The Last Charge
The death of Silverio Cuaresma in Nevada at age 100 is a reminder that the World War 2 generation is nearly gone. He accepted a field commission as a guerrilla during the darkest days of the Japanese occupation. “According to a fragile, yellow document that his family keeps in a plastic sheath, Cuaresma was appointed second lieutenant on April 22, 1943, ‘in the field by order of Edwin P. Ramsey, major, U.S. Army commanding.’”
Ramsey was himself a storied figure. He led the last horse cavalry charge in US military history against against a Japanese infantry unit attempting to cut off the retreat to Bataan. The Japanese were pushing a flying column of hard-marching soldiers to seize the town of Morong, through which the men heading for Bataan had to pass to reach their positions.
In December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then invaded the Philippines, the regiment was ordered north as part of the North Luzon Force to oppose the Japanese landings in Lingayan Gulf. Additional landings elsewhere forced the withdrawal of the outnumbered American and Filipino forces, whose retreat was covered by the 26th Cavalry into Bataan. Leading a 27-man Platoon, as advance guard for the 1st Regular Division of the Philippine Army, on January 1st, 1942, at the village of Morong, Bataan, Lieutenant Ramsey encountered a Japanese infantry force in the village and immediately ordered a charge. General Wainwright later awarded Ramsey the Silver star for gallantry in action for leading what became the last Horse Cavalry charge in U.S. history.
Escaping after the surrender of Bataan, Lieutenant Ramsey formed the guerrilla forces in Central Luzon. Then came three years of agonizing guerrilla warfare, waged by courageous Americans and Filipinos on Luzon Island, fighting both the imperial Japanese Army and communist Huk guerrillas to prepare the way for the return of General Douglas MacArthur. Ramsey also sent critical intelligence information to General Douglas MacArthur in preparation for the liberation of the Philippines. After his return, General MacArthur personally awarded Ramsey the Distinguished Service Cross for his guerrilla activities.
The Last Charge
A book on Ramsey’s military career, Lieutenant Ramsey’s War: From Horse Soldier to Guerrilla Commander is available on Amazon.
Cuaresma himself fought in the Luzon campaign, which as described elsewhere, was by far the largest battlefield of the Pacific War. He was was cited for gallantry, in particular for leading a grenade attack on Japanese positions, but along with many others, his services were never officially recognized. He became a US citizen in 1989 and lived out his life as a semi-public spokesman for the forgotten guerrillas of his generation, “a cause that Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., and Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev vow to continue”.
But at this point, the last stragglers of the Luzon Campaign are so close to marching beyond our ken that it hardly matters in any practical sense what the bureaucrats can give them now. For at this stage these last survivors are closer to the beckoning call of their youthful friends than to our own fading voices.
They are the last glimpse of a vanishing army, the final sight of a line of men as they pass around a bend, and we cannot follow where they go. Until it is our turn. But as Richard Todd, himself part of the assault on Pegasus Bridge said before his own death, they shall never leave us. They survive in us for so long as we can summon something of their spirit inside ourselves.
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Wretchard eulogizes:
“But this point, the last stragglers of the Luzon Campaign are so close to marching beyond our ken that it hardly matters in any practical sense what the bureaucrats can give them now. For at this stage these last survivors are closer to the beckoning call of their youthful friends than to our own fading voices.
They are the last glimpse of a vanishing army, the final sight of a line of men as they pass around a bend, and we cannot follow where they go. Until it is our turn. But as Richard Todd, himself part of the assault on Pegasus Bridge said before his own death, they shall never leave us. They survive in us for so long as we can summon something of their spirit inside ourselves.”
Programmr respectfully opines:
Most evocative and stirring. You sir, are a great talent!
Those who came before did more with less. Is there reason to hope that the lean times to come will produce a generation with character?
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
Tis but our own youth fading, the real yutes of today can barely remember the first Gulf War. Or the second.
Very moving. Thank you for this Richard. It will not fade if we do not forget. I will show this to my 16 year old daughter. I often share some of your essays and comments with her. Hope this will plant a seed which will bear fruit in the future.
Wait… is that Japanese soldier in the lower left corner… is that Donald Rumsfeld?
As I’ve said before, sometimes I miss them terribly.
