A Memorial Day Reflection

Do you remember when we used to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12 and Washington’s on the 22nd? Memorial Day was May 30th in those days. All those midweek holidays were a bit disruptive and the two presidents are remembered on President’s Day, the 3rd Monday in February, and Memorial Day, today, is the last Monday in May.

The origin of Memorial Day goes back to the brutally bloody Civil War. Many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war as a memorial to those who had died. Originally called Decoration Day (to decorate the graves of the fallen) the name was changed to Memorial Day in 1882. The holiday took on greater significance after World War II, another all-encompassing war that left few untouched or unmoved.

Setting aside a day for remembering has value because some things are too important to be forgotten.

My father-in-law, who served in World War II, eventually wrote a book about his experiences. Bud Wagner was on the first ship to Europe and served for the duration of the war, capturing details, images and keen personal observations that I doubt one can find anywhere.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction.

I began keeping a diary when I was quite young. I have many small books with short entries, and at the time I registered for the Draft in October 1940, when I was 22, I was closing the 5th year in a leather-bound 5-year diary.

I didn't even consider stopping with my diary because of my draft status, and I decided that in addition, I would keep a small camera with me at all times I possibly could during my Army service. My intention was to keep all my Army time on record to the best of my ability. On the front page of the 5-year diary I had written the Chinese proverb: "The faintest ink is better than the strongest memory."

There were many times during my Army career when I couldn't make my diary entries on the day they occurred. Days and nights would often run together when we were on the move, and dates were unimportant to me at the time.

Another reason I sometimes couldn't make daily entries is that for security reasons, I tried to keep my diary to myself. There were probably only three close friends who knew I was keeping it. I always carried it in my shirt pocket, and towards the end of the War it was getting to be quite a bulky burden. If I hadn't sent a part of it home before leaving Ireland, I wouldn't have been able to carry it all on my person.

Some of the problems I faced in writing it were (1) no light at night, (2) difficulty in getting ink, and (3) the fact that I didn't even have a real diary at times, but only small notebooks to write in.

There were times when I couldn't get away by myself that I would make believe I was writing a letter -- when actually I was trying to recollect and put in writing what had happened to me during the previous days or sometimes the previous week.

After I returned home in July 1945, the diaries were put into a drawer, moved with me several times, and were all but forgotten until about 1975 when our family was all together one Sunday afternoon. The talk turned to my Army life, and when I mentioned the diaries, everyone wanted to see them.

One of our sons-in-law, Ed Newman, a writer, thought there was potential in it for short stories, a journal, or a book. Our other son-in-law Harrold Andresen, a mechanic, was interested in all the mechanical work that had to be done to the vehicles. Our son, Lloyd, had heard some things about what I had written, and had been studying American and European history, including that of the World Wars, so he was very interested as well.

When Bud turned 79, he called me on the phone and said, “Eddie, I want you to take me to the store tonight to buy a computer. I’m ready to write my book.”

Whoever said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks was definitely mistaken. Bud had been assembling his research for a lifetime and was eager to prepare a manuscript. It was a major undertaking, but one could see the determination there. He also had help with preparing the polished version. His son Lloyd, my brother-in-law, did the “heavy lifting” as regards editing and organizing photos, etc. I did a measure of copy editing. And ultimately, an incredible book was produced called And There Shall Be Wars, a reference to Mark 13:7 in which Jesus said, “And when ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled; for such things must needs be, but the end shall not be yet.”

To purchase your own copy of the book, Bud Wagner's diaries and memoirs of World War Two send an email to ennyman3@gmail.com or visit the Hermantown Historical Society.

This year Wilmer A. "Bud" Wagner turns ninety and he has been looking forward to that 90th birthday party coming up soon. We may have a few surprises for him. For sure I will be returning to this topic again over the next couple weeks.

In the meantime, let us remember all who sacrificed so much to preserve the freedoms we enjoy.

Pickett’s Charge

I’m reading The Killer Angels again, Michael Shaara's deeply researched account of the Battle of Gettysburg, written with a storyteller's hand. It’s a book that probably could not have been written fifty years ago because it dares to be critical of General Lee, though this is not the book's focus. The battle made many images memorable, from Little Round Top and Devil’s Den to Cemetery Ridge. And it made many generals' names memorable as well, and none more so, in this battle, than General Pickett.

