Bailouts

I know that most people find this kind of topic boring but the calamity that is currently taking place within the European Common Market is insane!  I can only surmise that it is the media's concern for keeping the populace in an upbeat state of mind that keeps them from reporting the gravity of the events.  On the other hand it might be that financial news doesn't include much sex and violence, the topic that seems to sell newspapers.

It looks like Greece is near a settlement over its debt crisis with bond holders agreeing to settle for about half the value of the bonds they hold!  Italy will be next and then Spain, with its 25% unemployment, will follow.  I wonder if they will negotiate the same kind of deals?  If they do, it only seems logical that all the other European nations will follow suit and the worlds investors, one of which is the United States, will lose 50% of their assets.  One by one, the European nations are being bailed out of their debt!

Investors settling for half sounds like what has already happened to the U.S. mutual/retirement funds a couple of years back.  In any other disguise this would be considered a market crash and I think I’m finally beginning to see the light.  Instead of a crash, they are letting the market down gradually, one country at a time so we won’t hear the bang.  We are right in the middle of a world market crash and we didn’t even know it!  It’s a little like biological evolution, it all happens so slowly its unnoticeable.

Before long, the U.S. will enter the second cycle of this "slippery slope" and our bailout will be slightly different.  The U.S. bonds being held by investors, mainly China, are dollar bills.  I predict that we will also negotiate our way out of our debt in one of two ways.  We will try to negotiate with China to reduce our debt by half or, if that fails, we will just print more of those greenbacks and pay them off with cheap paper money.  Either way does not portend a rosy future for the dollar, or world economics.

The Colmar Pocket and Uncle Billy

Colmar is a small town in the Alsace-Lorraine region of eastern France, the home of all things Alsatian.  It was the site of the last German stronghold in France during WWII.  The military referred to the German stronghold as the “Colmar Pocket” and because of the fierce, do-or-die resistance of the German forces, it is sometimes called the second “Battle of the Bulge.”  This is the place and time where Audie Murphy won his Congressional Medal of Honor and where uncle Billy (William Raymond Henderson) found himself in early January of 1945.  Billy had just turned 17 and had just returned to the front after spending Christmas with his family in Sacramento, California.

Uncle Billy on the right, November 1944

General Eisenhower’s plan for invading Germany was contingent on all Allied Forces “closing on the Rhine River” and that meant “collapsing” the Colmar Pocket.  The initial assault on the Colmar Pocket began on the 20^th of January, 1945 when the French 1^st Corps and U.S. 3^rd Division of the 30^th Infantry (Billy’s unit) attacked from out of the forest in a snowstorm.  The weather at the time was later described as “Siberian” with temperatures of -4 degrees Fahrenheit, three feet of snow, and strong winds.  Uncle Billy was there.

Alsace-Lorraine, winter of 44/45

When German counterattacks began, Allied troops were exposed and being unable to dig foxholes because of the frozen ground had to fall back into the tree line for protection.  The retreating soldiers suffered heavy casualties and this is when Audie Murphy, also in the 30^th Infantry (but not Billy’s Division), climbed onto a burning M10 tank destroyer and used its heavy machine gun to cover the retreat of his men.

The Battlefield at Colmar

These back and forth pitched battles continued for 12 days until, on January 31^st, 1945, uncle Billy’s unit reached the Rhone-Rhine Canal, just five miles from the Divisions crossing point over the Colmar Canal.  At this point, uncle Billy’s unit was pinned down by intense German artillery fire.  After a bitter day-long battle, Sgt. Forrest E. Peden dashed through intense German fire to summon help for the ambushed infantry unit but was killed when he returned on a light tank that was hit and destroyed; Sgt Peden posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism.  Uncle Billy was “Killed in Action” on that same day, he was 17 years and 59 days old.