They were the bulwark of my youth, the elders that seemingly held up the sky. As my allotment of that weight settles onto my shoulders, I wonder at the load they carried with such apparent ease.
Well, the road ahead is long. No time to complain. Just commence the heavy lifting, I suppose.
Battling Bastards of Bataan indeed!
It was 1974. We had just moved to the Philippines, on assignment for a major American company. As part of the familiarization one day we drove south from Manila to see Lake Taal, the caldera in the Taal Volcano. On our way through a small village we were greeted by children flashing the V sign and calling us Joe. The Americans and WWII left an impression.
Our company had been in the Philippines from the 1920s. When the Japanese marched into Manila our American manager was placed in the Santo Thomas Civilian Internment Camp where he remained until the war’s end. The Japanese were notorious for their inhumane treatment of POWs but civilians were not subjected to that kind of treatment.
One day I remarked to one of our senior staff, hired in the late 1930s about what an ordeal that must have been. I rightly unloaded pointing out that he went through the war without the benefit of being fed, clothed and housed by the Japanese. To say that Filipino civilians were maltreated would be an understatement.
Wretchard, thank you for reminding Americans that those like Silverio Cuaresma who fought so bravely alongside Americans were, after the war, not accorded their due. The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, with more than 17,000 graves, pays fitting tribute to those Americans who died but as I recall does not properly include those without whom the recapture of the Philippines would have been at a cost of even more dead.
It is a sad day for America when we do not honor our allies. Thank you Silverio and please give my thanks to your colleagues now that you will see them again.
Thank you for this beautiful post and for informing me of the charge at Morong. The U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division still maintains a lot of cavalry heritage including a life-size wooden horse mascot (“Trigger”) which accompanied them on their deployments to Baghdad (2009) and Regional Command East – Afghanistan (2011).
My father’s WWII service was with the USN “Seabees”. He took part in amphibious assaults during the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and Philippines (Mindanao) campaigns. Thank God, he is still with us.
Morong is on the western coast of the Bataan peninsula guarding a river crossing. A glance at the map shows clearly why it had to be held. If the Japanese had crossed in force, the US and Filipino forces would have been flanked, as so often happened to Percival in Singapore. But Wainwright had cavalry and it did what it was designed to do for one final time in history.
Ed Ramsey, so far as I can tell, is still alive in California. As for the action itself, here is the best account that I can find.
If you take the tour boat to Corregidor today you’ll see the giant cross marking the Wainwright’s last stand at Mount Samat from out at sea. I went to Corregidor before the cross was constructed, once by ex-PT boat and another time on a minesweeper as a child, and have memories of clambering up to old, shell shattered docks before the island was turned into a memorial. In those days you looked out toward Bataan and only saw the mountains dwindling down to the sleepy town of Mariveles there at the opening of Manila Bay. But the memorial must be a sight from the channel, saying in its silent way. Remember us. Remember us.
I recently learned that my great grandfather served in Phillipine-American War. The 1900 US census lists him as residing in Sorsogon, Phillipines. Now, I have more research to do.
The style of the painting of the cavalry charge looks familiar. Is it by Fernando Amorsolo?
11. wretchard
Note, in the linked article, the photo showing the cavalry troop, on horseback, filing past an M3 Stuart tank. That is, in my opinion, one off the greatest, and most iconic, photographs of the war. The tank belonged to Company B of the 192nd Tank Battalion, which, along with the 194th Tank Battalion, comprised the Provisional Tank Group. I knew the American soldier sitting on the turret; interviewed him for a book I’m writing on the combat history of the PTG.He passed away recently (he survived the Death March and the POW experience).
The Provisional Tank Group, like the cavalry units, fought well and valiantly in the Battle of Bataan. They were particularly effective in the so-called Battles of the Points and Pockets–two battles in which the Japanese attempted amphibious landings on Bataan’s west coast to outflank the Fil-American forces. It was the same gambit they ran so often and successfully in the Malayan campaign; but on Bataan the invaders were wiped out by ad hoc Allied forces consisting of the tank units, regular U.S. Army units,units of the superb Filipino Scouts, a unit of U.S. Army Air Corps pilots and ground crew converted into infantry, and a unit of fierce Igorot tribesmen from northern Luzon.