It could be argued that the mad futility of Pickett’s Charge broke the South. The unfolding events that orchestrated the charge should have never occurred but Fate had the upper hand and Reason found refuge in a foxhole. But was Pickett’s Charge the Worst Decision in Military History?

No. The whole of history is littered with dead bodies and tragedy.

Here is a familiar passage from Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

Similar sentiments can be found in Eric Bogle’s And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda drawn from recollections of the Battle of Gallipoli.

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia

If you have ever been to the Gettysburg battlefield and seen the stretch of ground across which Pickett and his men had to traverse, you can’t help but ask, “What were they thinking?” Maybe it had something to do with the madness of crowds. “All or nothing” has permanent consequences when you put lives on the line. “Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die,” seems a common theme for the common soldier. And when a soldier falters in fully embracing this attitude, his own personal consequences are dire.

One of my own personal film favorites, this one set in the trenches of World War I, is Paths of Glory, an early Kubrick masterpiece that tells it like it was, is and probably ever shall be. War is hell.

Paths of Glory

This afternoon I decided to revisit Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, co-written and directed by Stanely Kubrick. This cold war classic was remarkable for its originality and dark comedy. "After all, we don't want to start a nuclear war unless we have to now, do we?" (Peter Sellers as Officer Mandrake)

It's hard to pinpoint the film that put Kubrick on the map as a director, but certainly all of his works demonstrate the power of his vision and unique genius. His films are both distinctive and daring.

One of my current top ten films of all time is Kubrick's Paths of Glory. It may have been the first film I wrote a review for on the Internet Movie Database. The following review is posted there, and at the end of this blog entry you may link to my reviews of several other films.

Early Kubrick film displays his profound skills of storytelling in film in remarkable and poignant World War One film.

I have placed this early Kubrick anti-war statement on my top ten list both for its originality, great acting, compelling story line, plot twists, and surprisingly beautiful and inspired ending. This one is a heart-breaker account of a moment in history that repeated itself endlessly in that horrific bloodfest called the trenches of World War I. To some extent Kubrick returned to the theme in various ways with Full Metal Jacket, but Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax is perfect here, demonstrating the challenge of maintaining honor within a system that has turned values on its head. It is a crisis in the life and career of Colonel Dax, who has lived by the watchword of Duty with a capital D throughout his career, but has remained idealistic and faithful to his men. The army's absurd effort to capture "the Anthill" results in a tear in the fabric of his idealism. The ugliness he sees is an eye opener for both Dax and the audience, who sees the truth with tragic clarity.

Colonel Dax, identifying with his men, is an inspiration in contrast to an empty culture of power and prestige with no ethical base.

For additional film comments:

http://imdb.com/user/ur12458383/comments

A WW2 Diary of a Common Soldier

"Dear Bud, ... Thanks not only for the copy of the book, but also for putting those wartime notes into a permanent record. It is an important addition to all the "stuff" historians record. I couldn't put the book down once I got into it. It brought back a lot of memories reading about times, places, and people from 55+ years ago." ~ retired General John W. Vessey

My father-in-law Wilmer A. "Bud" Wagner (above) was the second man in Northern Minnesota to be drafted into the war. He carried a small pocket camera and kept a diary from beginning to end, from Camp Claiborne to Ireland to North Africa and the Italy Campaigns. Cook, machine gunner and company agent - Bud had the privilege of being on the first convoy to make its way across the Atlantic for the European theater. And the good fortune of having survived the duration of the war without becoming a casualty - in North Africa and Italy, which included beachheads at Anzio and Salerno. General Vessey, who went on the become head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received notice of his first promotion in Bud's jeep.

The book Bud wrote is a remarkable document of what war is really like for the day to day soldier. If you wish to find a copy of your own or for someone you know who is a military history buff, I strongly encourage you to just do it. Here's the link:
http://www.savpress.com/Details.asp?ProductID=126

San Pietro and San Vitorre

Had to go to all battalions at midnight with firing orders. Moonlight so I didn't mind too much. Slept through breakfast. Were shelled twice here today. My nerves aren't able to take it anymore as well as they used to. Some shells came close enough.