After the War

This is an article written by my father, King Elisha Henderson, for the "Hell's Angels Newsletter" in July, 1989:

I would like to comment on a couple of letters in the “Your Chance to Sound Off” section of your April edition.  The first letter was written by Mr. Palmer of Pittsburgh, PA, who had lost his brother, Joe Palmer, in a B-17 during the war.  In the letter, Mr. Palmer states that he could not remove from his mind, the jubilant scene at a German airfield when the German pilots had just returned from shooting down one of our B-17’s.  I wonder if Mr. Palmer ever had the occasion to view the jubilation our pilots and gunners displayed when we shot down German fighters and bombers.

Within weeks after the war ended in Europe I was sent to Chartres and then Beauvais, France for a couple of months and then to Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany.  In France, being able to speak German, I was able to serve as interpreter for our Prisoners-of-War and through them, learned that they, like myself, were just as anxious for the war to end so that they could get back to what was left of their country and to their wives, parents, and loved ones.

After arriving in Germany, I was bivouacked in Koenigstein about 15 miles north of Frankfurt Airfield.  I had some very enjoyable times with many German folks and some German Prisoners-of-War who had returned from Russia and only rarely did I encounter Germans who carried any noticeable malice towards Americans for the destruction we had done to their country.  Even after all of these years I still communicate with a German family that I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with back then in the fall of 1949.

I too lost my youngest brother, William Henderson, just a few months before the end of the war, but to live with malice all of these years, towards Germans that were just doing their jobs as we were doing ours, would seem to be continuing the war without end; a war directed towards people who never knew Joe Palmer or William Henderson.  So, those of you who still have trouble trying to make friends with the German people, especially after 44 years, think about some of these things. 

The second letter in “your Chance to Sound Off” section was written by Hal Susskind and titled “My Forty-second Mission to Germany” wherein he states that the last time he saw Frankfurt it was leveled to the ground with not even one building left standing.  I must disagree with him on this since I was there right after the war.

Frankfurt, Germany at wars end

I remember the railroad station was leveled to the ground, as were all the bridges around the town and many of the town’s buildings; but I also remember that there were many other buildings in the town that had not been damaged at all.

The most prominent building left standing was the entire Krupp Chemical Works.  Also, it seems like the entire barracks facilities for their workers was untouched.  These facilities served as General Ike’s headquarters for a while.  The most startling thing to me was the fact that the Krupp Chemical Buildings seemed to have survived without a scratch!  It seemed like the entire complex had not even been hit by a single bullet, much less showing any type of bomb damage.  This is even more amazing since these buildings were on some of Frankfurt’s highest ground and were a bright white in color.  I was all the more surprised by the fact that just about every building around the Krupp Facility had been leveled to the ground and wondered how we, and the British, managed to accomplish such a feat without doing some damage to the Krupp Facility.

Memoirs of a Bombardier

Dad was telling me about one of his missions over Germany when their B-17 was damaged by flak.  He said they had lost an engine and couldn’t make it to their original target so they left the formation, headed home, and started looking for “targets of opportunity.”  They finally spotted a small ship tied up to a dock and dumped their entire load of bombs on that little ship.  “Sounds like a waste of good munitions” I said.  “Not really” he replied, “if we hadn’t found that ship we would have dumped everything in the English Channel and that would have been a waste.”

When I asked him why he didn’t take the munitions back so they could be used on the next mission, he told me the story that explained it all.  Apparently he was on the flight line one day when a plane did return with its entire bomb load in tact.  While they were unloading it, something set off an explosion the killed several men.  After a few seconds, when the smoke had cleared and everyone got back on their feet, dad saw the crew chief laying by the wreckage and calling for help.  He said he ran to help him but the man died in the few seconds it took for him to reach his side.  “It wouldn’t have made any difference” he said, “the man’s legs weren’t attached and he didn’t have much left below the hips.”  From that point on, even though it was not authorized and a punishable offense, there was an unwritten rule that no flight would ever return to base with their bomb load.

On a mission just before D-Day, Dad said he noticed multiple small lakes in the French countryside that he had never seen before.  He found out later that those lakes were French farm fields the Germans had flooded to thwart any attempt to drop paratroopers.  One of dad’s next missions was to bomb the dykes that would allow those fields to drain.