It’s actually a thumbnail of John Solie’s painting. One wonders why the subject is so obscure. One reason is the Bataan campaign is not a very Hollywood-friendly subject. Bataan was still a defeat, the largest capitulation in American history, for all of its valor and sacrifice. Second, it deals with the subject war against an Asiatic enemy and the complex Filipino-American relationship, which the American academia sees through the prism of colonialism.
Stripped of an easy narrative, popular culture has surrounded the great campaigns of Luzon with PC taboos that have robbed history of a great story and many Filipinos of their World War 2 past. After my father died he had among his things a mini-package of Lucky Strikes, the kind that were airdropped in 1944 during morale missions. On the side of the package is printed “I shall return.” To be caught with them by Japanese troops was probably going to cost a person his life.
Think of that. In all his long life, after surviving the Battle of Manila; after moving many times in the Philippines since the war, come flood, high water or Martial law, come the move to Australia, after ditching everything that wasn’t absolutely essential to life in a new country to the end of his days still he kept it: the Lucky Strikes with “I shall return”.
There are things we will never know about history. Old men’s memories were once young men’s adventures.
Someday a book ought to be written about the Filipino Scouts. They remind me of the Fremen tribemen in Dune. Almost nobody in “the known universe” of Dune, least of all the Emperor Shaddam’s elite Sardaukar soldiers, knew about the Fremen and their warfighting skills. The Sardaukar were considered the best and fiercest warriors in the entire universe; certainly they thought this to be the case. But in their first encounter with the Fremen, a unit of Sardaukar was wiped out in less than a minute of ferocious hand-to-hand combat. Similarly, the Filipino Scouts, in their encounters with battle-tested Japanese soldiers from the war in China, made hash of their enemies. I believe a case can be made that, man for man, the Filipino Scouts were at least the equal of the world’s elite soldiers, including the Waffen SS and Panzergrendiers, the best of the Japanese Army, etc.
After the surrender on Bataan the Japanese went to great and vindictive lengths to punish the Scouts, singling out and murdering hundreds of them during the Death March, after subjecting many to hideous tortures.
Come to think, maybe I’ll write that book. If my health holds.
I recently read Intrepid Aviators, about the USS Intrepid air group in WWII, which also covered the experiences of one pilot who was shot down during the first attack on the IJN Musashi and ended up joining the Philippine guerillas.
I also have two other books I have yet to read. One is “MacArthur’s Undercover War” (of which I have 2 copies in case anyone needs one) and the newest one, “Undefeated” about the US troops who fought at Bataan and Corregidor and then became POWs; it has a cover quote endorsement by Col Ed Ramsey.
And I have on my list of things to do to interview an A-20 pilot who was shot down and joined the guerillas in the PI.
One of my high school teachers was a bomb/nav on the Doolittle raid. Another was in command of an 800 ton seaplane tender that sailed into Pearl Harbor a few days after 7 Dec 1941, guns manned and ready to fight their way in to relieve Hawaii. When I moved here 20 years ago my next door neighbor had been a B-25 pilot in the med; his squadron commander was Ted W. Lawson’s co-pilot. One of the mechanics at the local airport was a crew chief flying the Hump. Another airport regular was a maintenance chief with the 9th PRS in India. All are gone now. It was once so common to have those guys around.
But I am proud to have written some magazine articles that gave a couple of my WWII warrior friends some recognition.
#15 Wretchard: “Old men’s memories were once young men’s adventures” – another gem of a bon mot.
I pity the generation of old men without consequential adventures to remember.
And they rarely ever talked about what they had done. As a kid, my brothers and I shovelled snow for the neighbors. One day, after doing the next door neighbor’s driveway, he took us into his study to write us a check. On the wall was a picture of a B-25 rolled onto its side, with a wing separating in a ball of flames. He had been on that plane and successfully bailed out over Germany.
But I have come to believe that a lot of PTSD is due to holding in what should be let out. That rustic philosopher Joe Namath once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it”. I’d suggest that a more relevant idea would be, “It ain’t bragging if you use your story to tell others how it was done”. Putting it in the past tense makes all the difference.
And only those who really did it can tell the story with “the ring of truth”.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ring-Truth-Inquiry-into/dp/0394556631
You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.
Where now are the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?
….lest we forget.
