SPEAKING OUT FOR AN UNDER-APPRECIATED WW II GENERAL

            In a 2008 address to the student body of the Air War College, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates challenged young Air Force officers to begin thinking about the kind of leaders they wished to become. “Do you want to become somebody” he asked, “or do you want to do something?” Without necessarily denigrating either choice, he made it clear that these were two distinctly different paths, with each requiring its own mindset and preparatory goals. It was clear though that he thought our present-day military could use more of those committed to a mission than to their own advancement.

            I was personally much-struck by the Secretary’s point, both as an ex senior non-com serving in several very different chains-of-command at a time of war, and as an amateur – but serious – military historian.  The World War II period (1941 – 1945) presents the student of military history with an interesting array of star-studded leaders serving during a time of changing national service demands – and with that a huge change in the very culture of military life. During a time of such a clash of “peacetime” vs. “wartime” cultures within the ranks, consider the one between disciplined “old timers” and greenies just out of high school, college or jerking sodas at a local milk bar. Consider the cadre of Junior Officers who had plugged away for ten or fifteen years for their coveted silver bar or Captain’s tracks only to see a small “army” of “kids” get their commissions after some good luck and 90 days of OCS - Officer’s Candidate School.

            And the upper ranks did not escape unscathed by the outbreak of war. Many field grade officers who had already reached or passed their level of competency were now promoted a notch or two beyond as swelling numbers gave birth to new advancement possibilities. In this maelstrom of administrative shuffling, many deserving but “quiet” candidates got “passed over” while astute “political” officers moved upward.

            When on August 17^th 1942 ,  a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress with the name Butcher Shop painted on its nose rose from the rough runway of Grafton-Underwood air field in Britain’s East Anglia to lead 11 other “Forts” on America’s first strike of WWII against Nazi-occupied Europe, the airman at the controls was a 27-year-old major named Paul W. Tibbets; that’s right, the same Paul Tibbets who three years hence would be flying a Super Fortress named the Enola Gay carrying the Atomic bomb which would bring about the end of the war. Tibbets would also lead the first 100-bomber strike deep into Germany.

            Tibbets was a rising star and a close associate of that group of leaders who made strategic bombing an eventual winning strategy, and his leadership skills forged the foundations of the air campaign in the pacific which would bring the Empire of Japan to the surrender table in 1945, before which he would have to restore the confidence of reluctant air crews even to fly the “cursed” giant.

            Described by Eisenhower as the Allies’ very best pilot, it would be Tibbets who would be given the responsibility of flying the Supreme Commander and his headquarters staff from England to Gibraltar in preparation for the invasion of North Africa. After being transferred to Africa and the newly formed 12^th Air force himself, and while awaiting his promotion to Colonel to be carried out, Tibbets manages to get on the wrong side of another Colonel on his way upward. Never one to suffer fools gladly, and with 43 missions under his belt, he objected to a mission planned by Colonel Lauris Norstad to go against an enemy target at 6,000 feet – the best possible “killing zone” for Nazi gunners. In the end Tibbets agreed to lead the mission if Norstad would fly as his co-pilot.  Group aircrews were relieved when the altitude was changed to 20,000 feet. Norstad cancelled Tibbets’ promotion and – superior in the changing chain of command in the following years – blocked his progress.

            In every command in which he served, Paul Tibbets – not always quietly – left things better than he had found them. He saw a future for jet-powered bombers and pioneered development of the B-47. When it was seen that the long-awaited B-29 program was in danger of failing, Tibbets was sent to save the super bomber and restore the confidence of grown men who were refusing to fly in the dangerous Boeing plane which had even killed its test pilot. He ended up accumulating more B-29 flight hours than any other pilot, and in the process working out a host of problems, lightening the plane’s weight by 7,000 pounds, and demonstrating the giant’s ability to turn inside that of the P-47 fighter in simulated air combat. Training two women pilots to handle the big bomber, he used a demonstration to shame male pilots refusing to fly.

            The next time you view the motion picture, Twelve O’clock High written by Bierne Lay, Jr. and released in 1949, you are seeing a story based upon the 97^th and 306^th bomb groups of the 8^th Air Force in the early days of the U.S.A.A.F. in WWII. Gregory Peck plays the part of Gen. Frank Armstrong, who ten years later was my C.O.  The tough no-nonsense pilot he chooses to be his Deputy – with the fictional name of Joe Cobb – is really Paul Tibbets, played by actor Joe Kellog.

            After many years of research and thinking about it, I believe that General Paul Tibbets, whose ashes were scattered over the English Channel, is one of the unsung heroes of WWII and certainly an example of one who lived to DO something.