On one of his last missions, dad’s oxygen line was severed by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, he didn’t remember which, and he passed out.  He was out for 20 minutes before “Captain Hardesty” revived him and reconnected his oxygen line.  He never forgot Captain Hardesty for saving his life and visited him after the war at Travis AFB near Sacramento.  The Captain was a General by then but took the time out of his busy schedule to meet with dad for a little reminiscing.

At the end of the war when the hostilities had ended, the occupation troops were desperate for Americans who could speak the language to act as interpreters.  Dad spoke fluent German, a talent he picked up from the German family who raised him in South Dakota, and he got the opportunity to visit some of the cities he had dropped bombs on only weeks before.  He made some friends while he was there that he stayed in touch with for the rest of his life.  When I was stationed there in 1966, dad came over for a visit and we met with those friends he had made 20 years earlier.

Religion

It’s interesting how the following of Jesus Christ developed into the Catholic Church and became an institution that controlled the lives of most of the people of Europe for almost 1,500 years.  The common people were kept in the dark and depended on their Priests to guide them through life.  This is the period referred to as the dark ages when individual thinking was discouraged and progress in society and the sciences were few.  Emperors and Kings were all dependent on the support of the Pope, and it was the Pope who financed most of the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims.

By the 15^th Century, the church’s hold on society was beginning to break down.  When John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin to English for the first time and more people were able to read it for themselves, they began to demand reform, and that event was the beginning of The Reformation.  The demands of the Reformation were clearly spelled out by Martin Luther when he published his “95 Thesis” in 1517

The Reformation was given a boost with the invention of the printing press by John Guttenberg in 1455.  When the common people were able to read their own copies of the Bible, they began to protest the Pope’s authority as sole interpreter of the scripture.  It seemed that all of Europe was protesting against the Pope and these people came to be known as Protestants.  When the Pope denied Henry VIII of England a divorce so he could marry Anne Boleyn, Henry became the most famous Protestant of them all and broke away from the Pope and established the Church of England.

The Catholic Church fought back, establishing the “Spanish Inquisition” which effectively wiped out Protestantism in Spain.  In France, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 30,000 French Protestants virtually crippled the movement there, but the Pope couldn’t reach the Protestants in England and Protestantism lived on.

For some English Protestants, the Reformation didn’t go far enough and they sought to purify the church and strip away all the pomp and ceremony that had accumulated over the years; these people were known as Puritans. You might think this would have been enough to satisfy everybody, but it was not.  In this never-ending battle there were some who thought purification didn’t go far enough and these were the groups that became known as Separatists.

One of these Separatist groups, and there were many, became the Pilgrims who ended up in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  When the Pilgrims, under the leadership of John Robinson, William Brewster, and William Bradford fled Scrooby, England for Amsterdam and then to Leyden, they did not fare well in their adopted country.  For twelve years they struggled in poverty to establish their church while their sons and daughters were distracted by the temptations of their new surroundings.  It is easy to see how this could happen since, even today, Scrooby is a tiny little village in the English countryside and Amsterdam was, at the time, one of the busiest ports in Europe.  What a culture shock it must have been for these people.

The city of Leyden was smaller and life was a bit slower, but Leyden had just established one of the very first Universities.  The University was a hotbed of fresh thought and ideas and the net effect was that the move to Leyden was only a small improvement over Amsterdam.  Out of desperation, the Pilgrims hatched their scheme to resettle in the New World, but it was not for religious freedom, since they already had that, they were trying to protect their flock from the distractions of progress!

It seems to me that the celebrated idea of the Pilgrims seeking religious freedom was nothing more than an effort to keep their flock in religious bondage!  Of course, the move from England to Holland was certainly motivated by the persecution of their sect by King James after the death of Elizabeth but from that point on, they became like their persecutors, intolerant.