I remember as a child visiting my friend’s grandfather in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada. He had served in the Canadian army in the Great War. Now they’re all gone and the WWII guys are dropping like flies with Korean War vets on their heels and then my war companions will be the old guys at the Veterans Day parade.
I guess we don’t “measure out our lives with coffee spoons” like Prufrock but faded khaki and old dusty decorations in the attic.
Its next to impossible to impart to someone the experience of war.
When ‘The Battle of Britain’ was being filmed, one of the cameramen, who had flown in the battle himself, was asked how accurate the film was. He said it couildn’t be made wholly real because the planes they were using in the film were expensive and couldn’t be risked, so the intensity of the manuevers was kept to a safe level. A twenty-five year old fighter pilot didn’t care if he wrecked the plane by exceeding the design limits, so long as it got the Hun off his tail.
I remember hugging the ground under mortar fire and thinking the buttons on my shirt were keeping me from getting lower. I’d read about that experience and thought it was an exageration at the time, but its not.
The smells, sounds, the bone tiredness till you don’t care anymore, simply defy expression.
The best summation I’ve seen is the quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes used in Ken Burns ‘Civil War’,
“In our youth, our hearts were touched with fire.”
Perhaps thats what you see in these tired old men, the last embers of the inferno they lived through.
17. RWE
“All are gone now. It was once so common to have those guys around.”
My dad was on Okinawa, and at Ia Shima when the white painted Betty bombers with green crosses landed, Ferrying the Surrender delagation to the Philipines.
He was born in ’23 and said when he was a kid old graybearded Civil War vets would sit around the square and if you passed too close they would snag you and talk your ears off. He said he used to figure out ways to get pass them without getting snagged into an hour long history lesson.
He would shake his head and say;
“All those stories, gone now.”
Here is a link to some video about the D-Day invasion that is now readily accesible courtesy of the Internet. http://youtu.be/lsaOBq8sph4?t=11m57s
You can see my 92 year old second cousin’s (twice removed) LST-533 beaching on Omaha Beach on D-Day + 1. He had NEVER seen this himself! You can see them dropping the port anchor.
His email to a shipmate reads in part
It was nice to know that I was able to give some old guys a nice color video of the most important day in their lives, when they were young. He was 22.
And speaking about coincidences, my father worked on the design of the LSTs and his second wife (he re-married after his first wife passed away) worked in the shipyard that built LST-533. It’s a small world!
I’m so glad I did not waste 5 hours a day watching sitcoms like The Brady Bunch!
I’ll join in:
**my uncle, who was a B-17 mechanic and later a crew chief, his squadron one of the first to England with a 105% turnover the first year. Endless stories of aircraft coming back so shot up as to defy belief, then flying out the next AM. Of the pilots with nerves totally shot, pints of whiskey in their suits, sipping away as they warmed up the engines
**a Marine veteran of the Pacific, three major campaigns without any combat-related injury, with tales of Japs and Marines and the reciprocal savagery.
**another Marine, enlisted right at the end of WW II, sent to Tientsin to secure the port and watch the Japanese soldiers who were heading home. Many bawdy tales of the black market, White Russian prostitutes, and high life on a corporal’s pay.
**finally, during my own service, a recap of those long-ago bomber pilots in the person of a former medevac chopper pilot and tales of heading for the flight line with handfuls of Valium, compliments of the flight surgeon–another generation of nerves almost shot.
Thank you for the essay, so beautiful as always. I visited American Cemetery in Manilla. Its literally overwhelming, acres of white markers in green grass. So many Phillipino and American names.
The Philippine campaign didn’t get its fair share of Hollywood glory. It didn’t suffer its fair share of Hollyoods leftist revisionism either.
22. walter adams
“Its next to impossible to impart to someone the experience of war.”
I usually ask if they had ever been in an automobile accident, then ask for the name of a book or movie that provided anything close to the same experience.
Hollywood has separated war from Hell. Near instant death or a minor wound.
Sadly many believe it is the truth. War is in fact Hell.
All seven of my uncles fought with one or another of the services. One who was in the Navy told me that he had never been so frightened as when he stepped out on deck of the old Maryland in rough seas, and saw a torpedo track pass under the bow as it heaved up and immediately another track pass under the stern as it heaved up in turn.
Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union/Prison Planet:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?…
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If… if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
– Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Time for “Dover Beach” again….