TAPPING INTO THE MAGIC OF MUSIC FROM THE HEART

                        Looking through the notes accumulated over the years in the planning and thinking that go on behind these columns I call “HOME COUNTRY”, several thoughts come into my mind that might be worth sharing with you who are the faceless but ever-present friends who read it. Sitting here at my computer keyboard reminds me that this, the actual writing, is the “easy” part of the job I love. The long and often lonely hours of thinking, weighing and listening for a whisper of inspiration; of fighting the nagging “voice” that tells me I don’t have another story left in me, that the “mojo” is gone. That is what is hard. I was thinking about this exercise when I wrote the column titled Appreciating Moments of Mindfulness back on November 2^nd 2015, and the month before with Listening to the Still, Small Voices.

            It is usually in the early morning hours, when it is quiet and peaceful and I can be alone with my thoughts that the “magic” happens; when it does. I was born into and grew up in a home where music was as ever present as the furniture, so I suppose it’s not so unusual that I should often turn to a background of selected song to enhance these searching moments. Not just any kind of music, but notes that speak to me of thoughtfulness, and the harmony of life at its most meaningful; soulful, peaceful and often haunting in its honesty. I confess that in recent months I have settled on the works of a particular composer, arranger and recording artist as a consistently dependable resource of inspiration of the kind that “speaks” to me when my heart is listening.

            Paul Cardall has been writing and performing music for close to twenty years and is well known across the country and especially in Utah and the Rocky Mountain West. He was born with only one half of a functioning heart, one of the 40,000 infants born with congenital heart defects in the U.S. each year. He endured numerous difficult surgeries and then experienced the long anxious wait on that now near- mythical list waiting for a replacement heart, upon whose beating he continues to write, arrange and perform today. Out of this came a unique awareness of the unfulfilled needs of this segment of U.S. health research and development, and the creation of the Saving Tiny Hearts Society the Cardall’s support. Even before I became aware of this charitable part of the artist’s life, I had noticed a quality to his music which imparted a sense of sympathy and appreciation of life that touches the very hearts of listeners. When I seek an hour of careful thinking and considering, I go to one or another of my half-dozen Cardall recordings.

            My favorite for setting a mood level which never fails to carry my consciousness away from the common and mundane and into a world where exposed hearts may be touched is a 2014 CD album titled (not surprisingly) Saving tiny Hearts. Each of the 14 titles which come together in this grouping contains the musical telling of a story, beginning with a personal favorite titled Gracie’s Theme, inspired by the true story of a much-loved little girl who, after all the preparation support and agonizing wait by her family, died during the heart transplant operation. A haunting quality which always speaks to me comes from another selection named simply Voices. The listener can write whatever story one wishes, but for me I always imagine I’m listening to the chorus of  thousands of tiny voices of cheery, happy, hopeful kids who had to leave us all-too-early because of childhood health events for which there is no available answer. Miracles, Our Love and Coming Home are titles on the same disc which tell their own musical stories.

            I and my family will always remember an evening long ago when we knelt together in our living room after being told that our four-year-old son would probably never live a normal life due to a heart defect. Then came our Miracle. Today that son runs marathons, travels the world, and is a grandfather

two times over.

            By the way, you too can help:  www.savingtinyhearts.com

REACHING OUT TO JENNIE

            I met Jennie three years ago, on our annual trip to the Oregon seashore.  We enjoy the transit of the awe-inspiring Columbia River Gorge so much we usually stop only once, and then not until we reach The Dalles or Hood River.   On this occasion the old Cadillac slowed for an exit I hadn’t planned to take. I nonchalantly picked a convenient service station brand as I tried to explain to my passengers that we didn’t really need gas, I just thought we should stop.

            Oregon is one of those states where you don’t get to pump your own fuel, so accordingly a young attendant approached my door. I watched her remove the adjacent pump handle as she acknowledged my instructions. Probably no more then 18, her need for lots of dental work was a major “giveaway” for one so young. Despite an eager smile and an obvious will to make a good impression, I could see that she possessed a sweet nature, but was burdened by serious cares. Unless you knew one of my inner- most weaknesses, you would never have guessed that this brief interchange would mark the beginning of a hopeful but sad three-year relationship.

            As I pulled our car away from the pump and watched as the girl swirled away on a five-minute break, I said to my family something like, “that kid has big problems; I have to park for a minute.” Inside, I found the station manager, an overworked late middle-age lady who was about to become a special kind of personal friend. After assuring herself that my intentions were sincere, Mary Baker took me aside to talk. “You’re right on,” she said, “when you see the sweetness in that girl, and you are right about her troubles. She is one of these teen-age single mothers who come back to us after running off to California chasing a ‘big new life’.