Even in Plymouth, MA, the immigrants were intolerant of anybody who didn’t conform to their way of thinking.  At least two of the Mayflower travelers suffered death for their failure to conform.  Later arrivals landing in Boston were even worse in their treatment of “heretics,” sending many into exile in a hostile land, a punishment tantamount to a death sentence.  A Baptist minister was publicly whipped and Mary Dyer was hanged for espousing alternative views.  The travesty that occurred in Salem, MA is a testament to their fear of individual thought.  I think, if there are four billion people on earth, there are four billion different religions!

My Mother

It was September 3, 1939, England had declared war on Germany and WWII in Europe had begun.  My mother, Elsie Merina Shorthose, was a 17 year old teenager just out of, what we would consider, High School.  She watched as all her brothers and uncles went off to war, some to North Africa, some to India, and one of them to Dunkirk.  Her father, who had fought in the trenches of the “Western Front” in WWI was too old to enlist and was still suffering from the “Shell Shock” disability of that encounter and living on his pension.

My mother, Elsie Merina Shorthose

The brother who fought in the battle of Dunkirk was one of the lucky ones who survived and was evacuated in what Winston Churchill later described as a “miracle of deliverance.”  During his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech Churchill described the events at Dunkirk as a “colossal military disaster.”

Sir Winston Churchill

Luckily for my uncle, Britain was able to evacuate 338,226 soldiers in a nine day effort that included the British Navy and a flotilla of 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft, and the lifeboats of the Royal National lifeboat institution.  Britain had lost her first battle of WWII and if Hitler had pursued the retreating army, the war may well have ended right there.

One of the Flotilla Boats loaded with evacuees

While visiting London in 2002, I had a chance to meet and chat with several survivors of Dunkirk.  Gail and I had lunch each day at “The Albert,” a quaint 19^th century pub located right in the heart of London’s business district and that is where I chanced to meet these gentlemen.

The Albert

Apparently, they were delivered to The Albert once a week from the “Old Soldier’s Home” where they could enjoy a “pint” and break the monotony of their lives.  All of them were well into their eightys and ninetys, but they were all alert and loved to chat.  I was thrilled to hear their first hand accounts of Dunkirk!

British evacuees on the beaches of Dunkirk firing at the German planes that were strafing them

Back at home, my mother enlisted as soon as she was eligible.  She wore a uniform and was, initially trained with the “home guard.”

My mother Elsie, in uniform

One of her first duties was to help the Red Cross with the wounded veterans who were just arriving from Dunkirk.  When the “Battle of Britain” started in 1940, she helped with the displaced children that were being moved out of London to protect them from the incessant bombing of the German Luftwaffe.  It was a battle for survival for England during these years, and a sudden awakening for a young teenage girl from the Midlands.

Wasted Effort

I once worked for a little Jewish fellow who had the biggest “Napoleon” complex I’ve ever witnessed; let’s call him S.B.  S.B. was on the short side, only about five foot six at best and to many people he probably seemed like a cute little hobbit.  S.B. was very well educated and a likeable chap but he developed an intense dislike for me from the moment of our first meeting.  I noticed when he was around me he had difficulty even walking, he seemed to be so self conscious that he stumbled over his own feet.  I tried my best to make S.B. feel more comfortable around me, digging deep to find his good qualities and bringing them into conversation, but nothing seemed to help the poor guy.  I don’t know what it was about me unless I represented everything he was not.  I was much taller and smarter than he was and I think he resented it, or maybe he was bullied as a youngster by someone who looked like me.  I guess I’ll never know.

For the first couple of years of our relationship, S.B. and I did not see much of each other and the inevitable confrontation did not occur, but that was not to last.  Eventually, work brought us closer together and his real venom began to show itself.  I knew my days were numbered.  Normally under these circumstances, I would not tolerate someone like S.B. but this time I put extra effort into making things right.  I tried to talk with him on several occasions but it seemed like the more effort I put into our relationship, the worse things got.  In the end, when the company began to downsize, I was one of the first to go.  There are many things I should have said to S.B. at the time, and I didn't, so if he is still out there somewhere and by chance has an opportunity to read this I’d just like to say, Fuck You.