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
– 1867
My dad came to this country from China; alone, 12 years old, not speaking English. In those days, literally, Chinese were not classified as human beings under American law. That changed in 1943. As soon as he was legally a person, he enlisted in the Army. Soldiering is a young man’s profession, and he was 30 when he enlisted. He never talked about the war, and all I knew was that he got his citizenship for his service. After his last heart attack and before he died, I was going through his papers looking for insurance and things like that for his 3rd wife, who did not speak English, and I found his Army papers.
Using them, after he died I researched his service. He was one of the first non-white NCO’s in the combat infantry. He never mentioned his decorations. And I found out that his company had gone the farthest east of any American unit in Europe, and the day before the war ended liberated the last concentration camp in Nazi hands [Gunzkirchen]. He never mentioned what he did, or saw. He just came home and built a life that included raising me [no easy task, that].
I have a nephew who was just promoted to Master SGT in the Marines. Multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn. Doesn’t talk about what he saw, but then again much of it is classified [I know what schools he has been sent to].
The stepmother of two of my nieces is a retired AF Master SGT. After 9/11 she transferred to AF SpecOps. She was support and not an operator, but she was in Afghanistan, the Horn, and some places we officially never were. She is out now, but has PTSD. She won’t talk about it, which is understandable.
There is, and always will, be a barrier between our protectors, and those they fought to protect. They cannot explain it, and it is our loss.
#29 beverly
Your quote may be the experiences that we will not be able to talk about. May we not have those same regrets.
Subotai Bahadur
As an English major I feel moved to add that I’ve imagined Tenneyson’s Locksley Hall overlooking Dover Beach.
Up next, perhaps: those ignorant armies.
Machias Privateer: Sure that wasn’t Dizzy Dean instead of Joe Namath?
I crossed paths in 2011 with Mr Cuaresma at a Fil-Am and other veterans affair. Did not get to know him but our eyes met with that flash of recognition known only
to those who have “seen the elephant”.
Before the formal evening affair there was an informal lunch get together. I was nursing a cup of coffee when a voice said “Is this seat taken”. I was joined by General Antonio Taguba. His father, still alive at 92, is also a Bataan and Death March survivor. I related how my wife’s father was taken away in December 44 and never seen again. I said “He is still among the missing.” The General pointed skyward and replied “But he is not missing up there.” Good enough for me.
I was also privileged to correspond with the late Clyde Childress of Tucson. A shavetail who was sent to Mindanao and thus avoided Bataan, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel under Fertig.
My adoptive father was one of Pershing’s Doughboys, his death at only 61 was in part due to the conditions in those trenches. My natural father was a P38 pilot who bought the farm a month before I was born. Also in 2011 I finally met another veteran who had known him. This search took me 53 years and was concluded by a chance meeting in Palm Springs. Found out that the two had been part of a group of 82 replacements who arrived in Italy in March 44. Only 17 of them ever saw VE Day and I ran across the last of the 17. I am indeed fortunate.
http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/20130130192023.aspx
When I saw that photo I thought of those who had gone before for some reason. The act, the gesture, the large and small sacrifices to make a gesture, for those who had made the gestures, appreciated or not in the past.
Subotai @ 31 – Based on the experience of Civil War vets, this is your nieces’ stepmother’s song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZ3jPMM5Ac
Dave @ 33 – Broadway Joe, in his own words (or those he borrowed from someone in the B.TV. era, Before TV).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oXUCWyj14I
The beginning of a preference cascade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIxIRkiThak
The chicks (AKA the “moderates”) change sides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ClijtnPkfU&feature=endscreen&NR=1
And note that he is humbled by wounded vets as he visits them in military hospitals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPJJRoc8100
Football is only a game.
The National Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNm5vCBM7EI
The Half-time Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeBGoacp2ks
Those kids sure grow up FAST nowadays!
Thank Heaven For Little Girls!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyBffCiGr8c
For at this stage these last survivors are closer to the beckoning call of their youthful friends than to our own fading voices.
Richard – you are indeed a poet.
#3:
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a victory for the British not the defeat of the poem. (See Orlando Figes book on the Crimean War)
26th Cavalry Regiment (PS)
The Philippine Scouts and the Phillippine Constabulary have piqued my interest since I first heard about them in 1973.