            Getting to know Jenny took the help of Mrs. Baker – one of the few people the girl trusted. Even then I had to learn a lot about the wandering and damaged mind of a long-time meth addict even to survive a five-minute long --distance conversation. My family tried to discourage me from trying to help from the outset, but I couldn’t forget about Bella, the five-year old daughter whose father I would later learn was serving time for murder. If there was one motivator left in Jennie’s bifurcated young life it

was Bella.  After a number of moves and changes, “Jen” lost the ability to work 

once again along with the use of a borrowed (and illegal) car for commuting. Because of the immense distance between communities in her remote area, employment was problematic at best in her situation.

            I tried to regularly send her caring, encouraging personal email messages between phone calls and in return she would tell me the current length of her sobriety. I would occasionally slip a greenback into a greeting card and envelope but remained careful to never let it become an established practice.  With the approach of Christmas, I used the opportunity to talk with Jennie by cell phone about the kinds of gifts which would bring joy to her little girl, and then went on a story-book buying hunt. Shortly after that she had a change of address, and her life began what I had to conclude was another downhill slide.

            For a long time I listened to the sad “goodbye” signals of an inactive cell phone; a wavering farewell from one of God’s daughters I would have given anything to help. Reaching out is not always painless.

            I remain in email-touch with Mary Baker, and stop at the Oregon service station to wish her well each year, but as with me, she too has only a tear and a memory of a sweet young girl we once shared a piece of our hearts with.

WHEN AMERICA AND FRIENDS SAVED RUSSIA

            Confident that he had neutralized Stalin by signing a non-aggression pact with Russia and offering to share ownership of a large chunk of recently- conquered Poland to boot, Hitler was ready to proceed with the next step in his plan for the conquest of the entire European Continent.

            On June 22, 1941 a Nazi army of 3,200,000 invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa piling up massive casualties in their wake as they sped to the very gates of Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad. Realizing the gravity of his country’s situation and knowing that Britain and her allies were already in retreat almost everywhere, Stalin appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt and the United States for war supplies and food for his people.

            The United States was still a neutral country (Pearl Harbor was still six months in the future,) but Roosevelt had found a way around a strict observance of neutrality with his “Lend Lease” agreement with Britain, and the U.S. had been massively supplying the Defense of Great Britain since 1939. Churchill – an ardent foe of communism and no friend of Stalin – quickly agreed with the need to support Russia, seeing any chance of stopping Hitler slipping away.

            An immediate challenge was the availability of sea-going cargo vessels, and the great distance over the world’s worst shipping lanes to open Russian ports, to say nothing of the ferocious activity of German U-boats which were already exacting a heavy toll in the “Battle of the Atlantic”. Waiting in the wings of history was another American innovation – the Liberty ship – an ugly duckling of a sea-going freighter which would be assembled from pre-produced sections which would be welded together rather than riveted in weeks rather than months. The SS Robert E. Peary would be finished in 4 days, 15 hours and 30 minutes and sail 3 hours later! (The author would cross the Pacific in one of these “moth-balled” veterans in yet another war.)

            The Russian ports chosen for this budding enterprise were in the Soviet Union’s far north including Murmansk, Archangel, and Kola Inlet on the Barents Sea, a world of floating ice floes, gale force winds, high seas and freezing rains capable of covering a ship with tons of ice faster than crews could chop it away. Patrolled by wolf packs of U-boats stationed at strategic target locations and homed in by “mother” subs and aircraft, the track the Allied convoys were forced to transit was a veritable

gauntlet.  The deadly route became known as the Murmansk run, a 14 to17-day voyage of deadly boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.

            The convoys were usually made up of several dozen fully-loaded cargo vessels accompanied by escort destroyers, corvettes and maybe a tanker for refueling and commanded by an officer known as the Commodore. Except for the Navy and Coast Guard crews on the warships, these crucial supply “sea-trains” were in the hands of the merchant marine, civilian sailors who drew no “combat-pay” or insurance protection, enjoyed little recognition, and were paid about $2,000 a year. Their work was some of the most dangerous of the war – especially on The Murmansk run.

            One of the most noted of these precious supply trains was Convoy PQ          -17 attacked by air and sea in August, 1942 – a voyage Winston Churchill called “one of the most melancholy episodes of the war.” Of the 37 cargo ships that left Iceland, 24 were sent to the bottom along with their crews and $700 million of supplies.

            Somewhere on the sea bottom in Russia’s arctic north there are 5,000 tanks, 7000 aircraft, and 200,000 tons of other war materiel. More tanks were lost on the Murmansk run than in any battle of WWII. In 1942 there could be no more dangerous place to be than aboard an Allied tanker carrying 100 octane aviation fuel between the U.S. and Europe. Respective of how their governments might argue with each other, the everyday people of the United States and Russia should be proud to have been united by so great a cause in our recent past.