Dad

“Up and at em’” was dad’s favorite wake-up call.  Up and at em’ was the way he woke us up in the morning like he was rousing ranch hands in a bunkhouse.  I guess it comes from his South Dakota farm upbringing where his industrious German foster parents probably woke him up with the same call.  Dad was built like a “brick shithouse” as they say, not being over five feet ten inches, but he was big boned and strong.  His light brown hair was fine and whispy and he had a rather large nose that had apparently been broken some time in his life.  He also had two upper front teeth that leaned backward into his mouth and gave his smile a flatness that was unique.  I asked him about his nose and teeth one time and he told me that he had been kicked by a horse; a mean horse.  “I got even with that horse” he once told me, “I hit him right between the eyes with a large board and dropped him to the ground.”

Dad and all his siblings were virtual orphans before the oldest of them was nine.  It was 1926 when their own family disintegrated and the kids were scattered all over South Dakota and Nebraska.  Dad ended up with Adam Straub and his wife Rosie on a nine hundred acre farm near the town of Eureka, South Dakota.  His adopted family treated him fair enough, he said, but life on the farm was a lot of hard work.

Dad stayed on the farm for about five years before he left and started riding boxcars around the country, a mode of transportation that was dangerous but common in the depression years.  He was only thirteen or fourteen when he quit school and ran away from the Straub farm, and he never made it beyond the eighth grade.  With his propensity to clown around and be a jokester, I doubt that even the eight grades he completed did him much good.  My guess is, he was the class clown and didn’t get much “book learnin’.”

Dad is in the back row, 5th from the left, making a face

 When dad was deep in thought he had the curious habit of tickling the tip of his nose with the hairs on the back of his wrist.  We would watch him from a distance and wonder, what the hell?  Even his smile was different.  Most people see a smile as lips with the ends turned up, but his lips would form a reverse smile where the ends turned down instead of up.  It didn’t mean he was sad, it meant he was thinking and anyway, believe it or not, it still looked like a smile!

When dad was thinking, you could almost hear the wheels spinning in his head.  He possessed and intellect that far surpassed his station in life and I sometimes wonder what might have been if he’d had a normal family life and had the same opportunities as others of his generation.  He did study law for a while, but just long enough to defend himself against the corruption he faced in the course of his business.  Believe it or not, he was very good at law and actually set a precedent in California that is still in the books.  Many powerful people have underestimated him and fallen victim to his legal prowess.

Dad at 18, just prior to his first enlistment

In spite of his meager education, dad had a talent with numbers.  He seemed fascinated by them and spent hours playing with his “hundred key” Monroe mechanical calculator.  He purchased that calculator in 1953 and must have paid a small fortune for it.  It was “cutting edge” at the time, sort of like a computer for his generation.  A little “overkill” for balancing his checkbook, I think.

When dad did leave the farm in South Dakota, his travels took him to the West Coast where he visited as far north as Seattle and as far south as Los Angeles.   Upon arriving in the Los Angeles area on his third or fourth trip, dad and his brother Paul, enlisted in the Cavalry at Fort Mac Arthur, Upper Reservation.  It was December 7th, 1937.  The two were sent to Fort McDowell on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay where they arrived on Dec.10th, 1937 (the same day the Japanese sank the ship "Panay" on the Yangtze River, China).  After some basic training the two brothers ended up in Hawaii where, due to a typographical error, dad got the opportunity to undergo training as a bombardier.  During his stay in Hawaii, he taught swimming at the YMCA and his graduating class was honored with a reception at the estate of James Drummond Dole, the Pineapple King.

After a couple of years of military life dad figured he’d had enough and finagled an early discharge, I guess he thought things would be better in civilian life.  He was wrong, the depression was still going on and jobs were scarce.  “I was quick to leave the military,” he said, “but I soon learned that picking fruit in the Sacramento valley was not for me either.”  Dad bummed around California with a friend for about a year and a half before he finally re-enlisted into the newly formed Army Air Force.  Soon thereafter, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he found himself headed to England as one of the first logistical support teams.  He spent several months establishing bases and supply depots for the troops that were to follow.