Heritage of Valor:
A History of the Philippine Scouts
Meanwhile Wretchard, another WWII anniversary is coming this weekend:
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675040069_Georgy-Zhukov_German-Marshal-Friedrich-Paulus-surrenders_celebrations-in-Stalingrad
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_STALINGRAD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-31-06-54-20
Volgograd to be renamed Stalingrad for a few days this week
My uncle-in-law, Isauro M. Sison was on Bataan and was surrendered to the Japanese. He participated in the Death March and returned to service, first in the US Army and later in the Philippine Army from which he retired as a general officer shortly after Marcos came to power. He was commander of the AFP Command and General Staff College from late 1965 to early 1966. Currently, he lives in Fremont, CA and we celebrate his 100th birthday next month.
COMMENTS TURNED OFF FOR “SINE NOMINE?”
I noticed that comments are turned off for “Sine Nomine.” Is that because of comments #43 and #45? They seemed a bit egregious and not very helpful.
I hope this helps -
To get a good feel for what goes on in these neighborhoods watch the program, The First 48.
“The First 48 is an American Documentary television series on A&E. Filmed in various cities in the United States, the series offers an insider’s look at the real-life world of homicide investigators. While the cinema-verite series often follows the investigations to their end, it usually focuses on their first 48 hours, hence the title. Each episode picks one or more homicides in different cities, covering each alternately, showing how detectives use forensic evidence, witness interviews and other advanced detective skills to identify suspects.While most cases are solved within the first 48 hours, some go on days, weeks, or months after the first 48.”
It is amazing how cheap life is in these neighborhoods and it appears most of these homicides are over drugs, money and turf. I am surprised that this TV series should be allowed to air and I suspect they are under tremendous pressure to show that there are lots and lots of Caucasian perpetrators. But the facts remain, watching this show demonstrates that 85% of this crime is committed by black youth, another 10% by Hispanics, most of whom are illegal aliens with the least to lose, and the remaining number primarily homeless white people.
The obvious solution to me is to legalize it. Make it cheap and legal like sodomy. 90% of the world’s problems would be solved. This would reduce the need for law enforcement so it will never happen. People talk about peace but they are liars, they demand that blood be spilled. Murder is good for government and bad for you. Screw you.
The reason the gun laws are to blame is because the incontrovertible truth of liberalism and black communism is that all things are the fault of white people going about their lives. It has to be white laws that are at fault because the Afro-Christ murderers cannot be held accountable for their own actions. All actions are the fault of government and all government is good except the founding fathers and the Republican Party, i.e.; it is George W. Bush’s fault.
Sorry for the cross-post. I had this loaded on my clipboard. I am out.
Concerning the point that Texas *used* to be Democrat – yeah, and there used to be such a thing as Conservative Democrats that were 100% behind a strong national defense and supplying our energy needs from our own resources.
Best example I can think of – it was the Texas DEMOCRATS who gave Texas NO STATE INCOME TAX. And made no bones about it.
Today’s Texas Republicans are yesterday’s Texas Democrats – same views, pretty much the same policies. It’s the parties that have changed, not the people.
My next door neighbor, who passed away a few years ago, had an old Navy ball cap that he wore only rarely, like on Veterans Day. It said USS ARIZONA BB-39. I got goose bumps the first time I saw it.
Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, you pretty much took for granted that most of the men around you were WW2 and Korean War veterans. You barely noticed. Thinking back, I am a little startled to remember some of them.
– My father, a Navy corpsman in the Pacific.
– A favorite high school math/shop/technical drawing teacher (it was a small school) was an 8th AF B-17 navigator. Shot down over Regensburg, interned at Stalag Luft III and Stalag VII-A. Hated cold weather for some reason.
– Fathers of classmates served in the Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force and merchant marine.
– One mexican-american couple acted as surrogate family for a bunch of us kids over the years. A framed bronze star that he was awarded during action in the Pacific was the first we knew he had served. (And our response was on the lines of “Oh. Right, just like Craig and Tom and Jan’s dads….”)
– Our family physician (his two children were classmates of my sisters in elementary school) was a nisei, interned in one of the camps in eastern California. We found out after he passed, not from him.
All gone now. And more of my generation passing on now, along with their elder compatriots.