D plus 65

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy. D-Day.

If you’ve watched TV or read a newspaper, you’ll have seen the coverage. Those frail old men making the pilgrimage one final time to touch the sand of the beaches where they and their comrades swam and crawled and climbed through hell to start the juggernaut towards Germany from the French coast. They are fewer and fewer every year, but they keep coming back to honor those who never left Calvados.

There are three military cemeteries within a few kilometers of one another near Omaha Beach: Colleville-sur-mer, American; Bayeux, British; and La Cambe, German. I’ve walked them all, several times.

The American cemetery is situated on the bluff above Omaha Beach. You can stand at the edge and look down on the scene of the slaughter. And wonder how the hell they ever made it up to where you are. The graves are marked with white marble crosses, with the occasional Star of David interspersed. It’s quiet, usually, except for the wind. More than 9300 men lie there—not all fallen at Normandy, but congregated there in the fellowship of death.

The British cemetery, run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is in the heart of Bayeux, the town they took on 7 June. The headstones are like those at all CWGC graveyards—identically-sized slabs of white marble engraved with the soldier’s name, regiment and date of death (if known; otherwise a cross and “known but to God” inscribed); a centrally-located Cross of Sacrifice (tall marble cross with a sword inset), and a Stone of Remembrance, inscribed “Their Name Liveth Forevermore”. More than 4000 Brits, Commonwealth, Poles, French and others lie there.

La Cambe is outside Bayeux; you get to it down a quiet road that seems to have no other purpose but to lead you to the dead. The cemetery is maintained by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German counterpart to the CWGC. It’s not as large space-wise as the two Allied graveyards. That’s because when you look at the inscriptions on the black metal markers set into the earth, you see there are often two to five men buried in a single spot. Plus, there are the nearly 300 known and unknown under the central mound. More than 21,000 men lie there.

The thing that struck me almost from the first in these three cemeteries was the ages on the markers—you almost never see anyone who’d reached 24. Most were in the 19-22-year age range. When you’d expect them to be in college, or working their first jobs.

I’ve often wondered what the world lost through those early deaths. What music never was composed? What scientific breakthroughs never made? What civic gains, feats of sportsmanship, family enrichment just disappeared from the future in June 1944?

That, of course, is in addition to the anguish and sorrow that engulfed their families. Parents, siblings, wives, children—bereft and left alone to sort out a world gone mad. No one to repair the gutter or fix the bike; to guide a grandchild’s hands tying a bow knot; to comfort a friend; to surprise a lover with flowers.

It had to be done—it always seems to need doing. But take a few moments this weekend to think on those 30,000 lives cut short in Normandy 65 years ago. The boys of D-Day who put their lives on the line for their generation and those that followed.

Signs of the times

This droll visual commentary came through the email & I tracked it down on the Net to share with you.

I must say it’s an extremely good use of graphics software. &, sadly, all too true in our current economy.

A modest proposal for GM

As you’d expect, Michael Moore has a few things to say about the state of GM. The filmmaker/whackjob (depending on your level of investment in corporate propaganda) who made Roger and Me 20 years ago to document GM’s catastrophic oblivion to the world immediately about it, thinks we all lose if the bankruptcy just allows the company to keep on keeping on (albeit on a smaller scale), seeing as to how “keeping on” has caused far more damage to our society than just making cars people really don’t like.

Growing up in LA, I was told that before WWII there was a nice system of light rail electric transport to get people around the area. Post-war, the oil and auto companies (GM in particular) lobbied heavily that the city should replace that “old-fashioned” system with nice, new, gas-burning buses. And that’s what they did.

And between the buses and the 12,437,677 cars on the roads, it became damned near impossible to get from here to there even on brand-new freeways. And LA for decades wore the crown of the smog capital of the country. (Growing up, I can well recall that painful limit on the depth of breaths you could take in the summer, when smog filled your lungs and; burned your eyes.)

Moore has some suggestions about what the bankruptcy executives could do with GM's remaining resources that don't involve continuing to build internal-combustion cars with the old GM mindset of tail-fins and planned obsolescence.

In general I agree with Moore.

But, as with Roger, probably no one involved in the GM bankruptcy will pay any attention.

Plus ça change…

Motor City's burning

As has been expected for the last 60 days, GM filed for bankruptcy this morning. It was an electronic procedure, almost automated. & the American taxpayers just as automatically forked over another $30B to tide the behemoth over through the expected 60- to 90-day Chapter 11 period.

That’s in addition to the $20B we’ve already flushed down this particular sewer line.

Chrysler, the other automotive welfare mother, has been authorized by its own bankruptcy judge to sell its assets to Fiat. That deal doesn’t involve any real cash, just a promise by Fiat to build cars people will actually buy.