Dad on the right with his younger brother Ralph who was a tail gunner

 When dad’s bombardier training was discovered, he was offered a position with the Eighth Air Force as a replacement bombardier for crews that were shorthanded.  He told me he needed the flight pay, but that seems like a crazy trade-off for the dangers he would face flying in B-17’s.  The life expectancy for a B-17 crew at the time was only 14 missions; dad flew a total of 37.

Dad at his 80th Birthday, wearing his favorite tie

Response to yesterday's blog

After yesterday’s post, James mentioned the time my brother Ken and I raced to Joaquin Miller Junior High School on our bicycles.  On the route we were taking that morning, we would enter the school yard through a small gate designed to pass one person at a time.  We were “neck and neck” all the way, and in the last hundred yards we really poured on the heat.  Pedaling as fast as we could and threatening each other all the way, neither one of us was willing to back down.  Consequently, we reached the gate at the same time.  The bicylcles wedged into the opening and came to a sudden stop, sending us both over the handlebars.  I still say I won that day by at least half an inch, but Ken thinks otherwise.  Maybe I should challenge him to a rematch.

My cousin LuAnn’s comment is referring to the time my father opened the show for Nat King Cole at Harrah’s Club in Lake Tahoe.  Dad was a talented Tap Dancer and always kept his tap shoes with him in a little brown satchel.  Nat invited talent from the audience to open for him and dad was there and ready.  As kids, we never really appreciated his talent and he would embarrass the hell out of us whenever we went to Shakey’s Pizza in Sacramento.  He would invariably get up and put on a show for everyone, much to the delight of the proprietors and much to the embarrassment of his own kids.  Dad was still tap dancing into his eighties, albeit a little subdued.  I think my sister Lil still has his shoes.

Surviving Lake Tahoe

In 1955, I was eleven years old and entering the 7^th grade in Lake Tahoe, CA; my brother Kenneth was a year older and a grade ahead of me.  We only lived at Tahoe, near the “Y” for about a year, but during that time we managed to flirt with death and danger on several occasions.

One time, Ken and a friend of his were chasing a squirrel when it ran into a very long piece of irrigation pipe.  Thinking they had the squirrel trapped, they decided that the friend would hold the end of the pipe down while Ken would raise the pipe vertically.  All was going well until the pipe came in contact with a high voltage transmission line.  Being in the center of the pipe, Ken avoided most of the harm, but his poor friend who was at the “ground” end was knocked unconscious and suffered some mild burns.  After the ambulance left, we looked around but never did learn the fate of the squirrel.

Another time, we were playing in a house that was under construction.  One end of the house was only about a foot above the ground, but because of the sloping terrain, the other end was well over three feet above the ground.  I can’t remember what we were up to that day, but we had a noosed rope tied to the rafters.  In a well timed sequence of events, I jumped off the end of the house about the same time Ken decided to lasso me.  The noose caught me around the neck and I hit the ground on my tip-toes with the rope stretched taut!  For several weeks after that, I had a rope mark on my neck that was reminiscent of Clint Eastwood in “Hang em’ High.”  I don’t like to think what the results might have been if the rope had been a foot shorter or the house a foot higher.

We must have been in the Cowboy mode in Tahoe because, another time, I was playing rodeo and using my bike as a horse.  I had a lasso firmly tied to the goose-neck on my handle bars (my saddle horn) and I was practicing my roping technique.  It never dawned on me until it was too late that if I roped something stationary, my bicycle was going to come to an abrupt halt.  Needless to say, I soon found myself on the ground picking gravel out of the palms of my hands.

Looking back, it all seems a little humorous but I guess we were lucky to have survived.  Oh well, it wasn’t the first time we had committed life threatening stupid antics, and it wouldn’t be the last.