

What? None of the usual insistence that not wearing a flag pin makes you a traitor and not placing your hand over your heart is tantamount of crapping on Old Glory? Nope, because Goshen is a Mennonite college, a religion that is vehemently pacifistic and probably more devout than your run of the mill spaghetti dinner fund-raising crowd.

Many Americans conflate flag waving and God-fearing so I suspect many of them will look at Goshen’s decision as “politically correct” or an attempt to inflame the delicate sensibilities of the “true Christian” majority of conservative Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, et al.

(In fairness, that hasn’t happened on a wide scale yet even though one Catholic athelete seems a put off by it as are several of Goshen’s city council members. However, I suspect the story will gain traction soon.)

This is as a legitimate decision based on strong Mennonite religious beliefs, applied to their religion’s school, and in line with the belief that not singing about rockets glaring and flags still being there is a choice. In this case, a choice that doesn’t impinge on anyone else, secular or non-secular. The school even supports the ball player’s right to speak his mind.

It’s also in line with another important American value: Freedom. Being forced to sing the national ditty doesn’t perfectly symbolize respect for the country, nor does it diss the sacrifices of others. It exercises the free speech to say no and celebrates that freedom.

I’m an atheist and a veteran who does sing the anthem and put my hand over my heart, but I’m with these Christians on this one.