Quelle idée.

People have been watching the Chrysler process to predict what type of bankruptcy we can expect from GM. But the Fiat deal was already circling the body in the water before Chrysler filed, and there’s no one in sight except the US taxpaying chumps for infusing billions into a company that’s shown again and; again that it can’t or won’t reorganize its way out of a paper bag.

So it’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Looking in the rear-view mirror

As we wait for GM to announce its descent into bankruptcy, P.J. O’Rourke drives a big car with fins down memory lane for the WSJ.

It doesn’t entirely resonate with me, but I’m sure it represents the Y-chromosome set's attachment to American cars. And it does touch on the massive post-WWII changes in the American national landscape wrought by the auto industry.

You can certainly see it in any housing built after around 1950: there’s always a carport or garage, and usually it’s the first thing you see when you drive up to a residence. Which veritably screams, “We’ve got wheels!”

(Don’t get me wrong—I’m an LA native and where my car goes is pretty much as important to me as whether the place has indoor plumbing. And when I was looking for a house in Seattle I reconciled myself to the fact that there isn’t going to be any street parking for guests because so many of the houses were built in the expectation that no one would have cars, much less three per household, so the curbs are chockablock with residents’ SUVs and Lexuses.)

I myself never owned anything with more than four cylinders, although the vehicle has to be equipped with a sun roof. (A fact that stymied the car dealer in Wales: “But, madam, you’re in the UK!”) Well—and it does need to possess scoot; I’d never drive a Saab without the turbo charge.

But I take O’Rourke’s point: just as Gen-Yers grew up never knowing existence without PCs and video games, I cannot imagine a world without cars, highways and assigned parking spaces. (In my recent house-hunting forays there were townhouses I rejected because it was impossible to get the car into the attached garage.) Even in London that was one of the absolutes of finding a flat.

We’ll see in the next quarter whether GM emerges from its self-inflicted time of trial. But the era O’Rourke reminisces about is definitely long gone.

Code of honor

We’ve lost two important pieces of history this week: two of the Navajo Code Talkers have died.

Brown Jr. John, 88, last of the original group of Code Talkers died at his home in Crystal, N.M. He volunteered for the Marines & wasn’t told that he’d be part of the secret communications group until he started Boot Camp. Thomas Claw, 87, died of cancer in Prescott, Ariz.

Both men left families & a legacy of service to a country that didn’t always do right by their people.

Code Talkers were stationed around the Pacific Theatre to foil Japanese attempts to crack Allied communications. Navajos were picked because the language is extremely complex & almost impossible to learn unless you’re immersed in it from birth. But they didn’t just speak Navajo; they added another layer of confusion for cryptologists by assigning code words for military discussions. “Tortoise”, for example, represented a tank; “potato” a hand grenade.

After the war, Code Talkers returned to civilian life & were told not to speak of their service. The project wasn’t declassified until 1968.

Some Code Talkers were captured by the Japanese & tortured to reveal the code. None gave it up.

With John & Claw our connection to that story & to the concept of dedicated service without expectation of high reward has been diminished. Consider that on 14 August, which is “Navajo Code Talkers Day” in the US.

Another Normandy invasion

Oh, dear, oh, dear—British noses are bent out of shape over ceremonies at the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-day landings.

Seems HM Queen Elizabeth II’s invitation to attend got lost in the mail and Brits are waxing wroth.

Only it turns out that this particular ceremony is a “Franco-American” gathering, at a US military cemetery, and the Queen, being neither, just isn’t on the A-List. A fact that seems to have escaped the huff-and-puff crowd.

What’s interesting is the compensation issues underlying the affront: Brits believe they don’t get enough credit for their efforts in defeating the Nazis. They think the Americans got all the press, and there they are, scuffing their toes in the dirt and muttering that they were too part of the team—it was the Allies, you know.

Of course, during the actual, you know, war, Bill Mauldin noted that whenever a joint effort in Italy resulted in an advance it was reported in the British press as a British victory; whenever an American army scored, it was reported as an Allied victory.

(Also, keep in mind that one of Britain's most vaunted contributions to the war effort was Montgomery; and if we'd followed his idea of strategy we'd still be there "tidying up" after each brilliant victory that never actually parlayed to actual advances. Don't even get me started on that.)

And during all the hoo-haw of 1999 on the 55th anniversary of the landings, if you watched any British TV or read any British papers, you wouldn’t have known there were any forces involved besides the Brits, Canadians and Germans. So all this whining is a little small-minded.

Whatever. But note that the particular ceremony in question is being held at Colleville-sur-mer, an American military cemetery. Not the one down the road in Bayeux, which is a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. I’m sure that if the Brits wanted to commemorate their war dead, the French would be happy to hold a service there, with all the royals who can cram in between the headstones.