151 moved tonight; I moved with them to the other side of San Pietro, a rubbled mess, a battlefield, to be sure. Back here at 10:00, just got nicely to sleep when the guard called, "Wag, get to Message Center," so there was another Firing Order to all battalions. It must have been after 2:00 when I got back.
Friday, January 7, 1944

San Pietro and San Vitorre were two towns literally blown off the face of the earth. There were many trees around that were totally devoid of all branches, and were just sticks left from all the shell fire. The city itself was piles of concrete rubble. I didn't see life of any kind left any time I drove through.About this time the II Corps took Mts. Porchio and Chiaia, two objectives necessary for our Division to have before our ultimate objective of Cassino.

Excerpt from Bud Wagner's And There Shall Be Wars. Anyone who has a relative who served in WWII should own this book.

To purchase And There Shall Be Wars, visit:
http://www.savpress.com/Details.asp?ProductID=126

Our Selves

The distance between what I was and what I am is but a moment, an instant. Funny how my features change, my hair thins, I accumulate scars and markings, wrinkles appear... all this yet I remain still I. And so, with our inner selves, we change yet remain the same, with a singular inner fingerprint, our unique "mark" that defines us. This is who we are.
October 4, 1999

It is fascinating to follow the careers of various authors or movie directors and look for their personal fingerprints. Borges, Graham Greene, Hesse, Hemingway... each leaves his mark on the stories he writes.

This morning I woke thinking about the films of Stanley Kubrick... specifically what he did that was so distinctive. That "something" was his love of the overlong look. That is, allowing the lens to linger, and linger still longer on a setting, a scene, an image. As early as Paths of Glory (Kirk Douglas, 1956) you could see it, from the scene with Douglas as Colonel Dax walking the length the corridor of trenches to the endpoint scene with the captured German woman singing to the soldiers with poignant tear-jerking grief.

2001: A Space Oddysey produced a whole catalog of unforgettable images from the opening monolith to the ultralightshow summing up. Scenes like "Open the pod door, Hal" are forever etched in Hollywood history and 1960's cultural archives.

Kubrick's style of lovingly lingering almost too long on a scene or image did not run in sync with the culture which seems to have become increasingly frenetic, pulsating with slam-bam jammin' and frantic overwrought camera work. Compare Barry Lyndon (1975) to Syriana, Crash or Bourne Ultimatum. The last of these practically requires a Dramamine to keep from getting motion sickness in the theater. (Note: I think each of these are fine movies, so the point here is only to contrast the style.) Too many modern movies are simply fast paced because that is "in" but Kubrick, to the end, gave his lens license to tarry unhurried, lavishing each scene till it mesmerized.

So it is that, like the great directors and the great authors, our own deeds are like fingerprints that reveal our Selves.

And There Shall Be Wars

At age 79 my father-in-law Bud Wagner called me on the phone and said, "I'd like you to help me buy a computer." That night we went out and did just that. He taught himself how to use it and proceeded to finish a project that he'd carried in his heart for most of a lifetime.

At age 80, Wagner completed his first book, based on his diaries from World War Two. Wagner was the second Minnesotan drafted into the war. Cook, machine gunner and company agent, Wagner had the privilege of being on the first convoy to make its way across the Atlantic for the European theater. And the good fortune of having survived the duration of the war without becoming a casualty in North Africa and Italy, which included beachheads at Anzio and Salerno.

The book, And There Shall Be Wars, is a truly powerful account of this man's experience and worthy of being included in the annals of military history.

Wagner had several motivations for writing the book. "I wanted to put my diary in a concise journal form for the family," Wagner said. "I've kept a diary out of habit since I was a young kid. During the war nobody else did it and I wanted to have it as part of my life experience." Diary writing was rare not only because few soldiers did it, but also because the army had rules against it. When citing the value of diaries Wagner fondly quotes the Chinese proverb, "The faintest ink is stronger than the strongest memory."

A primary theme for this blog is journal writing. That is, I have been sifting thought my personal journals and bringing to light excerpts that might lead to some thought provoking discussion, or insights of value. Bud Wagner's book is similar in design. He kept a journal during the war, but his book is more. Having spent decades researching that siginifcant period of history, his journal notes include commentary amplifying the entries, with additional historical facts collated to make this book especially valuable.

For more information on this book, and to see what others have said.

To purchase a copy of And There Shall Be Wars, send an email to ennyman3@gmail.com