And then they can all troop over to the German military cemetery just outside Bayeux and remember that a whole generation of 19- and 20-year-olds from the old world and the new lie in their little enclaves just a few kilometers apart in that département.

But I suppose it would be expecting too much to ask that the Brits just get over themselves and grow the hell up.

D minus four

The clock is ticking for GM—it’s got until Sunday to come up with a restructuring plan that will keep it out of bankruptcy. Word on the street (okay, various broadsheet papers) is that you and I, my fellow tax-chumps, are about to become majority stockholders in the tanking automaker—to the tune of 70%.

The UAW, which appears to be a better negotiator, will come out with 17.5% of the stock, although that’s less than the autoworkers had hoped for. (They're also accepting stock as funding for retiree benefits. Now there's a longshot for you.)

As in the case of Chrysler, GM’s bondholders have tossed their $700 hand-stitched sabots into the machinery, refusing to accept the offer of $0.41 on the dollar for their debts, which (as with Chrysler) is an invitation to bankruptcy.

You know someone’s out of whack when the UAW seem more reasonable.

Especially when you figure that the bondholders are likely to get much less than this offer under bankruptcy.

Comment dit-on en anglais?…schmucks.

Well, whatever. In a few days most of Detroit will be one big garage sale.

Yuppie armageddon

I’ve been focusing on other things the past few days but I couldn’t let this story go by without comment.

Don’t know whether this was reported with tongue in cheek, but the first thing that struck me was how really unsympathetic the Robbins family are as exemplars of people hard hit by the recession.

They’re pulling in $130K a year, but within a week of him being laid off they’re on Medicaid and food stamps? What’s up with that?

“That three-month emergency fund—we should have done it, but we didn’t,” Kim Robbins rued. Three months? Evidently they didn’t have seven days. How does that make them victims?

In fact, on $130K per annum “it was hard enough to keep up with living expenses…Plus, they had credit-card debt.”

So, there they were, spending everything they earned and more, evidently in the expectation that reality was never going to catch up with them.

But I love their response to the crisis: her mother brings them toilet paper and paper towels; they eat pasta; they stop the kids’ sports leagues and music lessons.

And Mrs. Robbins moans, “It’s all gone. Everything you had is all gone….Everything you were connected to—it’s gone.”

Well, except for the health club membership and Catholic schools.

Plus, their “agony” doesn’t even last two months—so that’s a lot of melodrama for a family that restored its income in six weeks.

I don’t know—I’m beginning to sound like my parents, who went through the Great Depression and made only two classes of purchases “on the cuff”, as my father referred to it: houses and cars. So I really don’t get the sort of mind set that lets you run up expenditures like you’re the federal government or GM with never any expectation that you’re going to have to, you know, pay for them.

Evidently no one’s read Mr. Micawber’s precept:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Including that reporter.

Muse of Fire

I have one more recommendation for a film for Memorial Day. This one’s a little different from yesterday’s list. And it’s related to last year’s Memorial Day post.

That was about Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of US Troops and their Families (Random House, 2006). As the title suggests, Homecoming is a collection of writings by those we’ve sent into harm’s way since 2001. It’s the outcome of a project by the NEA to help soldiers and their families use writing to process their experiences at war.

And the film is Muse of Fire; a documentary about that project. A few of the writers who took part in the project and the head of the NEA talk about the purpose, and a few of the participants talk about their experiences and their writing.

There’s not a lot of action, but there is a great deal of emotion.

I won’t go into a lot of the details, but there’s one story I’ll carry with me for a long time.

An Army specialist recounts the experience of being part of a transfer of a body from an Iraqi ambulance to a US one. What astounds and undoes him is when the body bag emerges from the Iraqi vehicle: “It’s the size of a pillow.”

His mind simply cannot connect with the anomaly of expecting a body, assuming it would be an adult, but then having a baby emerge, with the one-size-fits-all bag being folded over several times to accommodate the infant.

He feels like vomiting. After a while he spends the entire night writing, the literary equivalent of detoxifying. He assures us he didn’t send that output to anyone because it was too raw. But if he hadn’t been able to write—if he hadn’t had the NEA training—he thinks he’d have gone insane.

Another specialist talks about connecting with an old Iraqi, a man whose son has just been killed in a “roadside incident”. The specialist, who’d lost an infant daughter, thinks he can appreciate on some level the old man’s anguish, and he tries to comfort him. The Iraqi keeps repeating something and the specialist asks the translator what he’s saying.

“Just shoot me now.”

The film runs less than an hour and it’s on DVD. I found it at the King County Library, so you might check out your local branch or find it on Netflix. It’s more gripping than entertaining, but I highly recommend it.